The Florida Supreme Court on Thursday rejected a record-setting jury verdict that had awarded $145 billion in punitive damages in a class action challenge brought by smokers against tobacco companies. The Court vacated the punitive damages award, unanimously concluding it was "excessive as a matter of law." Tobacco companies, including Philip Morris USA, a unit [...]

An Israeli military tribunal Wednesday extended the detentions of five Palestinian Hamas lawmakers for an additional five days. The five – four MPs and one cabinet member – challenged the authority of the Israel Defense Forces court at the Ofer military base in the West Bank to hear their case, arguing that the tribunal has [...]

AP is reporting that the Georgia Supreme Court has upheld the state's ban on same-sex marriage contained in a 2004 constitutional amendment . In May, a lower court judge ruled the ban unconstitutional because the amendment violated the single-subject rule, which prohibits voters from deciding more than one issue at a time. Georgia Gov. Sonny [...]

North Korea on Thursday claimed it has a "legal right" to build and test missiles in an effort to strengthen self-defense, in a statement from the foreign ministry which also confirmed that the country test-launched seven missiles earlier this week. North Korea also promised to continue missile launches, and threatened to use force if the [...]

Google is prepared to file antitrust complaints against Internet broadband providers if Congress fails to pass effective net neutrality legislation, Google Vice President Vinton Cerf has told a press conference in Bulgaria. Cerf suggested that the claims could be based on service providers exploiting their control over their infrastructure to interfere with services provided by [...]

France has responded to reports that its intelligence agents interviewed six former Guantanamo Bay detainees now on trial in Paris while they were detained at the US prison, saying that the agents visited the detainees for the administrative purposes of identifying the French citizens and generally assessing their situation. The French Foreign Ministry said in [...]

Gunmen ambushed and killed a former Iraqi judge on Thursday in western Baghdad, also wounding his son and driver, according to Iraqi police. Saleh Hassan Yass al-Awsi, a Sunni, was among those removed from office by the Iraqi government's Debaathification Commission and was a strong voice in the push to petition Iraq's new parliament to [...]

The sudden death of former Enron CEO Kenneth Lay on Wednesday presents the legal system, Lay's family and Lay's own legacy with major challenges, according to a University of Houston law professor who closely followed the trial that led to Lay's conviction this spring. In a Thursday op-ed on JURIST, Professor Nancy Rapoport says that [...]

The US House Committee on Government Reform is waiting for the US Defense Department and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to comply with a subpoena seeking to compel the Pentagon to turn over several documents, including all drafts of a key report in the Abu Ghraib abuse investigation. In March, the Pentagon failed to respond to [...]

The New York Court of Appeals , the state's highest court, ruled Thursday morning that New York's ban on same-sex marriage is not unconstitutional. The ruling comes in four consolidated cases where attorneys representing 48 gay and lesbian couples argued that a 97-year-old statute limiting marriage to a union between a man and a woman [...]