Plaintiffs attorneys in the federal sudden acceleration litigation against Toyota received a second blow to their claims for economic damages when a judge refused to certify a request to appeal his substantial reduction of the scope of their potential class action.

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.

Generic drug manufacturers are not insulated from lawsuits by an FDA approval process that certifies such drugs as the “bioequivalent” of their brand-name predecessors, a federal judge has ruled. The judge refused to dismiss a suit brought by consumers who were taking Wellbutrin, a brand-name antidepressant, and who claim they had side effects upon switching to a generic. The suit alleges that two drug manufacturers failed to warn the public about differences that affected the release of the product’s active ingredient.

Armed with affidavits from 11 jurors, the Manhattan district attorney’s office fired back at a post-trial motion by Anthony Marshall, the son of socialite Brooke Astor, to set aside his conviction because the judge refused to conduct an inquiry after the 12th juror complained she felt personally threatened by another juror. The affidavits demonstrate that “no one was threatened in any way,” the D.A.’s office wrote. Marshall and lawyer Francis X.

The Federal Trade Commission’s crusade against “pay for delay” patent settlements between brand-name and generic drug makers got a boost Monday when a district court judge refused to dismiss a 2008 antitrust suit against Cephalon Inc. The case, now consolidated in U.S.