If the litigation over rights to the superheroes Stan Lee created at Marvel Entertainment were a comic book, Marvel counsel David Fleischer of Paul Hastings would be wearing tights and a cape.

The appellate ruling comes too late to keep generic manufacturers of the colon cancer drug Eloxatin out of the market, but the Federal Circuit found that a lower court judge interpreted Sanofi's patent incorrectly when he cleared the way for its rivals.

If the tobacco industry needed proof that the Supreme Court's preemption ruling last December in Altria v. Good was a big win for consumers, they got it Monday: The Massachusetts high court ruled that a consumer class action by smokers of "light" cigarettes could proceed to trial.

Plaintiffs hoping to hold Bank of America liable for alleged fraud by its Countrywide Financial unit got some tough news on Thursday. Despite Quinn Emanuel's aggressive efforts to keep the bank on the hook in a Countrywide mortgage-backed securities case brought by Allstate, a federal judge in Los Angeles once again rejected the insurer's successor liability claim.

The legendary creator of Spider Man and the Hulk severed ties with the company that bears his name and made peace with Marvel last year. But that--and a long string of adverse rulings--hasn't stopped Stan Lee Media from continuing to go after rights to the Marvel characters.

N.Y. Supreme Court Justice Eileen Bransten, who's overseeing MBIA's big mortgage-backed securities suit against Countrywide and Bank of America, apparently got fed up with a flurry of letters from lawyers battling over BofA's separate $8.5 billion MBS settlement.