Court upholds $185 million award against Argentina

The Supreme Court has upheld a British natural gas company's multimillion dollar award against the government of Argentina.

BG Group won $185 million through arbitration of a dispute with Argentina over investment in natural gas development. An arbitration tribunal said the company did not have to first submit the dispute to Argentine courts before arbitration could begin.

Argentina asked a U.S. court to throw out the award. The federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., sided with Argentina because it found that judges, not arbitrators, should decide where attempts to resolve the dispute should begin.

But the Supreme Court said Wednesday the arbitrators get to make that call and that they were correct to rule in favor of BG Group in this case.

High court sides with parent who fled with child

The Supreme Court has made it harder for a parent in a custody dispute to seek the immediate return of a child under an international treaty to deter child abduction.

The justices ruled unanimously Wednesday that a one-year clock begins ticking when a child is taken out of its country of residence, even if the parent left behind cannot determine where the child is living. In the one-year period, the Hague Convention on child abduction gives judges little option but to return the child to its home country.

After a year, judges have more discretion and must take account of evidence that the child is settled in its new home.

Fla. high court: Immigrant can't get law license

The Florida Supreme Court has ruled that immigrants in the country illegally can't be given a license to practice law.

The question was raised when a man who moved here from Mexico when he was 9 years old sought a license in Florida. The court said Thursday that federal law prohibits people who are unlawfully in the country from obtaining professional licenses. The justices said state law can override the federal ban, but Florida has taken no action to do so.

Earlier this year, the California Supreme Court granted a law license to Sergio Garcia, who arrived in the U.S. from Mexico as a teenager with his father. But that ruling was only after the state approved a law that allows immigrants in the country illegally to obtain the license.

Two men found guilty for selling U.S. company’s technology

A federal jury found two men guilty Wednesday of economic espionage involving the theft and sale of a U.S. company’s technology to a competitor controlled by the Chinese government.

The jury returned the verdicts against Robert Maegerle and Walter Liew.

They were accused of stealing Delaware-based DuPont Co.’s method for making titanium oxide, a chemical that fetches $17 billion a year in sales worldwide and is used to whiten everything from cars to the middle of Oreo cookies.

A federal jury found two men guilty Wednesday of economic espionage involving the theft and sale of a U.S. company’s technology to a competitor controlled by the Chinese government.

Prosecutors said DuPont was unwilling to sell its method to China, so it was stolen and sent to a company called Pangang Group Co. Ltd., according to testimony during the diplomatically dicey proceedings. The jury heard six weeks of testimony.

Prosecutors alleged that Pangang’s factory is the only facility inside China known to be producing titanium oxide the DuPont way, which uses chlorination.

Court: Broad protection for whistleblowers

The Supreme Court says whistleblower protections in a federal law passed in response to the Enron financial scandal apply broadly to employees of publicly traded companies and contractors hired by the companies.

The justices ruled 6-3 Tuesday in favor of two former employees of companies that administer the Fidelity family of mutual funds. The workers claimed they faced retaliation after they reported allegations of fraud affecting Fidelity funds.

The case involved the reach of a provision of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, passed in 2002 in response to the Enron scandal, that protects whistleblower activity. The measure was intended to protect people who expose the kind of corporate misdeeds that arose at Enron.

SC Supreme Court to rule on public autopsy reports

South Carolina's Supreme Court will begin grappling with that question Wednesday, when it hears a lawsuit by a Sumter County newspaper against the county's coroner.

The Item newspaper wants the high court to toss out a lower court's ruling that said autopsies do not have to be made public because they do not fall under the state's Freedom of Information Act.

The coroner says autopsies should be considered medical records that are exempt from public view. The newspaper says autopsy reports are investigative tools, not medical records.

Open records advocates say the Sumter County case is an example of government officials making it harder to get public documents.

It's a debate that is far from settled nationally. About 15 states across the U.S. allow the public release of an autopsy report. About a half-dozen other states allow the release of reports not being used as part of a criminal investigation. The rest severely restrict what's released or don't give any information from the reports, according to the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.

Keeping autopsy records secret closes off an important tool to make sure police agencies do the right thing when they investigate deaths, especially people shot and killed by officials or who die in custody, said Frank LoMonte, executive director of the Student Press Law Center.

"There is any number of cases over the years where journalist watchdogs have been able to shed light on suspicious circumstances only by having access on those records," LoMonte said. "And those records don't just show culpability, they can clear someone, too."

Ohio courts must report mental health info

Courts in Ohio must now report certain mental health information about people convicted of violent crimes for inclusion in a law enforcement database.

A rule approved by the Ohio Supreme Court requiring that notification took effect Jan. 1. The court devised the form to be submitted to law enforcement after legislation was approved last year.

The law requires judges to report ordering mental-health evaluations or treatment for people convicted of a violent crime or approving conditional release for people found incompetent to stand trial or not guilty by reason of insanity.

The legislation was introduced after a Clark County sheriff's deputy was fatally shot in 2011 by a man with a criminal history who was conditionally released from a mental health institution.