In its fight for LaSalle Bank, Bank of America [ticker: BAC] said in an appeal filing that it was “shocking” that the Dutch court would disregard fundamental European Union law.

The Charlotte, N.C.-based bank has accused a Dutch court of unlawful action by blocking its $21 billion purchase of Dutch banking giant ABN Amro’s U.S. unit.

In support of calls from investors, last month a Dutch commercial court froze the deal between Bank of America and LaSalle Bank in order to allow for a shareholder vote.

The Dutch Supreme Court is hearing appeals by both ABN and Bank of America over the frozen deal and will rule later this month or in early July on whether the sale can take place.

Lerach's imminent departure comes amid a seven-year investigation by federal prosecutors in Los Angeles into his former law firm.

That firm, Milberg Weiss Bershad & Schulman, was indicted in May 2006 by a federal grand jury in Los Angeles. Prosecutors allege the firm secretly paid more than $11 million in kickbacks to get people to take part in shareholder lawsuits, allowing its lawyers to be among the first to file lawsuits on behalf of shareholders and secure the lucrative position as lead plaintiffs' counsel.

Attorneys Steven Schulman and David J. Bershad, former partners in the firm, were also indicted. They and the law firm have pleaded not guilty.

Lerach, 61, has not been charged in the case.

Lerach remains actively involved in only a handful of cases, Coughlin said. They include some of the firm's highest-profile work, including its case against Enron Corp. Lerach and his partners recouped about $7 billion for Enron shareholders.

According to the DOJ, Sapsizian admitted to paying the bribes to a director at Costa Rica's Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad, in order to secure mobile telephone contracts for his company. Alcatel was eventually awarded a $149 million mobile phone contract in August 2001, the department said.

Sapsizian had been employed by Alcatel and its subsidiaries for more than 20 years. Alcatel merged with Lucent Technologies in late 2006 and the joint company is now known as Alcatel-Lucent.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation continues to investigate the matter, the DOJ said.

Lawyers for former US vice-presidential aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby asked a federal judge Thursday to delay Libby's prison sentence because they felt they have a good chance of winning an appeal of his conviction. Libby was found guilty of perjury and obstruction of justice in March, and sentenced to 2 1/2- years in prison on Tuesday.

Defense lawyers filed papers with the court Thursday arguing that Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald did not have the authority to bring charges against Libby, and that they were wrongly barred from questioning NBC reporter Andrea Mitchell about certain aspects of the Valerie Plame scandal. Earlier this week, US District Judge Reggie B. Walton said there was no reason that Libby should not begin serving his sentence while his case is on appeal.

Duval allowed a lawsuit against The Allstate Corp., The St. Paul Travelers Companies Inc. and other insurers to proceed, but said the issue of "flood exclusion" could be appealed by the companies.

A hearing on the appeal was held Wednesday at the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. A three-judge panel heard arguments from lawyers for policyholders and several insurance companies. Rulings from the appeals court often take months but Judge Carolyn King, one of the three judges, said a decision would come as quickly as possible.

"This case is not just going to take in the queue. It's going to the head of the list," she said.

Insurers say their homeowner policies do not cover damage from any type of flooding, including water from the levees that broke in the aftermath of the Aug. 29, 2005, storm.

"The generally prevailing meaning of the word flood includes what happened during and after Hurricane Katrina in this city," Richard Doren, lawyer for Lexington Insurance Co. argued Wednesday.

The insurance industry stands to lose an estimated $1 billion ($740 million) in Louisiana if policyholders successfully challenge companies' refusal to cover damage from levee breaches, said Robert Hartwig, chief economist at the industry-funded Insurance Information Institute in New York.

In court papers, a lawyer for policyholders with consolidated cases against insurers said Duval properly concluded that the definition of "flood" in policies is limited to "naturally occurring events."

But plaintiffs' attorney John Ellison accuses insurers of purposely not defining the term 'flood' and deliberately drafting vague policy language "to frustrate the reasonable expectations of Louisiana homeowner policyholders from whom they collected premiums for years."

"It's difficult to think of a more important or significant issue that needs to be resolved with respect to Louisiana law," Ellison said Wednesday.

Lexington Insurance Co. attorneys argue that punishing insurers for failing to define common words like "flood" could force them to engage in "defensive over-specification, which would inevitably lead to longer policies that are less comprehensible to most policyholders."

Duval agreed last year to dismiss State Farm Insurance Cos. from the litigation. He ruled that State Farm's policies included language that clearly excluded all flood damage, regardless of the cause.

The Environmental Protection Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers wrote the new guidelines after the Supreme Court split a year ago in a case about which waters fall under the Clean Water Act.

Because of the split decision, lower courts must decide on a case-by-case basis if the law applies to smaller water areas.

Four justices said the law was restricted to protecting navigable waters such as lakes and rivers, and bodies connected to them, while four argued the law had a broader reach.

The new guidelines were intended to help workers in the field determine if a waterway fell under the act, using the argument of Justice Anthony Kennedy, who did not join either side in the decision.

Benjamin Grumbles, EPA's assistant administrator for water, told reporters during a conference the new guidelines would provide greater consistency and predictability for the public.

Now his agency will regulate waters large enough to be used by boats that transport commerce, along with wetlands adjacent to them. It will decide on a case-by-case basis to regulate other tributaries that may affect main waterways.

'In effect, the EPA and the Corps are taking their field staff and the public out to the woods, blindfolding them, spinning them in circles, telling them to 'go west,' and calling that guidance,' complained Jon Devine, a senior attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council.

The EPA's new policy does not offer clear instructions to scientists in the field on how to protect surface waters, Devine said, and would eliminate protections for many streams. He also said the case-by-case decisions would inspire an onslaught of lawsuits and public confusion.

John Woodley, Assistant Secretary of the Army, said there would be no way to measure changes from the guidance.

But, he said, the waterways in the Supreme Court case would have been considered wetlands according to EPA's new guidance.

Angered by the Supreme Court's split, Democratic lawmakers last month introduced the 'Clean Water Restoration Act' that would drop the word 'navigable' from the original law.

Rep. James Oberstar, a Minnesota Democrat sponsoring the legislation, said the single edit would make clear that the EPA must also protect watersheds, which are often creeks or estuaries where water has collected.

Senior Circuit Judge Donald Walter presented the hypothetical situation about Hitler to American Civil Liberties Union attorney JoNel Newman, asking her if a school board would be allowed to remove that book from library shelves.

Newman answered by saying that the book about Cuba was a geography book about daily life on the island, not about Castro.

"The political reality in Cuba is not what the book is about, " Newman said. "The School Board can't remove it because it wishes to inject a political message into it."

Board members voted last year to remove the book after a parent who spent time as a political prisoner in Cuba complained. Cuban-Americans, most of them anti-Castro, have significant political sway as the largest ethnic group in Miami.

In seeking to remove the book, the board overruled the decision of two academic advisory committees, as well as the county school superintendent.

But another parent and the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida challenged the removal. A federal judge ruled last summer that the board's opposition to the book was political and that it should add books of different perspectives to its collections instead of removing the offending titles. The ACLU contends that diverse opinions should be represented in school libraries.

Circuit Judge Ed Carnes presented his own hypothetical, asking Newman if a book about North Korea could be pulled from shelves because it failed to mention problems in that Communist government.

Newman countered by saying such political discussions shouldn't be required for books for elementary students, arguing whether a book about the Great Wall of China must mention Chinese Communist leader Mao Tse-tung.

On another issue, the third member of the appeals panel, Circuit Judge Charles Wilson, asked if a book had to be part of the curriculum or required reading in order to be removed from school libraries, where it was available for checkout on a voluntary basis.

"If a book is educationally unsuitable, it can be removed, " said Richard Ovelmen, the School Board's attorney.

Also at issue is whether the ACLU has standing to file its legal challenge.

The court hasn't indicated when it would rule.