Suits

Two of the three largest U.S. tobacco companies sued Monday to block marketing restrictions in a law that gives the Food and Drug Administration authority over tobacco, alleging the provisions violate their right to free speech. R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., maker of Camel cigarettes, and Lorillard Inc., which sells the Newport menthol brand, filed the suit in District Court in Bowling Green, Ky., with several other tobacco companies. It is the first major challenge of the legislation, which was enacted in June.

It was just another work day for Rafael Jimenez, a veteran tree trimmer in his 24th year on the job. But as he stuffed branches from a Chinese elm tree into a wood chipper that sunny day in April 2008, his right hand became entangled in the branches and Jimenez found himself being jerked toward the steel knives. The machine, which devours a 20-inch branch in a second, consumed nearly his entire body.

California insurers are discriminating against women, charging them more for individual health insurance than men, the city of San Francisco maintained in a lawsuit filed Tuesday against the state regulators who govern them.

Klare Allen, a once-homeless mother turned community activist, was stunned at a public meeting in 2002 when she and her friends learned that Boston University Medical Center officials planned to build a biological defense laboratory in one of the city's poorest neighborhoods. "We heard anthrax and Roxbury-South End," she recalled. "Then we heard Ebola. The last thing we heard was bubonic plague. We looked at each other and said, 'No way are they bringing that . . . into our community.'

The City Council on Wednesday agreed to pay nearly $13 million to people injured or mistreated in a May Day melee in MacArthur Park, bringing to more than $30 million the money spent over the last two weeks to settle lawsuits alleging LAPD misconduct. The action served as a reminder of the Los Angeles Police Department's troubled past and its continuing path toward regaining the trust of some city residents and elected officials. For the LAPD, Wednesday's $12.

The NAACP sued subsidiaries of two major banks Friday for allegedly steering African American borrowers unfairly into costly subprime mortgages. The suits -- against Wells Fargo Bank and Wells Fargo Home Mortgage Inc., owned by Wells Fargo & Co., and against HSBC Mortgage Corp. (USA) and HSBC Bank USA, owned by HSBC Holdings -- arrive at a time when the housing crisis and soaring unemployment already are causing disproportionate harm in black neighborhoods, leaders of the rights group said.

The California Supreme Court revived a major class action lawsuit against the tobacco industry Monday, ruling that smokers could hold it accountable for alleged deceptive advertising. After years of consumer cases meeting their demise in lower courts, the state high court's 4-3 decision helped resuscitate a key consumer law that voters sharply limited in 2004 in the wake of lawsuit scandals. Justice Carlos R.

The attorney for a gang member kicked in the head by an El Monte police officer at the end of a televised car chase thinks his client has a great case. On Thursday, Nick Pacheco filed a $5-million legal claim against the city on behalf of the 23-year-old. But just in case, the attorney said his heavily tattooed client will be getting an extreme makeover in time for a trial, complete with a thick Tom Selleck mustache -- think "Magnum P.I."

You would never mistake Jesse Lopez Jr. for a revolutionary. Soft-spoken, with a shy smile beneath his gray mustache, the retired school custodian and amateur mariachi singer hardly seems like an instigator. Yet if Latinos come to dominate California politics someday, Lopez will have helped make it happen.

Santa Monica retiree Bob Braslau considers himself a victim of accused fraud mastermind Bernard L. Madoff. But the court-appointed bankruptcy trustee, he fears, might consider him a beneficiary. Braslau was among the thousands who lost money when the Madoff fund collapsed amid allegations that it was a $50-billion Ponzi scheme.