The Supreme Court yesterday gave the benefit of the doubt to a FedEx worker who claimed age discrimination, and said her case should not be thrown out because of mistakes made by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

The court ruled 7 to 2 that Patricia Kennedy's suit could move forward, even though her employer had not been notified by the EEOC that Kennedy and others had made charges against it, as the Age Discrimination in Employment Act requires.

The act says that a formal charge must be made with the agency before a lawsuit can be filed, and that in that interim, the EEOC is to notify the company, investigate the claim and seek conciliation between the employer and employee before lawyers and judges become involved.

At oral argument, it became clear that the form Kennedy filed with the EEOC sometimes was considered by the agency to constitute a formal charge, and sometimes not. Justices criticized the government for the inconsistency, and it responded that it is changing its policies.

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy's opinion said that because of the lack of clarity on the part of EEOC, "both sides lost the benefits" of the informal dispute resolution process, and it again criticized the agency.

But the majority said that the form and documents Patricia Kennedy filed could be considered a formal charge and that she should be allowed to proceed with her lawsuit.

Justices Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia dissented, saying the court's "malleability" was wrong.

"Given the court's utterly vague criteria, whatever the agency later decides to regard as a charge is a charge -- and the statutorily required notice to the employer and conciliation process will be evaded in the future as it has been in this case," wrote Thomas, who was head of the EEOC for a time in the 1980s.

The decision was the court's second in two days regarding the age discrimination statute, both of them rather narrowly drawn. The case is Federal Express Corp. v. Holowecki

Avelino Gonzalez Claudio had fought extradition to the U.S. from Puerto Rico, but a federal judge there rejected his bail request. He appeared Thursday in U.S. District Court in Hartford.

Gonzalez was arrested by the FBI earlier this month in Puerto Rico. The 65-year-old had been working there as a teacher and living under an assumed name.

Gonzalez is one of more than a dozen people indicted in the Sept. 12, 1983, robbery of about $7 million from a Wells Fargo armored car depot in West Hartford.

He is being held without bond and is due back in court Tuesday for a bond hearing.

The victims' families clamored for a trial, and prosecutors felt there was plenty of evidence for one. So they moved to rescind the deal.

They were rebuked Wednesday by a judge, who said their regrets weren't grounds for them to renege on an agreement reached weeks ago.

The judge's order means Michael Mastromarino, 44, will go to prison for 18 to 54 years for his ghoulish crimes — possibly putting him behind bars for the rest of his life.

"Mr. Mastromarino may never see the light of day," said Brooklyn Judge Albert Tomei, whose words brought Mastromarino's mother to tears.

Prosecutor Monique Ferrell said there had been a "change in circumstance" and a trial was needed to reveal the full "scope of harm he caused." She said prosecutors became fully aware of his activities only in the last year.

In a statement e-mailed after the hearing, a spokesman for the Brooklyn district attorney's office provided a clearer explanation of why prosecutors sought a trial.

A former partner in the New York office of Dorsey & Whitney is suing the Minneapolis-based law firm, claiming gender discrimination and violations of the whistleblower act, among other things.

Hennepin County District Court Judge Gary Larson heard an hour of arguments Tuesday on the Dorsey firm's motion to dismiss Kristan Peters' suit.

Peters began working as a Dorsey partner in January 2007 and left on June 23. At the core of the case is her handling of a trade secrets dispute on behalf of Wolters Kluwer Financial Services in New York. The matter drew media attention in trade publications, largely because of U.S. District Court Judge Harold Baer Jr.'s 129-page opinion criticizing Peters' behavior.

According to R. Scott Davies of Briggs and Morgan, who is representing Dorsey, Baier scolded Peters 22 times for her handling of the case. Davies said Peters played fast and loose with the litigation, lied to the court and misrepresented circumstances to the firm's partners.

Peters' lawyer James Kaster countered that the judge's behavior, not Peters', was unusual. The behavior Baer disliked -- such as scheduling a 7-hour deposition over two days and refusing to give bathroom breaks -- is not unusual, Kaster said.

Peters was denied her fair share of her $550,000 annual salary and an equity payment from the partnership, Kaster said. She claims the firm should indemnify her for issues stemming from the Kluwer litigation and seeks unspecified damages in excess of $50,000.

"The Dorsey law firm has a well-deserved reputation for excellence," Kaster said in court. "Frankly, I don't believe the treatment of Kristan Peters suits them."

He said Peters was let go because "she refused to fall on her sword" for Zach Carter, a "marquee partner" in the firm's New York office. She complained about his discriminatory behavior, ethical violations and violation of a court order to multiple members of Dorsey's managing team, the complaint said.

In his motion to dismiss the case, Davies said Peters made the claims when she could "see the writing on the wall" regarding her employment.

Peters' lawsuit claims that as a result of the complaints, she was told to resign or be fired and chose "resignation."

Davies said Peters' guaranteed $550,000 salary was "subject to her ethical duties as a lawyer." Peters did not act in good faith and is not entitled to indemnification, he said. He said it was unfair to criticize the judge.

Her conduct was "worse than unprofessional," Davies said. She deleted parts of an e-mail from the judge that she forwarded to a partner and ordered a copy made of disks despite a judge's order to return them to the court.

Davies contends she ordered a junior associate to alter documents so they could be classified as "work product." In filings, Peters claimed the destruction order was a "joke."

Davies also took issue with the gender bias claim, noting the firm's policy panel was led by managing partner Marianne Short from the time of Peters' hiring to her departure.

Peters did not attend Tuesday's hearing. Larson didn't say when he would rule, but asked the parties for an update on mediation within the week.

A jury in Alaska said $5 billion. An appeals court said $2.5 billion. And Exxon's answer Wednesday was nothing at all, because the company said it already had paid plenty.

Justices explored just about every possible alternative through intense questioning during 1 ½ hours of arguments before a packed courtroom. By the end, it seemed several held the view that the company could be found liable for punitive damages, but perhaps not as much as even the appeals court had found.

There were several unusual aspects to Wednesday's arguments in a case that has bounced through the legal system for 14 years.

Justice Samuel Alito is recused because of his Exxon stockholdings, so even a 4-to-4 tie on the court would affirm the lower court's decisions that punitive damages are owed to nearly 33,000 fishermen, native Alaskans, businessmen and others consolidated into the single suit against Exxon.

And, as Justice David Souter noted, the court for a decade has struggled with determining whether punitive damages awarded by state courts were excessive. Now, he suggested, it is the Supreme Court's turn to "come up with a number."

Exxon has acknowledged that the captain of the Exxon Valdez, Joseph Hazelwood, was drunk at the time of the March 24, 1989, accident, and the corporation has paid about $3.4 billion in fines, compensation and cleanup costs.

Maritime law has shielded ship owners from being punished for damage caused by their vessels. This made sense during the era of sailing ships, Souter said. "In those days, when a ship put to sea, the ship was sort of a floating world by itself," he said.

Walter Dellinger, representing Exxon, cited this principle of maritime law and urged the court to throw out the entire punitive verdict. He cited the case of the Amiable Nancy in 1818 as having a historic precedent shielding ship owners.

But his argument quickly ran aground. "It's rather, I think, an exaggeration to call it a long line of settled decisions in maritime law," Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said.

As a fallback, Dellinger argued that the $2.5 billion verdict was too high. He cited several federal laws that, for example, fine those who pollute the environment. Typically, these legal fines may total millions of dollars but not billions, he said.

The Mountain View-based company is taking its first step toward that goal Thursday with the debut of a free service designed for high-tech neophytes looking for a simple way to share information with other people working in the same company or attending the same class in school.

With only a few clicks, just about anyone will be able to quickly set up and update a Web site featuring a wide array of material, including pictures, calendars and video from Google Inc.'s YouTube subsidiary, said Dave Girouard, general manager of the division overseeing the new application.

"We are literally adding an edit button to the Web," Girouard said.

All sites created on the service will run on one of Google's computers.

Google acquired many of the Web-site tools when it bought a Silicon Valley startup, JotSpot, last year.

The tools are the latest addition to a bundle of applications that Google offers to consumers and businesses as alternatives to similar products sold by Microsoft Corp., one of Google's fiercest rivals.

Google's latest service represents a challenge to Microsoft's SharePoint, which charges licensing fees. Google is unveiling its alternative just a few days before Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft hosts a SharePoint conference in Seattle.

While Microsoft's programs typically are installed on individual computers, Google keeps its application on its own machines so users can access them from anywhere with an Internet connection.

By gradually introducing free versions of word processing, spreadsheet, and calendaring programs over the past two years, Google has been threatening to siphon revenue away from Microsoft, which makes most of its money from software sales.

Microsoft, in turn, hopes to take a bite of out Google's bread-and-butter in online search and advertising by buying Yahoo Inc. for more than $40 billion.

Google says more than 500,000 companies, government agencies and schools use at least some of its applications. The company won't say how many of those organizations subscribe to a premium version of its software suite, but the fees haven't made much of a dent at Google so far.

Last year, Google's software licensing and other products generated $181 million in revenue while $16.4 billion poured in from advertising.