Lawsuit

In rejecting PSA screening for prostate cancer, an influential federal panel has chipped a cornerstone of preventive medicine, declaring that it's not always best to catch cancer as early as possible. "At best, PSA screening may help only 1 man in 1,000 avoid death from prostate cancer," the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force said Monday. "Most prostate cancers found by PSA screening are slow growing, not life threatening, and will not cause a man any harm during his lifetime.

Donna Summer's family says the singer died of lung cancer even though she wasn't a smoker. TMZ says the diva believed she contracted the disease by breathing in toxic air after the Sept. 11 attacks in New York. Summer, who died Thursday at 63 in Naples, Fla., lived near ground zero. Summer's family rep, Brian Edwards, also said on Friday that the singer's funeral would be private and declined to disclose a time or place for the event. J-Lo: I'm undecided Jennifer Lopez denies she's already quit American Idol.

It is a family feud of epic proportions that involves one of the city's most prominent families and has spilled into state and federal court. And last week, the legal discord that has been raging between Jeffrey E. Perelman, and his father, Ray, and older brother, Ron, got even more rancorous. According to a lawsuit filed in federal district court, Jeffrey claims that Ray improperly steered millions of dollars from a pension plan the two were involved with into the global cosmetics company that Ron controls.

DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER A federal civil rights lawsuit alleges that the Philadelphia Police Department's top brass conspired to punish two veteran cops who blew the whistle on widespread problems in the Firearms Identification Unit. The lawsuit, filed May 17, pits Lt. Leonard Logan and Sgt. Andrew Little against Police Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey, several deputy commissioners and other high-ranking cops over a scandal in the FIU that was exposed last August by the Daily News.

IT WAS a typical summer Saturday night on South Street, filled with shoppers and revelers and at least one artistic woman drawing vivid, hippy patterns on the sidewalk with chalk. The artist, Emily Hamilton Epstein, wasn't doing anything wrong on June 19, 2010, when Police Officer William J. Gress came around, her attorney told the Daily News. "She hadn't done anything wrong and we're very concerned about an officer who's arresting people for activities that clearly aren't illegal," Paul Messing said.

A prison inmate who wrote a 583-page cookbook while serving a life sentence for murder is suing a Montgomery County man who he says promised to help publish it. Bernard Jerry-El, 43, now at the State Correctional Institution at Pittsburgh, filed the lawsuit against Edward J. Reilly of Devon, who he says took the original copy of his cookbook in 1987 to photocopy and send to publishers. But Reilly lied about his connections with publishers and never returned the cookbook, according to Jerry-El's lawsuit, filed Tuesday in Montgomery County Court.

A Royersford woman has filed suit against her former employer, seeking in excess of $20,000 in damages for what she alleges were various forms of sexual harassment over a half-year period. Hope Lindauer and her husband, C. Michael Lindauer, filed suit Oct. 14 against Berwyn-based Dickson Gabbay Young Inc. and partner James Young, and James A. Donegan and his Wayne security firm, Donegan Security Associates. Lindauer worked at Dickson Gabbay Young Inc. as an administrative assistant.

Director Julie Taymor filed a lawsuit Tuesday against the producers of Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark , alleging they violated her creative rights and have not compensated her for the work she put into Broadway's most expensive musical. The show's spokesman said he was not aware of the lawsuit, filed in federal court in New York. Taymor was not available to comment. Taymor, who had been the Spider-Man director and cowriter of the book, was fired in March from the $75 million production featuring music by U2's Bono and the Edge, after years of delays, accidents, and critical backlash.

Great Valley school board members have voted to support the Chester County Intermediate Unit in its lawsuit filed against the Pennsylvania Department of Education. "I strongly recommend that the board approve support of the intermediate unit's lawsuit," Superintendent William Fitzpatrick told board members at Tuesday evening's board meeting. "The IU operates classes for our students. This will have a direct impact on our district in the future if funding matters continue as they have since 1972.

A class-action lawsuit challenging Avalon's "magic bus" campaign against underage drinkers and rowdy parties was expanded this week to include this summer's policy of charging youths under a state law prohibiting underage drinking in a public place. The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Camden, alleges that Avalon's "zero tolerance" policy has routinely violated the constitutional rights of hundreds of youths spending the summer in Avalon. Lawyers had originally sought a court order barring the town from charging underage drinkers under a borough ordinance barring underage possession of alcohol and prohibiting anyone under 21 from being in the presence of alcohol.

DOES THE Philadelphia Police Department have a "no snitching" policy for its men and women in blue? That troubling question is at the heart of a federal civil-rights lawsuit filed Thursday by Lt. Leonard Logan and Sgt. Andrew Little, who allege that the department's top brass punished them for blowing the whistle on widespread problems in the Firearms Identification Unit. The issue dates to August 2009, when two problems arose in the FIU, the lawsuit says. Chief Inspector Evelyn Heath and Deputy Commissioner William Blackburn, both of whom oversaw the unit, wanted the FIU's backlog of firearms that needed to be examined to drop from about 1,500 to 500, the lawsuit alleges.

DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER A federal civil rights lawsuit alleges that the Philadelphia Police Department's top brass conspired to punish two veteran cops who blew the whistle on widespread problems in the Firearms Identification Unit. The lawsuit, filed May 17, pits Lt. Leonard Logan and Sgt. Andrew Little against Police Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey, several deputy commissioners and other high-ranking cops over a scandal in the FIU that was exposed last August by the Daily News.

Johnson & Johnson's courtroom fights over Risperdal resume in Philadelphia on Wednesday, when Commonwealth Court judges are scheduled to hear an appeal of decisions to dismiss Pennsylvania's 2008 lawsuit that alleged the company fraudulently profited from sales of the antipsychotic drug through the Medicaid program. While Pennsylvania's case did go to trial in Philadelphia, it did not get far. In 2010, a Philadelphia judge threw out the lawsuit, which sought to show that J&J had tricked the state into paying millions more for the drug than it should have.

Already singed by the state plan to downsize Philadelphia's branch library for the blind, the Free Library of Philadelphia has now been sued by four blind patrons who cannot use the library's new electronic book readers. The lawsuit, filed last week in U.S. District Court in Philadelphia, said that the e-reader lending program, begun in November at the main library off Logan Square, uses devices that are not accessible to the blind. And that violates the rights of blind people under the federal Rehabilitation Act and Americans With Disabilities Act, the lawsuit contends.

Instead of shutting down late-night businesses early, Camden's curfew law has become the tale of one delay after another. A lawsuit scheduled to be heard Tuesday from some business owners and city activist Frank Fulbrook challenging the ordinance has been delayed until the end of summer. And the city, which has yet to enforce the law passed in September, plans to convene a meeting later this month to discuss enforcement by summer. The ordinance — which mandates that businesses in residential zones or within 200 feet of a residential zone close between 11 p.m. and 6 a.m. on weekdays and between midnight and 6 a.m. on weekends as a way to help curb crime — went into effect Sept.

Man is forgotten, left in cell 4 days SAN DIEGO - A college student picked up in a drug sweep in California was never arrested, never charged, and should have been released. Instead he was forgotten in a holding cell for four days and says he had to drink his own urine to stay alive. Without food, water, or access to a toilet, Daniel Chong began hallucinating on the third day. Four days later, DEA agents opened the door on a fluke and found him covered in his own feces, said Chong, 23, an engineering student at the University of California, San Diego.

DETROIT - Some Detroit-area Muslims have been held at gunpoint, handcuffed, and repeatedly harassed about their religion when returning to the United States from Canada, according to a lawsuit that seeks to bar government agents from asking questions about religion. The Michigan branch of the Council on American-Islamic Relations said border agents and the FBI were violating the First Amendment and a 1993 federal law that guarantees freedom to practice religion. The lawsuit was filed Thursday in federal court in Detroit.

YAKIMA, Wash. - The federal government will pay more than $1 billion to settle a class-action lawsuit brought by American Indian tribes over mismanagement of tribal money and trust lands, under a settlement announced Wednesday. The agreement resolves claims brought by 41 tribes from across the country to reclaim money lost in mismanaged accounts and from royalties for oil, gas, grazing and timber rights on tribal lands. The settlement was announced jointly by the Justice Department and the Interior Department, which manages more than 100,000 leases on tribal trust lands and about 2,500 tribal trust accounts for more than 250 federally recognized tribes.

  Top officials at Philadelphia International Airport say they were never informed that the son of former State Sen. Vincent J. Fumo had acquired a share in an airport cheesesteak franchise, but they're not sure they care. "We probably will take a look at it," James Tyrrell, city deputy director of aviation, said in a telephone interview last week. "We really need to discuss it. I don't know if this is something we should be overly concerned about. " Vincent E. Fumo II filed suit in Common Pleas Court on March 29, complaining that he had paid $150,000 in 2009 for a 30 percent share of the cheesesteak business, but had received less than half the return promised - "a guaranteed return of $50,000 a year for every year that the restaurant was in business.

GETTING PULLED over just for wearing "colors" really ticks off outlaw motorcycle clubs, and now members of two of them can follow through with their lawsuit over just that scenario. In an opinion issued last week, U.S. District Judge Jerome Simandle in Camden said two members of the Pagans' Motorcycle Club and one Tribe Motorcycle Club member can proceed with their suit stemming from a July 30, 2009, traffic stop in Burlington County. During the stop, New Jersey state troopers ordered riders of six motorcycles to remove their "colors," the members' patched jackets.