The proposed $7.2 billion class action settlement over credit card "swipe fees"—which would be the largest private antitrust settlement in history—has survived an initial hurdle. At a Friday hearing in U.S. district court in Brooklyn, Judge John Gleeson preliminarily approved the deal.

Banner Supply Company cut the first major deal with plaintiffs so far in the multidistrict litigation over defective Chinese drywall on Tuesday. It took the opportunity to bash another defendant, Knauf, for allegedly lying about the safety and fitness of drywall it sold to Banner.

Who owns Lyondell Chemical's claims against the lenders that financed its 2007 leveraged buyout? That question is at the center of a fight that's going to be played out over the next few weeks in Manhattan federal bankruptcy court between Lyondell's Chapter 11 estate and the chemical company's unsecured creditors. And it looks like this one's going to get ugly.

Less than a week after Verizon threw its weight behind Samsung in its infringement fight with Apple and called for all the combatants in the smartphone patent wars to quit seeking injunctions against each other's products, another major wireless carrier has entered the fray.

The proposed settlement still leaves the country's largest fresh egg producer and its lawyers at Gibson Dunn fighting price-fixing claims from indirect purchasers and opt-out direct action plaintiffs.

Following Google's $5 million patent trial loss last month to Bedrock Computer Technology, it took a jury in the same Tyler, Texas courtroom just 40 minutes to reach a verdict of non-infringement on Tuesday in Bedrock's case against Yahoo over the same patent.

Last spring the lower court tossed MBIA's fraud claims against Merrill, finding the insurer is a sophisticated investor that understood the risks of the CDOs it insured. Only a breach of contract claim survived--and now that's gone too. A state appeals panel, in the first MBIA MBS case to reach the appellate level, concluded MBIA couldn't show a breach of the exact language of its CDO contracts.

A Philadelphia judge has refused to dismiss a class action suit accusing Bank of America of engaging in a scheme to use mortgage insurance premiums to fund illegal kickbacks. In his Thursday ruling, the judge directed the parties to develop a record on the issue of whether the statute of limitations should be equitably tolled based on the plaintiffs' claims.