In keeping with its established strategy of settling batches of cases with individual plaintiffs lawyers, GSK has resolved all of the more than 5,000 cases filed by the two lawyers who were to have tried the first Avandia bellwether case last month. The price tag is eye-popping, but that's nothing new for the multibillion-dollar Avandia litigation.

As expected, the Manhattan federal district court judge grilled lawyers from the bank and the government about the relatively small size of their proposed $33 million settlement. But he also homed in on the role of the law firms that drafted the allegedly misleading disclosure materials.

Boies Schiller's Lee Wolosky told us Starr International's suit is the first in the expanding 'reverse merger' litigation to target individuals in the U.S. who helped a Chinese merger partner obtain a listing on an American exchange.

Try as they might to swat away claims that leading heavy truck transmission manufacturer Eaton Corporation conspired with truck makers to thwart competition, Eaton and its lawyers at Baker Botts and Morris Nichols, Arsht & Tunnel are still facing a three-pronged antitrust assault.