The AIG litigation machine keeps humming as a New York federal judge declines to dismiss a class action alleging that the insurer misled shareholders about its credit default swap portfolio.

Precedent ruled the day at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in a price-fixing case against makers of liquid-crystal display panels, even if not all the judges were particularly happy about it. Who was happy? Lawyers for the LCD makers at White & Case.

Two months after opting out of a class action against Pfizer, a group of major public and private institutional investors are taking matters into their own hands. On Thursday the breakaway investors and their lawyers at Bernstein Litowitz filed their own securities fraud suit, accusing Pfizer of duping shareholders about risks associated with two once-blockbuster drugs.

Never has such high-caliber, high-priced legal talent toiled with so much creativity and effort on a case of so little societal benefit. In the latest round of the Battle of the Billionaire Sailors, Boies persuaded a Manhattan judge to bar the race from taking place in the United Arab Emirates in February.

Since April, the Federal Trade Commission has been fighting to block Phoebe Putney Health Systems from acquiring a rival hospital in southwest Georgia, on the grounds that the merger would create a monopoly on hospital care in the region. On Friday the Eleventh Circuit agreed that the deal was anticompetitive, but the panel also agreed with PPHS's lawyers at Baker & McKenzie and Weil Gotshal that the courts can't do anything to stop it.

An anonymous tipster with apparent inside knowledge of the agency's negotiations with Citi raised the allegations in an unsigned fax to Sen. Charles Grassley. True or not, the fax makes for compelling reading--and we've got a link to it.