The wheels of justice are turning slowly in the massive IPO securities litigation spawned by the Internet bubble of the late ’90s, with appeals by class members and lawyers alike stalling any distribution of the $586 million settlement, which includes $170 million in legal fees.

This week’s Supreme Court decision in the massive discrimination class action against Wal-Mart has left in-house lawyers with a number of questions — including whether delegating responsibility to local managers might help protect companies from class actions.

In the massive litigation over side effects from the diabetes drug Avandia, a federal judge has dismissed all claims brought by insurers acting as “Medicare Advantage Organizations” that demanded reimbursements from the settlements paid out by GlaxoSmithKline.

A federal judge has decided that Citgo Asphalt Refining cannot be blamed for the third-largest oil spill in U.S. history in a case over who should pay for the cleanup of the massive November 2004 spill in the Delaware River.

Plaintiffs’ lawyers succeeded in getting more than 95 percent of their clients in In re World Trade Center Litigation to opt into the massive settlement of some 10,000 claims alleging respiratory and other health problems from the post-9/11 response and cleanup.