A second Senate committee has endorsed adding an intermediate appeals court to West Virginia's judicial system.

The three-judge court would hear both criminal and civil cases under the version advanced Monday by the Senate Finance Committee. It heads to the full Senate.

The court would handle appeals filed with the state Supreme Court that the justices decide not to consider. Its decisions would set legal precedent and could be appealed to the Supreme Court.

The governor would appoint the three judges, nominated by a selection committee.

A commission that studied West Virginia's judiciary recommended an intermediate appeals court in 2009. Critics question the potential cost, and also cite how the Supreme Court revamped its appeals process last year.

The South Dakota Supreme Court will announce Monday whether it will allow expanded media coverage of trial courts.

The Supreme Court has allowed electronic recording equipment and cameras when it hears appeals, but those devices are not allowed in other court proceedings.

Chief Justice David Gilbertson appointed a committee of judges, lawyers and the media to study the issue.

It developed two proposals. One would allow cameras and recording equipment only if the judge and all parties agree. The other would presume they can be used unless the presiding judge thinks they would interfere with the fairness of the proceedings.

Kentucky appears to have violated a judge's order stopping all executions and preventing the state from taking any action to carry out a lethal injection by purchasing a key drug used in the process, an attorney for several death row inmates said Thursday.

Public defender David Barron wants to bar the state from ever using the 18 grams of sodium thiopental the state acquired this month.

Despite a national shortage of sodium thiopental, Kentucky bought enough of the fast-acting narcotic from a Georgia company to carry out three lethal injections. The packaging indicated the drug was made by Sandoz International GmbH, a European generics company, Kentucky Justice and Public Safety Cabinet spokeswoman Jennifer Brislin said. The packaging had an expiration date of May 2014.

In two filings in Franklin Circuit Court, Barron said that by even purchasing the drug, Kentucky violated the injunction handed down in September by Judge Phillip Shepherd. The Kentucky Supreme Court is reviewing a judge's order in one case regarding the state's lethal injection procedures and has halted all executions in the interim.

A Superior Court justice has ruled that six Maine counties overcharged a Cumberland businessman who requested public records under the state's Freedom of Access law.

Justice Thomas Warren ruled that fees charged by Androscoggin, Aroostook, Cumberland, Knox, Penobscot and York counties -- in response to a request by John Simpson -- can't be justified.

The Sun Journal of Lewiston says Simpson, owner of MacImage of Maine, filed Freedom of Access requests in 2009 for digital copies of records in the six counties' registries to create his own document database. Among the prices quoted by the counties were $12 million by Cumberland, and $4 million by Penobscot at $1 per page for 4 million pages.

The Supreme Court has rejected an appeal challenging campaign disclosure laws in Washington state.

The court on Tuesday let stand without comment a federal appeals court ruling that upheld the state's disclosure requirements. Human Life of Washington challenged the requirements as a violation of the First Amendment. The group didn't want to reveal its donors in a 2008 campaign opposing an assisted suicide ballot measure.

The San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the disclosure requirements "have become an important part of our First Amendment tradition."

A Florida Supreme Court ruling that threw out a $145 billion award against cigarette makers is biting Big Tobacco back, making it dramatically easier for thousands of smokers to sue and turning the state into the nation's hot spot for damage awards.

The 2006 ruling has helped generate more than $360 million in damage awards in only about two dozen cases. Thousands more cases are in the pipeline in Florida, which has far more smoking-related lawsuits pending than any other state.

Though the justices tossed the $145 billion class-action damage award, they allowed about 8,000 individual members of that class to pursue their own lawsuits. And in a critical decision, they allowed those plaintiffs to use the original jury's findings from the class-action case.

That means the plaintiffs don't have to prove that cigarette makers sold a defective and dangerous product, were negligent, hid the risks of smoking and that cigarettes cause illnesses such as lung cancer and heart disease. The plaintiffs must mainly show they were addicted to smoking and could not quit, and that their illness — or a smoker's death — was caused by cigarettes.

Jurors have sided with smokers or their families in about two-thirds of the 34 cases tried since February 2009, when the first Florida lawsuit following the rules set by the Supreme Court decision went before a jury. Awards have ranged from $2 million or less to $80 million, though tobacco companies are appealing them all.