Suits

It was billed as a "shocking tell-all" and a "world exclusive," but the National Enquirer's March 26 cover story landed with a thud. TMZ, Page Six and other major players in celebrity gossip ignored the article in which a masseur claimed John Travolta offered money for sex. FOR THE RECORD: An earlier version of this article used the term "masseuse"; it should have said "masseur. " Five weeks after the issue left the checkout aisle, a DUI attorney from Pasadena put the anonymous masseur's tawdry tale in a lawsuit and it became an overnight pop culture sensation, topping Google News, trending on Twitter and meriting a segment on "Good Morning America.

WASHINGTON -- A class-action lawsuit was filed Wednesday against Facebook Inc., Morgan Stanley & Co., and the other Wall Street banks that underwrote the Facebook's initial public offering, alleging they misled most shareholders about revenue projections for the social network. The suit, filed in federal court in New York, alleged that the IPO prospectus and registration statement were "false and misleading" and violated the Securities Act.

"Battleship"is not the first major motion picture to be based on a board game - who could forget 1985's benighted "Clue"? - but it is surely the most expensive. With every superhero more celebrated than Amazing-Man or the Chameleon already spoken for (ditto for hot toys like Transformers), Hollywood has fallen back on popular games as likely fodder for action epics. If "Scrabble: The Movie" or "Qwirkle or Death" appears on a future marquee, don't say you weren't warned. As its north-of-$200-million budget indicates, "Battleship" has been expanded considerably from its origins as a pre-World War I pencil and paper game to include a major alien invasion that puts the very fate of the human race at stake.

The NFL Players Assn. is accusing league owners of secretly -- and illegally -- agreeing to put a salary cap in place in the uncapped 2010 season. The union filed a complaint in federal court Wednesday, alleging the owners colluded to impose a $123-million salary cap on teams, when they did not have the authority to do so. The league has since penalized Washington and Dallas for overspending in 2010, reducing the future salary caps of the Redskins and Cowboys by a combined $46 million over the next two seasons.

The Trinity Broadcasting Network, which bills itself as the world's largest Christian network, is embroiled in a legal battle involving allegations of massive financial fraud and lavish spending, including the purchase of a $100,000 motor home for family dogs. Brittany Koper, a former high-ranking TBN official and the granddaughter of its co-founder, Paul Crouch Sr., was fired by the network in September after discovering "illegal financial schemes" amounting to tens of millions of dollars, according to a lawsuit filed in Orange County Superior Court.

On the CBS sitcom "How I Met Your Mother," Neil Patrick Harris plays perhaps the most style-obsessed male sitcom character since Alex P. Keaton. Hardly ever seen sans suit since the show debuted in 2005, Barney Stinson uses his wardrobe as a weapon for womanizing. It's a suit of armor and a security blanket rolled into one. It's become such a trademark of Harris' character that when the show's 100th episode, "Girls vs. Suits," found him confronted with the choice of a beautiful bartender or his signature suits, the result was a full-blown, street-filling, suit-sporting song-and-dance number -- favoring the suit.

Seven states and two family planning groups asked a federal court to block a controversial federal regulation that protects health workers who refuse to provide care that they find objectionable. In three lawsuits filed in U.S. District Court in Connecticut, the states and groups sought a court order preventing the regulation from going into effect Tuesday and a permanent decision voiding the rule. "The Bush administration has left a ticking political time bomb that is set to explode literally on the day of the president's inaugural and blow apart women's rights," said Connecticut Atty.

In a nationwide crackdown on credit repair companies, the Federal Trade Commission said Thursday that 30 firms were being targeted, including a Woodland Hills company that had its assets frozen. Success Credit Services was accused in an FTC civil suit of violating the Credit Repair Organizations Act by contending that it could quickly clean up credit reports by removing legitimate negative items, such as late payments, bankruptcies and tax liens.

This is Beverly Hills?, I wondered, oh so many years ago when a friend took me to lunch in a sweet little house with a fireplace on South Beverly Drive. Chez Mimi later moved to Santa Monica, and Urth Caffé now dispenses soy lattes and iced green tea from that rose-covered cottage. Back then (and now), South Beverly Drive didn't seem fancy at all, more like a small-town Main Street where you'd find shops selling nightgowns and one-piece swimming suits, baseball cards and birthday gifts.

A former student at exclusive Chaminade High School who was kicked out for alleged drug use won a $20,000 judgment Friday against the school for wrongful expulsion. Cara-Mia Kobzeff, 20, denied any involvement with drugs and accused the school of not following its own procedures. She alleged the school never called her mother, as required by Chaminade policy, and ignored a drug test she passed the day after being accused of using narcotics.

Former IndyMac Bancorp Chief Executive Michael W. Perry has won dismissal of much of the fraud lawsuit brought against him by the Securities and Exchange Commission. U.S. District Judge Manuel Real in L.A. tossed out five of the seven SEC filings by IndyMac that the agency's suit listed as grounds for action. Real ruled Monday that the filings from the giant Pasadena thrift contained no false or misleading statements to investors about IndyMac's deteriorating condition as the housing markets melted down.

WASHINGTON-- The battle between the Obama administration and some prominent Catholic institutions intensified Monday when 43 Catholic groups,  including the archdioceses of Washington, D.C., and New York,  and Notre Dame and Catholic universities, filed suit across the country challenging a federal mandate requiring them to provide contraception to their employees. The organizations say the administration's contraceptive requirement would compel them to violate church teaching. Some employers are exempt from the federal mandate - but many are not, including schools, hospitals and charities that offer their services widely.

I love my dog. Sure, he has issues - what lover doesn't? He wheezes when he sleeps, or when he's awake. There is an unexplainable darkness to his soul that emerges when he's under extreme stress. He also has a taste for the blood in mosquito bites. (The vet thinks he might be a vampire.) Being from L.A., our dog is prone to anxiety attacks and an almost debilitating sense of envy, particularly when coming upon younger, fitter dogs, which almost all dogs are. The last time we weighed him, he was close to 300 pounds.

It was billed as a "shocking tell-all" and a "world exclusive," but the National Enquirer's March 26 cover story landed with a thud. TMZ, Page Six and other major players in celebrity gossip ignored the article in which a masseur claimed John Travolta offered money for sex. FOR THE RECORD: An earlier version of this article used the term "masseuse"; it should have said "masseur. " Five weeks after the issue left the checkout aisle, a DUI attorney from Pasadena put the anonymous masseur's tawdry tale in a lawsuit and it became an overnight pop culture sensation, topping Google News, trending on Twitter and meriting a segment on "Good Morning America.

The parents of two USC graduate students slain near the campus last month have filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the university, saying the school misled them when it claimed that it ranks among the safest in the nation. Ming Qu and Ying Wu, both 23-year-old electronic engineering students from China, were fatally shot April 11 while sitting in a parked BMW in the 2700 block of Raymond Avenue. No arrests have been made, but Los Angeles police say they believe the killings were the result of a robbery gone wrong.

One measure of the extreme polarization of the House is that GOP leaders bring bills to the floor only if they have enough Republican votes to approve them. With the exception of the occasional must-pass spending bill, measures that aren't ideologically pure enough to attract support from 90% of the Republican ranks just don't get considered. Last week, however, the leadership broke from that practice to strike a compromise with Democrats over a bill to reauthorize the Export-Import Bank despite sharp opposition from some conservatives.

In the world of made-for-TV marriages, few seemed more solid than Martin and Gina. The couple at the center of Fox's "Martin" appeared to fit together like hand in glove. Their differences complemented each other. They had a healthy sex life. And though they regularly clashed, they were undoubtedly in love.

Nicholas George planned to brush up on his Arabic vocabulary during a flight in August from Philadelphia to California, where he was to start his senior year at Pomona College. So he carried some Arabic-English flashcards in his pocket to study on the plane. But those flashcards changed George's life far beyond the classroom. The 22-year-old from Pennsylvania is speaking out against what he contends are abuses by federal authorities in airport security measures. George, a physics major who is considering a career as a U.S. diplomat in the Middle East, is suing the Transportation Security Administration, the FBI and Philadelphia police for jailing him after his flashcards were found and confiscated in a Philadelphia airport screening.

The judge in  Oracle Corp.'s copyright-infringement lawsuit against  Google Inc.  may accept a partial verdict. U.S. District Judge William Alsup in San Francisco said Friday that he had a "strong inclination" to accept a partial verdict in the case, an outcome that Google opposes. The jury has been weighing whether Google infringed parts of Oracle's Java programming language to develop the Android operating system for smartphones, now running on 300 million devices. The panel heard two weeks of testimony from Oracle and Google executives, including their chief executive officers.

Keith Miller got a beast of a wake-up call Thursday morning. The 71-year-old had just stepped outside his Altadena home to get the newspaper when he saw "this huge bear, looking like a Volkswagen, staring at me," Miller said. "It ran one way and I ran the other. " Before Miller made it back inside, he turned to see where the bear - which had been snacking on leftover birthday cake tossed in a garbage can - was headed. That's when he saw two cubs scamper up an oak tree in his frontyard.