A trial over alleged defects in a Ford Explorer’s seat belts came to a dramatic halt this week when a Georgia judge tossed the carmaker’s top two lawyers from the case because they withheld information about the company’s insurance coverage.

Ending an odd detour of his legal career, a New Orleans lawyer has been dismissed as a defendant from a suit brought by Harlen Akins, a music promoter who claimed Kid Rock and his entourage beat him up. After hearing the judge drop him from the case, George P. Vourvoulias III hugged Kid Rock and left the courtroom

With federal prosecutors grabbing for most of the assets left from Scott Rothstein’s massive Ponzi scheme, it remains to be seen whether attorneys involved in his former firm’s bankruptcy will reap the millions of dollars in fees originally expected from the case.

A Georgia jury held an alleged drunk driver responsible for $15 million in damages to a girl injured in a car accident, but the plaintiff likely will get only a fraction of the award because the driver has few resources and the designer of the seat, which broke during the wreck, was cleared by the jury. Complicating matters was the bankruptcy-mandated dismissal of what was then DaimlerChrysler from the case.

In a motion filed in New York federal court on Thursday, lawyers representing artist Shepard Fairey in his copyright fight with The Associated Press over his Obama “Hope” poster asked that they be allowed to withdraw from the case and that a Jones Day attorney and a pair of law professors replace them. The AP’s outside counsel at Kirkland & Ellis have previously indicated in court filings that they will oppose any move by Fairey’s current lawyers to withdraw from the case.