Court Rulings

A former Orange County assistant sheriff who was fired and sent to jail in a perjury conviction is in line to get a big pay day -- about three years of back pay with benefits for wrongful termination. The tentative ruling in the wrong termination case was issued Friday by Orange County Superior Court Judge Andrew Banks.

Ford Motor Co. won reversal of a $52-million punitive-damages verdict awarded to the parents of a 3-year-old boy killed when a pickup truck ran over him. Walter White's parents said a defective parking brake caused the Ford F-350 pickup to move as their son fell out of the truck in 1994. A Nevada federal court jury awarded the sum in a 2004 retrial of the punitive-damages portion of the Whites' lawsuit. A federal appeals court in San Francisco ordered a third trial on the punitive-damages claim.

Warner Bros. is urging a federal judge to move up the date on which he will hear arguments about whether the studio may release the much-anticipated movie "Watchmen," arguing that "time is of the essence," with tens of millions of dollars in marketing expenses on the line. "Watchmen," based on a graphic novel by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, is scheduled for release March 6. But the movie is at the center of a bitter legal battle between Warner Bros. and 20th Century Fox. U.S.

Just days after his prospective colleagues in Washington turned him back from the Capitol, Democrat Roland Burris seized on an Illinois high court decision filed Friday to assert he should be accepted as President-elect Barack Obama's replacement in the U.S. Senate. Armed with the Illinois Supreme Court ruling, Burris' lawyers vowed to return to Washington on Monday and file suit in federal court unless top Senate Democrats reverse their rejection of impeached Democratic Gov. Rod R.

A Superior Court judge has ruled that Los Angeles city officials can seek to recover $5 million from a street gang that has long held a monopoly on the downtown heroin trade, officials announced Tuesday. The civil judgment was sought by City Atty. Rocky Delgadillo, who called it a new front in the fight against gangs. It was the first such judgment since a 2007 state law was passed allowing county and city prosecutors to go after a gang's ill-gotten assets.

The International Court of Justice ruled Monday that the United States violated its order last year when Texas proceeded with the execution of a Mexican national convicted of murder and rape. The court, based in The Hague, said the United States remains bound by a 2004 ruling to review the cases of 51 Mexican citizens on death row despite its failure to do so in the past.

A federal judge Thursday dismissed charges against the wife and former mistress of ex-Orange County Sheriff Michael S. Carona, who was acquitted earlier this month of charges that he took bribes in exchange for the powers of his office. U.S. District Court Judge Andrew Guilford ordered that related charges against Deborah Carona and Debra Hoffman be dropped, said Assistant U.S. Atty. Kenneth Julian.

The notion that the only safe job in a recession is a state Civil Service job was punctured this week when a Sacramento court gave the governor the authority to take an ax to the government payroll. Thursday's Superior Court ruling, which greenlighted Gov.

Forestalling a spectacle of a union at war with itself, a judge rebuffed for the second time a bid by Screen Actors Guild President Alan Rosenberg to block the union's new negotiating team from reviving contract talks with major studios. Rosenberg and three other SAG board members filed a lawsuit this week seeking to overturn a recent vote by the board that ousted the union's chief negotiator and disbanded the union's negotiating committee.

A Montana man has been acquitted of assault charges by a federal appeals court because he doesn't meet the definition of an Indian, never having joined the Blackfeet tribe from which his mother descended or accepted federal benefits to which Native Americans are entitled. Tuesday's ruling by the 9th U.S.