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.

As chief counsel for the U.S. Senate Banking Committee in the mid-1990s, Giuffra helped draft the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act and hobble stock-drop suits. Since the financial crisis the PSLRA has gotten a vigorous workout; last Friday it gave Giuffra the ammunition he needed to knock out what remained of a class action against UBS over more than $100 billion in losses.

A jury might really sink its teeth into Norex Petroleum's claims against a collection of Russian billionaires and oil companies. But unfortunately for Norex, over the span of 10 years Pell has led the way in convincing three different courts in Manhattan to dismiss the case without ever reaching the merits.