Settlements

State Senate officials have secretly approved a $70,000 legal settlement that prohibits a staffer who accused a former colleague of harassment from going public with the charges. The payment, made last month, is the latest in a string of such settlements, most of which include confidentiality clauses that keep taxpayers in the dark about what exactly they are paying to settle and why.

A judge has ruled in favor of five mobile home park residents near Canoga Park who alleged that the park owner failed to make repairs and allowed dangerous conditions to persist for years, including a faulty electrical system that had been cited more than 100 times by state inspectors. Based on an eight-day trial held in April, Judge Gregory C.

In one of the nation's largest settlements in a whistle-blower case, Northrop Grumman Corp. has agreed to pay the federal government $325 million to resolve claims that TRW, which it acquired in 2002, provided defective parts for a spy satellite program in the 1990s.

One day after disclosing that it would pay $100 million to end a patent lawsuit over the iPod music player, Apple Computer Inc. said it had settled an unrelated case targeting the company's iTunes software. Terms of the iTunes settlement weren't disclosed in documents filed in U.S. District Court in Burlington, Vt. Contois Music Technology of Essex Junction, Vt., sued in June 2005, claiming that Cupertino, Calif.-based Apple infringed a patent for an interface that lets users manage music files.

Arbitron Inc., a provider of radio-station ratings based on audience size, settled a lawsuit by New York Atty. Gen. Andrew Cuomo, who alleged that a new method of estimating the number of listeners underrepresented minorities. The settlement requires Arbitron to fix flaws in its methodology, pay $260,000 to settle claims that its system was unfair and contribute $100,000 to minority broadcasters, Cuomo said Wednesday.

Lawyers for 20th Century Fox and Warner Bros. told a judge Friday that they were trying to settle the copyright lawsuit over "Watchmen," a signal that the nearly year-old court fight over the superhero movie may be nearing a conclusion. The attorneys were to appear before U.S. District Judge Gary A. Feess to schedule a trial later this month over the film's distribution rights when they told the judge that settlement talks were underway. Warner Bros.

Managed-care company UnitedHealth Group Inc. said Thursday that it would pay $350 million to settle a lawsuit over out-of-network medical claims. The deal comes two days after the insurer pledged $50 million to set up a new database to determine payments for those claims. Another health insurer, Aetna Inc. of Hartford, Conn., agreed Thursday to pay $20 million toward the creation of that database.

Warner Bros. and 20th Century Fox reached a settlement Thursday night on their copyright dispute over the superhero movie "Watchmen," concluding a legal drama between two Hollywood studios that threatened to upend one of the spring's biggest movies. The agreement paves the way for Warner Bros. to release "Watchmen" as planned March 6.

The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, settling a claim over detentions of minority students during a narcotics search at Los Angeles Trade-Technical College, has agreed to revise its anti-bias training and ensure that its supervisors prevent racial profiling.

A slip-up by a law firm Tuesday revealed that Facebook Inc. paid $65 million to end its legal fight with a smaller social network, ConnectU. The founders of ConnectU had accused Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg, a fellow Harvard University graduate, of stealing their ideas to create his site. The details of last year's settlement were supposed to be confidential.