Tollison was not in his office Tuesday and was not immediately available for comment.

Scruggs is one of the nation's wealthiest trial attorneys. In the late 1990s, his Mississippi-based firm earned nearly $1 billion in fees for his part in reaching a landmark $250 billion settlement with tobacco companies.

He used that windfall to finance lawsuits against insurance companies for denying thousands of policyholders' claims after Katrina destroyed their homes.

Scruggs created a legal team, called the Scruggs Katrina Group, to represent the policyholders. SKG's work led to a settlement with State Farm Fire & Casualty Co. that will earn the attorneys about $26 million.

Those legal fees are at the crux of the lawsuit.

Zach Scruggs of Oxford, Scruggs' son and law partner, said Tuesday he could not immediately comment on the lawsuit.

Also named as defendants in the lawsuit are other members of the SKG team.

The lawsuit, which gives only one side of the legal argument, alleges that senior partner John G. Jones and other members of the Jackson law firm deposed witnesses, handled briefs, filed motions and other tasks for Scruggs' group.

Specifically, the lawsuit mentions Jones and his law firm's work on a July 2006 lawsuit, filed by SKG on behalf of Pascagoula police officer Paul Leonard against Nationwide Mutual Insurance Co. over denial of Leonard's claim. Jones participated in the questioning of witnesses in that lawsuit.

On the eve of the giant CTIA Wireless trade show in Orlando, Florida, Sprint Nextel announced that it will begin selling the UpStage in the US on 1 April. Its price will be $300, or $150 with a two-year contract, Sprint representatives say.

Unveiled in January at CES (the Consumer Electronics Show), the UpStage is a chocolate-bar style handset that's less than half an inch thick and not much taller or wider than an iPod nano.

Other multimedia-friendly mobile phones struggle to balance the sometimes-conflicting requirements of a conventional handset and a music or video player. The UpStage solves this quandary by simply putting phone functions on one side of the device and the multimedia functions on the other.

Face of a phone
The UpStage's phone face has a 1.4in sliver of a colour screen, a directional toggle and a keypad - one with soft, flat keys. The music-player/multimedia side features a 2.1in, 176-by-220-pixel display and a touch-sensitive navigation pad with a central button on the other.

A small Flip button on the edge of the unit toggles between the two sides, but the prompt that confirms you want to stop playing music (on the music side of the phone) and make a phone call gets old pretty quick.

The phone side will of course spring to life for incoming calls, halting music playback; the music resumes once you disengage the call.

The UpStage felt small but solid in my hand; I found its keypad quite usable, and the sound quality on voice calls was generally good. The four-way touchpad on the music side has a central, mechanical play button that took some getting used to. The excellent documentation (including a printed manual of over 300 pages) warns against trying to swipe it in a circle the way you would an iPod's control wheel, but the temptation is hard to resist. It also took a while for me to stop trying to use the central button for directional navigation (instead of tapping the touchpad above, below, or to either side of the button).

Switching sides
Even when the music/multimedia side is activated, you'll have to use the phone side whenever you need to input text - for example, to create a playlist, search the Sprint Store's music catalog or specify a URL for a site you wish to visit in the small-screen-optimised browser.

I was a little confused the first time I encountered a text-input box on the music side, since no alphanumeric keys and no software keyboard appeared. But the device is smart enough to recognise the need to use the phone side, and I noticed that "Flip" had appeared on screen as a soft-key option.

When I used it and began entering text from the phone keypad (T9 text input mode is a welcome option here), "Save/Flip" also appeared as a soft-key option to return me seamlessly to the multimedia side.

Kaye Steinsapir said she thought she was feeding her cat, Lila, one of the healthiest, most nutritious cat foods available.

"Lila was a healthy, vibrant cat without any medical conditions," said the lawsuit filed Tuesday in Los Angeles Superior Court. But in recent weeks, Lila began vomiting, drinking an excessive amount of water and was eventually diagnosed with acute kidney failure, the lawsuit said.

Gregory Helmer, a Los Angeles attorney retained by Steinsapir and Lois Grady of Sacramento, California, who alleges her cat, Riley, also became ill after eating tainted cat food, filed the lawsuit "on behalf of themselves and all others similarly situated."

Menu Foods recalled on March 16 several brands of dog and cat food products nationwide. Scientists at the New York State Food Laboratory last week identified the rodent poison aminopterin as the likely culprit in a scare that prompted the recall of 95 brands of "cuts and gravy" style dog and cat food by Menu Foods of Ontario, Canada.

On Tuesday, a survey by the Veterinary Information Network, which counts 30,000 veterinarians and veterinary students as members, said the number of reported kidney failure cases had already grown to more than 471. The network's founder, Paul Pion, a California veterinarian, said 104 animals have died.

The company has so far confirmed the deaths of 15 cats and one dog. Other deaths have been reported anecdotally around the United States, but Menu Foods has not confirmed them.

Hyundai Motor America, chief operating officer Steve Wilhite said, "Concept Genesis extends our product range into new territories from a performance, design and packaging perspective. When it arrives in 2008 it will catapult Hyundai into competition against some potent rivals, and Genesis is up for the challenge."

It looks like the production model is unlikely to be seen on these shores, but it is expected to go on sale in the US for a starting price of less than $30,000.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' allies on Capitol Hill have grown more scarce as he left it largely to aides to carry out President Bush's order to straighten out the story behind the firing of eight federal prosecutors.

Senate Republicans leaving their weekly policy lunch Tuesday no longer bothered to defend Gonzales' response to lawmakers' questions about the firings. At most, they mustered an appeal to withhold judgment until the attorney general testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee on April 17.

That was Sen. Arlen Specter's message during the closed-door meeting, according to three senators who were present.

"Senator Specter today said to give (Gonzales) a fair chance," said Sen. Jeff Sessions, an Alabama Republican and a staunch White House ally who lunched with Gonzales last week. "I think people are trying to do that. But there are some inconsistent stories he (Gonzales) is going to have to explain."

Among them: Why Gonzales said March 13 that he "never saw documents" and "never had a discussion" about the firings. Recently released documents show he participated in an hourlong meeting and approved a detailed plan on the dismissals 10 days before they were carried out.

Gonzales has maintained he was not closely involved in the firings, and did not help select which prosecutors would be told to resign.

Texas Governor Rick Perry Tuesday signed into law a new so-called "shoot first" law, which allows state residents to use deadly force to respond to threats in their homes, cars, and at jobs. The bill, also known as a "stand your ground" law, was approved by large majorities in both houses of the Texas Legislature. In his statement, Perry said "The right to defend oneself from an imminent act of harm should not only be clearly defined in Texas law, but is intuitive to human nature." The legislation, which requires that the person defending themselves be unprovoked, also provides civil immunity for any justified action under the law. The Texas law takes effect September 1, 2007.

Georgia enacted a similar law last July, and Florida adopted a "shoot first" law in 2005. Alabama, Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi and South Dakota all have enacted similar legislation as well. The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence has continually called such legislation "phenomenally dangerous," but the National Rifle Association maintains that these laws are necessary to protect innocent citizens.

On March 21, the California State University faculty voted overwhelmingly—94 percent—to authorize a strike for increased wages and benefits. The workers, represented by the California Faculty Association, have been working without a contract for over two years.

If a settlement is not reached by an April deadline, a series of two-day rolling strikes up and down the state will happen. 

This would mark the largest university strike in U.S. history with up to 24,000 workers participating.

Faculty pay is the primary sticking point. CSU's faculty members earn salaries much lower than faculty at other universities and even community colleges.

According to a report issued a year ago by the California Postsecondary Education Commission, based on a five-year trend, CSU faculty salaries were estimated to have fallen behind comparable institutions by 18 percent in the 2006-07 academic year. They were 16.8 percent lower than salaries for faculty at similar universities in the 2004-05 academic year.