At issue is language in a drug labeling rule from 2006 that effectively limits when people can sue in state court over injury claims involving medications. The FDA contends federal regulations prevail when there is a conflict with state law. This concept is called pre-emption.

Internal agency documents showed that career officials opposed this approach, according to a report released by Rep. Henry Waxman, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. In the past, the agency had viewed private suits as an additional layer of protection against unsafe drugs, the report said.

"Much of the argument for why we are proposing to invoke pre-emption seems to be based on a false assumption that the FDA approved labeling is fully accurate and up-to-date in a real time basis," the report quoted Dr. John Jenkins, who oversees FDA's new drug reviews, as saying. "We know that such an assumption is false."

Police in Warwick said Dennis Ricca died Oct. 17 of a single gunshot wound to the head. The 55-year-old was found behind the wheel of his pickup truck in the driveway of his summer home in Greenwood Lake, about 50 miles northwest of Manhattan. A 9 mm handgun was by his side.

Ricca was found three days after he and Leno were sued by the estate of Macy's department store heir John W. Straus. The lawsuit, filed in state Supreme Court in Manhattan, accuses them of knowingly buying valuable cars after an improper auction rigged to wrest the vehicles from Straus when he was ill.

Court papers said Leno paid $180,000 for a 1931 Duesenberg that was worth $1.2 million, and Ricca bought a 1930 Rolls Royce for an unknown amount. The cars were worth a total of $1.7 million and had been in the Straus family for 75 years, court papers say.

The lawsuit said parking garage owner Garage Management Corp. claimed it auctioned the long-stored cars to satisfy unpaid bills, although they actually had been paid. Ricca was the company's director of maintenance at the Upper East Side garage where the two cars were parked.

But what happens when the issue is less clear and a judge has the appearance of a conflict, but no personal stake in the outcome of a dispute? The court is considering a case that asks whether the Constitution requires judges to step aside in that instance.

The justices met in private Friday to discuss a lawsuit over a coal contract in West Virginia in which a state Supreme Court justice rejected calls to step aside because the leader of one company in the case spent more than $3 million to help him get elected.

Justice Brent Benjamin twice was in the majority in 3-2 decisions overturning a $50 million jury verdict against Massey Energy Co. Don Blankenship, Massey's president, chairman and chief executive officer, was a key Benjamin backer. Two other state court justices recused themselves from the case the second time it was under consideration.

The losing party, Harman Mining Corp., says the appearance of bias by Benjamin is so strong that Harman's constitutional rights were violated. Former Solicitor General Theodore Olson is representing Harman.

The court agreed with the plaintiffs, who said the state's marriage law discriminates against them because it applies only to heterosexual couples, therefore denying gay couples the financial, social and emotional benefits of marriage.

Eight same-sex couples sued in 2004, saying their constitutional rights to equal protection and due process were violated when they were denied marriage licenses.

The court ruled unanimously on Wednesday that an agreement leaving the final decision up to the ex-wife must be followed.

Dr. Laura Dahl, a pediatrician, and her former husband, Dr. Darrell Angle, an orthodontist, had attempted to conceive through in vitro fertilization.

After several failed attempts, the couple gave up and left the embryos with Oregon Health & Science University under an agreement that spelled out how they would be stored.

Dahl decided to have the embryos destroyed, but Angle had argued they should be donated to other couples trying to conceive.

In an opinion by Presiding Judge Rex Armstrong, the court ruled there is a contractual right to determine the fate of the embryos as personal property.

But Armstrong noted there is little guidance on who gets to make that decision in a divorce, so the court relied on a 1998 New York state case that held agreements on what to do with embryos after in vitro fertilization are binding.

Armstrong — noting the ruling in New York — said that it should be the parents, "not the state and not the courts, who by their prior directive make this deeply personal life choice."

Dahl said she opposed her ex-husband's recommendation that the embryos be donated to another woman for implantation because she did not want anybody else to raise her child.

Dahl also was concerned that any child born as a result of implantation might later wish to contact the son who she and Angle had previously conceived naturally.

The court noted that Angle "does not argue that the agreement itself is ambiguous or invalid for public policy reasons" and affirmed a Clackamas County Circuit Court ruling that he agreed his ex-wife would make the final decision.

The first day of the court's new term, which is set in law as the first Monday in October, included denials of hundreds of appeals. Chief Justice John Roberts opened the new session in a crowded courtroom that included retired Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.

Last term, the justices handed down several opinions that limited state regulation of business in favor of federal power. Several justices posed skeptical questions in this term's first case, whether federal law prevents smokers from using consumer protection laws to go after tobacco companies for their marketing of "light" and "low tar" cigarettes.

The companies are facing dozens of such lawsuits across the country.

The federal cigarette labeling law bars states from regulating any aspect of cigarette advertising that involves smoking and health.

"How do you tell it's deceptive or not if you don't look at what the relationship is between smoking and health?," Chief Justice John Roberts said during oral arguments on the case.

Three Maine residents sued Altria Group Inc. and its Philip Morris USA Inc. subsidiary under the state's law against unfair marketing practices. The class-action claim represents all smokers of Marlboro Lights or Cambridge Lights cigarettes, both made by Philip Morris.

The lawsuit argues that the company knew for decades that smokers of light cigarettes compensate for the lower levels of tar and nicotine by taking longer puffs and compensating in other ways.

A federal district court threw out the lawsuit, but the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said it could go forward.

The role of the Federal Trade Commission could be important in the outcome. The FTC is only now proposing to change rules that for years condoned the use of "light" and "low tar" in advertising the cigarettes, despite evidence that smokers were getting a product as dangerous as regular cigarettes.

Without comment, the justices declined to consider Englewood, Colo.-based Dish's appeal.

In January, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit agreed with a lower court that digital video recorders distributed by Dish, formerly known as EchoStar Communications Corp., violated the software elements of Alviso,Calif.-based TiVo's patent. The ruling overturned the lower court's finding that Dish also infringed on the patent's hardware elements.

TiVo issued a statement saying it was "extremely pleased" with the Supreme Court's decision and said company lawyers would press for Dish to pay financial damages.

TiVo sued in 2004, alleging that EchoStar, a satellite broadcaster, infringed on TiVo's patented technology that allows viewers to record one program while watching another. EchoStar Communications changed its name to Dish in late 2007.

TiVo pioneered digital video recorders that allow viewers to pause, rewind and fast forward live television shows.

The lower court had ordered Dish to shut down the 3 million digital video recorders used by its customers because they use TiVo's technology, but that order was put on hold pending appeal.

Dish Network has said that the ruling would not affect its customers because the company had developed and distributed new DVR software that "does not infringe the Tivo patent at issue in the Federal Circuit's ruling."