The already heated battle over the proposed $7 billion credit card "swipe fee" settlement is about to get even more contentious. On Friday, the law firms representing a proposed nationwide class of seven million merchants filed a motion for preliminary approval of the settlement. The numerous trade groups and retailers that have criticized the deal will now 30 days to voice their objections.

Plaintiffs lawyers were awarded $30 million for helping secure a settlement with Volkswagen and Audi drivers whose cars turned their engine oil to sludge. But the car makers want the award slashed, claiming it's two-thirds the size of the settlement itself.

Four years after regulators began investigating alleged collusion by the banks controlling the CDS market, private antitrust litigation is finally starting to take shape.

After hitting a roadblock erected by the U.S. Supreme Court in Morrison v. National Australia Bank, the litigation boutique Lewis Baach has swerved to survive a major hurdle in its $1 billion state court case against Goldman Sachs & Co. over a CDO that a Goldman exec once called "one shitty deal."

In a consolidated case involving 87 antitrust suits against candy manufacturers, a federal district court judge in Harrisburg, Pa., has certified an appeal of his March 4 refusal to dismiss plaintiffs' claims of collusion and price-fixing.

If the judgment had been upheld, taxpayers would have paid the bill. The Department of Energy, which owned the former nuclear weapons plant, had agreed to indemnify the plant's former operators, Dow Chemical and Rockwell International.

Plaintiffs lawyers accusing the bankrupt securities firm MF Global of bilking customers out of $1.6 billion have expanded their civil suit with new claims against the auditing giant PricewaterhouseCoopers.