U.S. District Judge Janet C. Hall awarded the payments to Gary Mastronardi, a former FBI agent turned lawyer, for his representation of Tristan Roberts, a 17-year-old Ansonia High School junior, and his mother, Paulette Bolling, last fall.

Michelle Laubin, a Milford lawyer representing the school system, challenged both the system's liability for legal fees and the $400 per hour Mastronardi requested for his work on the case.

The judge found that Mastronardi successfully obtained Roberts' return to school by convincing her to issue a temporary restraining order against the Board of Education's expulsion. That led to a Nov. 14 settlement in which the school board rescinded the Oct. 22 expulsion and allowed Roberts to return to school the next day.

Hall did reduce Mastronardi's hourly fee request to $350 for each of the roughly 51 hours he spent working on the case.

Roberts was suspended and then expelled from the high school after police arrested him in September on a marijuana possession charge in the Riverside Apartments housing project in Ansonia.

The incident occurred several hours after school closed for the day and several miles away from the high school. Police said they found eight small bags of marijuana and $13 in Roberts' possession during his arrest. The charges, however, were resolved under the youthful offender laws, with no incarceration and no criminal record.

Hall granted Mastronardi's request for a temporary restraining order against the expulsion.

At that time, Mastronardi said the judge advised schools that "they'd better make sure before expelling a student for engaging in after-hours, off-campus misconduct that the conduct disrupted the school's operation."

As part of the settlement, Bolling withdrew her federal lawsuit against the Board of Education, Supt. of Schools Carol Merlone and Ansonia High School Principal Susan H. McKernan.

Neither Laubin nor Mastronardi could be reached for comment Tuesday.

Who’s the hottest young female lawyer at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom? Last week that question sent the New York firm into a bit of a tizzy.

On Feb. 4, Skadden Insider, a blog written by two anonymous firm employees and dedicated, unofficially, to all things Skadden, announced the winner of its weeklong poll to decide the firm’s "Hottest Female Associate."

The American Lawyer notes that the contest was hardly Skadden Gone Wild - most of the photos of the eight contestants were relatively innocuous head shots. The winner, a blond litigator, drew 400 votes from Skadden cognoscenti.

The firm, however, was not amused. On Feb. 7, Henry Baer, the firm’s employment adviser, sent an e-mail to all Skadden lawyers in the United States, chastising the blog.

"Numerous attorneys at the firm have expressed their concern and, in some cases, embarrassment at such contests," wrote Mr. Baer, who said the competition was "inappropriate" and inconsistent with Skadden’s "values and standards of behavior."

The bloggers responded in a post titled "Not So Hot": "Damn, we feel like we were called to the Vice Principal’s office today and had our knuckles wrapped."

"The contest, although sophomoric, was done all in good fun," the writers continued. " We’re sorry if anyone was embarassed by it. We wish you had just chuckled, rolled your eyes or merely clicked away."

However, the lawyerly bloggers didn’t seem entirely abashed by the firm’s stern response.

"We’re not quite sure what Skadden’s "values" are (or, for that matter, the Firm’s "standards of behavior")," they said, adding that they had suspended nominations for the Hottest Male Associate.

The former police chief of Luthersville pleaded guilty Tuesday and was sentenced to five years in prison for charges stemming from sexual encounters with two women last year, prosecutors said.

The case against police Chief David Yates began with a rape accusation from a 21-year-old woman in August.

Then it grew when another Luthersville woman came forward, saying she twice had been coerced into sex with Yates in 2007 because the chief promised leniency against her husband in a drunken-driving case.

Yates pleaded guilty to one count of false imprisonment and two counts of violation of oath of office, said Pete Skandalakis, the district attorney for the judicial circuit that includes Meriwether County, 45 miles southwest of Atlanta.

After his prison term, Yates will be on probation for five years and has to register as a sex offender.

Another ex-Luthersville officer arrested in the case, Jason Hardegree, avoided prison but got five years probation after pleading guilty to giving false statements and violation of oath of office. He had agreed to testify against the chief if the case went to trial.

Skandalakis said both pleas were negotiated as the case was set to go before a grand jury next week.

In the rape case, on Aug. 24, Yates went to the 21-year-old woman's home in uniform and with his patrol car and threatened to have her young daughter taken from the home by child-welfare authorities if she didn't have sex with him, Skandalakis said. The chief admitted the sex took place, but said it was consensual, the prosecutor said.

A week or so earlier, he unsuccessfully tried to get her committed to a mental hospital after she made repeated unwanted calls to a friend of Yates' who she had just stopped dating.

After Yates was arrested, the other woman, 26, reported her story to authorities, Skandalakis said. She said that she had sex with Yates twice —- including once in a vacant home —- between March and July 2007 in exchange for leniency in her husband's DUI case.

Hardegree had a much lesser role in the incident involving the 21-year-old; he tried to prevent the woman from pursuing criminal charges against Yates and made a false statement to investigators, Skandalakis said.

January's sales increase followed a 0.4 percent decline in December and was contrary to Wall Street analysts' forecasts for a 0.2 percent decline. The surprise sales rise caused stock futures to jump on hopes it meant the United States had a better chance of skirting a recession.

Prices for U.S. debt securities fell while the dollar's value strengthened against other major currencies.

Excluding autos, January sales still rose 0.3 percent, reversing a 0.3 percent decline in December sales. Wall Street analysts were expecting a 0.2 percent gain in sales excluding autos.

"The data is clearly a surprise to the upside," said Omer Esiner, a market analyst with Ruesch International in Washington, D.C. "In the near term, it does ease some recession concerns."

Despite the higher headline number for sales, there were declines in many categories that implied consumer spending was being pinched. Furniture sales fell 0.5 percent in January, building material sales were down 1.7 percent and department store sales declined by 1.1 percent.

Many analysts think the slowing U.S. economy faces increasing risks of tumbling into recession and are closely watching for signs that consumers, who fuel 70 percent of national economic activity, will keep scaling back spending.

Several other money-strapped states have mulled going after the taxes.

Spitzer's proposed budget would require Internet giants like Amazon to collect tax on an estimated $47 million in sales to New Yorkers, who are currently required by an honor system to report how much they spend online on their tax returns.

Amazon spokesman Paul Misener says the governor's plan would be a radical departure from anything currently being done in the U.S.

He says other states — including California, Michigan, North Carolina and Texas — have considered similar plans, but abandoned the idea.

Walter rejected Lerach's request to spend part of his sentence in home detention and rebuked Lerach for his criminal conduct, saying he had “corrupted the law firm and corrupted it in the most evil way.”

Walter said he would have imposed a stiffer sentence on his own and considered rejecting the plea arrangement because of the gravity of Lerach's offense.

The secret kickbacks paid by Lerach's former firm, Milberg Weiss, made it easier for the firm to be named lead counsel and to command a bigger share of settlement fees in its lawsuits against major corporations.

Lerach pleaded guilty last year to a single count of conspiracy and admitted to participating in the scheme, which sought clients with large stock portfolios and asked them to serve as ready plaintiffs when negative information surfaced about a company. In return, Milberg Weiss paid these clients a percentage of the firm's legal fees.

Under law, the lead plaintiff in a class-action shareholder suit must serve as a representative of the class and cannot have a special interest or hidden inducement beyond other shareholders in the case.
“In the court's view, Mr. Lerach's conduct is one of the most serious crimes to come before this court,” Walter said. “The scope and duration of this conspiracy was breathtaking.”

Lerach, 61, who wore a dark suit, sat quietly with his fingers interlaced on the table in front of him. As the judge delivered his sentence, Lerach kept his eyes fixed on the table, his face flushed with color.

Earlier in the hearing, Lerach addressed the judge and a courtroom packed with his supporters, apologizing for “embarrassing” his family and law firm for conduct that was “completely unacceptable in a lawyer.”

“I pleaded guilty in this case because I was guilty,” Lerach said, his voice quavering. “I knew what I was doing was wrong, I just did not have the strength of will or the strength of character to not join in on what was going on in our bar.”

Lerach is likely to be disbarred as a result of the conviction.

After joining the Milberg Weiss law firm and moving to San Diego in 1976, Lerach became a nationwide pioneer in developing new legal strategies for shareholder litigation. His smashmouth tactics made him a pariah in corporate boardrooms, but a force to be reckoned with nonetheless.

He may be known most recently as the lawyer who helped recover $7.2 billion for investors in Enron Corp.

Yet Lerach also devised the strategy used to recover $240 million for investors who were bilked in the 1989 collapse of the Lincoln Savings & Loan in Irvine.

He became a key strategist in similar battles waged over public bond meltdowns throughout California and Washington state, and in the sprawling case against junk bond king Michael Milken and the defunct investment firm Drexel, Burnham and Lambert.

Some 160 people wrote letters of support for Lerach, including U.S. Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., and consumer advocate Ralph Nader.

“Some of the things he did were brilliant and really advanced the cause of shareholders,” said Sean Coffey, a lawyer with New York-based Bernstein Litowitz Berger & Grossman, who often battled Lerach for the lead position in lawsuits. “On the other hand, he's a confessed criminal who really bruised, rightly or wrongly, the rest of the bar.”

Lerach's attorney, John Keker, argued during yesterday's hearing that his client had stopped participating in the conspiracy in 1999. Keker said Lerach was “shocked” to learn that colleagues in New York had secretly paid a client as late as 2003 – at least two years after the government began investigating the firm.

The judge rejoined that Lerach had benefited for years after he stopped actively recruiting clients to the conspiracy by collecting millions of dollars in fees from tainted cases.

Walter also berated prosecutors for agreeing to a sentencing range that he felt was not severe enough, saying he had considered rejecting Lerach's plea deal and forcing the case to go to trial.

“The conduct to me just goes to the core of the judicial system,” Walter said. “This whole conspiracy corrupted the law firm and corrupted it in the most evil way. He has to be punished for what he did. It comes down to retribution.”

Walter noted that Lerach had not sought to lighten his sentence by agreeing to cooperate in the government's ongoing investigation of Milberg Weiss and co-founder Melvyn Weiss.

Amid mounting pressure from the federal investigation, Lerach led a breakaway from Milberg Weiss and founded the San Diego law firm now known as Coughlin Stoia Geller Rudman & Robbins. He resigned from that firm in August.

In addition to the prison term, Lerach agreed to forfeit $7.75 million in unlawful gains, pay a $250,000 fine and serve two years of probation. He is set to report to federal prison in California on April 21.

Lerach, who somberly shook hands with supporters outside the courtroom, had no comment on the sentence.

New York-based Milberg Weiss and Melvyn Weiss have been indicted as part of the same conspiracy, and have pleaded not guilty. Trial is set for August. Two former Milberg attorneys and three clients have pleaded guilty in the case.

Democrat Barack Obama looked to continue his winning streak in three mid-Atlantic presidential primaries and brushed aside questions Tuesday about future contests to which rival Hillary Rodham Clinton has turned her attention. Republican John McCain sought to rebound from two weekend losses to Mike Huckabee and reinforce his position as the inevitable GOP nominee.

"It's very early," Obama said when asked about his prospects in the March 4 Texas primary during an appearance near a polling place here. "We haven't even gotten through this yet, come on, man," he added, referring to Tuesday's Democratic presidential primaries in Virginia, Maryland and the District of Columbia. Clinton planned to spend election night at a rally in El Paso, Texas.

Obama surprised customers at a Dunkin' Donuts shop across from a school with a polling place. Autographs-seekers jostled with reporters, cameras and Secret Service agents as Obama worked his way through the crowd with Washington Mayor Adrian Fenty to deliver donuts and coffee to his poll workers.

Coming off weekend victories in five contests, Obama was favored to win the mid-Atlantic primaries which draw a heavy blend of black and better educated voters, blocs that have aided his wins in earlier matchups against Clinton. Likewise, McCain was favored on the GOP side.

Democrats picked 168 delegates and Republicans 116 on Tuesday.

"We need something new," Obama told a huge rally at the University of Maryland on Monday, dismissing the former first lady's suggestions that he is not tough enough for the rigors of the presidency.

The Illinois senator was traveling late Tuesday to Wisconsin, which votes next week, along with Hawaii, where Obama grew up.

With the Clinton campaign all but conceding losses Tuesday, as well as in other primaries during the month, the New York senator prepared to fly to Texas, which holds its primary on March 4. She is banking on strong showings there and in Ohio, which votes the same day, to blunt Obama's momentum.

"I wouldn't be doing this if I didn't think I would be the best candidate," Clinton told reporters Monday as she campaigned near Baltimore. "So I'm going forward — every day, we get to make our case to the American people."