The U.S.

A Chicago judge refused Wednesday to nullify Rod Blagojevich’s lone conviction at his first corruption trial, flatly rejecting the ousted governor’s claims of trial errors and prosecutorial misconduct. Federal Judge James Zagel said defense arguments for quashing the guilty verdict for lying to the FBI relied on a “well-known principle that if a lawyer cannot attack the law or facts … the only recourse is to attack the prosecutor.” Jurors convicted the impeached governor on just one of 24 counts in August.

Add the Federal Home Loan Bank of Chicago to the list of parties seeking billions from the banks that sold mortgage-backed securities. On Friday, the Home Loan Bank’s lawyers at Keller Rohrback filed a complaint in Illinois state court against dozens of financial institutions, including the largest banks in the world, over the sale of $3.3 billion in private label mortgage-backed securities, a type of residential mortgage-backed security issued by private entities.

The 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals created a circuit split by ruling that Medicare should reimburse the University of Chicago Medical Center for medical residents’ research work not related to Medicare patients. By upholding a Northern District of Illinois ruling that the medical center is eligible for Medicare reimbursements for “indirect medical education” expenses, such as research, this ruling stands in opposition to a 1st Circuit 2008 holding

U.S. District Judge Jose Linares in New Jersey has allowed an arbitration to proceed between Lakin Chapman of Wood River, Ill., and Freed & Weiss of Chicago over a portion of $5.775 million in legal fees approved as part of a class action settlement. The suit challenged the imposition of flat-rate, early-termination fees on cell-phone contracts.