Nix

Time Inc. asked a judge to throw out its settlement and dismiss defamation claims of former Alabama football coach Mike Price over a Sports Illustrated article recounting his night of drunken partying in April 2003 at a Florida strip joint, court documents showed yesterday. In a motion filed in federal court, Time claimed Price and his lawyer, Steve Heninger, violated an agreement to make only limited public comments about the deal, reached last week, to resolve Price's $20 million defamation suit against the magazine, which Time publishes.

The impending retirement of Chief Justice Robert N.C. Nix Jr. will bring to an end the stormiest period in the 274-year history of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. That, at least, is the view of members of the legal community familiar with Nix's tenure as chief, which began in 1984. At 67, Nix could serve another three years before reaching the mandatory retirement age of 70, but has said he would leave by the end of the year to pursue other interests. Stephanie Tryce, Nix's assistant, confirmed that he plans to retire but said he was not available for comment yesterday.

Pennsylvania Supreme Court Chief Justice Robert N.C. Nix Jr. said yesterday that he was moving up his retirement date to the end of July, when he expects to have completed work on remaining court matters. "I'm going to miss it. . . . but I feel very gratified. I think I've done what I anticipated trying to do when I took office," said Nix, who has been chief justice since 1984. Earlier this month, Nix, 67, said he planned to retire by the end of the year. But yesterday, Nix said in an interview that he had decided to move up the date to July 31 after reassessing his workload and concluding that he could have that work wrapped up sooner than he had anticipated.

Adding to the growing legal knot tying up the state's new auto insurance law, the chief justice of the state Supreme Court has ordered a key section of the law back into effect - temporarily. A one-sentence order released after business hours yesterday and signed by Chief Justice Robert N.C. Nix Jr. said an earlier order by Commonwealth Court stopping part of the law from taking effect is "temporarily stayed until further order of this court. " It appears the Nix order means the portion of the law that caps medical costs at 110 percent of Medicare is back in place.

The state Supreme Court has created yet another committee - the second in two months - to work on quickening the flow of cases in the city's overburdened Common Pleas Court. The purpose of the committee, announced in an order issued Thursday, seems to parallel that of the blue-ribbon task force appointed a month ago by Chief Justice Robert N.C. Nix Jr. Nix didn't have a hand in creating the latest committee, according to the final sentence of the order, which said Nix and Justice John P. Flaherty "did not participate.

Pennsylvania's $65,000-a-year Common Pleas judges are badly underpaid and leaving the bench because of it, state Supreme Court Chief Justice Robert N.C. Nix Jr. told a joint session of the General Assembly yesterday. "In virtually all cases, the exodus is because the individual cannot meet his or her family commitments on the judicial salary presently provided," Nix said in urging legislators to create a Judicial Salary Board to build cost- of-living increases into judges' pay. Although he did not recommend a specific salary level, Nix noted federal judges earn $89,500 annually and have lighter caseloads, trial judges in neighboring states earn more than in Pennsylvania and 50-year-old law partners in Philadelphia earn more than $254,000 annually.

State Supreme Court Chief Justice Robert N. C. Nix Jr. called yesterday for state legislation to reduce the power of Philadelphia's Traffic Court judges by decriminalizing routine parking and traffic cases and using administrative officers to resolve disputed tickets. Nix said the high court would ask the legislature to create a new agency to collect fines, which would remove judges from that process. He said he also favored establishing non-judicial administrators with the authority to resolve disputed tickets, which would enable accused violators to sidestep the judicial process entirely.

A long-simmering feud between the two most senior members of Pennsylvania's Supreme Court has exploded anew, with Justice Rolf Larsen accusing Chief Justice Robert N.C. Nix Jr. of being either insensitive or attracted to child pornography. In a harshly critical letter, Larsen urged Nix to disqualify himself from sitting on any case involving child pornography because of his views on the subject. Larsen's accusations were based on his interpretation of a written comment made by Nix in connection with the high court's deliberations on the professional fate of a northwestern Pennsylvania lawyer who pleaded guilty in June 1988 to a federal pornography charge.

A federal judge has charged that Pennsylvania Chief Justice Robert N.C. Nix Jr. interfered in a murder trial in 1985 and deprived the defendant of his constitutional right to a fair trial. In unusually harsh language, U.S. District Judge Clarence C. Newcomer said Nix's action constituted a "gross abuse of the jurisdictional limits of his power. " Newcomer was not only critical of Nix's behavior, but also used a 57-page ruling, plus footnotes, to lambast the Supreme Court for the way it handled the case, and then took on the entire state appeals court system.

Pennsylvania Supreme Court Chief Justice Robert N.C. Nix Jr. said yesterday that he intended to meet with "responsible outside parties" as a result of concerns raised in the legal community about the state's highest court. Nix did not directly address the matter that has triggered calls for investigations and reforms of the court: accusations last week by Justice Rolf Larsen about the two justices who decided in October that he should be publicly reprimanded. In the court documents he filed in an effort to stop that reprimand, Larsen accused Stephen A. Zappala and Ralph J. Cappy of a bold conspiracy to unfairly portray him as a "bad boy" in order to cut his power and advance their own political ambitions.