The state may have been partly responsible for the release of toxic chemicals at the Stringfellow Acid Pits site more than 40 years ago. But its insurers have to share in the $500 million cost of cleaning up the mess, the state supreme court ruled this week.

The case of the allegedly looted $20 million Pissarro painting presents a fascinating question: Does Spain have sovereign immunity from a suit to recover the painting because it wasn't the nation responsible for the work's theft? Seventy years ago, the Nazi government virtually stole the painting from a Jewish family, but Spain argued that because it acquired the painting long after its expropriation, it was entitled to immunity. The Ninth Circuit ruled otherwise.

The state may have been partly responsible for the release of toxic chemicals at the Stringfellow Acid Pits site more than 40 years ago. But its insurers have to share in the $500 million cost of cleaning up the mess, the state supreme court ruled this week.

The latest stage in long-running litigation over alleged price-fixing in the market for LCD screens is getting underway in San Francisco this week, with Best Buy and Eastman Kodak heading to trial against a trio of LCD screen manufacturers.

In the lastest chapter in the bitter feud between onetime partners Huawei and Motorola, a Chicago judge took less than a day to bar Motorola from disclosing confidential Huawei information to Nokia Siemens in the planned $1.2 billion transfer of Motorola's wireless networking business.