Vivendi on Friday hailed a U.S. Supreme Court ruling limiting foreign shareholders' rights to seek compensation in the United States.

Vivendi is trying to exclude French shareholders from a U.S.-based class action lawsuit on whether it misled investors about its financial health.

The entertainment-to-telecoms group said it was very satisfied with a U.S. ruling on Thursday, which dismissed a suit against National Australia Bank Ltd (NAB.AX) by foreign investors seeking damages in a New York court.

The Supreme Court ruled foreign investors who bought shares of National Australia Bank on an overseas stock exchange cannot sue in a New York court over large writedowns tied to the bank's onetime U.S. mortgage unit.

The justices upheld a ruling by a U.S. appeals court that dismissed the lawsuit on the grounds that American courts did not have jurisdiction.

Defense attorneys plan to seek the release of a Kansas doctor and his wife while they appeal their convictions on charges they conspired to profit from illegally prescribing painkillers to patients who later died.

Jurors found Dr. Stephen Schneider and his wife, Linda, guilty Thursday. Prosecutors linked their suburban Wichita clinic to 68 overdose deaths.

The Schneiders also were found guilty of unlawfully writing prescriptions and health care fraud.

No sentencing date has been set. Each faces up to a life sentence.

Linda Schneider's attorney, Kevin Byers, blames the guilty verdict on a national crackdown on doctors caught in the middle of a federal policy dispute over the drugs.

A federal judge heard new testimony Wednesday in the case of a Georgia death row inmate given a rare chance by the U.S. Supreme Court to prove his innocence nearly 20 years after a jury convicted him of killing a police officer.

Attorneys for Troy Anthony Davis say witnesses who identified him as the killer of Savannah police officer Mark MacPhail during Davis' 1991 trial were pressured by police into making false statements. New witnesses have since come forward to say another man confessed to the slaying after Davis was convicted.

In U.S. District Court on Wednesday, Davis' lawyers rested their case after calling nine witnesses to support that claim. The hearing will continue Thursday with prosecutors presenting rebuttal evidence.

Judge William T. Moore said he's highly skeptical of testimony that another man has admitted to shooting MacPhail, because Davis' attorneys did not subpoena the man they say is the real killer.

The Supreme Court lifted Monday a four-year ban on the sale in the United States of genetically modified alfalfa, which farmers fear contaminates others crops.

A district court judge in California in May 2007 blocked the US biotech giant Monsanto from selling alfalfa seeds that it had genetically modified to resist its Roundup weed killer.

The ruling was upheld on appeal in 2009, but Monsanto went to the Supreme Court arguing that any decision should have awaited the findings of a study by the Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service.

An Oregon jury is considering whether to sentence to death a convicted killer who has already been given the death penalty three times.

A Deschutes County Circuit Court jury in Bend on Wednesday will be the fourth to decide whether Randy Lee Guzek should die.

The 41-year-old was convicted of aggravated murder in 1988 for killing Rod and Lois Houser at their home in Terrebonne, just north of Redmond.

His death sentence has been overturned three times since his conviction.

Guzek was 18 when he and two other men shot and stabbed the Housers, then ransacked their house.

A tearful Guzek apologized for his crimes and told the jury he now blames himself, not an abusive father or drugs.

The Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that Florida can undertake beach-widening projects without paying beachfront property owners who lose exclusive access to the water.

The court, by an 8-0 vote, rejected a challenge by six homeowners in Florida's Panhandle who argued that a beach-widening project changed their oceanfront property into oceanview. Justice John Paul Stevens took no part in the case in which the court affirmed an earlier ruling.

Private property advocates had hoped the court would rule for the first time that a court decision can amount to a taking of property.

The court's four conservatives — Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas — were prepared to rule that way, even though the homeowners still would have lost in this case, Scalia said in his opinion for the court. But they lacked a fifth vote.

The Constitution requires governments to pay "just compensation" when they take private property for public use.

An appeals court has overturned the conviction of an east Texas man accused of grooming children as young as 5 to perform in sex shows at a small-town swingers club.

The 14th Court of Appeals in Houston on Thursday ordered a new trial for 43-year-old Patrick "Booger Red" Kelly. He was sentenced to life in prison two years ago after a jury found him guilty of engaging in organized criminal activity.

The three-judge panel agreed with Kelly's claim that he had not been allowed to present a proper defense.

Authorities alleged that Kelly was a member of the so-called Mineola Swinger's Club. They accused him of helping set up a "kindergarten" where children learned to dance provocatively. Kelly testified that he was innocent.