Court Orders

The U.S. Supreme Court ordered the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to reconsider its decision to let a case involving a former Northrop Grumman Corp. employee's whistle-blower suit against the company proceed. The action comes a week after the Supreme Court overturned another 9th Circuit decision in a similar case involving General Motors Corp.'s Hughes Electronics subsidiary.

The World Court on Friday ordered Burkina Faso and Mali to withdraw their troops from a long-disputed border area and asked them to observe the cease-fire that ended their five-day flare-up last month. Burkina Faso, formerly Upper Volta, had asked the court for an emergency ruling last week, and a hearing was held Thursday. A troop pullout accord "within 20 days . . .

A federal appeals court on Friday ordered the Environmental Protection Agency to make auto manufacturers start installing special canisters on cars and light trucks to control gasoline fumes. Congress, as part of the 1990 Clean Air Act, mandated that vehicles coming off the assembly lines beginning with the 1996 model year be equipped with the on-board refueling vapor recovery (ORVR) systems.

A U.S. appeals court Friday overturned a portion of Federal Communications Commission rules aimed at making it easier and cheaper for new local telephone companies to offer high-speed Internet connections. The FCC last March ordered the U.S. regional phone companies and GTE Corp. to make it easier for competitors, such as Covad Communications Group Inc. and NorthPoint Communications Group Inc.

For the second time in two weeks, the Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday lost a federal court challenge to key air pollution requirements. A three-judge panel of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ordered the agency to stop moving ahead with a regulation requiring 22 states to work to reduce the amount of smog-causing chemicals drifting to other states.

In a case that could cost banks millions of dollars, the California Supreme Court today revived a class action suit alleging that fees levied on customers who bounce checks are "unconscionable" and excessive. In a unanimous opinion written by Justice Allen Broussard, the court reversed a San Francisco Superior Court judge who threw out the suit brought on behalf of attorney Paul Perdue against Crocker National Bank over its $6-per-rubber-check charge.

A Los Angeles man who said he hoped to house the homeless and the elderly in the Skid Row hotel he bought less than two months ago was instead ordered Thursday by a Los Angeles Superior Court judge to institute a series of stringent steps aimed at eliminating what city officials say is a "cesspool of drug trafficking" there. At the request of Deputy City Atty. Pamela Albers, Judge Ricardo A.

A court convicted five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor Tuesday of deliberately infecting more than 400 children with HIV and sentenced them to death, despite scientific evidence that the youngsters had the virus before the medical workers came to Libya. The United States and Europe reacted with outrage to the verdict, which prolongs a case that has hurt Libya's ties with the West. This is the second conviction for the six codefendants, who already have served seven years in jail.

An Orange County Superior Court commissioner temporarily suspended the licenses of two doctors Monday following the death of a La Habra woman who underwent more than 10 hours of liposuction and plastic surgery. Commissioner F. Latimer Gould said in his ruling that public health and safety would be threatened if Dr. William Earle Matory and anesthesiologist Dr. Robert Ken Hoo practiced pending the findings of an administrative hearing.