A federal court has turned up its nose at an insurance company’s attempt to brand as “pollution” the smells wafting from New York’s famed Barney Greengrass delicatessen. The judge ruled that the insurer must defend the eatery, known as “The Sturgeon King,” against claims that odors, smoke and exhaust forced a co-op owner to sell his apartment. “[W]hile the quality of the plaintiff’s restaurant smells may be in the nose of the beholder, defendant’s ‘pollution’ argument …

The first personal injury lawsuit involving the chemical dispersant Corexit 9500 has surfaced in Alabama federal court, where two Gulf Coast residents and property owners claim BP has dumped millions of gallons of toxic chemicals into the Gulf of Mexico to disperse and sink crude oil.

Goldman Sachs trader Fabrice Tourre has chosen a novel defense against regulators accusing him of fraud: He’s blaming the in-house lawyers. In a filing Monday in federal court, the self-described “Fabulous Fab” denied SEC allegations that he made materially misleading statements or omissions in a 2007 deal involving subprime mortgages

A plagiarism fight involving two British authors of books about young wizards has crossed the pond. A trustee of the estate of late author Adrian Jacobs filed a copyright infringement suit on Tuesday against Scholastic, the U.S. publisher of the wildly popular “Harry Potter” series by J.K.

Online auction giant eBay was hit Tuesday with a $3.8 billion patent infringement lawsuit. XPRT Ventures, which holds patents covering e-commerce payments and methods, filed suit in Delaware federal court against eBay and subsidiaries, including PayPal and StubHub.