The Court of Appeals, divided 4-3, says the New York's Office of Mental Health decided not to license the nursing homes. Therefore lawyers for the Mental Hygiene Legal Service lack jurisdiction.

State mental institutions began discharging patients in 1996 to nursing homes for continued but lower-level care.

The MHLS was established to guard the rights of the mentally disabled in institutions. It sought access to all those patients. The nursing homes said no, citing privacy rights.

The high court on Monday refused to hear an appeal from Charles Patton, who was convicted and sentenced to 44 years in prison on drug charges. He appealed his conviction, saying that jurors weren't questioned by his trial judge on whether they had any bias against firearms. Patton had a loaded firearm when he was arrested.

The Illinois Appellate Court threw out the appeal, saying the judge did not have to ask about potential firearm bias on his own.

The competency hearing was scheduled after Hayes attempted to kill himself on January 30.

Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty for Hayes and Joshua Komisarjevsky for the murders and sexual assaults of Jennifer Hawke-Petit and her daughters, 11-year-old Michaela and 17-year-old Hayley. Dr. William Petit survived the home invasion attack.

If Hayes, 46, is allowed to plead guilty, under Connecticut law a jury or a three-judge panel would determine his sentence.

The high court on Monday turned away an appeal from Homaidan Al-Turki. He was convicted of false imprisonment, conspiracy, criminal extortion, theft and unlawful sexual contact.

Al-Turki was convicted of sexually abusing his Indonesian housekeeper and paying her less than $2 per day.

He complained that he wasn't allowed to question a potential juror about potential anti-Muslim sentiment.

Cancer survivor Elizabeth Wagner was presented with the Volunteer of the Year Award and a $2500 scholarship April 13, 2010 during the Leadership Awards Luncheon at the Beverly Hills Country Club in Los Angeles by the Greater Los Angeles Chapter of the Association of Legal Administrators, a professional association for legal managers. 

Battling Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a cancer of the immune system, for 1 year, Wagner, of Long Beach, said of the award “I am so honored to receive this award and despite health-related challenges, I have thoroughly enjoyed giving back to the community through volunteering.”

Wagner was honored for her continued involvement and dedication to the association and to the community. She supports the GLA ALA Justice Jog, AIDS Life Cycle and Tour De Palm Springs Charity Ride.  

“Wagner is a role model to GLA ALA.  She inspires everyone she meets to get moving and get involved,” says Jean Jewell, CLM, a past recipient of Volunteer of the Year Award.

Wagner, the Legal Administrator of Kegel, Tobin & Truce in Los Angeles, CA, serves as the Programs Chair for the Greater Los Angeles Chapter of the Association of Legal Administrators (GLA ALA).

The international President of the Association of Legal Administrators, Susan French Koran keynoted, and Mary McDonnell was installed as the 2010 GLA ALA board President. 

The scholarship received is an award for travel, hotel and registration to the Association of Legal Administrators annual conference in Boston sponsored by First Legal.

ABOUT GLA ALA: The Greater Los Angeles Chapter of the Association of Legal Administrators (GLA ALA) is a 350-person nonprofit membership organization that provides educational opportunities, community service, and exchange of information to improve the quality and professionalism of management in legal services organizations. For more information, visit www.glaala.org.

A federal judge on Monday struck down patents on two genes linked to breast and ovarian cancer. The decision, if upheld, could throw into doubt the patents covering thousands of human genes and reshape the law of intellectual property

United States District Court Judge Robert W. Sweet issued the 152-page decision, which invalidated seven patents related to the genes BRCA1 and BRCA2, whose mutations have been associated with cancer.

The American Civil Liberties Union and the Public Patent Foundation at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York joined with individual patients and medical organizations to challenge the patents last May: they argued that genes, products of nature, fall outside of the realm of things that can be patented. The patents, they argued, stifle research and innovation and limit testing options.

Myriad Genetics, the company that holds the patents with the University of Utah Research Foundation, asked the court to dismiss the case, claiming that the work of isolating the DNA from the body transforms it and makes it patentable. Such patents, it said, have been granted for decades; the Supreme Court upheld patents on living organisms in 1980. In fact, many in the patent field had predicted the courts would throw out the suit.

But online auction site operator eBay won significant victories in rulings by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that said it did not engage in trademark infringement or trademark dilution in its use of jeweler Tiffany & Co.'s trademarks. Those rulings upheld the findings of a lower court judge.

Tiffany sued eBay in 2004, saying eBay engaged in trademark infringement, trademark dilution and false advertising because most items that sellers list for sale as genuine Tiffany products on its sites were fakes.

The appeals court left in place a finding by the lower court that eBay did not violate false advertising laws but returned the case to the judge to consider that issue again.

The three-judge panel said in its written ruling that it had difficulty with the lower court's reliance in its ruling on eBay's assertions that it did not know which listings offered counterfeit Tiffany goods. The 2nd Circuit noted that eBay advertised the goods sold through its site as Tiffany merchandise.