The European Union's Court of Justice ruled Thursday that Greece illegally ignored an EU order to recover millions of euros (dollars) in aid it gave to the ailing Olympic national airline.

The Luxembourg-based court said Greece "had not fulfilled its obligations" to take back the handouts from Olympic Airlines SA and its predecessor Olympic Airways.

EU officials said last November that Olympic would have to repay 130 million euros ($189.6 million) to the Greek government.

The ruling confirmed three previous EU court decisions since 2002, which backed the EU's executive Commission's arguments that the millions of euros (dollars) in direct aid and subsidies violated state aid rules and gave Olympic an unfair advantage over competitors.

Greece and Olympic Airlines still have an appeal pending in a lower EU court to annul earlier Commission decisions against restructuring aid and subsidies given to the airline.

Olympic Airlines won a small victory last year at the EU court when it said the Commission failed to prove some of the funds violated EU state aid rules. Those funds involved unpaid taxes on fuel and spare parts, as well as unpaid fees to Athens International Airport.

For years, Greece supplied subsidies to the struggling national airline, which in 2001 had debts totaling some 120 million euros ($166 million). In 2003, the government incorporated the assets of debt-ridden Olympic Airways and two subsidiaries into the newly named Olympic Airlines.

Investors showed immediate enthusiasm for Pittsburgh-based Calgon Carbon Corp., an industry leader in mercury-removal technology. Stocks were up the day of the ruling and continued to rise in the following days.

"We think that long-term it is going to be quite positive for us," said Calgon spokesperson Gail Gerono.

In its Feb. 8 ruling, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit struck down the Environmental Protection Agency's Clean Air Mercury Rule (CAMR).

The court agreed with opponents that the EPA, in adopting the CAMR for the control of mercury, had violated the Clean Air Act.

Mercury is a neurotoxin, a powerful poison that causes nerve and brain damage. It enters waterways and accumulates in fish and is especially harmful to children.

The 2005 CAMR aimed to cap U.S. power plant mercury emissions, which stand at about 48 tons a year. It would have reduced them by about 20 percent by 2010 and 70 percent by 2018.

Environmental groups and 17 states sued the agency, arguing that the Clean Air Act requires cuts as steep as 90 percent because existing mercury-removal technology can achieve those levels.

Last week's court action leaves the nation with no regulatory control over power plant mercury emissions while the EPA establishes a new rule based on available technology.

"It's sort of ironic," said American Electric Power spokesman Pat D. Hemlepp. "The environmentalists' challenge actually eliminates some of the reductions that would have taken place by 2010."

Some reductions will take place even without regulation.

"The majority of the mercury emissions reductions that we would achieve by 2010 will happen even without that rule (as) a co-benefit of other equipment that we are installing for sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides control," Hemlepp explained.

But, he added, "We would have had to also put some activated carbon systems in place on some plants to do some mercury capture--and those are the systems that we will likely end up delaying until we get some clarity on what's going to be required."

Activated carbon, the current industry standard for mercury removal, is injected in powdered form into the flue of a coal-fired plant.

"The activated carbon comes into contact with the mercury and (bonds to it by chemical attraction)," Calgon's Gerono explained. "The activated carbon that holds the mercury is taken to a landfill."

The technology can remove 90 percent of the mercury from the flue stream, she said.

In a statement, Boston Scientific said it believed the jury's verdict is unsupported by both the evidence and the law. As a result, the company said it would seek to overturn the verdict in post-trial motions and, if unsuccessful, appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals.

"We do not intend to record a charge at this time because we believe we will prevail on appeal," said company spokesman Paul Donovan.

Barbara Wrigley, a patent attorney with Oppenheimer Wolff & Donnelly in Minneapolis who was not involved with the case, said the jury award easily stands as one of the 10 largest ever in the U.S. An appeal likely would take about two years, Wrigley estimated, and the matter could drag on even longer if the case is then sent back to the lower court for reconsideration.

"It's not unusual for an individual inventor to win an award like this," Wrigley said, adding a jury's perception is of a David-like underdog going up against a Goliath-like
corporation.

Stents are metal mesh tubes used to prop open heart arteries, and the Taxus stent has generated billions in sales for Boston Scientific's stent division in Maple Grove. The stent is coated with drugs that prevent arteries from re-clogging - a development that helped make stents blockbuster products in 2003 and 2004.

Gary Hoffman, an attorney who represented Saffran, said his client came up with the essential concept behind drug coated-stents while completing his residency at a hospital in Boston. Saffran worked at home with makeshift materials in coming up with the idea for placing a layer of material on devices that could "directionally deliver a drug to damaged tissue," Hoffman said.

Saffran applied for a patent in 1995 and received it two years later, said Hoffman, who is with Dickstein Shapiro in Washington, D.C. It is valid, he said, until 2013. The inventor also has a lawsuit against New Jersey-based Johnson & Johnson, which has dominated the drug-coated stent market along with Boston Scientific.

"Dr. Saffran is an independent inventor, and his contributions to the advancement of medical technology needed to be recognized and rewarded," Hoffman said.

Saffran still is considering whether to seek an injunction against the sale of the Taxus products, Hoffman said.

Johnson & Johnson won such an injunction last year in a separate patent case involving a Medtronic spinal product, which Fridley-based Medtronic had to remove from the market.

To Larry Kurland, a partner in the intellectual property group with the St. Louis-based law firm Bryan Cave, said the award speaks volumes about the attitude of juries in the eastern district of Texas like the one that heard the case. That district, lawyers say, has a reputation for being plaintiff-friendly.

"They tend to believe if you've got a patent ... you must have done something that makes you entitled to something," Kurland said.

U.S. District Judge Janet C. Hall awarded the payments to Gary Mastronardi, a former FBI agent turned lawyer, for his representation of Tristan Roberts, a 17-year-old Ansonia High School junior, and his mother, Paulette Bolling, last fall.

Michelle Laubin, a Milford lawyer representing the school system, challenged both the system's liability for legal fees and the $400 per hour Mastronardi requested for his work on the case.

The judge found that Mastronardi successfully obtained Roberts' return to school by convincing her to issue a temporary restraining order against the Board of Education's expulsion. That led to a Nov. 14 settlement in which the school board rescinded the Oct. 22 expulsion and allowed Roberts to return to school the next day.

Hall did reduce Mastronardi's hourly fee request to $350 for each of the roughly 51 hours he spent working on the case.

Roberts was suspended and then expelled from the high school after police arrested him in September on a marijuana possession charge in the Riverside Apartments housing project in Ansonia.

The incident occurred several hours after school closed for the day and several miles away from the high school. Police said they found eight small bags of marijuana and $13 in Roberts' possession during his arrest. The charges, however, were resolved under the youthful offender laws, with no incarceration and no criminal record.

Hall granted Mastronardi's request for a temporary restraining order against the expulsion.

At that time, Mastronardi said the judge advised schools that "they'd better make sure before expelling a student for engaging in after-hours, off-campus misconduct that the conduct disrupted the school's operation."

As part of the settlement, Bolling withdrew her federal lawsuit against the Board of Education, Supt. of Schools Carol Merlone and Ansonia High School Principal Susan H. McKernan.

Neither Laubin nor Mastronardi could be reached for comment Tuesday.

Who’s the hottest young female lawyer at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom? Last week that question sent the New York firm into a bit of a tizzy.

On Feb. 4, Skadden Insider, a blog written by two anonymous firm employees and dedicated, unofficially, to all things Skadden, announced the winner of its weeklong poll to decide the firm’s "Hottest Female Associate."

The American Lawyer notes that the contest was hardly Skadden Gone Wild - most of the photos of the eight contestants were relatively innocuous head shots. The winner, a blond litigator, drew 400 votes from Skadden cognoscenti.

The firm, however, was not amused. On Feb. 7, Henry Baer, the firm’s employment adviser, sent an e-mail to all Skadden lawyers in the United States, chastising the blog.

"Numerous attorneys at the firm have expressed their concern and, in some cases, embarrassment at such contests," wrote Mr. Baer, who said the competition was "inappropriate" and inconsistent with Skadden’s "values and standards of behavior."

The bloggers responded in a post titled "Not So Hot": "Damn, we feel like we were called to the Vice Principal’s office today and had our knuckles wrapped."

"The contest, although sophomoric, was done all in good fun," the writers continued. " We’re sorry if anyone was embarassed by it. We wish you had just chuckled, rolled your eyes or merely clicked away."

However, the lawyerly bloggers didn’t seem entirely abashed by the firm’s stern response.

"We’re not quite sure what Skadden’s "values" are (or, for that matter, the Firm’s "standards of behavior")," they said, adding that they had suspended nominations for the Hottest Male Associate.