Knauf Plasterboard Tianjin and a group of builders, suppliers, and insurers have agreed to cover the cost of remediation and temporary relocation for the owners of 300 properties affected by allegedly defective drywall. If the program is a success, the plaintiffs' lawyers say, it could lead to fixes at another 2,000 to 3,000 properties.

Supreme Court of the State of New York Appellate Division: Second Judicial Department WILLIAM F. MASTRO, J.P. FRED T. SANTUCCI JOSEPH COVELLO DANIEL D. A

Plaintiffs lawyers were granted $315 million in common benefit funds from the $4.85 billion settlement that Merck reached in the Vioxx multidistrict litigation in 2007. But they won't get a share of the $950 million settlement that the federal government and more than 40 states reached with the drug maker last November.

SUPREME COURT OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK Appellate Division, Fourth Judicial Department 529 CA 09-01549 PRESENT: SCUDDER, P.J., MARTOCHE, G

The National Football League and its lawyers at Paul Weiss Rifkind Wharton & Garrison reached a $765 million agreement on Thursday with retired players who accused the league of hiding the dangers of brain injuries.

Federal district court judge Dana Sabraw on Friday refused to certify a proposed class of 60,000 California home-loan borrowers who were allegedly misled by Countrywide's sales and marketing practices. Relying on the same reasoning that he used when rejecting a larger class in October, Sabraw ruled that the plaintiffs had failed to meet the commonality test in the U.S. Supreme Court's Dukes decision.

For years U.S. District Judge Harold Baer in Manhattan has been using his power to appoint plaintiffs counsel as a means to cajole lawyers to find more women and minorities to lead class action lawsuits. Now another New York judge has followed his lead in a suit against Bayer AG.