Watkins Ludlam Winter & Stennis has been recognized by American Lawyer Media (ALM) as a "Go-To Law Firm" in the area of Litigation. The firm will be recognized as a Go-To Law Firm in a national reference guide which is being released at the end of June 2007. Nominees are chosen from an ALM national survey of General Counsel from the Leading Financial Services Companies coupled with in-depth research & analysis of various public filings and resources. After a lengthy & rigorous process only the strongest firms made it to the top of the list, hence being named a Go-To Law Firm.

Watkins Ludlam Winter & Stennis, which has more than 70 lawyers, is headquartered in Jackson and has offices in Gulfport and Olive Branch.

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"It instead opted to use statutory language that pushed almost every boundary that the Supreme Court has imposed for these types of laws," the judges said.

Previous attempts by Michigan lawmakers to stop the procedure were struck down by federal courts in 1997 and 2001.

The U.S. Supreme Court in April upheld the federal Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, with the majority opinion carefully distinguishing the controversial procedure from a more common abortion method used in the second trimester of pregnancy. The latter was unaffected by the ruling.

The appeals panel affirmed a Detroit district judge's opinion that the 2004 Legal Birth Definition Act in Michigan places an "undue burden" on a woman's right to have an abortion.

Abortion rights groups have said the law - unlike the federal ban and the law in Ohio - overreached and would have banned pre-viable abortions, including the most common method of second-trimester abortion. The appeals court agreed.

"The Michigan statute contains no similar exception or clear definitions that would avoid sweeping up protected abortion procedures within its prohibition," the court wrote.

The Michigan Legislature approved the abortion law in June 2004. Hundreds of thousands of voters signed petitions that allowed the bill to become law with only the approval of the House and Senate - both of which were controlled by Republicans at the time - after Democratic Gov. Jennifer Granholm vetoed it.

A three-judge panel of the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found "no evidence to indicate that any of the last six inmates executed suffered any unnecessary pain," according to its ruling.

The court's decision reversed a ruling by U.S. District Judge Fernando Gaitan Jr. ordering reforms to Missouri's lethal injection procedures. He wanted the state to involve a doctor specializing in anesthesia, but the state has been unable to find a doctor willing to participate.

Missouri is among nine states that have put executions on hold as it grapples with whether lethal injection is inhumane.

Attorney General Jay Nixon said the decision "reopens the necessary legal avenue for the state of Missouri to move forward on this issue."

Margaret Phillips of the Eastern Missouri Coalition Against the Death Penalty said many questions remain unanswered and it would be unwise for the state to renew executions.

"The uncertainty of all of this is a good indication that Missouri needs a moratorium on the death penalty," she said.

A message seeking comment was left with the governor's office.

Taylor, convicted of killing 15-year-old Ann Harrison in Kansas City in 1989, was hours away from being put to death in February 2006 when the execution was halted. His attorney, Ginger Anders, said she would appeal Monday's ruling but declined further comment.

The third-party question comes in a case before the Supreme Court. The high court is reviewing whether vendors that did business with Charter Communications Inc. (CHTRcharter communications inc (CHTR) can be held liable for allegedly helping the company inflate its financial results.

Meanwhile, high-profile plaintiffs lawyer William Lerach is asking the Supreme Court to review a case that involves investment bankers who worked with Enron Corp. He is alleging that several Wall Street firms should be held liable for Enron's accounting fraud because they financed transactions Enron used to inflate its financial results

In a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court upheld the decision of the trial judge and said the 9th Circuit erred by intervening.

"It is not for us to second-guess the determination" of the trial judge over whether a potential juror is willing to follow the law, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy said.

He said the prosecutor and the judge had ample reason for excusing the man, referred to as Juror Z, because he had said the death penalty was appropriate only if the killer might be released and kill again.

In Washington, as in California, that was not a possibility in a case such as this one. The defendant, if convicted of aggravated murder, would be sentenced either to life in prison without parole or to death. The prosecutor asked to have Juror Z excluded, saying his comments suggested he would reject the death penalty for Brown. The defense lawyer replied, "We have no objection."

Nonetheless, the move -- seemingly minor at the time -- led to the reversal of Brown's death sentence more than 12 years later by the San Francisco-based appeals court.

The Supreme Court was sharply split along conservative-liberal lines in its decision.

Justice John Paul Stevens delivered a strong dissent in the courtroom. By allowing prosecutors to exclude jurors who have qualms about the capital punishment, the court will encourage the formation of juries "unfairly biased in favor of the death penalty," Stevens said. "Millions of Americans oppose the death penalty," and juries are supposed to represent a cross section of the community, he argued.

He said jurors who pledged to follow the law in death penalty cases should be seated, even if they expressed doubts about the use of such punishment.

Justices David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer joined his dissent in the case of Uttecht vs. Brown.

Based on the order, known as a preliminary injunction, a federal judge ruled that Florida should pay Wyner's lawyers $25,000 in legal fees.

But Wyner's lawsuit also was a broader challenge to a Florida law that bans nudity on beaches, arguing that the law violated her First Amendment right of free expression.

Wyner lost that fight and the Supreme Court said that what matters is the final resolution of the lawsuit.

"Here, at the end of the fray, Florida prevailed in the suit. The state's bathing suit rule remained intact," Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said in her opinion for the court.

Ginsburg cautioned that the court was taking no position "on the extent to which the First Amendment protects artworks that involve nudity."

Because the case had the potential for broad impact on lawsuits against governments generally, the Bush administration and 24 states joined Florida in urging the court to reverse the award of attorney's fees.

An unusual array of conservative and liberal interest groups came together in support of Wyner, arguing that public interest law firms would be left without any compensation in many cases.

The governments wanted the court to rule that parties who win preliminary injunctions can never recover attorney's fees.

The court, however, left unanswered what happens in lawsuits in which "the preliminary injunction essentially resolves the whole case and ends the litigation," said Andrew Pincus, a partner with the Mayer, Brown, Rowe & Maw law firm who filed a brief on behalf of the interest groups.

Authorities have been tracking the plot for more than a year. The suspects include Russell Defreitas, a US citizen native to Guyana and former JFK air cargo employee, Abdul Kadir of Guyana, Kareem Ibrahim of Trinidad, and Abdel Nur of Guyana, who is still being sought in Trinidad. Defreitas said he formed the plot more than a decade ago when he worked as a cargo handler. He said he chose the airport because its destruction would put "the whole country in mourning."