The judge also dismissed claims against Thomas W. Jones, the former chief executive of Citigroup Asset Management, and Lewis E. Daidone, the former treasurer and chief financial officer of the Smith Barney family of funds.

"It is undisputed that defendants disclosed the amount of fees paid by the funds. Thus, plaintiffs were in possession of all material information, i.e., they knew the value of the funds," the judge said in a nine-page opinion.

The consolidated lawsuit alleged that Citigroup's asset-management business took most of the benefit of a discount from using an affiliated transfer agent for itself, pocketing more than $90 million, rather than passing on those savings to the mutual funds and their customers.

In February, another federal judge in Manhattan dismissed a similar case brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission against Jones and Daidone. Citigroup itself settled the SEC's charges in May 2005 and agreed to pay $208 million to affected mutual-fund customers. In settling, the financial-services company didn't admit or deny wrongdoing.

A lawyer for the investors and a Citigroup spokesman didn't immediately return phone calls seeking comment Wednesday.

The Supreme Court will now examine whether a fatal three-drug cocktail most of the states use to execute inmates may violate the ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

Among the four key questions the justices will consider is whether states can execute an inmate if there is a "substantial risk" of pain and suffering through lethal injection.

By taking the Kentucky case, the justices are expected to provide a road map for judges across the country, including in California, where a San Jose federal judge has been reviewing the issue for more than a year.

"They decided to take the bull by the horns," said Ronald Matthias, a senior assistant attorney general in charge of California's death penalty appeals. "It is a very significant development, and we expect a very far-reaching and important decision which we'll obviously be bound by."

The Supreme Court review is likely to further delay California's effort to resume executing death row inmates.

Matthias would not speculate whether the court's intervention would halt the ongoing challenge in California by death row inmate Michael Morales, whose case has prompted Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to overhaul the state's lethal injection procedures.

U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel is scheduled to hold additional hearings on the Morales case in December and to tour a newly constructed death chamber in November. But some legal experts now expect the case may wait until the Supreme Court makes its ruling.

California has put executions on hold since early 2006 while Fogel has been reviewing Morales' lawsuit, which maintains the state's lethal injection method poses an undue risk of an inhumane execution for the more than 650 inmates on the state's death row.

John Grele, one of Morales' lawyers, said he would need to review the Kentucky case more closely to determine its effect on the California litigation.

But legal experts agreed the decision to hear the Kentucky case would have broad implications for states across the country, particularly given the scattershot results that have come from different courts asked to review the arguments of death row inmates.

In some states, executions have been put on hold, whereas other states have kept executing people despite nearly identical challenges pending in their courts.

The Supreme Court's decision to take the Kentucky case is "huge news" that should lead to a "de facto moratorium" on executions nationwide, Douglas Berman, an Ohio State University law professor and leading expert on the issue, said on his law blog. Berman does not expect a ruling until the end of the court's next term, in June.

Elisabeth Semel, head of the death penalty clinic at UC Berkeley's Boalt Hall School of Law, said the case is crucial to settling questions surrounding lethal injection but cautioned that the justices do not necessarily have to settle them all.

"The court is taking a bite of the apple," she said. "But how big a bite is not known."

"It puts Judge Fogel and other judges in the middle of this process in a position where they have to step back," she added.

A Supreme Court review of lethal injection has been brewing for years. Most states with a death penalty have turned to the method after similar legal challenges of alternatives, such as the gas chamber and the electric chair.

A federal appeals court declared California's gas chamber unconstitutional in the mid-1990s, prompting the switch to lethal injection.

In recent years, the Supreme Court has been repeatedly asked to review challenges to various states' lethal injection procedures but has steered clear of the central constitutional issue. The justices did make it easier for condemned inmates to file challenges, prompting a number of cases to unfold in states such as Missouri, Tennessee and Kentucky.

A federal judge in Tennessee recently put executions on hold there after concluding that the state's lethal injection method was too flawed. Fogel, in the California case, called this state's execution procedures "broken" but fixable.

In the Kentucky case, the state courts rejected challenges from death row inmates Ralph Baze and Clyde Bowling Jr. after a trial was held in 2005 to review Kentucky's execution method. It was the Baze and Bowling case the Supreme Court agreed Tuesday to hear.

Kentucky uses the same three drugs to put an inmate to death as California -- sodium thiopental to sedate the inmate, pancurium bromide to paralyze the muscles in breathing and potassium chloride, which stops the heart.

Lawyers for death row inmates say pancurium bromide conceals an inmate's suffering and masks the potential of the third drug, causing a searingly painful death.

One of the four issues the Supreme Court may address is whether it is unconstitutional to use those three drugs if other chemicals are available that pose "less risk of pain and suffering."

But legal experts say the court's ultimate ruling may focus more on how a state administers those drugs, rather than what drugs are used.

The Supreme Court, experts say, can instead clarify the standard for what amounts to a cruel and unusual execution and the obligations of states to administer the fatal drugs with proper safeguards.

Here're some back-of-the-envelope calculations. Vonage will have to pay some $69.5 billion in damages to Sprint. In addition, since spring, it's placed into escrow or issued a bond for some $90 million related to a patent-infringement case it lost to Verizon (a decision on an appeal is expected any day now). That adds up to $159.5 million. Plus, Vonage is obviously paying lots of legal fees. And Vonage is still losing money: It lost $34 million in the second quarter alone.

So, let's look at Vonage's cash. At the end of the second quarter, the company's cash and equivalents totaled $344 million, which included $66 million of restricted cash used as collateral for the Verizon bond. If we subtract from that the various royalty payments and jury awards/restructed cash, Vonage has about $184.5 million in cash and equivalents to work with.

Assuming Vonage continues to lose money at the current rate of $34 million per quarter, the company can last for a little over five more quarters.

This is a very rough estimate, of course: Vonage's expenses will rise as it starts making royalty payments to Sprint. The outcome of the Verizon case can tip the scales one way or another. Thanks to recent staff cuts, overall expenses may fall. But one thing is clear: Vonage will have less financial flexibility now, after the Sprint loss.

Craig on Tuesday said he won't resign until "legal determinations" are made. A political source involved in discussions about the case said Craig has made it clear he wants to find a way to stay in office.

A court ruling on Craig's appeal could take longer than the four days before September 30.

In his petition to vacate the plea, Craig's attorney maintained the senator's "panic" over the possibility that the allegations would be made public drove him to accept a guilty plea without seeking legal advice and that he had been assured by the arresting officer that the matter would remain private.

The petition also claims that because Craig submitted his guilty plea by mail, he did not have the benefit of a judge explaining the exact consequences of the plea before accepting it.

General Motors workers return to work today after the auto maker agreed to a new labor contract with the United Auto Workers union. The deal ends a two-day strike but questions remain just how much the deal will save GM.

Shares of GM rose $2.76, or 8.0%, to $37.18, after the company agreed to a tentative contract with the UAW. The UAW represents approximately 74,000 GM employees. The contract ends a national strike that began Monday and crippled GM's production.

The deal sets up a health care trust to pay for retiree healthcare benefits. GM will front the money for the trust while the UAW will run it. GM hopes the trust will help it close a $25-per-hour labor gap with foreign auto makers.

"This agreement helps us close the fundamental competitive gaps that exist in our business," said GM Chief Executive Rick Wagoner. "The projected competitive improvements in this agreement will allow us to maintain a strong manufacturing presence in the United States along with significant future investments."

But former Forbes senior editor Jerry Flint says that the health care trust won't reduce any costs. He explains the health care bill remains the same whether the UAW or GM is in charge. "A health care trust, if it happens, may look good today, but one day it will come back to haunt GM," says Flint.

The deal must now be approved by the rank-and-file union membership. The Securities and Exchange Commission must also review the contract.

But many companies have hesitated amid concerns about XBRL's maturity and implementation costs.

Cox said the U.S. XBRL group has completed all its work on developing data tags for U.S. Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, which represented "the removal of the last major obstacle that stood behind the world and interactive data."

At a news conference, Mark Bolgiano, president of XBRL US Inc, handed Cox a tiny data card with the code for thousands of tags for volumes of U.S. accounting classifications.

While the data tags are being reviewed by major accounting firms and the Financial Accounting Standards Board, Cox said the SEC and XBRL groups would work on promoting the format.

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