A California jury says Yamaha is not liable for injuries a man suffered when he crashed in one of the company’s off-road vehicles. The case was the first to go to trial among more than 170 lawsuits filed in California over the company’s Rhino brand of vehicles. The plaintiff argued that defects in his 2005 Rhino 660 caused it to roll, fracturing two bones in one leg.

Lawyer Thomas Ostly and a former paralegal at his firm are battling each other in a contentious California jury trial.

Non-clients have no standing to disqualify attorneys from jointly representing others, a California appeals court ruled Tuesday, despite a federal trial court ruling that seemed to suggest otherwise. The ruling reverses a trial court’s disqualification of Calabasas, Calif., attorney Bruce Graham and his firm, Graham & Associates, from representing clients with some allegedly opposing interests in a libel and breach of contract suit.

The California Supreme Court has carved out an exception to a quarter-century-old ruling banning cities and counties from hiring private counsel to handle public-nuisance suits on a contingency fee basis. The court said such hirings are acceptable if government lawyers retain complete control over all critical decision making, providing “a safeguard against the possibility that private attorneys unilaterally will engage in inappropriate prosecutorial strategy and tactics geared to maximize their monetary award.”

Dismantling a 90-lawyer law firm is a messy business, but firm leaders at Sacramento, Calif.’s McDonough Holland & Allen are hopeful that the firm can wind down its operations gracefully before its planned Sept. 1 dissolution.