Leading international law firm SJ Berwin has opened an office in Shanghai.

The office is the firm’s third opening this year, its second in East Asia and its 12th office worldwide. It follows the opening of the regional office of SJ Berwin for East Asia in Hong Kong in April 2009 and the formal opening of its Dubai office last month.

SJ Berwin’s application for a license to operate a Representative Office in Shanghai was granted on 28 August 2009 at an official ceremony at the Ministry of Justice in Beijing. The new office for SJ Berwin in Shanghai, China opened in October 2009, coinciding with the 60th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China.

The business of the office will start by focusing on Fund Formation, Mergers and Acquisitions, Private Equity and Real Estate, reflecting the traditional key strengths of SJ Berwin.

Jonathan Blake, Senior Partner of SJ Berwin, said: “This is a further step in our strategy of international development in our core areas, and reinforces our confidence in the expansion and growth of our firm worldwide.”

Daniel Liew, Asia Managing Partner of SJ Berwin, said: “China’s impressive economic growth continues despite the global economic challenges, and client demand is high for dedicated, capable and experienced legal resources able to assist with both inbound and outbound cross-border legal work involving China.”

The Supreme Court turned away another appeal to stop the release of documents generated for sexual abuse lawsuits against priests in a Roman Catholic diocese in Connecticut.

The court on Monday refused to hear an appeal from the Diocese of Bridgeport, which has been fighting for years to prevent the release of the documents. Last month, the justices refused to grant a delay at least while they considered the diocese's full appeal.

The order Monday was issued without comment.

The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Washington Post and the Hartford Courant have asked to see the documents. The Connecticut Supreme Court has ruled that more than 12,000 pages from 23 lawsuits against the six priests should be unsealed.

The documents include depositions, affidavits and motions.

The records have been under seal since the diocese settled the cases in 2001.

The diocese says the First Amendment prohibits civil authorities from intruding into internal church decisions about priest assignments.

The Supreme Court on Monday left in place a judge's ruling that allowed prosecutors to charge a reputed Ku Klux Klansman with kidnapping more than 40 years after two black men were abducted and killed in rural Mississippi.

The justices rejected a plea from the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to rule on whether too much time had elapsed for the case against James Ford Seale to go forward.

The action leaves in place a lower court ruling that the statute of limitations had not expired for a federal kidnapping charge against Seale in the 1964 disappearance of two 19-year-old friends.

Seale was convicted in 2007 of abducting the men. Authorities said they were beaten, weighted down and thrown, possibly still alive, into a Mississippi River backwater.

Disagreeing with their colleagues, Justices John Paul Stevens and Antonin Scalia said the high court should have agreed to hear the case because it raises an important issue that potentially affects similar prosecutions. The court did not otherwise elaborate on its order.

The request by the New Orleans-based appeals court indicated that the decision could affect roughly two dozen other investigations into Civil Rights Era crimes. But Chief Judge Edith H. Jones and five other dissenters cast doubt on that number.

In 1964, when the men disappeared, kidnapping was punishable by death under federal law. But in the 1970s, Supreme Court decisions and acts of Congress changed the maximum sentence for kidnapping to life in prison. Capital crimes have no deadline for prosecution, but lesser crimes must be prosecuted within five years.

The Supreme Court turned away another appeal to stop the release of documents generated for sexual abuse lawsuits against priests in a Roman Catholic diocese in Connecticut.

The court on Monday refused to hear an appeal from the Diocese of Bridgeport, which has been fighting for years to prevent the release of the documents. Last month, the justices refused to grant a delay at least while they considered the diocese's full appeal.

The order Monday was issued without comment.

The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Washington Post and the Hartford Courant have asked to see the documents. The Connecticut Supreme Court has ruled that more than 12,000 pages from 23 lawsuits against the six priests should be unsealed.

The documents include depositions, affidavits and motions.

The records have been under seal since the diocese settled the cases in 2001.

The diocese says the First Amendment prohibits civil authorities from intruding into internal church decisions about priest assignments.

Gerald Leader loves California wines but lives in Massachusetts, where state law sharply limits the ability of out-of-state wineries to ship their products directly to consumers.

"I can't go directly to wineries in Napa and Sonoma," said Leader, a retired Boston University professor, who, along with a group of like-minded people, are suing to have the restriction lifted.

On Monday, the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston is scheduled to hear arguments on the law that for years has been fermenting opposition from out-of-state wine producers, as well as connoisseurs like Leader who would prefer to order their bottles through the Internet or mail order.

Despite a 2005 Supreme Court ruling that opened the door wider to interstate wine shipments, restrictions remain in more than a dozen states. Attorneys say the outcome of the case in Massachusetts could influence others.

"It's an example of a protectionist law that violates the commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution," said Tracy Genesen, who will argue the case on behalf of Sacramento, Calif.-based Family Winemakers of California, which represents about 650 producers that claim they have essentially been frozen out of the Massachusetts market.

According to Free the Grapes, a coalition of wine producers, retailers and consumers, Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Maryland, Montana, New Jersey, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Dakota and Utah prohibit wineries from shipping directly to consumers while Arizona, Kentucky, Ohio along with Massachusetts restrict shipments by companies that produce over a certain amount of wine.

The Supreme Court Monday rejected a generic-drug maker's appeal challenging a patent for a blockbuster blood-thinning drug developed by Sanofi-Aventis SA and co-marketed by Bristol-Myers Squibb Co.

The dispute arose after the Canadian generic-drug maker Apotex Corp. applied to market a generic version of the anti-blood-clotting drug Plavix shortly before its original patent expired in 2003.

France-based Sanofi sued Apotex for patent infringement because Sanofi researchers had separated Plavix's two main molecules and successfully applied for a second patent on just the effective molecule in the drug.

Apotex argued that the second patent, which doesn't expire until 2011, shouldn't have been granted. Two years ago the Supreme Court ruled in KSR v. Teleflex that a patent can't be awarded to the results of a procedure that is "obvious to try."

But both a U.S. judge in New York and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington upheld the patent's validity, ruling that the results of the drug tests couldn't have been predicted, even if trying the experiment itself were obvious.

A Sacramento Superior Court jury Thursday awarded the survivors of Jennifer Lea Strange $16,577,118 as a result of her death nearly three years ago in a water-drinking contest conducted by a local radio station.

In making the award, the seven-man, five-woman panel found that Entercom Sacramento LLC, the local subsidiary of Entercom Communications Corp. of Philadelphia was negligent in putting on the contest that ultimately resulted in Strange's death.

Plaintiffs lawyers had asked the jury for an award for economic and non-economic damages in a range of $34 million to $44.3 million.

Strange, 28, died Jan. 12, 2007, after participating in what KDND promoted as its "Hold Your Wee for a Wii" contest that promised the popular Nintendo video game to whomever could drink the most water without urinating or vomiting. The Sacramento County Coroner's Office determined that she died of acute water intoxication. The Sacramento County Sheriff's Department investigated the case to see if it was a homicide, but no criminal charges were filed.

Plaintiffs attorneys filed the wrongful death lawsuit on behalf of her husband, William Strange, individually and as guardian of their two young children, Ryland, 6, and Jorie, 3; and Ronald Sims, the father and guardian of the woman's oldest son, Keegan, 13. The plaintiffs charged that the defendants were negligent in holding the contest.