The Oregon Supreme Court for a third time has allowed a $79.5 million punitive-damages judgment against Philip Morris, an award twice struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court, which suggested it was excessive.

The award was for the family of Jesse Williams, a former Portland janitor who started smoking during a 1950s Army hitch and died in 1997 six months after he was diagnosed with lung cancer. A jury in Portland made the award in 1999.

The Oregon Supreme Court said in Thursday's ruling that Philip Morris and the tobacco industry worked during the 1950s on a "program of disinformation" to create doubt about the dangers of smoking. Williams "learned from watching television that smoking did not cause lung cancer," but, once he came down with it, said the "cigarette people" had lied to him.

Thursday's ruling followed a decision by the U.S. Supreme Court last year to send the case back to Oregon.

The state Supreme Court was told to reconsider the award based on its decision about instructions for the trial jury that Philip Morris had proposed and the trial judge rejected.

The Oregon high court on Thursday said there were other defects in the instructions, violating Oregon law, that justified the trial judge's decision.

The Oregon court said that, for example, the instructions Philip Morris suggested would have forbidden the jury to consider the profits the tobacco company made through misconduct that was not illegal.

The Oregon Supreme court decision Thursday didn't take issue with the U.S. Supreme Court on another point it raised -- that Oregon courts couldn't allow jurors to use punitive damages to punish a defendant for harm done to anybody who wasn't part of the suit.

The instructions about punitive damages have been at the center of the legal battle over the suit brought by Williams' widow, Mayola.

Philip Morris will appeal Thursday's ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court, the tobacco maker said. Business groups have watched the case closely as a precedent setter for large jury awards in product liability suits.

The Oregon high court made its first decision in 2002, refusing to hear an appeal from Philip Morris.

"This compact, as it stands before you, is unconstitutional. It exceeds the governor's power," Mills told the justices. Attorneys for the governor and the tribe said Crist was only acting on existing state and federal law.

"You take the law as you find it, you interpret it to the best of your ability, and you apply it," said Christopher Kise, a lawyer representing the governor. "But that doesn't mean that you rewrote the law."

Mills also said any agreement made by the governor should be approved by the Legislature. Kise, however, says Crist was under a federal order to negotiate with the tribe. Had Crist needed approval from the Legislature to reach a deal with the tribe, those negotiations would not have been in good faith, he said.

The federal law regulating Indian gaming requires any game permitted anywhere in a state must also be allowed by Indian casinos. Broward County pari-mutuels already have Vegas-style slots, and Miami-Dade County voters decided on Tuesday that they want slots at their jai-alai fronton and horse and dog tracks.

But Mills said the compact goes too far in allowing "banked" card games, like blackjack and baccarat, and granting the tribe exclusive rights to those games.

As part of the compact, Florida has already received a $50 million payment from the tribe and is guaranteed $100 million in the first year. The state's share is set to increase to up to $150 million by the third year of the agreement, and after that will be based on revenue. Many expect the state's share to quickly add up to billions of dollars.

If the compact between the state and the tribe is invalidated by the court, the U.S. Department of Interior will give the tribe permission to move forward with the Vegas-style slots, said Barry Richard, an attorney for the tribe. The casinos wouldn't be allowed to add the card games, but then the state wouldn't be entitled to the payments or any regulation of the gaming.

Under the compact, about 800 Vegas-style just began operating Monday at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Broward County. The high court has no timetable for a ruling.

Overturning a long-standing precedent it had reaffirmed only last year, the Alabama Supreme Court has allowed a wrongful death lawsuit that a judge had barred on grounds that the plaintiff waited too long to file.

The 5-4 decision handed down Friday will allow Alabamians exposed to toxic chemicals after Jan. 25, 2006, to sue the manufacturers if they become ill in the future, but it will not apply to thousands of people who were last exposed before then.

"That doesn't mean we're going to stop," said Birmingham lawyer Robert Palmer, who represents the plaintiff, a widow of a Tuscaloosa man who died from a rare form of leukemia. "Denial of justice to anyone is not justice. ... It's a victory, but it's not a complete victory."

Since 1979, the high court had enforced what amounted to a Catch-22. In most cases, people who claim to have been sickened by a toxic substance had to file a lawsuit within two years of their last exposure. But they also could not sue until they were sick.

Since symptoms caused by toxic chemicals often do not show up until years after the fact, the rulings effectively barred plaintiffs from seeking damages in court.

Alabama had been the only state to interpret its statute of limitations rules in that way.

Activists urging restrictions on lawsuits have argued that the state Legislature should address the issue. They also note that the statute of limitations is important because of the difficulty companies face trying to defend against alleged conduct that occurred many years ago.

"More people are potentially going to have claims now," said Mobile lawyer Matt McDonald, the general counsel of the Alabama Civil Justice Reform Committee. "Because it's not retroactive, I don't think it's going to open the floodgates, either."

In the case decided Friday, Brenda Sue Sanford Griffin sued in 2006 on behalf of her dead husband, claiming his death was the result of exposure to benzene and other toxic substances he came in contact with on the job at a tire manufacturing plant.

David Wayne Griffin worked at the Tuscaloosa plant from 1973 to 1993. He was diagnosed with a rare disease called acute myelogenous leukemia in 2003, 10 years after his last exposure.

A U.S. official confirmed last week that waterboarding was used in the past but had not been used for several years.

"The interrogation techniques currently authorized in the CIA program comply with the law," Mukasey wrote Leahy. "A limited set of methods is currently authorized for use in that program. ... Waterboarding is not, and may not be, used in the current program."

Leahy, a Democrat from Vermont, and other lawmakers repeatedly pressed Mukasey in his confirmation hearings last year and afterward to say whether he considered waterboarding an illegal form of torture, as do many human rights groups and other critics.

If Mukasey agreed, it could open the door to prosecution of officials involved in CIA's interrogation program launched after the Sept. 11 attacks. Mukasey, who had said in a letter to the committee before his confirmation that waterboarding is "repugnant to me," said he would review the interrogation program.

But Mukasey told Leahy on Tuesday that since waterboarding was not now in use, he did not feel it appropriate to give an opinion.

"The evidence is overwhelming that when voters do not have access to technology that notifies them of ballot errors, many more ballots are left uncounted," said Meredith Bell-Platts, a voting-rights attorney with the ACLU.

Cuyahoga County, which includes Cleveland and has more than 1 million registered voters, plans to send all paper ballots from precincts to a central location to be scanned and counted.

The ACLU alleges that the optical-scan system and centralized vote tabulation would not give voters notice of ballot errors — such as voting for two candidates for one office.

Opponents of the system say scanning should be done immediately at the precinct level to alert voters to such errors and allow them to correct invalid ballots.

U.S. District Judge Kathleen O'Malley set a deadline of Feb. 4 for the Ohio secretary of state and the county elections board to respond to the ACLU and a hearing for the next day on the request for a preliminary injunction.

Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, Ohio's top elections official, said the thrust of the ACLU's request would rule out the use of absentee ballots because those voters wouldn't know whether they had made an error or get a chance to correct it.

Brunner said it would difficult to go back to the prior touch-screen voting system in time for the primary because of staff training and system testing requirements.

"The ACLU is too late," she said.

Messages seeking comment were left for Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Bill Mason, whose office handles legal matters for the elections board. Jane Platten, director of the Cuyahoga County elections board, referred requests for comment to Mason's office.

When the lawsuit was filed, Mason said he would challenge its contentions. Mason said the optical-scan system is permitted under the Help America Vote Act passed by Congress in 2002 in response to the disputed 2000 presidential election.

U.S. District Judge Stephen G. Larson was expected to rule Monday on whether to send federal marshals to close the encampment and evict its residents. Larson took an extensive tour of the park last month to see the conditions firsthand.

At a hearing earlier this month, Larson indicated he would shutter the park unless its owner, Harvey Duro Sr., presented a detailed plan to fix electricity, water and sewage systems by Monday's hearing. The judge could order the park closed immediately or he could give residents several weeks or months to find other housing.

But closing the park, which is in the fertile Coachella Valley about 130 miles southeast of Los Angeles, would flood an already overwhelmed affordable housing market in surrounding Riverside County.

The county currently has a 40,000-person waiting list for subsidized or low-income housing, with no new units expected before 2010. The only other affordable apartments are at least 90 minutes away, according to papers filed Friday.

Cheap housing is key for the 4,000 migrant workers who live in the Desert Mobile Home Park during peak harvest season and for the region's economy. The migrants, who make as little as $15,000 annually, pick some of the nearly $1 billion worth of table grapes, dates, chili peppers and other crops that the region yields each year.

Last summer, a fire displaced 120 residents, and the Bureau of Indian Affairs paid for an independent inspection that launched the government's latest drive to shut the park down.

That inspection found sewage wastewater several inches deep, dead rodents, swarms of flies and animal feces at the encampment, as well as inadequate drinking water, a dangerous electrical system, severe overcrowding and fire hazards, according to court papers.

The father, James Boldt, converted to Judaism in 2004 and wants the boy to be circumcised as part of the faith. The mother, Lia Boldt, appealed to the high court, saying the operation could harm her son physically and psychologically.

The state Supreme Court ruled that earlier court decisions failed to determine whether the boy wanted the circumcision, as his father contended, or opposed it, as his mother alleged.

The Supreme Court sent the case back to the trial court to answer that question.

If the trial court finds the child agrees to be circumcised, the Supreme Court said, it should deny the mother's requests. But if the trial court finds the child opposes the circumcision, the court has to determine if it will affect the father's ability to care for the child.

The custody dispute began when the child was 4 and the circumcision issue began three years ago when he was 9.

James Boldt, a lawyer, is representing himself, had no comment, his office said. The attorney for both sides also declined to comment.

The case has drawn attention from Jewish groups concerned that the Oregon court might restrict the practice. A group called Doctors Opposing Circumcision backs the mother.

The courts have steered clear of religious or medical issues, focusing on the questions of custody and care of the child.

One constitutional law professor who has been following the case called it "a reasonable ruling."

"I think what may be delicate and tricky is ... how much we can trust what the 12-year-old says, given the circumstances," said Carl Tobias of the University of Richmond. "He likely feels some pressure from (his parents)."

More than a million U.S. infants are circumcised each year, but circumcising adults or teens remains relatively rare. A urologist who met with the boy submitted an affidavit that said the procedure would cause him minor discomfort for about three days but not interfere with his normal activities, the Supreme Court's decision said.