A Manhattan federal judge has invalidated patents relating to LCD technology that University of Illinois professor Kanti Jain’s Anvik Corp. has been asserting against Nikon for close to seven years. The judge ruled that Jain undermined his own case during a deposition.

In an unusual move, Manhattan federal district court Judge Lewis Kaplan sent the New York Attorney General’s suit against Ernst & Young over its role as auditor for Lehman Brothers back to state court, even though the AG conceded that the federal court had jurisdiction.

A lawsuit filed by a woman who alleges she developed mesothelioma from using a cosmetic product tainted with asbestos is not pre-empted by the federal Food, Drugs and Cosmetics Act because that law’s pre-emption clause, added in 1997, is not retroactive, a Manhattan judge has ruled.

A new attorney has stepped in as defense counsel for a woman accused of running an Upper East Side brothel, while two other attorneys have withdrawn from the defense, including one who is still willing to put up his Manhattan loft to secure Anna Gristina’s $2 million bail. See related story (free-access): Lawyer’s Offer to Cover Client’s Bail Raises Ethical Concerns

New York Mets owners Fred Wilpon and Saul Katz intend to call baseball legend Sandy Koufax and former Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau as defense witnesses to refute claims they were willfully blind to the fact that Bernard L. Madoff was operating a multibillion-dollar fraud.