Until yesterday, the nation has had an unusually competitive retail market, in part because antitrust laws made it illegal for sellers or manufacturers to agree on fixed prices. The Supreme Court, in a 1911 case involving a Dr. Miles and his patented medicines, had said that price-fixing agreements between manufacturers and retail sellers were flatly illegal.

The rule's practical effect was to discourage a manufacturer from setting a price -- leading, for instance, to stickers on new cars that list the "manufacturer's suggested retail price." However, in yesterday's opinion, the high court described this rule as out of step with modern economics.

At issue is an anti-terrorism law that Bush pushed through Congress last year taking away the right of the foreign terrorist suspects held at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba to have a judicial review of their detention.

The decision by the court to hear the two cases was a setback for the Bush administration which had urged the justices to turn down the appeals.

There are about 375 detainees now at the prison which critics, including some of Washington's allies, have demanded be closed. The first arrived more than five years ago after the United States launched its war on terrorism in response to the Sept. 11 attacks.

The indefinite detention and allegations of prisoner mistreatment at Guantanamo, which the U.S. military denies, have tarnished the U.S. image abroad. Human rights groups have demanded Guantanamo be closed and detainees charged with crimes or released.

Three of the nine justices in April dissented from the decision to reject the appeals by the Guantanamo prisoners. The high court on Friday gave no explanation for its reversal in now deciding to hear the cases.

After the appeals had been rejected in April, lawyers for the prisoners asked the court to reconsider, and the court on Friday agreed. It has been the first time in decades the high court has granted such a request.

The Supreme Court's action in the Guantanamo cases was announced the day after the justices had ended their 2006-2007 term.

Law firm Nelson Levine de Luca & Horst said Thursday it has acquired the eight-lawyer New York office of Chicago-based Querrey & Harrow. The group adds three partners to an existing small New York office for Nelson Levine, which represents insurance industry clients.

The Querrey group focuses on complex insurance and reinsurance litigation. Querrey partner George Vogrin will serve as managing partner of the New York office. He currently serves as coordinating counsel to underwriters at Lloyds of London, and represents other London-based insurers and reinsurers.

The 50-lawyer Nelson Levine opened its London office last year to serve the firm's international insurance and surplus lines insurer clients and said the latest addition will enable the firm to focus on the European insurance market.

"As a boutique firm focused solely on the insurance industry, the European insurance market is essential to our continued growth," Nelson Levine Chairman Michael Nelson said. "The addition of this practice is a perfect fit for us, as it expands our capabilities and provides additional depth and support as well as unique experience in exciting new practice areas."

Nelson said Nelson Levine is ahead of its five-year growth plan and has taken on new space at its Blue Bell headquarters that can accommodate 70 lawyers. The firm also has offices in Philadelphia; Cherry Hill and Newark, N.J.; and Columbus, Ohio.

Scripps “strongly objects” to the accusations, company spokesman Don Stanziano said yesterday. “Scripps is proud of our service to the community.”

He said the class-action designation, made Wednesday by Judge Steven Denton, did not represent a decision on the appropriateness of the bills under scrutiny. The ruling allows the plaintiff's attorneys to represent all the uninsured patients who might have been affected by the hospitals' practices.

“What happened today was expected. It's part of the process,” Stanziano said.

The case is similar to other suits filed in recent years in California and other states alleging that nonprofit health care systems such as Scripps have failed to live up to their legal obligation to provide free care to the needy in exchange for a tax-exempt status.

In the most recent case in California, Catholic Healthcare West agreed to pay $423 million in refunds and bill reductions to hundreds of thousands of uninsured patients who received care at the nonprofit's 35 hospitals in California. The San Francisco-based health care system did not admit any wrongdoing.

The Scripps case was filed last year by Franklin, of Solana Beach, who was referred to a collection agency after failing to pay a $2,900 bill for a visit to the emergency room at Scripps Memorial Hospital Encinitas in October 2004. Franklin was unemployed at the time because of a work-related disability and couldn't pay the charges, Dermody said.

Franklin went to the hospital with severe kidney pain and was diagnosed with a kidney stone. He was given urine and blood tests, a CT scan and pain medication, according to the suit, and was referred to a urologist.

The hospital was unwilling to let Franklin pay his bill in installments, Dermody said. The bill collector that later pursued the charges filed a lawsuit against Franklin in January 2006.

The rates at which Scripps bills uninsured patients – known as chargemaster prices – were, on average, 412 percent above the rates the hospitals charge when caring for patients covered by Medicare, the federal government's health care program for people who are elderly or have disabilities, according to the suit.

Government and private health plans routinely negotiate discounts for hospital services by using the leverage of being able to direct large numbers of patients to health care providers.

A recent article in the journal Health Affairs found growing evidence that uninsured patients are being charged considerably more – often as much as two and a half times – for hospital services than those with insurance.

The trend is a dramatic reversal from conditions 50 years ago when the poor and uninsured were often charged the lowest prices for medical services, wrote article author Gerard Anderson, a professor of health policy and management at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore.

Stanziano said that Scripps already offers a number of options for uninsured patients who need help paying their bills, including extended payment plans and discounts for those making less than 350 percent of the federal poverty rate or $72,275 a year for a family of four.

In 2005, the lawyers won what Gains calls the liability phase of the case, in which U.S. District Judge David D. Dowd Jr. sided with the inmates and took control of the lockup.

Generally the losing party in a case pays the winning party's legal fees.

The county's insurance company, the County Risk Sharing Authority, also known as CORSA, paid the legal fees associated with the liability phase, Gains said.

But CORSA argued it shouldn't responsible for the fees associated with the consent agreement, Gains said, and he agreed to assign his staff to represent the county in that matter and to pay Armbruster and Kelly's fees.