The plaintiffs lawyers leading El Paso shareholders' assault on the company's planned $21 billion acquisition by Kinder Morgan lost their bid to enjoin the sale late Wednesday, but they sure got the judge's attention. Can they translate the opprobrium of Delaware Chancery Court chancellor Leo Strine Jr. into a big payday--and more than a little embarrassment for El Paso advisor Goldman Sachs?

The judge called the deal "half-baked justice at best," but still "better than nothing." And that's about the best Rakoff had to say for a case that's bedeviled him for six months.

The AIG litigation machine keeps humming as a New York federal judge declines to dismiss a class action alleging that the insurer misled shareholders about its credit default swap portfolio.

An anonymous tipster with apparent inside knowledge of the agency's negotiations with Citi raised the allegations in an unsigned fax to Sen. Charles Grassley. True or not, the fax makes for compelling reading--and we've got a link to it.

We've all been waiting for the other shoe to drop since word leaked in April that AIG was getting ready to sue the banks that sold it $40 billion in toxic mortgage bonds. On Monday AIG's lawyers at Quinn Emanuel slammed it down--and hard. The bank's new litigation woes, coupled with the U.S. credit downgrade, may have conspired to knock 20 percent off BofA's stock price on Monday.