A judge has thrown out the verdict in the first securities class action trial tied to the financial meltdown, finding the plaintiffs’ sole expert failed to show that shareholder losses had resulted from false statements BankAtlantic made about its loan portfolio.

A New York federal jury has found blogger Harold “Hal” Turner guilty of threatening to kill three 7th Circuit judges.

Despite a plaintiff’s argument that upholding the dismissal of the first hormone replacement therapy tort case to reach Pennsylvania’s highest court conflicts with succeeding case law in Pennsylvania’s HRT litigation, the state Supreme Court is leaving intact a judgment notwithstanding the verdict in favor of drugmaker Wyeth.

A New York state judge has tossed the felony convictions of two former Marsh & McLennan executives after finding that the state attorney general’s office had failed to turn over to the defense potentially exculpatory evidence, including some 700,000 documents obtained during a related civil proceeding. The judge wrote that prosecutors’ failure to exercise due diligence in searching out the material had “undermin[ed]” his “confidence in the verdict” that he had reached after a 10-month bench trial.

Novartis Pharmaceuticals was slammed with $250 million in punitive damages on Wednesday in the largest-ever award in a gender bias case. A New York federal jury took slightly more than one day of deliberations to deliver the blow after finding the company liable for discrimination against women employees in pay, promotion and pregnancy policies.