Vermont's highest court is being asked to decide what a dog's love is worth.

The state Supreme Court on Thursday began hearing a case that started in July 2003, when Denis and Sarah Scheele, who were visiting relatives, let their mixed-breed dog wander into Lewis Dustin's yard and he fatally shot it.

Now the Scheeles, of Annapolis, Md., are asking the court to carve out a new legal doctrine that a dog's owners can sue for emotional distress and loss of companionship, just like parents can when they lose children.

"It's so important for people to really recognize the relationship between the families and their companion animals," said Sarah Scheele, 58, who attended Thursday's court hearing.

The Scheeles' attorney argued that a family dog is worth more than a piece of property, saying dogs "love you back."

Under the current law, losing a dog is "treated the same way as the loss of an end table," David Putter said after the hearing.

"That's not what the relationship between humans and dogs is anymore. They're a member of the family and when they're lost you can't just go out to the local store and buy a new one. That doesn't fix it."

Dustin's lawyer, David Blythe, questioned how the court could draw a distinction between a dog and other personal property.

"Can you effectively create a special rule just for dogs? Why not cats? Why not horses?" Blythe said.

The court isn't expected to make a ruling before spring.

A man unhappy with a judge's ruling in his divorce case returned to the court house on Wednesday and shot and killed one of its employees, authorities said.

The alleged killer — a 57-year-old Austrian male — was arrested after gunning down a 42-year-old court employee who is the mother of two young children, police said. No other injuries have been reported at the district courthouse in Hollabrunn, a town about 30 miles (50 kilometers) northwest of Vienna, Austria's capital, said Leopold Etz of the Lower Austrian criminal police force.

Etz could not immediately confirm local media reports that the woman had been shot in the head. He said the motive of the unidentified attacker was not immediately clear but that he apparently had come to the courthouse for a divorce-related matter.

Wilhelm Tschugguel, president of a court in the town of Korneuburg that oversees the Hollabrunn court, said the alleged killer was unhappy with the outcome of his divorce proceedings and had entered the court in Hollabrunn to find the judge who had handled the case.

The Ohio Supreme Court said Tuesday police officers must obtain a search warrant before scouring the contents of a suspect's cell phone, unless their safety is in danger.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio described the ruling as a landmark case. The issue appears never to have reached another state high court or the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Ohio high court ruled 5-4 in favor of Antwaun Smith, who was arrested on drug charges after he answered a cell phone call from a crack cocaine user acting as a police informant.

Officers took Smith's cell phone when he was arrested and, acting without a warrant and without his consent, searched it. They found a call history and stored numbers that showed Smith had previously been in contact with the drug user.

Smith was charged with cocaine possession, cocaine trafficking, tampering with evidence and two counts of possession of criminal tools.

During his trial, Smith argued that the evidence obtained through the cell phone search was inadmissible because it violated the constitutional ban on unreasonable search and seizure.

The Colorado Supreme Court has upheld a state ban on smoking by actors onstage, ruling that public health trumps actor's freedom of expression.

The court ruled 6-1 on Monday that a state indoor smoking ban applies to theaters. Observers called it the first decision by a state court upholding the extension of a smoking ban to theatrical performances.

Of 24 states with indoor smoking bans, 12 have exemptions or exemptions on a case-by-case basis for theatrical performances, according to the ruling.

The court said performances typically convey their message "by imitation rather than by scientific demonstration" and that there are alternatives to smoking on stage.

It also agreed with Attorney General John Suthers' argument that the state Legislature passed a narrowly tailored law to protect public welfare, not to limit speech.

Colorado's law bans using alternatives to tobacco cigarettes, such as cigarettes filled with cloves or tea leaves.

Electricite de France SA could potentially recover some euro1.2 billion after it won a European Union court challenge Tuesday that said EU regulators were wrong to order the company to repay tax relief to the French government.

The ruling from the EU's general court can still be appealed to the EU's highest legal authority, the court of justice — or EU regulators can also come to a new decision on the subsidy that would address the court's criticisms.

The court said Monday that the European Commission had failed to check if the French government had acted like a private investor when it decided that the company had effectively received an illegal subsidy by reclassifying money saved from a 1997 tax break as a capital injection.

The court said regulators had violated EU state aid law by failing "to apply the private investor test" to the terms of the capital injection — even if the money had come from a fiscal debt.

In 2003, commission ordered the company to repay the euro888.89 million tax concession to the government, saying it was a state subsidy that gave the business — then state-owned — an unfair advantage over rivals.

At the time, it was the highest subsidy that the EU had ever ordered to be repaid. With interest, the full amount was euro1.2 billion — which EDF has now paid to the French state.

A Los Angeles man has pleaded not guilty to running a Ponzi scheme that cheated about 50 investors in a NASCAR merchandise wholesale business out of at least $10 million.

Federal prosecutors say 63-year-old Eliott Dresher was arraigned and ordered held pending trial in U.S. District Court Monday.

The U.S. attorney's office says Dresher claimed investors' money would be used to buy NASCAR apparel and sell it to stores. He claimed he had $70 million in various accounts and his business would return 20 percent every six months.

Dresher ran his scheme for about 10 years before it c