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The article discusses a U.S. copyright infringement lawsuit filed by graffiti artist Adrian Falkner against automaker General Motors Co. after it used his mural in a Cadillac advertising campaign. The company posted images of the mural on its Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts without the artist's knowledge or consent. The Federal District Court in Los Angeles, California, will hear the case.

The article reports on a lawsuit filed by U.S. President Donald Trump against porn actress Stephanie Clifford for violating a confidentiality agreement at least 20 times. Trump's lawyers filed two motions in the U.S. District Court in California. Clifford claimed that she had an affair with Trump starting in 2006. She faces damages of at least 20 million U.S. dollars for violating the confidentiality agreement.

The article presents concerns over the nomination of Thomas Alvin Farr for serving on the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina and also discusses his career profile.

The article reports on a lawsuit filed by heirs of Jewish family who allegedly owned the painting "Colorful Life" of Wassily Kandinsky, at the Federal District Court in Manhattan, New York City, demanding its returned of ownership from the Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus in Munich, Germany.

The article reports on the preliminary approval given by Judge James V. Selna of U.S. District Court on the settlement deal worth $1 billion between Toyota Motor and plaintiffs, after the recall of various cars from Toyota.

In the latest and potentially most damaging salvo in an increasingly bitter family feud, the N.F.L. players' union filed a complaint in federal court Wednesday charging the N.F.L. with collusion, saying team owners had a conspiracy to create a secret salary cap in the uncapped 2010 season. The suit, filed in the United States District Court in Minneapolis, stems from the same issue that led to the Washington Redskins and the Dallas Cowboysbeing docked millions of dollars in salary cap space in March. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Prosecutors finally have some momentum in their perjury case against Roger Clemens, even if it means dragging in the former major leaguer David Segui, a witness who is apparently so reluctant to testify that the judge threatened from the bench: ''If he doesn't show up, he'll be arrested like anyone else.'' Judge Reggie Walton of United States District Court indicated Wednesday that he was leaning toward allowing prosecutors to call Segui and another witness to counter an overall impression created by Clemens's lawyers. Segui is expected to say that around 2001 he was told by Clemens's strength coach, Brian McNamee, that McNamee had saved evidence from injections of players to placate his wife. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

WASHINGTON -- Brian McNamee's direct testimony early this week was four and a half years in the making and unfurled in pitch-perfect fashion with the familiar details of a hotel room in Toronto in 1998, drugs and a syringe laid out in a bathroom and the indomitable Roger Clemens ready for an unthinkable boost. McNamee's cross-examination here Wednesday was an impromptu performance, often confusing, and played out like a cable courtroom drama gone off the skids. It ended, perhaps mercifully, at lunch, but not before Judge Reggie Walton of the United States District Court tried to discern what each side was arguing and warned again to play by the rules. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A federal judge on Monday struck down new regulations governing union elections, saying the National Labor Relations Board did not follow proper voting procedures when it approved the rules last year. Judge James E. Boasberg of United States District Court said the board had lacked a quorum when it voted on the rules that expedite union representation elections. He did not address the merits of the rules and said the board could simply vote again. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hiram Monserrate, a former city councilman and state senator, pleaded guilty on Friday to improperly using Council money to finance a failed political campaign. Mr. Monserrate, a Democrat, represented a Queens district in the State Senate before he was expelled in 2010. On Friday, he acknowledged before Judge Colleen McMahon in Federal District Court in Manhattan that he was guilty of mail fraud and mail fraud conspiracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

WASHINGTON -- In a sharp rebuke, a federal judge on Friday reversed a decision by the Environmental Protection Agency to revoke a critical permit for one of the nation's largest mountaintop removal mining projects. The United States District Court judge, Amy Berman Jackson, said that the E.P.A.'s unilateral decision in January 2011 to rescind the waste disposal permit for the Spruce No. 1 mine in Logan County, W.Va., exceeded the agency's authority and violated federal law. She declared that the permit was now valid, paving the way for a mining project covering 2,278 acres to go forward. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio (AP) -- As members of his community watched quietly in court, an Ohio man admitted Thursday that he had defrauded fellow Amish in 29 states out of nearly $17 million. The suspect, Monroe L. Beachy, 77, of Sugarcreek, changed his plea to guilty in United States District Court before Judge Benita Y. Pearson. She ordered a presentence report and scheduled sentencing for May 24. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The legal dispute between Steve Wynn and Kazuo Okada, Wynn Resorts' largest shareholder, escalated Monday as Mr. Okada countersued in federal court, saying that the casino company's board had breached its fiduciary duties and violated racketeering laws by voting to redeem his shares. In his suit, filed in United States District Court in Las Vegas, Mr. Okada said he ''disputes that any redemption has occurred.'' The suit also claims that Wynn Resorts, which Mr. Wynn founded, ''undertook a secret investigation'' to force him off the board and ''committed a series of predicate acts of racketeering, which include fraud.'' [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

LOS ANGELES -- A federal appeals court on Monday overturned the 22-year prison sentence for Ahmed Ressam, the Algerian national known as the Millennium Bomber, who plotted to set off explosives at Los Angeles International Airport on Dec. 31, 1999. The court deemed the sentence too lenient. In a review of an earlier decision by the appeals court, an 11-judge panel from the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled 7 to 4 to send the case back to the district court for a tougher sentence. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A federal judge's ruling Monday in Manhattan will determine the fate of the Mets' owners in their protracted legal fight against the trustee for the victims of Bernard L. Madoff. He can dismiss the case or let it go to a trial March 19. He can remove an enormous financial cloud that has hung over the Mets for more than a year by not making them pay up to $386 million -- or let a jury decide. Whichever way he rules, United States District Court Judge Jed S. Rakoff will not give his reasoning, at least not on Monday. He is to issue a ''bottom line ruling'' that will say if he has granted or denied each side's motions for summary judgment. He will write a lengthier ruling later. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A federal judge ruled Friday that the National Labor Relations Board can require most private businesses to put up posters telling workers they have a legal right to form a union. But the judge, Amy Berman Jackson of United State District Court, limited how the board can enforce the requirement. She said simply failing to display the new N.L.R.B. poster is not automatically a legal violation. The ruling pleased labor groups but disappointed business groups, which argued that the new poster is too one-sided and seems to encourage workers to join unions. The posters are to be displayed effective April 30. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Julie Taymor, who filed suit after she was fired as director of the $75 million Broadway musical ''Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark'' last March, said in court papers Friday that the producers' counter-suit was ''highly sensationalistic, false and misleading'' and aimed at ''assassinating her character and professional reputation.'' In a 46-page answer to the producers' counterclaim, filed in U.S. District Court in New York, Ms. Taymor contended that they secretly conspired to oust her while still asking her to make changes on the show's book while public performances were going on. The filing argues that the producers fired Ms. Taymor and blamed the show's problems on her as an ''opportunistic way'' to calm worried investors, buy more time, and ''sway critics' opinions'' by insisting that the show had been ''re-imagined.'' [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

NEW ORLEANS -- The civil trial over America's biggest oil spill has been delayed for a week as efforts to settle the multibillion-dollar litigation intensify. Proceedings were scheduled to begin Monday, but on Sunday afternoon, Judge Carl J. Barbier of Federal District Court, who is overseeing the sprawling litigation, issued a brief order pushing the opening day back to March 5 ''for reasons of judicial efficiency and to allow the parties to make further progress in their settlement discussions.'' In an unusual move, the judge said the court was issuing the order ''on its own motion,'' as opposed to a request from any party in the case. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

7:32 p.m. Updated WASHINGTON - The chairwoman of the Securities and Exchange Commission defended the agency's record of settling fraud cases with Wall Street companies, saying on Wednesday that she believes the agency's practices ''clearly have deterrent value,'' even though firms are often charged repeatedly for violating the same securities laws. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A three-judge federal panel wants the Texas primaries to remain in April and is ordering redistricting negotiations between minority rights groups and the state to continue. Judge Orlando Garcia of Federal District Court signed the order on Friday but did not mention a specific election date. The primaries are scheduled for April 3, but they will most likely be pushed back. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A federal judge said Tuesday that the government must notify Occupy DC protesters if it intends to evict them from a Washington park and remove their belongings. The decision from Judge James E. Boasberg of Federal District Court means the protesters would have an opportunity to challenge any eviction beforehand. Officials have not said when or if they will clear the park of protesters, though a lawyer for the federal government said in court Tuesday that she was unaware of any imminent plans to do so. The ruling came in a response to a request filed before the National Park Service on Monday began enforcing a ban on camping at the site, McPherson Square. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Exxon Mobil Corporation and Kenneth Salazar, the interior secretary, agreed to settle a lawsuit in which Exxon, the world's largest publicly traded oil company, challenged the government's decision to cancel offshore leases that may yield ''billions of barrels of oil,'' according to a court filing. The accord ''will allow Exxon Mobil to develop this very large, but technically challenging, resource as quickly as possible using a phased approach,'' Patrick McGinn, a spokesman for Exxon, said in an e-mail. Exxon sued on Aug. 12 over a ruling by the department that canceled Gulf of Mexico leases for the so-called Julia unit. The company and the government entered into a settlement agreement on Dec. 30, according to a filing Friday in United States District Court in Lake Charles, Louisiana. Exxon said in its complaint that it sought a suspension for its Julia leases in 2008 because of drilling complexity. It cited federal regulations that allow oil oil producers to suspend production in their fields, partly ''to facilitate proper development of a lease.'' The Interior Department denied the request in 2009, stating that the company''had not demonstrated a commitment to production'' according to court papers. Unsuccessful appeals followed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

BUFFALO (AP) -- A Canadian sports doctor sought out by superstar athletes for help in healing from injuries avoided prison on Friday for bringing unapproved and mislabeled drugs into the United States. The doctor, Anthony Galea of Toronto, was sentenced to time served. The sentence, delivered in Federal District Court in Buffalo, amounted to a single day, that of Galea's arrest. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

8:27 p.m. Updated WASHINGTON - The Securities and Exchange Commission's practice of settling cases while allowing corporations or other defendants to neither admit nor deny the charges will be the subject of a hearing early next year by the House Financial Services Committee. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

SAN FRANCISCO -- Barry Bonds, baseball's home run champion, avoided a prison term Friday when a federal judge sentenced him to 30 days of house arrest, 2 years of probation, 250 hours of community service with youth groups and a $4,000 fine for providing evasive testimony to a federal grand jury eight years ago. Bonds's lawyers stated their intention to appeal the guilty verdict, and the judge, Susan Illston of United States District Court, agreed to stay the sentence through the appeal process. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

WASHINGTON -- AT&T has one month to tell a Federal District Court judge and the Justice Department whether it will pursue its proposed $39 billion acquisition of T-Mobile USA in its current form, in a modified structure, or if it will drop the deal altogether. Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle, of Federal District Court in Washington, granted a joint motion filed Monday by AT&T and the Justice Department to delay the government's antitrust lawsuit over the merger. Judge Huvelle set a Jan. 12 deadline for AT&T to decide whether it intends to continue to pursue the deal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

WASHINGTON -- Taking a broad swipe at the Securities and Exchange Commission's practice of allowing companies to settle cases without admitting that they had done anything wrong, a federal judge on Monday rejected a $285 million settlement between Citigroup and the agency. The judge, Jed S. Rakoff of United States District Court in Manhattan, said that he could not determine whether the agency's settlement with Citigroup was ''fair, reasonable, adequate and in the public interest,'' as required by law, because the agency had claimed, but had not proved, that Citigroup committed fraud. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A federal judge in Montgomery has stopped state officials from using Alabama's tough new immigration law to prevent immigrants from renewing required permits on manufactured homes. The judge, Myron H. Thompson of United States District Court, issued a temporary restraining order Wednesday evening that allows Alabama residents to renew registration of manufactured homes without requiring that they prove that they are in the country legally. The deadline for renewing the registration without being fined is Nov. 30. Lawyers for a coalition of civil rights groups said earlier that by refusing to renew the permits, state officials could force people to abandon their homes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A federal judge on Monday blocked a Food and Drug Administration requirement that tobacco companies put big new graphic warning labels on cigarette packages by next September. In a preliminary injunction, Judge Richard J. Leon of United States District Court in Washington ruled that cigarette makers were likely to win a free speech challenge against the proposed labels, which include staged photos of a corpse and of a man breathing smoke out of a tracheotomy hole in his neck. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

CORRECTION APPENDED ON Feb. 2, 2004, Marlo Kidd awaited sentencing before Judge Denny Chin of Federal District Court in Manhattan. She had pleaded guilty to acting as a lookout for two masked gunmen who had robbed a bank in Yonkers, and under federal sentencing guidelines, she faced a prison term of up to six years. Her lawyer, though, was asking the judge to sentence her only to home confinement, because she was raising five children who ranged in age from 5 to 13, and also caring for her 14-year-old sister, as their own mother had been a crack-cocaine addict. He had said that sending Ms. Kidd to prison would almost certainly result in her children being placed in foster care, destroying what was left of the family. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The trustee for Bernard L. Madoff's fraud victims said on Thursday that he had overestimated how much his recovery efforts would be affected by a court ruling this week in his case against the owners of the New York Mets. The practical effect of the ruling, released on Tuesday by Judge Jed S. Rakoff of United States District Court in Manhattan, will be to reduce the amount of money the trustee, Irving H. Picard, can seek in court by $6.2 billion -- not by $11 billion, as the trustee's lawyers reported on Wednesday. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The right to vote is sometimes said to be the most fundamental in American democracy. Yet legal challenges to the federal voting rights law are increasing even as they highlight the racial injustices that make it essential. In a ruling last week, Judge John Bates of Federal District Court rightly dismissed such a challenge by Shelby County, Ala., which sought to have a central part of the law declared unconstitutional. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

John Edwards's trial on campaign finance charges has been delayed from October until January, giving his defense team time it says it needs to examine 400,000 pages of material turned over by the government. Mr. Edwards, a former North Carolina senator, was charged in June with using about $1 million in under-the-table payments from political supporters to hide his pregnant mistress, Rielle Hunter, during his 2008 run for the Democratic presidential nomination. He is also charged with helping to falsify campaign finance reports to cover up the payments. On Wednesday, Chief Judge James A. Beaty Jr. of Federal District Court in Winston-Salem, N.C., granted the motion from defense lawyers, who say they must talk with 125 witnesses who were interviewed by 50 agents with the F.B.I. and the Internal Revenue Service. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

WASHINGTON -- The Justice Department on Wednesday sued to block the proposed $39 billion merger between the cellphone giants AT&T and T-Mobile USA, arguing that keeping them separate would preserve competition in the wireless industry and even help save jobs of American workers. In a lawsuit filed in Federal District Court here, the Justice Department argued that the proposed deal, which would join the nation's second- and fourth-largest wireless phone carriers, would result in higher prices and give consumers fewer innovative products. The companies disputed those assertions, and labor unions that support the deal said that the merger would add jobs, not cost them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A group that advocates for changes to the gender-equity law known as Title IX announced Thursday that it was suing the Department of Education, arguing that the department is violating the Constitution by forcing high schools to use what it claims is a quota system to afford greater opportunities for female athletes. At issue in the lawsuit, sent Thursday to Federal District Court in Washington, is a 1979 test that is used to measure compliance with Title IX, which bans sex discrimination in education. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The father of a man who plotted in 2009 to set off homemade bombs in Manhattan subway cars tried to thwart investigators by destroying evidence and misleading a grand jury, a relative testified on Tuesday. The testimony, in Federal District Court in Brooklyn, came during the trial of Mohammed Wali Zazi, who is charged with obstructing justice and conspiring to obstruct justice while federal agents were investigating his son, Najibullah Zazi. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Federal prosecutors will have at least two more months to decide whether to retry Barry Bonds on any of the perjury counts that resulted in a deadlocked jury in April, a federal judge in San Francisco told them in court on Thursday. Judge Susan Illston of United States District Court granted a request from the prosecutors to delay their decision to retry Bonds to late August, at the earliest. She said it would make sense for the court to resolve another issue first: Bonds's motion to drop his conviction on an obstruction of justice charge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Boston College filed a motion this week to quash a federal subpoena seeking access to confidential interviews of paramilitary fighters for the Provisional Irish Republican Army. The motion, filed in United States District Court in Boston, seeks to prevent the British authorities from accessing the interviews as part of an investigation into burglaries, kidnappings and murders during the decades known as the Troubles in Northern Ireland. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

MINNEAPOLIS -- More than two months after a federal judge ruled that the N.F.L. failed to maximize revenue in its renegotiated television deals, lawyers for the locked-out players returned to United States District Court on Thursday seeking a minimum of $707 million in damages, as well as an injunction to prevent the league from accepting more than $4 billion in television revenue during the lockout. Judge David S. Doty, who found for the players on March 1, heard almost two hours of arguments without issuing a ruling. Doty took five days to issue his previous decision. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After only four days of court-ordered talks, negotiations between N.F.L. owners and players came to a temporary halt Wednesday with little sign that much progress had been made toward resolving differences that have kept the league in a lockout since March 12. With mediation recessed until May 16, both sides now await a ruling by Judge Susan Nelson of United States District Court, which is expected by Monday, on the players' request for an injunction to stop the lockout. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Judge Susan Illston of United States District Court in San Francisco barred the jury at Barry Bonds's perjury trial from hearing angry voice-mail messages he left his mistress during their nine-year relationship. Prosecutors wanted to introduce them to show that Bonds was experiencing so-called ''roid rage'' when he left the messages. The trial begins Monday. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

An ex-nurse accused of seeking depressed people online and encouraging two to kill themselves was found guilty Tuesday of aiding the suicides of an English man and a Canadian woman. The defendant, William Melchert-Dinkel, 48, of Faribault, had declined a jury trial. Judge Thomas Neuville of Rice County District Court ruled against Mr. Melchert-Dinkel in the deaths of Mark Drybrough, 32, of Coventry, England, who hanged himself in 2005, and Nadia Kajouji, 18, of Brampton, Ontario, who jumped into a frozen river in 2008. Mr. Melchert-Dinkel's lawyer argued that the victims were predisposed to suicide and that his client had not swayed them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

SAFEGUARD A top banking regulator approved a plan to seize and unwind big banks, a proposal that will help address those ''too big to fail'' firms whose collapse could imperil the financial system. The board of Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, led by its chairwoman, Sheila C. Bair, left, voted on Tuesday to approve rules intended to create an orderly process to unwind large institutions. The rules outline how creditors can file a claim and how those claims will be addressed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Denny Hecker, a ubiquitous presence in Minnesota who once owned 26 auto dealerships, was sentenced Friday to a maximum 10 years in prison for fraud. Judge Joan Ericksen of Federal District Court denied a defense request for eight years, saying Mr. Hecker deserved the sentence for his pattern of lying and concealing assets in the implosion of his empire. Judge Ericksen said he told the truth only when backed into a corner. ''It all adds up to -- you don't get a break,'' Judge Ericksen said. Mr. Hecker, 58, of Medina, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and one count of bankruptcy fraud. Prosecutors said he cheated lenders out of tens of millions of dollars so he could support a high-flying lifestyle. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

DELAYED TRIAL A federal judge on Thursday pushed back by a week the trial of Raj Rajaratnam, below, who has been accused of being at the center of an insider trading network. The trial, which was scheduled to start on Feb. 28, will now begin on March 8, according to the order from Judge Richard J. Holwell of United States District Court in Manhattan. He gave no reason for the postponement. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A right-wing Internet radio host was sentenced on Tuesday to 33 months in prison for threatening the lives of three federal judges in Chicago after they upheld a local gun control law. The host, Harold C. Turner, 48, was convicted in August in United States District Court in Brooklyn. He had been charged with one count of threatening to assault or murder the three judges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

WASHINGTON -- By the numbers, President Obama is beating opponents of his signature health care bill two to one in federal court. Of the three district court judges who have ruled on the merits of constitutional challenges to the landmark Affordable Care Act, two have sided with Mr. Obama. But from a political standpoint, the only case that really matters is the one Mr. Obama lost on Monday. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The proceedings in the Senate on Tuesday were as remarkable as the charges that lawmakers there were asked to weigh. As tax policy debates swirled around the Capitol, the Senate on Tuesday began pondering the fate of Judge G. Thomas Porteous Jr. of Federal District Court in Louisiana, whom the House of Representatives impeached in March on four articles of ''high crimes and misdemeanors'' stemming from charges that he received cash and favors from those with business in his court. This is only the 12th impeachment trial of a judge in Senate history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When a federal judge barred prosecutors on Wednesday from using a crucial witness in the first civilian trial of a former Guantanamo terrorism detainee, the ruling -- widely perceived as a major setback for the government -- contained an unusual observation. It was, in a way, a polar opposite to a get-out-of-jail free card: even if the defendant, Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, is acquitted, his status as an enemy combatant will probably allow his return to military custody, to remain locked up, said the judge, Lewis A. Kaplan of Federal District Court in Manhattan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The plagiarism accusations that dogged J. K. Rowling in Britain have now reached Scholastic, her American publisher. The estate of Adrian Jacobs, an author who died in 1997, filed suit in United States District Court in New York on Tuesday, asserting that Ms. Rowling's fourth ''Harry Potter'' book, ''Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire,'' was partly copied from Mr. Jacobs's 1987 book, ''The Adventures of Willy the Wizard.'' Mr. Jacobs's estate previously brought similar legal action against Ms. Rowling and her British publisher, Bloomsbury. Those cases have not been resolved. Kyle Good, a spokeswoman for Scholastic, said on Thursday that the publisher considered the claims in the lawsuit to be ''completely without merit.'' Ms. Rowling has said that she had not heard of Mr. Jacobs until 2004, and had not read his book. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]