A federal judge in Maine yesterday denied class-action status to four lawsuits accusing Philip Morris USA of misleading smokers about the health risks of light cigarettes.

The ruling by U.S. District Judge John A. Woodcock Jr. concerns lawsuits that were filed in Illinois, Maine, California and Washington, D.C., alleging that Henrico County-based Philip Morris USA marketed light cigarettes as healthier than regular cigarettes in violation of various consumer-protection and false-advertising laws.

The lawsuits are among 15 cases that were consolidated for pre-trial proceedings in federal court. In his ruling, Woodcock said the plaintiffs had not met the requirements for class-action status.

"While the judge has yet to rule on the remaining cases in the multidistrict litigation, we believe this decision should serve as a persuasive authority in denying class certification in those and other similar cases as well," said Murray Garnick, senior vice president and associate general counsel for Philip Morris USA parent company Altria Group Inc.

The federal court ruling in Maine yesterday was in contrast to a decision in a separate lawsuit in New Hampshire state court Monday.

In that case, a superior court judge granted class-action status to a lawsuit against Philip Morris USA over its marketing of light cigarettes. A spokesman for Philip Morris USA said the company will appeal that decision to the New Hampshire Supreme Court.

The fate of the largest job bias lawsuit in the nation's history — a claim that Wal-Mart Stores Inc. shortchanged women in pay and promotions for many years — hinges on whether the Supreme Court will let the class-action case go to trial.

The court is likely to announce as soon as Monday whether it will hear the retail giant's appeal asserting that a single lawsuit cannot speak for more than 1.5 million employees.

Business lawyers and civil rights advocates are closely following the Wal-Mart case for its implications for class-action litigation.
"This may sound like just a technical, procedural issue, but because of the economics of it, class-action certification is often the most important issue to be decided," said Washington lawyer Roy T. Englert Jr.

If the high court permits the Wal-Mart case to proceed as a class action, it will put enormous pressure on the retailer to settle, he said. The plaintiffs have not specified the damages they would seek, but given the size of the class, it could mount into billions of dollars.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and several large corporations have joined with Wal-Mart, the nation's largest employer, in urging the high court to hear the appeal and to restrict the use of class-action claims.

They argue that it is unfair to permit plaintiffs' lawyers to lump together many thousands of employees from stores spread across the country and to rely on statistics to prove illegal discrimination.

A $450 million class action is being launched on behalf of National Australia Bank shareholders who lost money during the global financial crisis because of NAB's exposure to toxic debt.

Legal firm Maurice Blackburn will lodge the claim in a Victorian court tomorrow.

The firm says NAB had bought $1.2 billion in collateralised debt obligations (CDO) in 2006 which had a heavy exposure to the US sub-prime housing market.

It will allege that between early January and late July that year, NAB failed to properly disclose to shareholders all material information relating to its CDO exposure.

An industrial espionage trial between Oracle Corp. and SAP AG, two of the world's biggest business software makers, ended Friday without the testimony of one of its most anticipated witnesses.

The evidence part of the three-week trial wrapped up Friday without an in-person appearance by the new CEO of Hewlett-Packard Co., Leo Apotheker, and without Oracle playing a videotaped deposition he gave.

The cat-and-mouse game of Oracle trying to force Apotheker to testify, and HP refusing to allow it, has captivated technology watchers and overshadowed Apotheker's start as head of the world's biggest technology company by revenue.

Oracle wanted Apotheker to testify because he was previously SAP's CEO.

But Oracle says that HP refused to accept a subpoena on Apotheker's behalf. HP accused Oracle of harassing Apotheker.

Oracle hired investigators to track down Apotheker, but since he started the HP job Nov. 1, he wasn't spotted close enough to the federal courthouse in Oakland, where the case is being tried, for Oracle to serve him with the subpoena. The subpoena only applies within 100 miles of the courthouse, which includes HP's headquarters in Palo Alto.

HP hasn't disclosed Apotheker's whereabouts. Representatives have

The Ohio Supreme Court will get a chance to determine the legality of the state's smoking ban after an appeals court ruled that state officials didn't overstep their bounds when they repeatedly cited a Victorian Village bar for violating Ohio's smoking ban.

Zeno's Victorian Village is fighting a two-pronged battle against the 2006 anti-smoking law, saying that it shouldn't apply to family-owned bars and that authorities are unfairly punishing bars for violating the ban rather than the smokers themselves.

On Tuesday, the Franklin  County Court of Appeals handed Zeno's a big setback. In a  3-0 ruling, judges overturned a trial court's decision that dismissed more than $30,000 in  fines against Zeno's. The trial  court concluded that authorities had singled out bars and  restaurants for penalties while  refusing to cite smokers who  violated the ban.

The February ruling by Franklin County Common Pleas Judge David E. Cain never affected how state and local health departments enforce the no-smoking law. As of the end of August, more than 2,500 fines had been imposed totaling nearly $1.2 million, according to the Ohio Department of Health. State and local officials had collected about $400,000 of that amount.