General Electric and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries are mired in at least a half-a-dozen patent and antitrust battles around the country. With another win for GE's lawyers at Weil, Gotshal & Manges in the wind power war, Mitsubishi seems to be stuck in the doldrums.

The job of deciding whether to approve the Securities and Exchange Commission's proposed $285 million settlement with Citigroup could have fallen to any number of federal judges in Manhattan. That the case wound up before Judge Jed Rakoff, who only very, very grudgingly approved previous SEC settlements with the likes of Bank of America, tickled no one more than the judge himself. At the start of a standing-room-only hearing on the settlement in Judge Rakoff's Manhattan courtroom Wednesday, he said he was reminded of Humphrey Bogart's line in Casablanca: "Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine."

We called Mendelsohn after reading about a newly disclosed, eight-country probe of four pharmaceutical companies and noting the rapid upward spiral of recent FCPA settlements. His prediction: FCPA defense is only going to get hotter.

U.S. District Judge Sidney Stein in Manhattan granted final approved to Citigroup Inc.'s $590 million settlement with shareholders on Thursday, but not without slashing a $100 million fee request submitted by plaintiffs lawyers at Kirby McInerney.

Will Barry Berke of Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel help stymie the ever-widening insider trading probe of the hedge fund SAC Capital Advisors? Or will Berke's client be just another step up the ladder for prosecutors determined to nab the fund's billionaire founder, Steven Cohen?