The day after hotel chain Extended Stay filed for bankruptcy, its lenders sued the company's chairman for $100 million for allegedly violating "bad boy" guaranty provisions. Extended Stay's lawyers at Kasowitz Benson say the plaintiffs are looking for leverage in the company's reorganization. Motives aside, the suit could clarify the limits of liability under so-called bad boy provisions.

For more than 40 years, California was out of synch with the U.S. Supreme Court, permitting defendants in state antitrust actions to argue that direct purchasers suffered no harm because they passed price increases on to consumers. With a ruling Monday that eliminates the pass-through defense, California's now in step with the federal courts.

In a potentially ruinous suit for the gift card industry, a company called Every Penny Counts claimed that all gift cards violated its patents on technology for transferring "excess cash." The Federal Circuit thought differently.

It took a federal jury in Marshall, Tex., just 75 minutes to return a verdict that the Gap Inc. doesn't infringe on patents related to gift cards. For Alan Fisch it was his fourth defense verdict in the Eastern District of Texas.