Los Fresnos Justice of the Peace Gustavo Garza was sued by three families who say Garza left them with no real option when he told them they must pay a fine for their children's transgressions or paddle them in open court.

Until District Judge Abel Limas can resolve that case, he ordered Garza to halt the paddling. A trial date has not been set.

The lawsuit was initially brought by the parents of a 15-year-old Los Fresnos girl who appeared in Garza's court in April for skipping school.

Daniel Zurita paddled his stepdaughter with one of the two wooden paddles Garza displays in his courtroom after the justice said it was either that or pay a $500 fine.

Last week, Garza said offering paddling as an option was lawful and that 98 percent of parents took that choice.

Garza was represented by Cameron County attorney Richard Burst at a hearing Wednesday. A woman in the county attorney's office who did not identify herself declined comment and hung up.

A message left for Garza at his office was not immediately returned.

Plaintiff attorney Mark Rossi said Burst rejected his offer to stop the case if Garza would halt the paddling in his courtroom and apologize.

The case before the court involved alleged contract fraud by a former unit of General Motors Corp. At issue was whether the False Claims Act covers any fraudulent claim paid for by government funds, or only fraudulent claims directly submitted to a government official.

Justice Samuel Alito charted a middle path, saying the law can be used if fraudulent statements are ultimately intended to get the government to pay claims.

The whistleblower law does not apply in situations in which a subcontractor does not intend the government to rely on a fraudulent claim as a condition of payment.

A lower appeals court had ruled that the whistleblower suits could proceed, because the False Claims Act covers claims made to other parties, "so long as the claim will be paid with government funds."

The court sent the case back to the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati to apply the standard it laid out Monday.

Without comment, the justices refused to step into the dispute, giving the owners and operators of countless sports fantasy companies the opportunity to operate without having to pay to be licensed by baseball.

Jeff Thomas, a Kenosha, Wis.-based operator of two fantasy sports Web sites and president of the Fantasy Sports Trade Association, said the decision was a victory for free speech and "marks potentially the single biggest day in the history of the fantasy sports history."

In fantasy sports, participants act as owners or managers of a sports team, and track how the players they have perform statistically. The statistical performance is converted into points, which are compiled and totaled.

The attorneys general say in court documents filed Thursday that they have an interest in the case because they would have to determine if their states would recognize the marriage of gay residents who wed in California.

They want the court to stay its ruling until after the November election, when voters likely will decide whether to amend the state constitution to ban gay marriage.

California Attorney General Jerry Brown is urging the court not to grant the stay.

The states involved are Alaska, Colorado, Florida, Idaho, Michigan, Nebraska, New Hampshire, South Carolina, South Dakota and Utah.

A Texas court scrapped a $26 million verdict against the drugmaker stemming from the first trial. The court found no evidence that Robert Ernst suffered a fatal heart problem from a blood clot triggered by Vioxx. He had been taking the now-withdrawn drug for eight months before being stricken in May 2001.

A New Jersey appeals court separately voided $9 million of the nearly $14 million awarded to John McDarby in 2006 by a jury in Atlantic City. The panel found that New Jersey's Product Liability Act was pre-empted by the federal Food Drug and Cosmetic Act.

A report examines 123 terrorist cases from the past 15 years, and the study's two principal authors say that the courts were able to produce just, reliable results while protecting national security.

The report comes at a time when the Bush administration's system of military commissions remains mired in delays.

Whether the case is the first attack on the World Trade Center in 1993 or the East African embassy bombings in 1998, judges, juries, defense attorneys and prosecutors are able to get the job done correctly, they say.

Although the justice system is far from perfect, it has proved to be adaptable and has successfully handled a large number of important and challenging terrorism prosecutions, said New York lawyers Richard Zabel and James Benjamin of the law firm Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld.

The 2-1 decision by a panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals affirms the same court's 2005 ruling striking down the law. The Supreme Court had ordered the appeals court to take another look at Virginia's statute after the ruling on the federal ban.

The appeals court cited a key difference between the federal and state bans on the procedure that abortion opponents call "partial-birth abortion." The federal law protects doctors who set out to perform a legal abortion that by accident becomes the banned procedure. The Virginia statute provides no such protection.

The state has two weeks to ask the full federal appeals court to review the ruling, or 90 days to appeal to the Supreme Court. The attorney general's office "is reviewing all possible courses of action," spokesman J. Tucker Martin said.

The state law is unconstitutional "because it imposes an undue burden on a woman's right to obtain an abortion," Judge M. Blane Michael wrote in the majority opinion, joined by Judge Diana Gribbon-Motz.