Lawyer

With perhaps billions of dollars at stake, a hearing Tuesday in Philadelphia over concussion litigation filed against the NFL will be held to determine whether the lawsuits stay in federal court or are "preempted" by the collective bargaining agreements. About 4,200 former players have sued the league. Some say they suffer from dementia, depression, Alzheimer's disease, and other neurological problems. Others simply want their health monitored. A small number, including Ray Easterling and 12-time Pro Bowler Junior Seau, committed suicide after long downward spirals.

AUSTIN L. HOGAN liked to kick back on the rooftop deck of his Society Hill condominium overlooking the Delaware River and burn through books at a scary pace. "He would devour a book in an hour and a half," said his wife, Margaret Leyden. "It was frightening. " Not only books but newspapers, local, national and even international, would fall into the maw of his insatiable greed for information and amusement. And he often would turn from the printed page to his Kindle. "He read everything," his wife said.

Lawyers for the NFL urged a federal judge in Philadelphia on Tuesday to dismiss hundreds of lawsuits by former professional football players, contending players' claims that the league hid the risks of concussions belong before a labor arbitrator, not in civil court. "This case is at bottom a case about workplace safety in an industry where issues about workplace safety were addressed in collective bargaining agreements" negotiated by the players union and clubs, Paul Clement, a former U.S. Solicitor General who is representing the league, told U.S. District Judge Anita B. Brody.

THE FBI is investigating whether a former Rutgers basketball employee tried to extort the university before he made videos that showed ex-coach Mike Rice shoving and kicking players and berating them with gay slurs. Meanwhile, Robert Morris University is expected to report soon on what it has learned in its own inquiry on the three years Rice spent as head coach there. A person familiar with the FBI's probe told the Associated Press on Sunday that investigators are interested in Eric Murdock, who left his job as the player-development director for men's basketball last year and later provided the video to university officials and ESPN.

  Robert R. Batt, 93, the ultimate tax lawyer who spent his entire career at Ballard Spahr, serving as managing partner and head of its tax practice, died of cancer Tuesday, April 2, at Bryn Mawr Hospital. Mr. Batt joined the Philadelphia law firm in 1948, fresh out of Harvard Law School, after obtaining his bachelor's in history and English literature from Harvard. His keen intellect and deft people skills, immediately spotted by those around him, catapulted Mr. Batt to prominence as the unofficial dean of the state and local tax bar in Pennsylvania, and helped raise the firm's profile.

In November, former Rutgers University employee Eric Murdock provided school officials with a videotape that last week led to the firing of head basketball coach Mike Rice. The tape, which showed Rice throwing basketballs at players during practice and using antigay slurs, had been available to Rutgers officials all along, according to Murdock: The university gave him the footage after he filed a public-records request. On Friday, Murdock sued Rutgers officials in state court, accusing them of ignoring his complaints about Rice - and firing him from his position as director of player development in retaliation.

Michalisa Marshall Pugh, 60, of West Chester, a lawyer who specialized in representing children with special needs and their parents, died of multiple sclerosis Thursday, March 28, at home. In 1997 after nearly 20 years in law, she and her husband, Charles E. Pugh, formed a civil litigation firm, Pugh Law Associates. In 2006, the firm began representing children with special needs and their families under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act and other federal and state disability and civil rights laws.

Robert Saul Blau, 61, of Upper Chichester, a bankruptcy lawyer with a wacky sense of humor, died of heart failure at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital on April Fools' Day, one day before his 62d birthday. Known as "Big Bob," Mr. Blau was born in Philadelphia, the son of Evelyn Gellar and Seymour Dore "Big Sie" Blau. As a youngster, he had a penchant for cherry bombs. Yet he managed to earn a diploma from Friends Central High School and went on to graduate from Purdue University, the London School of Economics, and Rutgers Law School.

WIFFLE ball may not be an Olympic sport, but its practitioners are as devoted as a Jamaican bobsled team or hammer throwers in kilts. One of the sport's stars in the '60s was a robust Friends' Central kid named Bob Blau. His prowess with a bat he had painted red and blue and named the KesselKill (after a boy he used to harass with cherry bombs) was described in an article in Sports Illustrated in 1982 by Franz Lidz, a Cheltenham High School grad and Wiffle-ball practitioner who played with Bob Blau and other kids in a back yard in Penn Valley.

A former administrator from Truebright Science Academy Charter School will testify about operations of the North Philadelphia charter when a school district hearing resumes Thursday. The charter school, which is linked to a controversial Turkish imam, is fighting to remain open. A Common Pleas Court judge ruled in late February that Susan Farley-Ellison could be compelled to testify even though she had reached a settlement agreement with Truebright that barred her from mentioning the agreement or saying anything negative about the school.