National Roundup

New York
Citigroup to pay $730 million to settle lawsuit
NEW YORK (AP) — Citigroup has agreed to pay $730 million to settle a class-action lawsuit that claimed investors were misled by the bank’s disclosures when they purchased its debt and preferred stock.
The investors’ purchases were made from May 11, 2006 through Nov. 28, 2008.
Citigroup Inc. denied the allegations and said in a statement late Monday that it agreed to the settlement so it could get rid of further expenses and uncertainties that come along with drawn out litigation.
“This settlement is another significant step toward resolving our exposure to claims arising from the financial crisis, and we look forward to putting this matter behind us,” the New York company said in a statement.
Citigroup said that the proposed $730 million payment will be made from its existing litigation reserves. The settlement will be reviewed by Judge Sidney Stein in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, where the lawsuit is pending.
Citigroup has been undergoing a transformation since Michael Corbat took over as CEO after former CEO Vikram Pandit resigned abruptly in October.
Corbat’s first bold move was a decision, announced in December, to cut 11,000 jobs, close dozens of branches and trim the company’s consumer banking business in some countries.
In January Citigroup announced a settlement with federal regulators related to its foreclosure practices. The bank allegedly took part in industry-wide practices that caused people to be foreclosed on illegally. It took a fourth-quarter charge of $305 million to cover its agreement with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Federal Reserve.

Washington
Woman loses  downloading music appeal
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court has turned away an appeal from a Minnesota woman who has been ordered to pay record companies $222,000 for the unauthorized downloading of copyrighted music.
The justices did not comment Monday in letting stand the judgment against Jammie Thomas-Rasset of Brainerd, Minn. She claimed in court papers that the ordered payment was excessive.
The music industry filed thousands of lawsuits against people it accused of downloading music without permission and without paying for it. Almost all the cases settled for $3,500.
Lawyer Kiwi Camara said Thomas-Rasset is one of only two defendants whose case went to trial. The other is former Boston University student Joel Tenenbaum, who also lost and was ordered to pay $675,000.
The case is Thomas-Rasset v. Capitol Records, 12-715.

Washington
Supreme Court rules against gold miners stands
GRANTS PASS, Ore. (AP) — The U.S. Supreme Court has let stand a ruling that makes it tougher for small-time gold miners to work their claims on federal lands across the West.
The high court on Monday denied without comment a petition to hear an appeal from The New 49’ers, a gold-mining club based on Northern California’s Klamath River.
That leaves standing a ruling from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. It ruled last year that the U.S. Forest Service has to consult biologists from other agencies before allowing miners to do anything that might harm salmon protected by the Endangered Species Act.
The Karuk Tribe had sued after a Forest Service district ranger allowed the club to mine in the river without first consulting NOAA Fisheries Service.

Washington
U.S. High Court declines Ky God reference case
LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to take up a challenge to a reference to “Almighty God” in Kentucky’s homeland security law.
The high court on Monday rejected the case without comment.
The order came seven months after the Kentucky Supreme Court made a similar decision in a lawsuit brought by the group American Athiests.
The plaintiffs had claimed in a 2008 suit that the law was a violation of constitutional bans on state-sponsored religion.
The Kentucky Court of Appeals upheld the law and said the reference is made to “a generic ‘God’” and doesn’t “seek to prefer one belief over another.”
The controversy arose because of two related laws passed in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Washington
Court sides with student in case over textbooks
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court has sided with a Thai graduate student in the U.S. who sold cheap foreign versions of textbooks on eBay without the publisher’s permission, a decision with important implications for goods sold online and in discount stores.
The justices, in a 6-3 vote Tuesday, threw out a copyright infringement award to publisher John Wiley & Sons. Thai graduate student Supap Kirtsaeng used eBay to resell copies of the publisher’s copyrighted books that his relatives first bought abroad at cut-rate prices.
Justice Stephen Breyer said in his opinion for the court that the publisher lost any ability to control what happens to its books after their first sale abroad.

California
Lawsuit over San Diego Boy Scout leases ends
SAN DIEGO (AP) — A civil rights group is ending a decade-old lawsuit over San Diego’s leasing of city property to the Boy Scouts.
U-T San Diego says the local American Civil Liberties Union announced Monday it won’t appeal a ruling in the suit, which argued that the lease of public land was illegal because the scouts ban homosexuals, agnostics and atheists.
A scout spokesman told the newspaper the group won’t comment until it speaks to its lawyers later this week.
The city had leased 18 1/2 acres of land in Balboa Park and Fiesta Island for a nominal fee to the Scouts.
A federal appeals court declared the leases legal in December, ruling they didn’t violate state or federal constitutional prohibitions on discrimination and giving special preference to religious groups.