U.S. District Judge Florence-Marie Cooper threw out the lawsuit March 21 after determining the family missed a state deadline for bringing a claim against the city and two former police officers. The lawsuit was originally filed in Los Angeles Superior Court, then moved to federal court.

The family appealed, and the judge reversed her decision after finding federal claims in the case can proceed, according to court papers obtained Thursday.

Cooper gave the family 20 days to file a new lawsuit and drop the state claims.

B.I.G., whose real name was Christopher Wallace, was gunned down March 9, 1997, while leaving a party at a Los Angeles museum. The 24-year-old performer's killing remains unsolved.

Two wrongful death lawsuits were filed against the city on behalf of the rapper's widow, mother and two children.

The first lawsuit, filed in 2002, alleges wrongful death and civil rights violations. It ended in a mistrial in 2005. The case remains active, with the judge allowing the family to amend the lawsuit because of newly discovered evidence.

Cooper's recent ruling involved the secondary lawsuit, which contends that rogue police officers conspired to kill Wallace and that the Police Department covered up their involvement.

The former mental patient convicted yesterday of stalking actress Uma Thurman was ordered by a judge to be kept in jail for a month to undergo psychiatric examination before he is sentenced.

Jack Jordan, 37, of Maryland, showed no emotion as a jury in Manhattan State Supreme Court convicted him just before noon of stalking and aggravated harassment - both misdemeanors - for actions over a two-year period driven by his obsessive love for the "Pulp Fiction" star.

The panel of six men and six women, which had deliberated for about five hours since Monday, acquitted him of two other charges of aggravated harassment.

Assistant District Attorney Jessica Taub asked Judge Gregory Carro to immediately put Jordan in a Manhattan jail next to the courthouse pending his sentence, a move vehemently opposed by defense attorney George Vomvolakis.

Jim and Dina Matos McGreevey's divorce trial, which starts Tuesday, means the end of their 3 1/2-year separation that has lasted nearly as long as their marriage.

The trial will feature the usual squabbles — the ex-governor wants equal custody of their 6-year-old daughter, and alimony and child support are at issue as well. But the proceedings figure to be particularly salacious because of the question everybody has asked at least once: Did she know he was gay?

Matos McGreevey, 41, claims she was duped into marriage by a closeted gay man who needed the cover of a wife to advance his political career. McGreevey says he gave her a child and the coattails she rode to the governor's mansion, thus fulfilling the marriage contract.

Matos McGreevey seeks $600,000 as compensation for the time she would have lived at the governor's mansion in Princeton had her soon-to-be-ex not resigned in disgrace. Perks enjoyed by a sitting governor's spouse include household servants, access to a state police helicopter and a state-owned beach house.

The gay former governor and his estranged wife will sit at adjacent legal tables, fewer than 5 feet apart, in the Union County Courthouse in Elizabeth as their high-priced lawyers lay bare the pair's sex lives and finances. Only issues concerning custody of their kindergartner are expected to be decided away from the glare of tabloid reporters and Court TV.

Oregon's high court ruled unanimously Thursday that smokers must show actual harm to make a negligence claim against cigarette manufacturers — not just the possibility they will be harmed.

The lawsuit, brought by Patricia Lowe on behalf of about 400,000 Oregonians, argued the tobacco companies were negligent because they "knew or should have known that their cigarettes contained toxic and hazardous substances likely to cause lung cancer."

Lowe argued the industry should pay for tests to detect lung tumors at their earliest and most treatable stage.

The court ruled instead that Oregon law has long recognized that "a threat of future physical harm is not sufficient" grounds for a legal claim.

James Coon, who represents Lowe, said the ruling shows the law is trailing behind science.

"Certain toxic products put people at risk for future injury," Coon said, but "medical monitoring is a concept that ancient common law has trouble dealing with, and the court in this case applied old common law concepts without flexing them in any way."

Carl Tobias, a University of Richmond law professor who specializes in torts, or damage claims, agreed.

"It doesn't fit in the box of traditional tort law," Tobias said. "Tort law by definition is after the fact. It aims primarily to compensate for past harm — not to prevent future harm."

But Tobias noted that Justice Martha Lee Walters, in a concurring opinion, left open the possibility the law could change "when science and medicine are able to identify harm before it becomes manifest."

Such techniques may be coming soon, said Thomas Glynn, the American Cancer Society's cancer science and trends director.

"We're probably about two years away before we can say whether we can detect lesions early enough to know what the effect will be," Glynn said.

Ben Zipursky, a Fordham University School of Law professor who specializes in product liability, said it was ironic the ruling came from the same court that recently affirmed a nearly $80 million punitive damages award against tobacco giant Philip Morris after it was struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court.

"This is the very court that has most aggressively ruled against Philip Morris," Zipursky said.

The ruling was similar to those in state courts around the nation in similar cases, despite a move toward loosening the definition of actual harm, he said.

Philip Morris and R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., two of the five companies named in the lawsuit, welcomed the ruling in a statement released Thursday.

The other companies were Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp., Lorillard Tobacco Co. and Liggett Group Inc.

The bride was also accused of breaking a speaker in a dispute over the music at the April 5 reception. Fabiana Reyes has been sentenced in Village Court to the six days she already spent in jail. The 41-year-old also paid the band $1,500 for the damage.

Her 42-year-old husband and their 21-year-old daughter were accused of interfering with Reyes' arrest. Elmo and Helen Fernandez pleaded guilty Thursday. Police used stun guns on both during the fracas.

The daughter says the couple were legally married in 1986 but delayed their church wedding until last month.

Lawyers for defendant Brian Nichols said in court papers earlier this week that Superior Court Judge James Bodiford was quoted in a newspaper article four days after the March 11, 2005, shootings saying that he was friends with the judge killed in the rampage.

The article also said Bodiford released a statement at the time that described the death of Judge Rowland Barnes as a "brutal murder."

Nichols' lawyers questioned Bodiford's ability to be impartial, and asked that he step down.

Bodiford said at a hearing Thursday that he doesn't believe he should step down. But he said it's a good idea to let another judge review the issue.

Bodiford is serving on the Nichols case in place of a previous judge who stepped down from the case in late January after he was quoted in a magazine article saying of Nichols that "everyone in the world knows he did it."

Nichols' murder trial for the killings of four people resumes July 10.

James Battista told a judge in federal court in Brooklyn he hatched a scheme in late 2006 with another old friend of Donaghy, Thomas Martino, to pay the referee thousands of dollars for the information while Battista was "engaged in the business of sports betting."

Battista's lawyer had notified the court last week that his client wanted to go to trial rather than plead guilty to charges of defrauding the NBA, as Martino did earlier this month. But he changed his mind after prosecutors offered a last-minute deal allowing him to instead plead guilty to a lesser charge of conspiring to make illegal bets, said the lawyer, Jack McMahon.

"He's a gambler, and he bet," McMahon said. "We never really contested that."

The deal spares Donaghy from having to testify as the government's star witness at a high-profile federal trial. It also means Battista, 42, will face only 10 to 16 months in prison at sentencing on July 11. By contrast, Martino faces 12 to 18 months.

Donaghy, of Bradenton, Fla., pleaded guilty last year to charges he conspired to engage in wire fraud and transmitted betting information through interstate commerce.

The referee said he made NBA bets for four years, even wagering on games he worked. He also admitted recommending bets to high-stakes gamblers and collecting $5,000 if his picks hit.

Donaghy, 41, is scheduled to be sentenced May 22. By law, he faces up to 25 years in prison, though the term could be much lower under sentencing guidelines.

The three men attended high school together in Springfield, Pa