Court Case

When filmmaker Sofia Coppola set out to tell the story of the "bling ring," she wanted the movie to have an authentic, docudrama sensibility. So the daughter of Francis Ford Coppola reached out to the Los Angeles Police Department investigator who cracked the case of the starry-eyed youths from the San Fernando Valley. Four years ago, their lust for stardom and money led them to raid the homes of young Hollywood, making off with Paris Hilton's designer clothes and Lindsay Lohan's artwork.

The heirs of the Budapest-based Jewish banker Baron Mor Lipot Herzog have cleared a major legal hurdle in their decades-long quest to force Hungary to return dozens of artworks from Herzog's collection that were looted during World War II. In 2010, Herzog's great-grandson David de Csepel of Altadena led his family in suing Hungary and three of its museums for the return of more than 40 artworks valued at $100 million, including masterpieces by...

All but unnoticed by most of the news media, a criminal case working its way to trial in a federal courtroom in Alexandria, Va., could create perilous new restrictions on both Americans' political speech and the right of their free press to report national security issues. The constitutional implications of these proceedings are alarming enough on their own.

A federal judge on Friday rejected Gov. Jerry Brown's claim that California has improved inmate care enough to end 17 years of court oversight of its less-crowded prisons. Brown has vowed to challenge any such rejection, if need be, before the same U.S. Supreme Court that less than two years ago deemed California prison conditions shocking. U.S. District Judge Lawrence Karlton's decision is a blow to Brown's larger ambition to remove court caps on prison crowding and end court control over a $1.6-billion prison medical program.

Question: A homeowner successfully sued our association, the association's attorneys and their law firm. A copy of the lawsuit was obtained from the courthouse, and the homeowner has been using the blank reverse side for his personal stationery. He makes no comment regarding the suit, he merely wraps all his bills and packages using the lawsuit paper. He is having a field day spreading the word without saying a word.

The time slot was an unforgiving one and the venue even worse. When Foster the People ambled onstage at noon on the final full day of the nearly weeklong South by Southwest music festival in Austin, Texas, in March, it was exhaustion rather than excitement that filled the convention center hall. The scant and weary crowd was hardly befitting for a band that would soon have a top 10 album in "Torches" and become the hottest thing going in Los Angeles. "To a spectator who knew nothing about the back story, we are a band that came out of nowhere," said the trio's leader, Mark Foster.

In homes across the Netherlands, family doctors are carrying out euthanasia at the request of patients seeking a dignified final release from incurable or terminal illness. Dr. Herbert Cohen, one such practitioner, says he has been involved in "up to a dozen" mercy killings in the last three or four years and has always informed the police beforehand. He has never been prosecuted. "Before they die, they say the most marvelous things.

The Supreme Court's decision to hear arguments on the fate of President Obama's healthcare law sets the stage for a ruling just as the presidential election shifts into full swing, putting the law — and the justices — in the center of the campaign. Both sides see the case as posing a profound legal dispute over the size and scope of the federal government, reminiscent of the 1930s court battles over President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal. At stake now is whether Congress has the power under the Constitution to require all Americans to buy health insurance — a linchpin of the new law. Conservatives have made the "individual mandate" a key part of their argument that Obama and congressional Democrats tried to expand government regulation to an unprecedented degree.

Cards on the table: When George H. Painter says the game is rigged against the small investor in Washington, I have reason to take him at his word. Even when his word comes wrapped up like a bombshell. Painter, 83, detonated that bombshell recently in the course of announcing his retirement as an administrative law judge for the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, effective in January. In a public notice, he accused his lone colleague on the CFTC bench, Bruce Levine, of having made a vow nearly 20 years ago never to rule in a complainant's ?

The ignominious history of sexual abuse in the Boy Scouts of America - and the attempts over the years by the organization's executives to cover it up - have been sadly detailed in court cases and, most recently, in an investigation by the Los Angeles Times. But the most exhaustive chronicles of that abuse reside within the Scouts itself, which a century ago began keeping secret "Ineligible Volunteer" files on men accused of sexual abuse or other transgressions. The files were - and still are - intended as a confidential, internal registry of cases of alleged or confirmed abuse in which volunteers were expelled from the organization and were not to be reinstated.

WASHINGTON - Certain law partners no longer call Theodore B. Olson for lunch. Old friends no longer come to dinner at his sprawling house in the woods near the Potomac. One of his best friends died in December, somewhat estranged. All since Olson - the conservative legal hero, crusader against Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton, defender of George W. Bush - signed on to fight for same-sex marriage in California, a battle that he will take to the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday when he challenges Proposition 8, the state measure that banned gay marriage.

Days after his arrest was ordered, the former president of the Maldives sought refuge Wednesday at the Indian embassy, the latest twist in a political saga that has gripped the chain of islands south of India. Mohamed Nasheed stepped down as president last year after weeks of turmoil, set off by his decision last February to arrest a judge whose rulings he claimed were politically tainted. He and his backers later said he was forced to resign by forces loyal to his country's longtime autocracy, which held sway over the Maldives until its first democratic elections roughly four and a half years ago. In August, a national commission countered that there was no coup and concluded that Nasheed had run afoul of the constitution by arresting the judge, findings that triggered new rounds of protests.

The Times on Tuesday released about 1,200 previously unpublished files kept by the Boy Scouts of America on volunteers and employees expelled for suspected sexual abuse. The files, which have been redacted of victims' names and other identifying information, were opened from 1985 through 1991. They can be found in a database along with two decades of files released by order of the Oregon Supreme Court in October. The database also contains summary information on about 3,200 additional files opened from 1947 to 2005 that have not been released publicly.

The ignominious history of sexual abuse in the Boy Scouts of America - and the attempts over the years by the organization's executives to cover it up - have been sadly detailed in court cases and, most recently, in an investigation by the Los Angeles Times. But the most exhaustive chronicles of that abuse reside within the Scouts itself, which a century ago began keeping secret "Ineligible Volunteer" files on men accused of sexual abuse or other transgressions. The files were - and still are - intended as a confidential, internal registry of cases of alleged or confirmed abuse in which volunteers were expelled from the organization and were not to be reinstated.

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court has ended a 6-year-old class-action lawsuit against the nation's telecommunications carriers for secretly helping the National Security Agency monitor phone calls and emails coming into and out of this country. The suit was dealt a death blow in 2008 when Congress granted a retroactive immunity to people or companies coming to the aid of U.S. intelligence agents. Without comment, the justices turned down appeals from civil liberties advocates who contended this mass surveillance was unconstitutional and illegal.

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court has ended a 6-year-old class-action lawsuit against the nation's telecommunications carriers for secretly helping the National Security Agency monitor phone calls and emails coming into and out of this country. The suit was dealt a death blow in 2008 when Congress granted retroactive immunity to people or companies aiding U.S. intelligence agents. Without comment, the justices turned down appeals from civil liberties advocates who contended this mass surveillance was unconstitutional and illegal.

The Times on Tuesday released about 1,200 previously unpublished files kept by the Boy Scouts of America on volunteers and employees expelled for suspected sexual abuse. The files, which have been redacted of victims' names and other identifying information, were opened from 1985 through 1991. They can be found in a database along with two decades of files released by order of the Oregon Supreme Court in October. The database also contains summary information on about 3,200 additional files opened from 1947 to 2005 that have not been released publicly.

Child actress Edith Fellows had made about 30 films by the age of 13 when she starred in a heart-wrenching, high-profile 1936 custody case, which was driven, she later said, by "my money — past, present and future. " Abandoned as an infant by her mother, she was being raised by her paternal grandmother, who brought Edith, then 4, to Hollywood from South Carolina after a "talent scout" guaranteed her a screen test for a $50 fee. The address they were given led to a vacant lot, and her grandmother responded to the con man's ruse by cleaning houses so that they could afford to stay.

WASHINGTON -- A former senator. A scandal. A court case over campaign spending.  Not John Edwards. This time, it's former Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho), who's fighting the Federal Elections Commission's attempt to force him to pay back more than $200,000 in campaign funds. Craig used the funds for his legal expenses in connection with his 2007 arrest at a men's restroom.  The FEC contends the expenses were "not made in connection with his campaign for federal office or for ordinary and necessary expenses incurred in connection with his duties as a senator.

When Bill Buck accidentally cut off the tip of his finger at his Duarte cabinet workshop two years ago, he headed to Huntington Memorial Hospital's emergency room. He assumed his insurance company would sort out the $12,630 bill from the plastic surgeon, Jeannette Martello. But Martello wasn't satisfied with the $3,500 insurance reimbursement, so she returned the check and filed a lawsuit against Buck, his wife and his business for the full amount, according to the state attorney general's office.