A federal appeals court says an Oregon longshoreman who got drunk on the job, urinated while standing on a dock and then fell 6 feet onto concrete should not get workers' compensation benefits for his injuries.

Gary Schwirse drank at least nine beers and half-pint of whiskey on Jan. 8, 2006. While standing on a dock, he urinated and fell over a railing. At the hospital, he registered a blood-alcohol level of 0.25 percent.

Schwirse sued for workers' compensation benefits and at first was victorious, when an administrative law judge ruled that workplace hazards had been a factor in his fall. But the judge later reversed his ruling when Schwirse backed off a claim that he tripped over an orange cone.

The worker appealed it to U.S. District Court, where he lost, and the case landed in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which denied a petition for a review of claims this week. The court said his injuries were due solely to intoxication and his employers could not be held responsible.

Schwirse later tried to argue that the very concrete onto which he fell, and not his intoxication, was responsible for his injuries. That argument also lost.

Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals judge N. Randy Smith wrote in the opinion that if intoxication was the reason for the fall, then intoxication was also the reason for the injury.

The U.S. Justice Department says a Charleston man prepared hundreds of tax returns that cheated the government out of $55 million.

A federal judge on Tuesday permanently barred Stacy Middleton from preparing federal tax returns for others.

Middleton had been preparing tax returns for more than a decade. Prosecutors say he and another man prepared returns that understated their clients' income tax liabilities and overstated deductions and credits.

From 2008 to 2011, authorities say the men prepared about 17,000 federal returns. Of the records examined by the Internal Revenue Service, more than 90 percent needed adjustments.

In all, the IRS estimates that the U.S. Treasury lost as much as $55 million in revenue.

The Arizona Supreme Court on Tuesday hears arguments in an appeal of a lower court's ruling that requires the state Legislature to give schools an annual funding increase even in lean years to account for inflation.

The high court is reviewing a Court of Appeals decision. It said a voter-approved law requires the Legislature to provide an annual inflation adjustment for state funding to public schools.

School districts and education groups sued after the Legislature in 2010 instead only increased schools' transportation funding, eliminating a $61 million increase in general school spending.

The Supreme Court says it is considering is whether the Voter Protection Act allows voters to require the legislature to increase funding for schools.

The Voter Protection Act severely restricts the Legislature's to change voter-approved laws.

The Iowa Supreme Court on Friday stood by its ruling that a dentist acted legally when he fired an assistant because he found her too attractive and worried he would try to start an affair.

Coming to the same conclusion as it did in December, the all-male court found that bosses can fire employees they see as threats to their marriages, even if the subordinates have not engaged in flirtatious or other inappropriate behavior. The court said such firings do not count as illegal sex discrimination because they are motivated by feelings, not gender.

The ruling upholds a judge's decision to dismiss a discrimination lawsuit filed against Fort Dodge dentist James Knight, who fired assistant Melissa Nelson, even while acknowledging she had been a stellar employee for 10 years. Knight and his wife believed that his attraction to Nelson _ two decades younger than the dentist _ had become a threat to their marriage. Nelson, now 33, was replaced by another woman; Knight had an all-female staff.

The all-male court issued its revised opinion Friday in the case after taking the unusual step last month of withdrawing its December opinion, which had received nationwide publicity, debate and criticism.

Nelson's attorney, Paige Fiedler, had asked the court in January to reconsider, calling the decision a blow for gender and racial equity in the workplace. She had warned the opinion could allow bosses to legally fire dark-skinned blacks and replace them with light-skinned blacks or small-breasted workers in favor of big-breasted workers.

New Jersey's highest court on Monday overturned a $375,000 jury award given to an elderly couple who complained that a protective sand dune behind their house blocked their ocean views.

In a ruling seen as a wider victory for towns that want to build barriers to protect themselves from catastrophic storms, the state Supreme Court faulted a lower court for not allowing jurors to consider the dune's benefits in calculating its effect on property value. The high court ruled that those protective benefits should have been considered along with the loss of the ocean views.

The sand dune in question saved the elderly couple's home from destruction in Superstorm Sandy in October.

The 5-year-old case is being closely watched at the Jersey shore, which was battered by Sandy. Officials want to build protective dune systems along the state's entire 127-mile coastline, but towns fear they won't be able to if many homeowners hold out for large payouts as compensation for lost views.

Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber can delay the lethal injection of a death-row inmate who wants to waive his appeals and speed his execution, the state's highest court ruled Thursday.

The Oregon Supreme Court said Kitzhaber did not overstep his power when he granted a reprieve delaying the death sentence of Gary Haugen, who was convicted of two murders.

Kitzhaber opposes the death penalty and intervened weeks before Haugen was scheduled to be executed in 2011. The governor said he refused to allow an execution under a state death-penalty system he views as broken, vowing to block any execution during his term in office.

Haugen challenged Kitzhaber's clemency, saying the reprieve was invalid because Haugen refused to accept it. He also argued that it wasn't actually a reprieve but rather an illegal attempt by the governor to nullify a law he didn't like.

The governor argued that his clemency power is absolute, and nobody - certainly not an inmate on death row - can prevent him from doing what he believes to be in the state's best interest.