The private law firm hired to represent the state Office of Legislative Services amid a federal grand jury investigation has submitted a $55,000 bill for its first few weeks on the job.

The law firm, Greenberg, Dauber, Epstein & Tucker, submitted an invoice Feb. 5 that totaled $55,032.25 for three lawyers' 189.7 billable hours, according to a redacted bill released by the OLS to Gannett New Jersey.

Though the firm did not send the OLS a written contract until Jan. 18, billing began on Dec. 30. By the time it sent a letter to OLS stipulating its rate -- $275 per hour, or $300 per hour in court -- the firm's lawyers had racked up $17,600 in fees.

Because the matter involves a federal grand jury looking at whether lawmakers personally profited from state budget decisions, little of the proceeding has been public.

Senate President Richard J. Codey, D-West Orange, has said the legal fight for which the outside counsel was hired only involves former Senate budget committee chairman Wayne Bryant, D-Lawnside, invoking an attorney-client privilege with the OLS, but subsequent subpoenas issued to partisan legislative offices and key lawmakers have indicated a broader scope.

OLS Executive Director Albert Porroni would neither confirm nor deny that the inquiry involves only Bryant.

The legal invoice renewed Republican calls for a meeting of the Legislative Services Commission, a bipartisan panel of lawmakers that oversees the OLS. Republicans have been calling for a commission meeting since it was revealed the OLS hired Edward J. Dauber without briefing lawmakers.

The Catholic Diocese of San Diego filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Tuesday putting a stop to an upcoming sex abuse trial and becoming the largest US diocese to file for bankruptcy thus far. The diocese had been engaged in settlement talks with plaintiffs' attorneys in the lawsuits over clergy abuse, however, after those talks failed to come to any resolution, the diocese filed for Chapter 11 reorganization. As Bishop Robert Brom explained, the diocese "decided against litigating our cases because of the length of time the process could take and, more importantly, because early trial judgments in favor of some victims could so deplete diocesan and insurance resources that there would be nothing left for other victims." David Clohessy, director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, said that the filing is not due to concerns for the victims, but rather "its for their own self-preservation."

The diocese told parishioners last week that it was considering declaring bankruptcy in light of the more than 140 pending lawsuits alleging sexual abuse by priests. In January 2007, the Catholic Diocese of Spokane agreed to settle molestation claims against priests for $48 million as part of its Chapter 11 reorganization plan. The Archdiocese of Portland filed for Chapter 11 in 2004, and the dioceses of Tuscon, Spokane, and Davenport soon followed suit in the wake of hundreds of sexual abuse lawsuits against clergy. Last month, the Portland archdiocese filed a new bankruptcy plan including a $75 million settlement of the sexual abuse claims.

Following the example of suspected Iraqi terrorist and US citizen Shawqi Omar, Ramadan brought a petition for a writ of habeas corpus before the federal court. Basing his claim on the fact that he is presently in US custody, Ramadan claimed that he would be subject to harm if turned over to Iraqi officials. Judge Paul Friedman ruled that regardless of whether Ramadan was in US custody, a US court lacks jurisdiction over an alien who is detained overseas and convicted by a foreign court. Friedman stated from the bench that granting the petition would constitute an improper collateral review of another court's decision.

The assistant captain operating the boat at the time had blacked out, causing the ferry to crash into the Staten Island pier, killing 11 passengers and injuring dozens more. Richard Smith pleaded guilty to 11 counts of seaman's manslaughter in 2004 and was sentenced to 18 months in jail. Patrick Ryan, the city's former ferry operations director, also pleaded guilty to seaman's manslaughter in 2005 and admitted he had not enforced the two-pilot rule. He received a 366-day prison sentence. The ruling opens New York City up to to tens of millions of dollars in potential payouts to victims and their families. Only two-thirds of the 186 claims have so far been settled at a total of $27.6 million. The city said it will consider appealing the court's ruling.

The system allows candidates to indicate their party affiliation on the ballot and is open to voters regardless of their party. The system is the successor to the blanket primary that the Supreme Court struck down in 2000 on the grounds that it violated political parties' rights.

The Washington Democratic and Republican parties sued to block the new system, approved by voters in 2004. The parties said they would be forced to be associated with candidates they did not choose.

Lower federal courts agreed with the parties. The new system, which has never been used, infringes on the rights of political parties to choose their own nominees, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said.

"The net effect is the parties do not choose who associates with them and runs using their name; that choice is left to the candidates and forced upon the parties," Judge Raymond Fisher wrote.

Microsoft has been ordered by a U.S. jury to pay $1.52 billion in a patent dispute over the MP3 digital file format, the technology at the heart of the digital music boom.

If upheld on appeal, it would be the largest patent judgment on record.

The ruling, in U.S. District Court in San Diego on Thursday, was a victory for Alcatel-Lucent, the networking equipment company. Its forebears include Bell Laboratories, which was involved in the development of MP3 almost two decades ago.

At issue is the way the Windows Media Player software from Microsoft plays audio files using MP3, the most common method of distributing music on the Internet. If the ruling stands, Apple and hundreds of other companies that make products that play MP3 files, including portable players, computers and software, could also face demands to pay royalties to Alcatel.

Microsoft and others have licensed MP3 - not from Alcatel- Lucent, but from a consortium led by the Fraunhofer Institute, a large German research organization that was involved in the format's development, along with Bell Labs and the French electronics company Thomson. The current case turns on two patents that Alcatel claims were developed by Bell Labs before it joined with Fraunhofer to develop MP3.

"Intellectual property is a core asset of the company," said Joan Campion, a spokeswoman for Alcatel-Lucent. "We will continue to protect and defend that asset."

Thomas Burt, the deputy general counsel of Microsoft, said the company would most likely petition the judge in the San Diego case, Rudi Brewster, to set aside or reduce the judgment. If Brewster does not, Microsoft will probably take the case to the U.S. appeals court in Washington, which hears patent cases.

Microsoft argued that one patent in question did not apply to its MP3 software and that the other was included in the Fraunhofer software that it paid to license.

Further, it argued that the damages sought by Alcatel were unreasonably high, pointing out that it paid Thomson, which represented the consortium in its dealings over the patent, a flat $16 million fee for the rights to the MP3 software.

Alcatel argued that the damages should be based on a royalty of 0.5 percent of the total value of Windows computers sold.

John Desmarais, a partner with Kirkland & Ellis who represented Alcatel, said the proposed damages were consistent with patent law. He said it was not appropriate to compare them with the $16 million Microsoft paid Thomson because the rights to the Bell Labs patents were far more valuable.

"It's like going to the supermarket and paying $1 for a bar of soap," he said. "That lets you use the soap. We were offering the equivalent of the right to make soap any way they wanted."

The jury supported Alcatel's arguments on every count except one.

It deadlocked on the question of whether Microsoft willfully infringed on the Bell Labs patents. If the jury had found that it did, Microsoft would have had to pay triple damages.

"Microsoft has been and to some degree continues to be at a competitive disadvantage, as it did not file for patents for many, many, many years," said Jack Russo, a patent lawyer with Russo & Hale in Palo Alto, California.

That makes it harder, he said, to work out deals with other large companies in which they exchange the rights to each other's patents.

Large companies like AT&T and IBM "have huge patent portfolios and that represents large and unpredictable risks for companies like Microsoft," he said. The judgment is part of a complex litigation by Alcatel to enforce claims related to Bell Labs patents. The case was initially brought against Dell and Gateway, which make computers using Microsoft software. Other trials are pending for technology related to speech recognition, user interfaces and video processing.

Microsoft has countered with a claim, filed with the International Trade Commission, that Alcatel is violating its patents related to messaging technology.

The largest award for a patent infringement case to date was the $909 million that Kodak was ordered to pay in 1990 to Polaroid for violating patents related to instant cameras.

The US military lawyer for Australian Guantanamo Bay detainee David Hicks said Saturday that Hicks would spend years in court and could not get a fair trial before a US military commission. In remarks at a rally in Adelaide, US Marine Corps Maj. Michael Mori noted that the revised military commissions system could not be used to try American citizens and questioned how such a system could then be fair enough for foreign citizens. Mori said that he believed the military tribunals were designed to deliver guilty verdicts and asserted that even if a decision on Hicks' guilt or innocence comes relatively quickly, it would likely take two or more years before an appeal from Hicks or another detainee made it to the US Supreme Court.

Hicks is one of three high profile Guantanamo prisoners facing new charges announced by the US earlier this month. The original charges against Hicks, Canadian Omar Khadr and Yemeni Salim Hamdan and other detainees had to be dropped after the US Supreme Court ruled the original military commissions system was unconstitutional as initially established by presidential order. Hicks was picked up in Afghanistan in 2001 while allegedly fighting for the Taliban. US prosecutors claim that he trained at up to four terrorist camps. The charges against him must still be formally approved, but US Vice President Dick Cheney has said that Hicks will be among the first to be tried  after the DOD's convening authority makes a determination whether a military commission should be convened to consider the charges.