MLM Counties News. Notices. Need-to-know Information.

Merscorp Inc., which runs an electronic registry of mortgages, had a civil-racketeering lawsuit against it voluntarily dismissed. The plaintiffs, who accused the company and its Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems of forcing false foreclosures in New York state, reached an undisclosed settlement with the Steven J. Baum PC foreclosure law firm in Amherst, N.Y. U.S. District Judge Jack B. Weinstein in Brooklyn closed the case April 14.

Merck & Co. won the first of hundreds of state-court lawsuits in which its Fosamax osteoporosis drug is blamed for causing so-called jaw death.

U.S. carmakers and engine manufacturers asked an appeals court to force the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to reconsider its October decision allowing the sale of gasoline with 15 percent ethanol.

A lawyer for Roger Clemens urged a judge to throw out a lawsuit in which the former Major League Baseball pitcher is accused of defamation by his onetime trainer, Brian McNamee.

A Deutsche Bank AG salesman’s trial began in U.S. regulators’ first case targeting insider trading in credit-default swaps. Jon-Paul Rorech, a bond and credit-default swap salesman at Deutsche Bank Securities, is accused of illegally feeding information on a bond sale ...

Merrill Lynch, now a unit of Bank of America Corp., won dismissal of investors’ class action over auction-rate securities, at least the seventh such victory since the market collapsed in February 2008. Kansas City-based Stueve Siegel Hanson was representing investors ...

E*Trade Financial Corp., the online brokerage that hasn’t made money since 2007, won dismissal of a class-action lawsuit accusing it of making misrepresentations to customers in selling them auction-rate securities. Kansas City-based Stueve Siegel Hanson is representing investors in the ...

A former lawyer at McGuireWoods pleaded guilty to securities fraud for trading unregistered private-placement shares of companies that were his clients. Louis Zehil, 44, was charged by federal prosecutors with illegally trading shares in seven companies for which he helped ...

A broker-dealer unit of Citigroup Inc., the third-largest U.S. bank by assets, doesn’t have to arbitrate a claim that it arranged a credit-default swap that cheated a hedge fund out of $10 million. The federal appeals court in New York, ...

Hugh Hefner, founder and majority shareholder of Playboy Enterprises Inc., was sued by an investor who said Hefner rejected acquisition suitors during the past six months so he could maintain his lifestyle. David Brown sued Monday in state court in ...

Citigroup Inc., Goldman Sachs Group Inc., UBS AG and seven other banks won dismissal of lawsuits in which they were accused of violating U.S. antitrust law by propping up and then abandoning the market for auction-rate securities. U.S. District Judge ...