After a federal judge refused to certify an economic damages class, he granted a motion to enjoin certification of a similar state court class in West Virginia. On Tuesday, despite cries of unfairness by the state court plaintiffs, the Eight Circuit upheld the injunction.

Eighteen months after U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff set off alarm bells on Wall Street by concluding that Goldman Sachs must pay more than $20 million for clearing trades for a fraud-riddled hedge fund, an appellate panel has tepidly endorsed the ruling.

Who can blame the Supreme Court for wanting no part of Chevron Corporation's multi-billion dollar slugfest over its predecessor's operations in the Ecuadorian Amazon? On Tuesday the high court steered clear of the toxic litigation over toxic sludge, refusing to review a ruling that limited Chevron's options for fighting an $18 billion judgment by an Ecuadorian court.

It's becoming clear that patent wars over smart phone technology are going to spread revenue to Am Law firms like manure over undernourished soil. Kirkland has filed the latest smart phone suit--Apple's infringement case against the phone-maker HTC--but it turns out that K&E has quietly been representing Apple in the Nokia case as well. Plus: a rundown of all the firms involved in the smart phone litigation to date.

The most celebrated battle in the multifront war between Qualcomm and Broadcom has been the Big Q's suit alleging that Broadcom infringed its patents on video compression technology--the case in which San Diego federal district court judge Rudi Brewster ruled that Qualcomm had deliberately failed to disclose patents to a standards-setting body. Yesterday the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit affirmed Judge Brewster's finding that Qualcomm breached its duty to disclose its patents to the standards-setting body. It also upheld his award of attorneys' fees to Broadcom.

Once upon a time, Paul Daugerdas generated hundreds of millions of dollars for Jenkens & Gilchrist by blessing dubious tax shelter deals. Then the feds got wind of his role. In 2007 Daugerdas's tax shelter work led to the demise of his onetime firm. Now it's led to his indictment on tax fraud and conspiracy charges.