Two of Dallas' most prominent law firms squared off in federal court Thursday in the high-profile case that has pitted heirs to oilman H.L. Hunt's fortune against each other in a nasty family fight.

But the skirmish was not to decide how the family funds should be divvied up. Instead, it was to decide whether the Bickel & Brewer law firm can represent one of the parties.

Hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees could be at stake, and the courtroom was crowded with distinguished lawyers, including George Bramblett and Don Godwin, who have an interest in the case.

Some may have been looking for fireworks but got gentlemanly jabs instead as Mike Lynn of Lynn Tillotson Pinker & Cox, representing Al G. Hill Jr., asked the court to disqualify Bickel & Brewer from representing Al G. Hill III in the suit against his father and other family members.

Bickel & Brewer "chose to betray their own client" by filing a lawsuit against him, Mr. Lynn said as "Al Jr." looked on.

He described attorney Bill Brewer as "the most conflicted lawyer in the city of Dallas."

Neither Mr. Brewer or "Al III" attended the hearing. But Bickel & Brewer partner James Renard said despite hundreds of pages of filings in the case, Mr. Lynn failed to prove that Al Jr. was anything other than a witness in unrelated litigation, so there was no conflict of interest.

In a filing last February, Bickel & Brewer called the motion to disqualify its firm "transparently tactical in its effort to delay this litigation and increase the costs to Plaintiff."

The hearing is a byproduct of a suit filed last fall, by Al III against Al Jr. and other relatives, accusing them of conspiring to plunder two family trusts, one set up for his late grandmother, Margaret Hunt Hill and the other set up for his late great-uncle, Haroldson Lafayette Hunt Jr., known as Hassie. The trusts were begun in 1935 by oilman H.L. Hunt, once considered the richest man in the country.

The two trusts' major asset was Hunt Petroleum, which was sold to XTO Energy for more than $4 billion in June.

A grand jury on Thursday indicted Mayra Lizbeth Rosales, 27, on one count of first-degree murder and on one count of injury to a child in the death of Eliseo Gonzalez Jr. She previously had been charged with capital murder.

Rosales weighs nearly 1,000 pounds and cannot fit through a door to leave her home, leaving prosecutors wondering how to bring her to court. As of Thursday evening, she was not in custody.

Hidalgo County Sheriff Lupe Trevino said holding her at the county jail for her trial would be impossible because she needs extensive medical care.

"She would die," said Trevino in Thursday's online edition of The Monitor in McAllen.

The grand jury indicted Rosales after an autopsy confirmed investigators' suspicions that the child died March 18 because he had been struck. Investigators believe the toddler was struck at least twice, crushing his head.

Authorities recommended Rosales' bond be set at $150,000.

The boy's mother Jaime Rosales, was charged earlier with injury to a child because she allegedly left her son alone with his aunt. Her bond has been set at $100.000.

Doug Baker of the Michigan attorney general's office made the disclosure during a routine arraignment for Kilpatrick on the charges in one of two criminal cases against him.

Kilpatrick attorney Juan Mateo told Circuit Court Judge David Groner he had just learned of the deal offer and wasn't prepared to respond. Another defense attorney, James Thomas, said after the hearing: "We're preparing for trial."

A not guilty plea on the assault charges was entered on the mayor's behalf. Kilpatrick didn't speak in court.

The mayor is accused of shoving a sheriff's detective into another investigator while they tried to serve a subpoena on one of his friends July 24.

Kilpatrick is a superdelegate to the Democratic National Convention next week in Denver. Thomas said last week the mayor is interested in attending but conditions of his bond in the assault case prevent him from traveling outside the metro Detroit area.

A hearing was scheduled for Monday on Kilpatrick's bond conditions.

Separately, Kilpatrick and his former top aide, Christine Beatty, were charged in March with conspiracy, perjury, obstruction of justice and misconduct in office, mostly tied to their testimony in a civil trial. Sexually explicit text messages between the pair, published by the Detroit Free Press in January, contradict their sworn denials of an affair, a key point in the trial last year involving a former deputy police chief.

Meanwhile, Gov. Jennifer Granholm is scheduled on Sept. 3 to consider a request from the Detroit City Council to have Kilpatrick removed from office. Under Michigan law, a governor can remove an elected official for misconduct. That hearing could last several days.

Granholm declined Friday to discuss anything involving Kilpatrick.

Khodorkovsky — the former head of Yukos oil company, and once Russia's richest man — was sentenced to prison for eight years in 2005 on charges of tax evasion and fraud in what Kremlin critics slammed as a flawed trial.

"Prisoner Khodorkovsky does not deserve conditional early release," Judge Igor Faliliyev said at the Ingodinsky regional court in the Siberian city of Chita, citing as reasons his refusal to take part in professional training in sewing while in prison, and an alleged misdemeanor dating back to October.

Khodorkovsky showed little surprise at the decision, appearing calm as the judge finished speaking. As he was hustled out of the courtroom by guards, he said Russia's "legal system will not be reformed anytime soon."

Detained since 2003, Khodorkovsky has served more than half of his sentence and has been eligible for parole for the past 10 months.

Most of that sentence has been served in the remote Chita region, nearly 4,000 miles east of Moscow. In December 2006, he was moved from a prison camp to a pretrial detention center in the city after new charges were brought against him and his business associate Platon Lebedev.

Similar to a retail shop that increases its product lines to meet customer demand, the law firm of Jonathan D'Agostino & Associates, has ventured into additional areas of jurisprudence.

The expansion wasn't part of the original game plan for the 18-year-old firm, which began specializing in personal injury.

"I never wanted to be that law firm that claims they do everything, because I do not believe you can do everything well," said founder Jonathan D'Agostino.

But when his clients indicated a need for other legal services, D'Agostino didn't want to let them down. He brought legal experts, in a variety of specialties, on board.

"We would settle large cases, and clients would ask us to help with estate planning," D'Agostino said.

At other times, he said, personal-injury cases would involve clients who were so injured they didn't have the mental capacity to make decisions or handle their settlements, so the firm would be prompted to draft special-needs trusts.

Today, in addition to personal injury, the Eltingville-based firm offers a range of legal services, including medical malpractice, estate planning, elder law, criminal defense and Social Security disability.

"Rather than refer those types of matters to other firms, we brought in trained and seasoned attorneys to handle things. This also assured our clients the same exceptional service they were used to," D'Agostino said.

The firm's Social Security department grew out of the need to service clients who, due to their injuries, could not return to work.

Attorney Edward Pavia helps clients like these with Social Security paperwork, hearings and appeals.

Judge Ernest Murphy and the state Commission on Judicial Conduct have agreed Murphy is "permanently disabled" from performing his judicial duties, according to the order from the state Supreme Judicial Court.

Murphy has said the libel case took a severe physical and emotional toll and he suffers from post-traumatic stress.

The commission initiated a complaint in October, alleging that Murphy suffered from disabilities that affected his performance. The court sealed the complaint and most related documents because they contain personal medical information.

Murphy's attorney, Michael Mone, said he was prohibited from commenting on the agreement.

Howard Neff, a staff attorney for the commission, would not comment on details of the complaint, but said the court accepted the agreement and "ordered that Judge Murphy shall not sit again as a judge in Massachusetts."

The Supreme Judicial Court hasn't decided yet whether to impose on Murphy the commission's recommendation for a 30-day suspension without pay, $25,000 fine and public censure for using court letterhead to write a threatening letter to the Herald's publisher, Patrick Purcell.

The agreement allows Murphy to continue to receive his judicial pay for up to four months. During that period, he must use any accrued vacation and sick time.

In a 2-1 decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit threw out a two-year-old rule that may have allowed some refineries, power plants and factories to exceed pollution limits because the Environmental Protection Agency "failed to fix inadequate monitoring requirements ... and prohibited states and local authorities from doing so."

Since 1990, the Clean Air Act has required permits granted to facilities releasing more than 100 tons of any pollutant a year to include enough monitoring to ensure the company is meeting its emissions targets. Approximately 15,000 to 16,000 permits have been issued under the program, mostly by state and local pollution agencies.

"We can't have strong enforcement of our clean air laws unless we know what polluters are putting into the air," said Keri Powell, a staff attorney with Earthjustice, who sued the EPA on behalf of four environmental groups.

The EPA said Tuesday that it was reviewing the court's decision. But an agency spokesman said the monitoring deficiencies should be remedied on the national level rather than on a case-by-case basis.

Appeals court judge Brett Kavanaugh, a former attorney in the Bush White House, wrote the sole dissenting opinion.

He said that while EPA and state and local governments may disagree about whether monitoring requirements will adequately measure compliance, he found "nothing in the statute that prohibits EPA's approach."