Court Rulings

The U.S. Supreme Court said it would decide whether pharmacy companies violate antitrust laws -- and drive up costs to consumers -- by agreeing to let brand-name drug makers pay rivals to delay selling lower-priced generics. In the last decade, several federal courts have upheld such agreements on the grounds that they are settlements of disputes over patents. The Federal Trade Commission, however, has been challenging the so-called pay-for-delay agreements as illegally stifling competition and preserving monopolies.

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court set the stage Friday for a historic decision on gay rights, announcing it would hear appeals of rulings striking down California's Proposition 8 and the federal law denying benefits for legally married same-sex couples. The court could decide in the Proposition 8 case whether the Constitution's promise of equal treatment gives gays and lesbians a right to marry. But the justices also left themselves the option to rule narrowly or even to duck a decision.

CAIRO - Egypt's highest court Sunday postponed ruling on the legitimacy of the constitutional assembly after judges accused Islamist supporters of President Mohamed Morsi of blocking their chambers in a deepening struggle over the country's political future. About 2,000 protesters rallied in front of the Supreme Constitutional Court, which was expected to defy a decree by Morsi and rule against the assembly's authority to write the nation's new charter. The case has heightened political divisions and created a backlash against judges connected to the deposed government of longtime autocrat Hosni Mubarak.

SEATTLE - It had been a night so full of horror that Sherl Hilde might understandably have had trouble recalling the most crucial detail: Who was the man who shot her and her husband late one night at a remote campground in southern Oregon? Was it the man they had turned out of their campsite earlier in the day? Or someone else? Eventually, Hilde identified the campsite squatter, Samuel Lawson, as the man who'd shot her through the window of her camp trailer later that night and then killed her husband as he called 911. But she didn't do so with certainty until after she twice failed to pick Lawson out of a photo lineup, insisted she hadn't seen “their” faces, and said she hadn't seen the perpetrator when he entered the trailer because it was too dark.

the founder of Crystal Cathedral and the face of the globally watched "Hour of Power" television program --and his family will be paid just a fraction of the millions they sought from the preacher's bankrupt ministry. Schuller's daughter, Carol Milner, described Monday's ruling on intellectual property, copyright infringement and contract violations as a "travesty" that leaves the family no choice but to "start liquidating everything. " "It's an avoidance of responsibility for an organization to not take care of those who have gone before them.

BOGOTA, Colombia - In a ruling that gave each side some of what it wanted, the International Court of Justice in The Hague on Monday upheld Colombia's sovereignty over seven Caribbean islands but ordered that Nicaragua's maritime boundary be redrawn to give it more offshore territory. Ending a case that first came before the court in 1999, the ruling gives Nicaragua additional access to fishing grounds and potentially huge reserves of natural gas that Colombian government studies say reside below the ocean floor in the disputed area.

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court ruled Monday that an antiabortion protester who won the right to carry displays of aborted fetuses at a busy intersection is a civil rights advocate entitled to claim attorneys' fees in his case against a local government. The justices in an unsigned opinion said that because the South Carolina antiabortion activist had a free-speech right to "carry pictures of aborted fetuses" that had shocked bystanders, he also had the right under the Civil Rights Act to claim legal fees for vindicating this right in the courts.

Ohio voters who insist on casting a ballot at the wrong polling place will not have their votes counted, a federal appeals court has ruled. Voters who show up at the wrong polling place next week will be told they cannot cast a legal vote there. And if they insist on casting a provisional ballot, it will go uncounted. The decision is the latest to clarify the rules for counting provisional ballots in Ohio, rules that will take on enormous importance next week if the presidential candidates are locked in a close contest.

To settle a lawsuit, the city of Los Angeles entered into a billboard deal in 2006 that was so improper that it would have been funny were it not for the damage it did to neighborhoods, the city's pocketbook and local government's reputation for competence. The agreement kept in place a ban on new billboards but allowed two companies to convert hundreds of conventional signs into huge outdoor electronic screens that change messages every few seconds and glare into adjacent neighborhoods.