Court Case

OPRAH IS COMING to Philadelphia. But not to give away cars. The talk-show queen and owner of much of the free world is expected at the end of March for court and could spend two weeks here defending a defamation case linked to a sex-abuse scandal at her South African girls' school. The trial is set to start March 29. Oprah's attorneys say in recent filings that she must attend as a named defendant and has rearranged her TV- production schedule to do so. It also appears likely that she'll testify.

Clay Caldwell, 36, killed his 40-year-old former girlfriend to keep her from testifying against him at a pending assault trial, said the prosecutor, Assistant District Attorney Terri Domsky said Caldwell broke into Cheryl Goldsby's Lawndale home and beat and stabbed her to death on Jan. 12. Caldwell's trial for assaulting Goldsby was scheduled for later this month. Domsky said that after the brutal murder, Caldwell, of Bailey Street near Montgomery Avenue, stole pictures depicting the bruises on Goldsby's face from the beating he allegedly inflicted on her last Oct. 28. Homicide Detective Raleigh Witcher said Goldsby's wallet, personal papers and car were also stolen.

Police Commissioner Kevin M. Tucker yesterday postponed indefinitely the scheduled May 12 promotions of an estimated 100 police officers because of a continuing legal battle. Tucker notified police over the department's computer network that the promotions were in limbo "in view of the fact that the Commonwealth Court has failed to render a final decision in the Bonner case. " Lt. James Bonner is one of seven police lieutenants seeking to retain that rank after being promoted from sergeant.

An associate of former Philadelphia Common Pleas Court Judge Kenneth S. Harris was convicted yesterday by a federal court jury of extorting $500 in 1986 from a defendant in a drug case that was assigned to Harris. The maximum sentence that the defendant, Thomas Henshaw, 56, of the 3600 block of North 11th Street, could receive is 20 years in prison and a fine of $250,000. U.S. District Judge Louis C. Bechtle scheduled sentencing for May 17. Henshaw, who was convicted on the single count of extortion after the jury deliberated for about two hours yesterday and Monday, is the fifth person convicted as a result of a federal and local investigation of case-fixing in Harris' courtroom during 1986.

THANKS TO Christine Flowers for her brilliant June 18 column on the Boy Scouts. I've been working with the scouts for years, and it's truly an incredible program for boys. If people could only see from the inside out - the learning and building of such great citizens that takes place - they would have a totally different view. Jerry Rafter, Wallingford Why doesn't the city simply sell the property to the Boy Scouts? Everybody would win. The city wins by making money on the sale and collecting property taxes in future years.

A patent case decided in federal court Thursday spoke as much to the shifting sands of corporate alignment as it did about the arcane issues of infringement on the formula for the muscle relaxant Amrix. The case began in 2008 and pitted two groups of companies. One group included Teva Pharmaceuticals Inc., which as major operations in North Wales. The other side included Cephalon Inc., which has its headquarters in Frazer. Last month, Teva bought Cephalon. Teva's group came out ahead with U.S. District Judge Sue Robinson in Wilmington.

Patsy and Gerard Tinnelly were so sure their demoliton company had won a multimillion-dollar contract to dismantle an outmoded power station in 1985 that they stopped taking on new work. The job did not go to the Tinnellys' company, however, even though it was the low bidder. Instead, Northern Ireland Electric, a state-run utility, mysteriously awarded the lucrative contract to a shaky Scottish company that soon went bankrupt. Bigotry on the part of Protestant-dominated unions at the power station was to blame, say the brothers, who are Catholic.

Last week, the New Jersey Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case that will determine what happens to seven frozen embryos remaining from a marriage that ended in divorce. It is a case that joins two of the worst aspects of American culture - the collapse of marriage and an idolatrous obsession with technology - with the greatest affliction of our political life: turning over decisions on crucial moral issues to unelected judges. In 1992, J.B. and M.B (their identities have not been disclosed in the case)

You have to do a little looking to find the Ten Commandments. They hang on an outside wall of the Chester County Courthouse in West Chester, on a worn bronze plaque 6 feet high. A fixture since 1920, when a church group put it there, the plaque has gotten scant attention from passersby, perhaps because it is set among bronzed signs also bearing commandments: "No Smoking" and "No Skateboarding. " But a 72-year-old atheist named Sally Flynn noticed it. Last summer, she summoned the American Civil Liberties Union to sue the county on her behalf to remove the plaque.

Virtua-Memorial Hospital Burlington County, which twice failed to win township approval for a $17 million expansion, will return to the Zoning Board with plans. Virtua-Memorial officials had appealed to the Law Division of state Superior Court in Mount Holly after township officials in April rejected the expansion for a second time. The hospital said construction of a three-story intensive-care unit was up against time constraints, prompting the court appeal last month. But because of promising settlement discussions with township representatives, the court case is on hold.

THREE DAYS of arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court on the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act - a/k/a "Obamacare" - began Monday with observers wondering aloud if the two main attorneys in the case possess the mental and physical stamina to get through it. Of course, if the attorneys should crack under the strain, for sure they will have adequate health care since they no doubt can afford decent insurance. Not so for millions of Americans if opponents of the law succeed in blocking its full implementation - in particular, the 30 million Americans who don't have insurance who would get it under the new law. Actually, though, pretty much every American will be affected by the court decision, if only because the nation's dysfunctional health-care system is a persistent drag on the economy.

It is the legal equivalent of the Super Bowl, the World Series, and the NBA playoffs rolled into one. When the nine justices of the United States Supreme Court gather Monday in their ornate courtroom to begin three days of hearings on President Obama's overhaul of the nation's health-care system, they will be deciding the constitutionality of what many experts say is the most far-reaching economic and social legislation since the Great Society...

CHARDON, OHIO - The teenager accused of killing three students in a shooting rampage in an Ohio high-school cafeteria chose his victims at random and is "someone who's not well," a prosecutor said yesterday as the teenager was brought to juvenile court. T.J. Lane, 17, admitted taking a .22-caliber pistol and a knife to Chardon High and firing 10 shots at a group of students sitting at a cafeteria table Monday morning, prosecutor David Joyce said. The hearing came hours after the death toll rose to three, and as schoolmates and townspeople grappled with the tragedy and wondered what could have set the teen killer off - a mystery that the court appearance did nothing to solve.

CHARDON, Ohio - The teenager accused of killing three students in a shooting rampage in an Ohio high school cafeteria chose his victims at random and is "someone who's not well," a prosecutor said Tuesday as the slightly built young man appeared in juvenile court. T.J. Lane, 17, admitted taking a .22-caliber pistol and a knife to Chardon High and firing 10 shots at a group of students sitting at a cafeteria table Monday morning, Prosecutor David Joyce said. Joyce said Lane would probably be charged with three counts of aggravated murder and other offenses.

NEW DELHI - Google India has removed web pages deemed offensive to Indian political and religious leaders to comply with a court case that has raised censorship fears in the world's largest democracy, media reported Monday. The action follows weeks of intense government pressure for 22 Internet giants to remove photographs, videos or text considered "anti-religious" or "antisocial. " A New Delhi court gave Facebook, Google, YouTube and Blogspot and the other sites two weeks to present further plans for policing their networks, according to the Press Trust of India.

NEW YORK - More than 1,600 people who filed lawsuits contending that their health was ruined by dust and smoke from the collapsed World Trade Center must decide by next Monday whether to keep fighting in court, or drop the litigation and apply for benefits from a government compensation fund. For some, the choice is fraught with risk. Federal lawmakers set aside $2.76 billion last winter for people who developed illnesses after spending time in the ash-choked disaster zone.

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court agreed Monday to resolve an international human rights dispute over whether corporations and political groups can be held liable in U.S. courts for their role in the torture, murder, and enslavement of victims abroad. Since the Nazi war crimes trial at Nuremberg, international law has held that human-rights abuses can be prosecuted around the globe. And two U.S. laws - the Alien Tort Statute of 1789 and the Torture Victims Protection Act of 1992 - give American courts the jurisdiction to decide those human-rights cases.

THE NUMBERS needed to go down - way down. The Police Department's Firearms Identification Unit was sitting on an enormous backlog of more than 6,000 cases in 2007, and it was up to Lt. Vincent Testa, the unit's commander, to figure out a way to cut the backlog down to size. As of last week, police officials said, the FIU had a backlog of just 941 cases. The progress was impressive. Maybe a little too impressive. Numerous police sources have told the Daily News that Testa routinely ordered his examiners to violate the FIU's protocols and ship handguns and other weapons directly to a City Hall evidence-storage room without examining them, a move intended to make the backlog appear smaller.

Rep. Walsh assails child-support story CHICAGO - Rep. Joe Walsh (R., Ill.), the tea party-backed freshman who squeaked into office last year by vowing to bring fiscal responsibility to Washington and who has been one of President Obama's most outspoken critics during the debt-ceiling standoff, is being sued for more than $100,000 in unpaid child support, the Chicago Sun-Times reported. His ex-wife, Laura Walsh, filed the claim in December as part of their divorce case, saying he owed $117,437 to her and their three children, the newspaper reported Wednesday.

THE PHILADELPHIA Parking Authority, that bastion of Republican patronage in a Democratically controlled city, had a problem: Its staff, from ticket writers on the street to supervisors in the office, was doing a bad job filling out the agency's many forms. The PPA solution: A remedial English class taught by Jim Dintino , a ward leader, executive director of the Republican City Committee and a former teacher. Dintino's "personnel development" classes run for 90 minutes, twice a day, once a week.