Tossed: The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals threw out a convicted terrorist's lawsuit against John Yoo, a high-ranking Bush administration lawyer who wrote so-called "torture memos," the AP reports. Jose Padilla accused Yoo of authorizing harsh treatment of enemy combatants, but the court said the former deputy assistant attorney general wrote the memos in the two years after the Sept. 11 terror attacks, when the law defining torture and the treatment of enemy combatants was unsettled.
Spilled: A judge gave preliminary approval to BP's estimated $7.8 million settlement of more than 100,000 claims by individuals and businesses stemming from the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill, Reuters reports. The settlement does not cover claims by the U.S. government or Gulf Coast states, which could amount to tens of billions of dollars.
Suspended: Could the handful of New Orleans Saints players, who were suspended on grounds they embraced a bounty program that gave monetary rewards for injuries to opponents, appeal their punishment to the Supreme Court?, USA TODAY ponders but does not answer.
Bitten: The Maryland Court of Appeals ruled that pit bulls as a breed are "inherently dangerous," making it easier for anyone attacked by a pit bull or pit bull mix in Maryland to sue against the dog's owner, NBC News reports. Owners of those dogs that attack are strictly liable for damages, as is any landlord who rents to a pit bull owner.
Divorced: A 70-year-old doctor in Mississippi was charged with conspiring to kill the attorney who represented his wife in a their divorce in the mid-1990s, the AP reports. Two men suspected of planning to murder the lawyer showed up at his office, and state agents who'd been tipped off to a possible murder-for-hire plot were waiting and gunfire broke out.
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