A federal appeals court on Thursday struck down a novel and controversial California law that allowed descendants of 1.5 million Armenians who perished in Turkey nearly a century ago to file claims against life insurance companies accused of reneging on policies.

The move came when a specially convened 11-judge panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously tossed out a class action lawsuit filed against Munich Re after two of its subsidiaries refused to pay claims.

The ruling, written by Judge Susan Graber, said the California law trampled on U.S. foreign policy — the exclusive jurisdiction of the federal government.

The California Legislature labeled the Armenian deaths as genocide, a term the Turkish government vehemently argued was wrongly applied during a time of civil unrest in the country.

The court noted the issue is so fraught with politics that President Obama studiously avoided using the word genocide during a commemorative speech in April 2010 noting the Armenian deaths.

The tortured legal saga began in 2000 when the California Legislature passed a law enabling Armenian heirs to file claims with insurance companies for policies sold around the turn of the 20th century. It gave the heirs until 2010 to file lawsuits over unpaid insurance benefits.

A divided federal appeals court ruled Thursday that California law enforcement officials can keep collecting DNA samples from people arrested for felonies.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said law enforcement’s interest in solving cold cases, identifying crime suspects and even exonerating the wrongly accused outweigh any privacy concerns raised by the forced DNA collections.

The 2-1 ruling came in response to a lawsuit filed by four Californians who were arrested on felony charges but never convicted.

The arrestees sought a court order barring collection of DNA from people who are arrested but not convicted, arguing the process is an unconstitutional search and seizure since some suspects will later be exonerated.

The DNA samples are obtained with a swab of the cheek and stored in the state’s DNA database, which contains 1.9 million profiles. Arrestees who are never charged with a felony can apply to have their samples expunged from the database.

The state Department of Justice said it has had roughly 20,000 “hits’’ connecting suspects with previous crimes since it began collecting the DNA profiles.

Judge Mylan Smith Jr., writing for the two-judge majority, said the useful law enforcement tool wasn’t any more intrusive than fingerprinting.

A New York court has scheduled a hearing on a lawsuit filed by the woman who accused former International Monetary Fund chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn of sexually assaulting her in a Manhattan hotel.

Prosecutors dropped criminal charges against Strauss-Kahn last year, but his accuser has demanded damages in civil court.

The March 15 hearing will deal with issues that must be resolved before a trial, which has yet to be scheduled.

Strauss-Kahn wants the lawsuit dismissed because he says he had diplomatic immunity. He isn't required to attend the March court session.

The hotel maid who says she was attacked and forcibly sodomized by Strauss-Kahn is Nafissatou Diallo (na-fee-SAH'-too dee-AH'-loh). Her lawyer, Kenneth Thompson, says she is "looking forward to her day in court and can't wait to get to trial."

The Supreme Court said Wednesday that California police officers cannot be sued because they used a warrant that may have been defective to search a woman's house.

The high court threw out the lawsuit against Los Angeles County Sheriff's Detective Curt Messerschmidt and other police officials, who were being sued personally by Augusta Millender for the search on her house and confiscation of her shotgun.

Police were looking for her foster son, Jerry Ray Bowen, who had recently shot at his ex-girlfriend with a black sawed-off shotgun. She told police that he may be at his foster mother's house, so Messerschmidt got a warrant to look for any weapons on the property and gang-related material, since Bowen was supposed to be a member of the Mona Park Crips and the Dodge Park Crips. The detective had his supervisors approve the warrant before submitting to the district attorney and a judge, who also approved the warrant.

The Supreme Court will once again confront the issue of race in university admissions in a case brought by a white student denied a spot at the flagship campus of the University of Texas.

The court said Tuesday it will return to the issue of affirmative action in higher education for the first time since its 2003 decision endorsing the use of race as a factor in admissions. This time around, a more conservative court is being asked to outlaw the use of Texas' affirmative action plan and possibly to jettison the earlier ruling entirely.

A broad ruling in favor of the student, Abigail Fisher, could threaten affirmative action programs at many of the nation's public and private universities, said Vanderbilt University law professor Brian Fitzpatrick.

A federal appeals court upheld the Texas program at issue, saying it was allowed under the high court's decision in Grutter vs. Bollinger in 2003 that upheld racial considerations in university admissions at the University of Michigan law school.

The Texas case will be argued in the fall, probably in the final days of the presidential election campaign, and the changed makeup of the Supreme Court could foretell a different outcome. For one thing, Justice Samuel Alito appears more hostile to affirmative action than his predecessor, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. For another, Justice Elena Kagan, who might be expected to vote with the court's liberal-leaning justices in support of it, is not taking part in the case.

The law firm of Brower Piven, A Professional Corporation, has commenced an investigation into possible breaches of fiduciary duty to current shareholders of CH Energy Group, Inc. and other violations of state law by the board of directors of CH Energy Group relating to the proposed acquisition of the company by Fortis Inc. The firm's investigation seeks to determine, among other things, whether the board breached its fiduciary duties by failing to maximize shareholder value.

On February 21, 2012, Fortis announced that it had entered into an agreement providing for Fortis to acquire CH Energy Group for $1.5 billion. Under the terms of the merger agreement, CH Energy Group shareholders will receive $65.00 for each share of CH Energy Group common stock held. However, according to Yahoo! Finance, at least one analyst has set a high price target of $69.00 per share.

If you currently own shares of CH Energy Group and would like to learn more about the investigation being conducted by Brower Piven, you may email or call Brower Piven, who will, without obligation or cost to you, attempt to answer your questions.

www.browerpiven.com