Courts

The Dodgers would retain more than $6 billion from their new television contract under a tentative agreement with Major League Baseball, according to two people familiar with the agreement. The settlement would avert a showdown between the Dodgers and MLB in U.S. Bankruptcy Court and would effectively end the court's jurisdiction over the Dodgers' affairs. The people providing the information about the settlement spoke on condition of anonymity because negotiations have not concluded.

When federal officials recently confirmed the existence of a massive National Security Agency program that has been collecting Americans' phone data for years, they argued it was needed to fight terrorism. But that acknowledgment has opened potentially seismic rifts in the nation's legal system, allowing defendants to argue that the government is holding a massive trove of evidence that is necessary to their cases - the same kind of evidence that, when it's collected by police, is commonly turned over to defendants.

The improbable dream is now even more unlikely. The romantic idea of an NFL stadium at Chavez Ravine, one that overlooks downtown Los Angeles, was already a long shot. News that Frank McCourt is in position to demand some involvement only increases the degree of difficulty. The Los Angeles Times obtained documents Wednesday that show the unpopular former Dodgers owner has the option to buy back land if another sports facility - let's say an NFL football stadium - is built on Dodger Stadium property.

If the NFL wants to play at Dodger Stadium, Frank McCourt could be the sole landlord. In any case, the value of the Dodgers sale could exceed $3 billion. Those details were included in previously unreleased provisions of the sale agreement between McCourt and the Dodgers' new owners, Guggenheim Baseball Management. The Los Angeles Superior Court last week denied Guggenheim's request to keep those provisions secret; The Times obtained a financial summary of the deal Wednesday.

At the height of his career, Michael Jackson had it all. International fame. Grammy-winning records. Unimaginable wealth. But in the final months of his life, as the King of Pop planned his ill-fated comeback in London, one of his biggest motivators was just to make enough money to buy his own home where he could raise his children, according to testimony Wednesday. Jackson broke down in tears as he confided that he was tired of "living like vagabonds" - shuttling his family between a Las Vegas rental and a Bel-Air hotel - said Randy Phillips, concert promoter AEG Live's chief executive who has spent days testifying in a wrongful-death suit filed by the singer's family.

WASHINGTON - The massive leaks about U.S. spying systems caused sharp political and legal aftershocks Tuesday as the Justice Department prepared to file criminal charges against Edward Snowden, a government contractor who has publicly admitted disclosing highly classified telephone and Internet data-gathering operations. The vast scope of the government surveillance sparked the first federal lawsuit challenging its legality, a bipartisan effort in the Senate to declassify secret court orders that authorize the operations, and requests from Google and Facebook for permission to disclose more about National Security Agency requests for users' emails and other online communications.

The Los Angeles County Superior Court plans to eliminate more than 500 jobs by the end of the week in a sweeping cost-cutting plan to close a projected $85-million budget shortfall for the next fiscal year. On Friday, layoff notices will be hand-delivered to employees as 511 court positions are eliminated. While some positions will simply go unfilled, 177 people will lose their jobs, court officials announced Tuesday. An additional 139 people will receive demotions and pay cuts, and 223 people will be transferred to new work locations, officials said.

California's chief justice said she was "encouraged" that the budget deal worked out between Gov. Jerry Brown and the Legislature would end a pattern of funding cuts for courts and restore at least some money lost previously. Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye said in a prepared statement Tuesday morning the state spending plan hammered out the day before "is an initial step forward" to rebuild "the kind of access to justice the public deserves. " It now falls to the Judicial Council and a newly created Trial Court Budget Advisory Committee to work on how that money is allocated to trial and appellate courts.

SACRAMENTO - Most California voters are willing to take more drastic steps than Gov. Jerry Brown favors to reduce prison crowding, including the early release of nonviolent offenders, but they don't want to sacrifice public safety to reduce the inmate population, according to a new poll. Support for softened penalties comes as Brown is fighting an order from a panel of federal judges to continue shrinking the number of inmates in state prisons. He says California has done enough and any more changes could increase crime.

WASHINGTON - The nation's top intelligence official formally acknowledged the Internet surveillance program code-named PRISM on Saturday, saying it had obtained foreign intelligence information from U.S. Internet companies under laws passed by Congress and with oversight from a secret intelligence court. The four-page statement by James Clapper, director of national intelligence, came after several days of what he described as "reckless disclosures" to the media about classified National Security Agency operations that vacuum up and archive domestic telephone records and can access Internet material.