Pacific Investment Management Company is paying $92 million to settle a class-action lawsuit that accuses it of manipulating the price of 10-year Treasuries back in 2005.

The lawsuit was filed by two investors that had taken short positions in the futures contracts. Breakwater Trading and the other plantiffs had bet that the market value of the notes would decline. However, they wound up paying prices that were "articially high," according to the plantiffs because Pimco scooped up large amounts of the T-notes, according to a report by the Los Angeles Times

"PIMCO's position is that all such trades were properly designed to secure best execution for its clients; that by lending cheapest-to-deliver notes back into the market it eliminated any concerns," PIMCO said in a press release.

Two San Francisco newspapers engaged in a lengthy legal battle over predatory pricing have settled their dispute outside of court.

The San Francisco Chronicle reports that the Bay Guardian and SF Weekly announced a settlement Monday but did not disclose its terms.

The Guardian filed an antitrust lawsuit against SF Weekly in 2004, accusing the paper of slashing advertising prices to drive the Guardian out of business. A San Francisco judge in 2008 ordered SF Weekly to pay $21 million to its rival.

SF Weekly has said its low-cost ads reflected fair competition and did not violate antitrust laws.

Both alternative weeklies are distributed for free and rely on ad revenue to continue operating.

Dairy processor Dean Foods Co. will pay $30 million and take other undisclosed actions to settle allegations by a group of dairy farmers that it had monopolized the milk industry in the Northeast.

The settlement does not include another major player in the national dairy industry that had been named in the original lawsuit.

"This settlement with Dean will help our dairy farmers who have been hurting for too long," said Burlington attorney Andrew Manitsky, who represents Vermont dairy farmers involved in the case.

Manitsky said he couldn't provide any details of the settlement until the case has been submitted to a federal judge in Burlington, which is expected to happen next week.

Dallas-based Dean Foods revealed the settlement in a submission Thursday to the Securities and Exchange Commission.

It said the company had agreed to the payment as a way to settle the "purported class action antitrust lawsuit." It also said it would agree with other terms and conditions for its "raw milk procurement activities at certain of its processing plants located in the northeast." It did not elaborate.

The Supreme Court will consider whether to keep alive the largest job discrimination case in U.S. history, a lawsuit against Wal-Mart that grew from a half-dozen women to a class action that could involve billions of dollars for more than a half million female workers.

Wal-Mart is trying to halt the lawsuit, with the backing of many other big companies concerned about rules for class-action cases — those in which people with similar interests increase their leverage by joining in a single claim. Class actions against discount seller Costco and the tobacco industry are among pending claims that the high court’s decision might alter.

The suit against Wal-Mart Stores Inc. contends that women at Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club stores are paid less and promoted less often than men. The case the high court accepted on Monday will not examine whether the claims are true, only whether they can be tried together.

Estimates of the size of the class range from 500,000 to 1.5 million women who work or once worked for Wal-Mart.

Wal-Mart, based in Bentonville, Ark., is appealing a ruling by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco that the class-action lawsuit could go to trial.

Tobacco giant Altria Corp., Bank of America Corp., Dole Food Company Inc., General Electric Co., Intel Corp., Pepsico Inc. and United Parcel Service Inc. are among the companies that also called for high court review of the case.

The Supreme Court said on Monday it would decide if the largest sex-discrimination class-action lawsuit in U.S. history against Wal-Mart Stores Inc can proceed, a case involving women workers who seek billions of dollars in damages.

The nation's highest court agreed to hear an appeal by the world's largest retailer and the largest private employer arguing the claims of as many as 1.5 million current and former female employees were too diverse to proceed as a single class-action lawsuit.

The justices decided to review a ruling by a appeals court in California that upheld the class-action certification in the lawsuit alleging discrimination against every woman employed over the past decade at the company's 3,400 U.S. stores.

The Supreme Court is expected to hear arguments in the case, which immediately became the most important business dispute before the justices this term, in March, with a ruling likely by the end of June.

The ruling could affect other class-action lawsuits. Anthony Sabino, a professor of law and business at St. John's University in New York, said the case "will test the very limits of class litigation."

Bentonville, Arkansas-based Wal-Mart said in a statement it was pleased the court granted review in the important case and it looked forward to the court's consideration of the appeal.

Housing stocks were trading mostly higher on Tuesday after an analyst forecast modest improvement in the housing market next year and better home orders for homebuilders.

In his report, J.P. Morgan analyst Michael Rehaut said he sees the housing market stabilizing and improving modestly next year, coming off a 2010 that has seen home sales weaken in the months following the end of federal homebuyer tax credits in April.

Rehaut notes that, while demand for homes remains highly depressed, new home construction and home sales have largely stabilized over the past four months.

"We see this recent stability as critical in terms of our outlook for only modest downside for home prices, in contrast to 2006-2008, when consistently falling demand trends played a key role in declining home prices," Rehaut wrote.

The analyst anticipates home prices will trend from flat to down about 3 percent next year -- a view that he notes is more positive than other forecasts, some of which see home prices falling another 5 percent to 10 percent in 2011.

As a result of more stable price trends, builders should see minimal land-related charges and a modest increase in profit margins, the analyst said.

He also expects more builders to generate operating earnings per share next year.

Employees at the Oscar Mayer meat processing plant in Davenport, Iowa have filed a class action lawsuit seeking compensation for time they spend putting on and taking off their safety equipment.

The lawsuit claims employees are not paid while they don and doff uniforms, safety footwear, hairnets, glasses and other equipment before and after their shifts in violation of the law.

Four current employees are the plaintiffs in the case. Their attorneys are seeking to represent a class of 1,750 employees at the plant, which processes pork, beef and poultry.

The lawsuit names Oscar Mayer's parent company, Northfield, Ill.-based Kraft Foods Inc.

Kraft spokeswoman Rachel Larsen says the company believes it is in full compliance with state and federal law.