The Supreme Court is entering a $40 million dispute between an energy company and Montana that could turn on the experiences of the Lewis and Clark expedition.

The justices said Monday they will hear an appeal from PPL Montana of a state court decision ordering the company to pay $40 million in rent for placing its hydroelectric dams in riverbeds owned by the state.

The ownership of the waterways turns on whether they were navigable when Montana became a state in 1889. Both the company and the state base part of their argument on the journey of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark more than 200 years ago.

The Supreme Court will let two West Virginia residents revive a lawsuit against Bayer AG over its anti-cholesterol drug Baycol, which was withdrawn from the market in 2001 after reports of a severe and sometimes fatal muscle disorder.

The high court on Thursday unanimously agreed to let Kevin Smith and Shirley Sperlazza's class-action lawsuit against Bayer go forward.

The 8th U.S. Court of Appeals had thrown out their lawsuit out after a federal judge overseeing multistate litigation against Bayer refused to let other West Virginians file a similar class-action lawsuit against the corporation.

The high court said that decision was incorrect.

The second trial to result from a massive investigation into insider trading at hedge funds ended Monday with the conviction of a trio of Wall Street traders on charges they paid hefty bribes to coax confidential information out of shady lawyers.

A jury reached the verdict against stock trader Zvi Goffer and two others in federal court in Manhattan after deliberating five days since June 2. It came a month after the conviction of Raj Rajaratnam, the one-time billionaire who founded the Galleon Group of hedge funds and who was once Goffer's boss.

Goffer, his brother Emanuel and Michael Kimelman were convicted of conspiracy to break securities laws. The men were permitted to remain free on bail pending sentencing, set for the fall.

The defendants, who had insisted they based trades only on public information, remained calm during the verdict. Zvi Goffer's wife and mother left the courtroom in tears.

The Supreme Court has rejected an appeal from investment funds seeking repayment of their losses in a $3.7 billion Ponzi scheme operated by Minnesota businessman Thomas Petters.

The funds together lost $165 million and challenged a federal judge's order denying restitution to any of Petters' victims. Among other things, the court said the victims would have other ways of recouping some of their money.

The justices on Monday refused to disturb the ruling.

A federal law generally requires a court to order restitution as part of a defendant's sentence, but allows for some exceptions. The judge in this case said that restitution would be too complex, take too long and result in the payment of less than a penny for each dollar victims lost.

The Supreme Court has ordered a lower court to reconsider its decision to release a criminal on parole.

The high court threw out a lower court decision ordering John Pirtle and other prisoners released from prison on parole.

Pirtle was convicted of killing his wife, and the parole board started denying him parole in 2002. Pirtle sued in federal court, saying his parole was denied without any proof that he posed a danger if he got out.

The lower courts agreed with him and ordered him and other prisoners in similar situations released on parole.

The high court threw out that decision in a summary judgment and ordered the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco to reconsider it.

A federal judge expects the first lawsuit to go to trial in a massive class action against Toyota Motor Corp. over a sudden acceleration problem that led the company to recall 14 million cars will involve a crash that killed two people in Utah.

U.S. District Judge James Selna told attorneys Friday that the case of Paul Van Alfen and Charlene Jones Lloyd -- whose Toyota Camry slammed into a wall in Wendover, Utah, in 2010 -- will go to trial in early 2013.

The case will be the first of several bellwether lawsuits, intended to determine how the rest of the litigation will proceed.

Toyota says it welcomes the first suit because it will focus on what it calls the alleged technical defects at the heart of the cases.