Delivering a big blow to Hollywood attorney Marc Toberoff, the Ninth Circuit ruled Thursday that the heirs of now-deceased Superman co-creator Jerry Siegel signed away their rights to the Man of Steel in a 2001 agreement with Warner Brothers.

It's been a while since we've tracked the Miami litigation over the Fontainebleau casino resort project, which hit the skids in 2009 when the banks financing the development backed out and Fontainebleau filed for bankruptcy. But while the docket has continued to advance, the song remains the same: The banks are winning.

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.

We're not sure who's a hero and who's a villain in a comic book-worthy copyright battle over the control of the Superman franchise. But for the heirs of Superman's creators, O'Melveny's Daniel Petrocelli played Lex Luthor this week when he won a key victory for Warner Brothers and its DC Comics subsidiary.