The Supreme Court is allowing a lawsuit to proceed against Hustler Magazine over decades-old nude photographs of a woman that were published after she was killed by her husband, wrestler Chris Benoit.

The court turned down Hustler's appeal Monday. Benoit killed his wife, Nancy, and their son before committing suicide in 2007.

Hustler published 20-year-old nude photographs of Nancy Benoit after the deaths gained international attention.

Her family filed a federal lawsuit against the Larry Flynt Publishing Group, Hustler's publisher, claiming that the woman, a model and former professional wrestler herself, had asked the photographer to destroy the images immediately after they were shot.

A small-plane pilot from San Francisco, who hid his HIV-positive status for years out of fear of losing his license, can sue the government for disclosing his condition during a fraud investigation, a federal appeals court ruled Monday.

A federal judge in San Francisco dismissed Stan Cooper's damage suit in 2008, despite finding that the Federal Aviation Administration and the Social Security Administration had violated Cooper's rights by sharing his confidential personal and medical records. Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker said Cooper hadn't been harmed financially and that federal privacy law doesn't authorize suits for emotional distress.

In reinstating the suit Monday, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco said the law was intended to compensate people for harm they suffer when a federal agency intentionally discloses their confidential records.

That harm often consists of embarrassment rather than out-of-pocket losses, Judge Milan Smith said in the 3-0 ruling.

Cooper, 67, a pilot since 1964, gave up his license after he was diagnosed HIV-positive in 1985, when FAA rules still barred anyone with the AIDS virus from flying a plane. He said he reapplied in 1994 but did not disclose his medical condition.

Cooper's condition worsened in 1995 and he applied for Social Security benefits, with the assurance that his medical records would remain confidential.

He said he regained his health, discontinued his benefits and applied for a renewal of his license in 1998 after the FAA dropped its ban on HIV-positive pilots. He still did not disclose his condition, explaining later that the FAA required 10 years of medical records but didn't say how it would evaluate them.

The FAA revoked his license in 2005 after obtaining information from the Social Security Administration in the short-lived "Operation Safe Pilot," which examined records of 45,000 pilots, all in Northern California, to see if they had committed fraud in obtaining Social Security benefits or a pilot's license.

As litigators, cynics and viewers of A Civil Action know, how and where a lawsuit is brought can determine its outcome at least as often as the merits of the case. Perhaps the most potent civil procedure decision is the case's forum: state or federal court. Generally, corporate defendants prefer federal courts, and plaintiffs' attorneys prefer state courts. As a result "forum shopping" battles dominate the early stages of proceedings, as the sides fight over whether a corporation can be deemed a "citizen" of the state the plaintiffs come from; if both sides are from the same state, the case stays in that state's court.

So the big issue is where a corporation has citizenship. The Circuit Courts have interpreted the key statutory language -- citizenship exists where the "principal place of business" is -- in a few ways, but most assess the "total activity" of the corporation, including its purposes, type of activity, and legal site, and most of the others similarly look to the operations of the business as a whole. Only the 7th Circuit focused on the company's "nerve center", essentially meaning the place where the company is headquartered.

In Hertz Corp. v. Friend, our business-friendly Supreme Court unanimously swept away the case-by-case assessments of where businesses actually conduct their business and adopted the 7th Circuit's nerve center approach. Now corporations can insure federal diversity jurisdiction -- plaintiffs and defendants coming from different states -- whenever they most want it by (re)locating their headquarters.

Expect this decision to produce two dynamics. First, some corporations will relocate out of states where the courts are viewed as particularly plaintiff friendly, insuring claims against them will not be brought in those courts. Second, corporations will threaten to leave, if the state legislatures don't amend their laws to make corporate-friendly outcomes more likely if the case is heard in the state court.

A judge is praising Chris Brown's progress on his probation for the beating of ex-girlfriend Rihanna.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Patricia Schnegg says Brown hasn't missed a session of domestic-violence counseling and has done 32 days of hard labor in his home state of Virginia.

She also cleared the 20-year-old R&B star to travel out of the United States in May and June for concerts. The exact locations weren't disclosed.

The judge's comments came during a Thursday hearing during which she reviewed Brown's progress with the terms of his probation. Brown was sentenced last year to five years of probation and six months of community labor for the February 2008 attack on Rihanna.

A federal appeals court is reviewing whether the imprisoned founder of Adelphia Communications Corp. and his son can face a second federal fraud trial.

A full 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel in Philadelphia will hear defense arguments that a second trial in Pennsylvania amounts to double jeopardy for John Rigas and his son, Timothy.

John Rigas is serving a 12-year term and Timothy Rigas a 17-year term after convictions in New York for defrauding their now-defunct cable television giant, which was based in Coudersport, Pa. Prosecutors say they used the company like a piggy bank.

A 3rd Circuit panel had sided 2-1 with the Rigases' double-jeopardy claims and ordered a lower-court review. The full panel is rehearing the issue at prosecutors' request.

An out-of-town jury will hear the murder trial of a central Missouri teenager accused of slaying a 9-year-old neighbor girl because she wanted to know what it felt like to kill someone.

A judge decided Tuesday to select a jury from outside of Cole County as an alternative to a request by Alyssa Bustamante's attorneys to move the trial elsewhere.

Bustamante, who was 15 at the time of the crime, is charged as an adult with first-degree murder and armed criminal action in the Oct. 21 slaying of Elizabeth Olten. She has pleaded not guilty.

Authorities say Bustamante plotted Elizabeth's death — digging two holes several days in advance — then strangled her without provocation, cut the girl's throat and stabbed her. They say Bustamante confessed in a police interview to slaying Elizabeth because she wanted to know what it felt like to kill someone.

Hundreds of volunteers helped during a two-day search for the missing fourth-grader. Authorities say Bustamante ultimately led them to Elizabeth's body, which was concealed in a wooded area near the girls' homes just west of Jefferson City.

When his corruption trial begins in June, Rod R. Blagojevich, the former governor of Illinois, wants jurors to be allowed to hear all of the audio recordings — some 500 hours’ worth — that federal authorities secretly made of his telephone conversations.

In papers filed here on Wednesday, Mr. Blagojevich asked Judge James B. Zagel of Federal District Court to allow far more than just snippets of the calls, some of which have been made public.

“Play all the tapes,” Mr. Blagojevich told reporters after a hearing. He said that he planned to testify at his trial, and that all the tapes — not just parts — would provide the full picture and prove his innocence. “Play the truth, and play the whole truth,” he said.

A lawyer for Mr. Blagojevich, Sam Adam Jr., said jurors did not necessarily have to hear all of the tapes, which were made in Mr. Blagojevich’s home and campaign offices and on cellphones in the three months leading up his arrest in December 2008 on bribery, racketeering and a host of other charges.

But, Mr. Adam said, the defense team does want to play any parts that are related to the charges against Mr. Blagojevich or that give context to any of his statements on the tapes.

That prospect, political analysts here said, was likely to cause queasiness for Illinois politicians, some of whom are thought to be heard on those audio recordings and might have hoped their comments would never become public. In a year when the state is electing a new governor and a United States senator, such an open airing of hundreds of hours of tapes — even for those who did nothing criminal — might be especially awkward.