The justices rejected the case of Ronnie Cottrell and Ivy Williams without comment.

Cottrell and Williams sued the NCAA and recruiting analyst Tom Culpepper for defamation, claiming they were unable to find comparable employment following the NCAA's investigation of Alabama. The football program was placed on probation and received other sanctions for rules violations.

Cottrell won a $30 million judgment against Culpepper, but the trial judge threw out the verdict and ordered a new trial. The Alabama Supreme Court upheld that ruling, as well as others that eliminated Williams as a plaintiff and the NCAA as a defendant.

Cottrell still is entitled to a new trial, but could find it harder to prove his claims under the Alabama high court ruling.

The justices' decision Tuesday includes no comment explaining why they turned down the appeal from the American Civil Liberties Union.

The ACLU wanted the court to allow a lawsuit by the group and individuals over the warrantless wiretapping program. An appeals court dismissed the suit because the plaintiffs cannot prove their communications have been monitored.

The government has refused to turn over information about the closely guarded program that could reveal who has been under surveillance.

A part-time private attorney who was listed as a full-time employee by five school districts - enabling him to earn health benefits and a nearly $62,000-a-year state-funded pension, while his law firm was paid millions of dollars in fees - has been suspended by his current law firm, one of its partners said yesterday.

Steven Schlesinger, a partner in the Garden City law firm of Jaspan, Schlesinger, Hoffman, said yesterday that his firm had suspended Lawrence Reich and asked for his resignation. Reich had been serving as of counsel, or as a consultant, to the law firm since Jan. 1.

Newsday reported Friday that five school districts falsely reported to the state that Reich, 67, was a full-time employee in each district at the same time. The districts were Baldwin, Bellmore-Merrick High School, Copiague, East Meadow and Harborfields.

"Based on the publicity, it's not any good to have him at the firm," Schlesinger said. "I don't need P.R. liabilities."

He added, however, "I don't think any laws were violated."

Schlesinger said the firm has not heard from Reich since the disclosures. "We're trying to locate him."

Reich, who lives in Centerport, did not return a call for comment yesterday. In an earlier interview, he defended his arrangement with the five districts as "common practice."

At the same time that the districts claimed Reich as an employee, they paid his then-law firm, Ingerman Smith of Hauppauge, more than $2.5 million in fees, according to district records. Under Internal Revenue Service rules, a person cannot be treated as both an employee and independent contractor for the same work.

After the Newsday story appeared, agents with the Federal Bureau of Investigation served all five districts with subpoenas for financial records.

In addition, the New York State comptroller has sent letters to four of the five districts, notifying them that they would be audited. Reich left the payroll of East Meadow on Nov. 30, 2001, according to records.

Reich retired with an annual pension of $61,459 in September 2006. But he continued working for some of the districts, according to letters he sent asking them to "reconfigure" his pay as a retainer, rather than as a salary.

Last July, state auditors uncovered the problem in an audit of the Harborfields school district. Reich said he then contacted the state about his pension eligibility and was assured it was common practice.

The state took no action, and the issue was not included in the final audit of Harborfields.

Nonetheless, Reich notified the districts that he was retiring for good in October.

In December, Ingerman Smith notified the districts that Reich was leaving the firm.

Gates, who called Microsoft's offer for Yahoo "very fair", said Google is the only company with "critical mass" in Web search. Microsoft needs a bigger piece of the market to create a more competitive and profitable Web search business.

"We can afford to make big investments in the engineering and marketing that needs to get done. We will do that with or without Yahoo," said Gates in an interview with Reuters.

"But we also see that we'd get there faster if the great engineering work that Yahoo has done and the great engineers there were part of the common effort," said Gates, who is Microsoft's biggest shareholder.

The two companies are at a stand-off in Microsoft's $41.7 billion unsolicited bid to acquire Yahoo. Microsoft has offered to buy Yahoo for $31 a share in cash and stock, a bid which Yahoo's board rejected, saying it undervalued the company.

Microsoft countered by saying its offer was "full and fair," but did not say what it planned to do next. Analysts expect Microsoft to sweeten its bid, possibly to $35 a share, to clinch a deal.

"There is nothing new in terms of the process. We've sent our letter and we've reinforced that we consider that it's a very fair offer," said Gates, who remains the public face of Microsoft, even though he plans to switch to a part-time role at the company in June to focus on his philanthropic work.

Microsoft's stock has fallen 13 percent since its offer for Yahoo, reducing Microsoft's offer price to $29. Yahoo shares closed at $29.66 on the Nasdaq on Friday, indicating that investors expect Microsoft to raise its bid.

In addition, RIM alleges that Motorola "is demanding exorbitant royalties...for patents that Motorola claims are essential to various standards for mobile wireless telecommunications and wireless computing that RIM practices."

This includes technology that allows mobile telephone handset users to use Wi-Fi, RIM said.

At the same time, Motorola is refusing to acknowledge or pay royalties for certain patents held by RIM, the BlackBerry-maker said.

RIM claims that Motorola's response to the "declining fortunes" of its own handset business can been seen in dramatic increases in royalties charged to RIM. None of the allegations has been proved in court.

RIM's worldwide subscriber base of about 12 million includes business executives, politicians and professionals who rely on the BlackBerry to send secure e-mails. BlackBerry has been expanding from its mainstay enterprise market into the consumer sector with sleeker handsets that offer a range of services in addition to e-mail.

Congress has recognized that sometimes this power can be abused by managers who retaliate if they don't like something that employee has said or done.

This week, the US Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in two cases examining how, when – or even if – employees can fight back against such abuses of power. On Tuesday, the high court will examine whether a US postal worker can claim retaliation in a lawsuit under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act because she says her supervisor refused to let her return to her old job because he didn't like her personally. Instead, he hired a younger, less experienced worker.

On Wednesday, the justices will hear the case of a former assistant manager at a Cracker Barrel restaurant who alleges he was fired in retaliation for his repeated complaints about racial prejudice by his supervisor.

In both cases the laws cited do not explicitly authorize legal action in response to an act of retaliation. Lawyers for the employees say retaliation is a particularly virulent form of illegal discrimination and thus falls within the scope of the US's civil rights laws even when those laws don't specifically mention retaliation.

Lawyers for companies and supervisors counter that if Congress wanted to authorize lawsuits to punish acts of retaliation, it would have written it into each statute.