Plaintiffs

HARRISBURG - Wartime welder, civil-rights marcher, world traveler, voter - Viviette Applewhite of Philadelphia's Germantown section can boast of having been all those things. On Tuesday, she added another title: plaintiff. Applewhite, who is 93 and uses a wheelchair, became the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit filed here in state court by the ACLU and the NAACP challenging Pennsylvania's new law requiring voters to produce a driver's license or other photo identification before they are allowed to vote.

Nine years after filing their first legal complaint, Comcast customers who contend that the cable television giant undercut competitors with unfair pricing policies and other anticompetitive strategies can take their claims to a jury. U.S. District Judge John R. Padova, sitting in Philadelphia, said Comcast customers had presented evidence during pretrial proceedings showing that the company had offered lower prices and extended contracts in a way that may have driven out competition.

The University of Pennsylvania law school on Monday officially dedicated a new courtroom at Golkin Hall that was funded by Philadelphia plaintiffs lawyers Thomas Kline and Shanin Specter, on behalf of their law firm, Kline & Specter P.C. The courtroom will be used for student education and includes the latest in courtroom technology, the law firm said. Golkin Hall, a newly constructed 40,000 square foot addition to the law school campus, itself will be officially dedicated April 5 at an event to be attended by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor.

NEW ORLEANS - BP and a committee representing plaintiffs suing over the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill have reached an agreement, a federal judge said late Friday night. As a result of the agreement that will be filed with the court for approval, the trial that was scheduled to begin Monday has been postponed a second time, Judge Carl Barbier said. No new date was immediately set. The settlement will likely result in a realignment of the parties in this litigation and require substantial changes to the current trial plan, Barbier said.

The builder of two private juvenile-detention centers at the heart of the "kids for cash" corruption case has agreed to pay $17.75 million to settle all civil-rights claims that resulted from the scandal, lawyers said Friday. Robert K. Mericle's construction company built the for-profit detention facilities that replaced the Luzerne County detention center. Mericle and Robert Powell, who co-owned the centers, paid several million dollars to two county judges, one of whom sentenced juveniles to the facilities from 2003 to 2008.

Flames leap from the gavel on the cover of a new report that declares Philadelphia No. 1 among the nation's "Judicial Hellholes. " For the second year in a row. South Jersey overall and Atlantic County in particular were not among the top seven, but did make a "Watch List. " The report, released Wednesday, focuses on perceived abuses in civil courts, not criminal ones, and comes from the American Tort Reform Foundation, which represents businesses, municipalities and professional associations.

The sister of the student who brought the first webcam lawsuit against the Lower Merion School District two years ago has filed her own federal lawsuit, which administrators have slammed as "an attempted money-grab and a complete waste of tax dollars. " Paige Robbins, 19, of Penn Valley, alleges the district invaded her privacy when it remotely snapped pictures via a laptop in her home while she was undressed. She is the sister of Blake Robbins, 17, who as a sophomore at Harriton High School sued the Lower Merion district for invasion of privacy and agreed to a $175,000 settlement.

A federal judge has dismissed a civil rights lawsuit by some Lower Merion School District parents, students, and former students who claimed the district discriminated against them and other African American students by disproportionately and inappropriately placing them in special-education programs and in the lowest-level classes. The ruling in Amber Blunt et al v. Lower Merion School District et al was handed down Thursday by U.S. District Judge Harvey Bartle 3d, who wrote that there was "no direct or circumstantial evidence of racial discrimination.

A federal judge sitting in New York has found there is no evidence lawyers at the Center City firm of Kohn, Swift & Graf P.C. were aware of potentially fraudulent actions in a huge pollution lawsuit it financed that alleges that Chevron Corp. had despoiled vast stretches of the Amazon rain forest. However, the ruling by U.S. Magistrate Judge James C. Francis requires the Kohn firm and other parties to turn over internal documents that Chevron contends may bolster its claim that opposing lawyers in Ecuador corruptly influenced the judiciary there.