A Portsmouth law firm and a Portsmouth contracting firm are tangled in Supreme Court litigation after serving as each other's unhappy customers two years ago.

The high court heard oral arguments Wednesday in a Consumer Protection Act claim by the Becksted Associates construction firm against the Nadeau law firm for using alleged deceptive and coercive business practices against them.

That's just one of several lawsuits between the two companies in the past year.

Attorney J.P. Nadeau and his son, Justin Nadeau, an attorney and former Democratic Congressional candidate, won a directed verdict for the firm in Rockingham County Superior Court in 2006 dismissing the consumer protection charge. The Becksteds appealed to the Supreme Court.

Both sides agree William Becksted Sr. and his son, William Becksted Jr., were renovating the second floor of the Nadeau law firm into an apartment for Justin Nadeau. The Nadeau court brief says the Becksteds were still billing Justin for more than $39,000 after he had paid $166,000 for a project he had understood would cost no more than $100,000, and later would cost no more than $154,000.

Nadeau refused to pay the balance because he was disappointed with the cost overruns and the work he was getting. According to both sides, he sent the contractors a letter March 4, 2005, on law firm letterhead threatening litigation unless they stopped dunning him. The Becksteds hired a different lawyer and sued the Nadeau firm on March 28.

Amid these mounting tensions, J.P. Nadeau was still representing the Becksteds in two unrelated legal cases on behalf of the construction firm. The elder Nadeau had sent his client no bills between the summer of 2004 and that December. In January 2005 he finally gave them an invoice for $12,001.50. It had obvious arithmetic errors, which Becksted Sr. picked up on. The total should been around $5,000, based on the hours and hourly rate.

Becksted asked the New Hampshire Bar Association for help resolving the billing issue. The elder Nadeau found out about it, rechecked his time log, changed the billable hours slightly, and sent a corrected bill for $5,335. He soon sent a bill for another $3,234 in legal fees for the second case he was working on. Eventually the combined legal bill reached $15,000.

Attorney Philip Pettis argued the Consumer Protection case for the Becksteds. He told the high court it was improper for the Nadeau firm to keep representing them as lawyers. Pettis also noted the legal bills arrived only after the contracting dispute had flared up.

Justice Richard Galway asked why this case is any different from the average contract dispute. Pettis said the lawyers were using their position of relative power as unfair leverage. It's hard to change lawyers in the middle of litigation. He also called the incorrect billing "inflated and deceptive."

Chief Justice John Broderick said a billing error is a foolish way to intimidate someone.

"Why would you do that if you weren't innocent?" he asked.

Pettis agreed that might not have been the best tactic.

Broderick grilled attorney Anna Barbara Hantz, the lawyer for the Nadeaus, the same way.

"You're working on my house," Broderick said. "I'm representing you in a legal case. I'm trying to use the bills you owe me to get you to drop claims against me over my house. We now have a personal dispute that's not going away. Does that bother you?"

Hantz said it certainly would.

"But the Consumer Protection Act doesn't have a different standard for lawyers," she added.

The Stamford, Connecticut-based company and three executives admitted that they falsely claimed OxyContin was less addictive, less subject to abuse, and less likely to cause withdrawal symptoms than rival pain medications.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration had not approved those claims.

"Purdue (Frederick) put its desire to sell OxyContin above the interests of the public," Assistant Attorney General Peter Keisler said in a statement. "Purdue abused the drug approval process which relies on drug manufacturers to be forthright in reporting clinical data and, instead, misled physicians about the addiction and withdrawal issues involved with OxyContin."

OxyContin, prescribed for patients with moderate to severe pain, is now regulated as a controlled substance with the same addictive potential as morphine.

Of the $634.5 million settlement, $276 million will be forfeited to the United States, $160 million allocated to federal and state government agencies to resolve false claims for government healthcare programs and $130 million will go to resolving private civil claims.

Additional amounts will be paid to the Virginia Attorney General's Medicaid Fraud Control Unit and the Virginia Prescription Monitoring program.

The guilty pleas follow a $19.5 million settlement the related manufacturer of OxyContin, Purdue Pharma LP, made with 26 states and the District of Columbia this week over allegations it failed to adequately disclose abuse risks posed by the powerful narcotic.

Purdue Pharma had also settled a civil case brought by its insurer in June for $200 million.

Graves is now the ninth known US Attorney to be fired last year for alleged political reasons. On Monday, the US Senate Judiciary Committee sent a letter to former US Attorney Bradley Schlozman to answer questions about a possible link between the firing scandal and voter fraud prosecutions. Also Monday, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) said that it would not try to block a House decision to grant immunity to former DOJ official Monica Goodling in exchange for her testimony about whether politics played a role in the dismissal of eight US Attorneys. Goodling told the committee in March that she would not speak to the committee about her role in the firings.

Randi Collotta, who worked for Morgan Stanley's compliance division in New York, admitted to giving information about upcoming mergers and acquisitions to her husband, who is in private practice.

Christopher Collotta told the court he shared some of the insider information with Florida broker Marc Jurman, who agreed to share part of his profits with the Collottas and also passed the information along to others.

The couple sat at opposite ends of a long table at the hearing, flanked by their lawyers and occasionally glancing at each other. Randi Collotta wept softly as she read a statement admitting her guilt.

"Randi Collotta accepted responsibility for what she did, and today she took a significant step in putting this behind her," her lawyer Kenneth Breen said after the hearing.

The Bayport, New York couple were among 13 people charged criminally in March with participating in the scheme. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filed separate, civil charges against 11 people, including the Collottas.

Six of the 13 defendants, including Jurman, have pleaded guilty.

Christopher Collotta's lawyers released a statement after the hearing saying, "Mr. Collotta recognizes that these are serious offenses, deeply regrets his actions in participating in these offenses, and realizes that he will have to live with the consequences of his actions for the rest of his life."

Both defendants agreed to forfeit $9,000 in profits they made through the scheme. Randi Collotta agreed not to appeal a sentence of 18 months or less in prison, while her husband agreed not to appeal a sentence of 16 months or less, Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew Fish said. Both face a maximum 25 year prison term.

The couple were released until sentencing, scheduled for Sept. 7. They have been free on $250,000 bond each.

Planned Parenthood (PP), Southwest Ohio Region, and its representatives were without comment on Wednesday, May 9, 2007, when they were named as defendants in a lawsuit filed in Warren County Ohio, alleging that they violated Ohio law by their failure to report the sexual abuse of minors.  The suit alleges that on November 15, 2004, 16 year-old Denise Fairbanks, was brought to PP by her father, who had been sexually assaulting her since she was 13. He sought an abortion for his daughter at PP's Auburn Avenue facility in order to cover up the sexual abuse and resulting pregnancy. 

"If the allegations are true, then PP is complicit in the abuse of Ms. Fairbanks when they should have protected her," says Dana Cody of Life Legal Defense Foundation (LLDF).    "Our children deserve better."   

Attorney Brian E. Hurley of Cincinnati based law firm Crabbe, Brown and James, who is representing Ms. Fairbanks, stated in the complaint that PP's "don't ask, don't tell policy" resulted in another one and one-half years of abuse of Ms. Fairbanks.  It wasn't until a basketball coach reported the abuse that Ms. Fairbanks's father was tried and convicted of sexual assault. 

The suit also alleges the failure to report abuse of another unnamed minor as proof of PP's pattern and practice of non-reporting of sexual abuse of minors.

In addition to the failure to protect Ms. Fairbanks by not reporting the abuse in violation of the law, the suit calls into question PP's policies and procedures as well as the training and supervision of clinic employees.  

A copy of the complaint is available at www.lldf.org.  LLDF is helping to fund a similar case, also in Ohio, Roe v. Planned Parenthood.  That suit seeks damages against PP for performing an abortion on a minor in violation of  Ohio law, including laws mandating reporting of suspected sexual abuse of minors .  There is a hearing in that case next week, wherein PP has objected to producing records requested by "Roe," who is making allegations similar to those of Ms. Fairbanks.  "Roe" is also being represented by Mr. Hurley.

Currently, Vermont, Connecticut, California, New Jersey, Maine and Washington are the only states that recognize civil unions or domestic partnerships. The Washington State Senate passed a domestic partnership bill in March. Late last month, the New Hampshire Senate voted in favor of a bill already passed by the state House allowing same-sex civil unions. Also in late April, New York Governor Eliot Spitzer introduced a bill to legalize gay marriage in New York.

The Food and Drug Administration would have to establish a system to monitor the safety of new drugs after they hit the market and the pharmaceutical industry would be required to register clinical trials of new medicines in a publicly available database under legislation approved yesterday by the Senate.

The provisions are part of a sweeping bill, approved by a 93-to-1 vote, that would reauthorize the federal practice of charging drug makers hundreds of millions of dollars in fees each year to speed up FDA review approval of new drugs. The system of fees will expire Sept. 30 unless Congress reauthorizes it before then. The House has not yet taken up similar legislation.

The Senate bill also would enable the FDA to fine companies that fail to report contaminated food and require the government to establish labeling standards for pet food and to create a system to detect tainted pet food and notify the public of recalls.

It would provide for fines of up to $2 million for pharmaceutical companies that do not comply with the new system to measure the risks of new and high risk drugs in the first few years after they become available in the marketplace.

"This legislation is going to make the prescription drugs that families take safer and our food safer, and it's going to ensure that the agency has the resources to do follow-on reviews and continue to be the gold standard for safety," said Senator Edward Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee and a lead sponsor of the bill.

Senator Mike Enzi, Republican of Wyoming , the chief Republican sponsor of the bill, said: "The changes made in the drug safety components of this legislation are critical to restoring peace of mind to Americans who want to be assured that the drugs they purchase to treat illnesses and chronic medical conditions can be relied upon and trusted."

Peter Lurie, deputy director of the health research group at the nonpartisan advocacy organization Public Citizen, agreed that the bill improves drug safety, but said lawmakers failed to address the core issue: that the FDA user fee system requires a regulated industry to fund its regulators.

"It is a fundamental conflict of interest to have an industry be able to dictate to an agency the speed at which reviews will take place," Lurie said. "And yet that's exactly what happens and nobody challenged that in a fundamental way."

The Senate legislation was shaped in part by an analysis by the Institute of Medicine last year that concluded the federal system for approving and regulating drugs is in serious disrepair. That report, requested by the FDA, followed two years of controversy over drug safety after the 2004 withdrawal of the arthritis drug Vioxx because of the risk of heart attacks.

Much of the institute report focused on a key gap in drug regulation: While the FDA requires stricter data on the safety and effectiveness from clinical trials before approving a new drug, less attention is paid after the drug reaches the market.

The Senate bill requires stepped up monitoring of new drugs for dangerous side effects and gives the FDA new authority to limit the sale of medicines if problems are found.

Drug makers could be required to undertake new studies of drugs after approval, and physicians who prescribe certain high-risk drugs would have to undergo special training.