The Mississippi Supreme Court has suspended Alcorn County Justice Court Judge Jimmy McGee for misconduct.

The Mississippi Commission on Judicial Performance had accused McGee of interfering with a criminal case and making "statements in open court encouraging others to engage in vigilante justice."

The complaint involved a case in another court in which McGee's relative was a crime victim. He allegedly said in open court in 2008 that his relative's case should have been handled "down on the farm" instead of in the justice system.

The Supreme Court ordered a suspension without pay for 270 days, a public reprimand and assessed $100 in court costs.

Drug developer Pozen Inc. said Monday that a Texas court upheld three patents supporting its migraine drug Treximet.

Pozen said the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas ruled that the patents were valid. The court also found that generic versions of Treximet developed by Par Pharmaceutical Co. and Dr. Reddy's Laboratories Ltd. infringed on all three patents, while a version developed by Alphapharm Pty Ltd. infringed on two patents. Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. had also challenged the patents, but was dismissed from Pozen's lawsuit in April 2010 after it agreed to abide by the court's decision.

The court said the Food and Drug Administration cannot approve the generics made by Dr. Reddy's and Par until Feb. 2, 2025, and that the agency can't approve the Alphapharm generic until Aug. 14, 2017.

Treximet is a combination of GlaxoSmithKline PLC's drug Imitrex and an anti-inflammatory drug developed by Pozen. GlaxoSmithKline markets the drug and pays royalties to Pozen. In the second quarter, those royalty payments accounted for $4 million of Pozen's $4.6 million in total revenue.

The FDA approved Treximet in April 2008 after years of delays, and Par filed for approval of its generic in October of that year.

If you had a Bank of America account with a debit card between January 2001 and May of this year, you may be due some cash.

The nation's largest bank has started contacting customers who may be entitled to a refund. It recently reached a class-action settlement over the way it charged overdraft fees. Most of the other suits are continuing to work their way through federal court in Florida.

Bank of America agreed to set up a $410 million fund to settle the lawsuit. The money will be used to pay back customers who were charged overdraft fees as a result of the company's policy of processing debit card transactions based on the size of the transaction, rather than when the purchases occurred.

The bank is one of about three dozen named in a series of class-action lawsuits over the practice of "reordering." A policy that became widespread in the 2000s, reordering involves deducting purchases from an account starting with the largest dollar amount first. That means a customer may end up paying additional overdraft fees.

For instance, someone with an account balance of $95 and who made three purchases in one day, the first for $5, the next for $25 and the last for $75, would be charged two overdraft fees, rather than one.

The suits claim that reordering was done to intentionally increase the number of overdraft fees collected. Banks took in about $39 billion in overdraft fees annually before the Federal Reserve put new rules in place last year. Now banks are required to obtain a customer's written permission before providing overdraft protection.

To inform customers that they may be eligible for a refund of some overdraft fees, Bank of America is sending postcards to customers with a brief explanation of the settlement and the address of a website where more information is available.

A federal appeals court ruling could lead to even more spending in Wisconsin's recall elections.

A 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel ruled Monday that the state's $10,000 annual contribution limit on so-called "super PACs," or political action committees that do not coordinate with specific candidates or their campaigns, can't be enforced while a lawsuit from one of the groups is pending.

The lawsuit was brought by Wisconsin Right to Life's political action committee, and the group's attorney said it will immediately begin soliciting big-dollar donations to spend in the recalls targeting six Republicans and two Democrats.

"They will raise money in excess of the limits," said Right to Life attorney James Bopp, Jr.

To date, Wisconsin Right to Life's PAC reported spending only $325 on telephone calls in support of Republican Sen. Randy Hopper and against his Democratic challenger, Jessica King.

The appeals court said the donation limit can be exceeded while the underlying lawsuit is pending. Wisconsin Right to Life argues that the limits are an unconstitutional restriction on free speech.

Oral arguments were tentatively planned for September, after both the Aug. 9 elections targeting six Republican state senators and elections a week later involving two Democratic incumbents.

A federal appeals court on Tuesday overturned the conviction of a man who posted Internet messages threatening Barack Obama during his 2008 presidential campaign.

A divided three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Walter Bagdasarian's violent and racist screeds against Obama were "repugnant" but not criminal. The court also said it was obvious the San Diego man wasn't planning to attack the candidate and that the postings were protected by Bagdasarian's free speech rights.

Bagdasarian was convicted in 2009 of two felony counts of threatening a major presidential candidate.

Bagdasarian posted several messages to a Yahoo Finance message board in October 2008, including one that called Obama a racial epithet and another that said "he will have a 50 cal in the head soon" — a reference to a .50 caliber gun.

A retired Air Force officer forwarded the postings to the Secret Service. Yahoo provided Bagdasarian's subscriber information to investigators, who raided his house and seized six guns and a hard drive containing an email with similar sentiments.

Bagdasarian admitted posting the messages, but said he was drunk and joking.

He waived his right to a jury trial. District Judge Marilyn L. Huff found him guilty and sentenced him to 60-days in a half-way home.

But the appeals panel said no "reasonable person" could have taken seriously Bagdasarian's posts.

The Supreme Court on Monday blocked a massive sex discrimination lawsuit against Wal-Mart on behalf of women who work there.

The court ruled unanimously that the lawsuit against Wal-Mart Stores Inc. cannot proceed as a class action, reversing a decision by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. The lawsuit could have involved up to 1.6 million women, with Wal-Mart facing potentially billions of dollars in damages.

Now, the handful of women who brought the lawsuit may pursue their claims on their own, with much less money at stake and less pressure on Wal-Mart to settle.

The justices divided 5-4 on another aspect of the ruling that could make it much harder to mount similar class-action discrimination lawsuits against large employers.

Justice Antonin Scalia's opinion for the court's conservative majority said there needs to be common elements tying together "literally millions of employment decisions at once."

But Scalia said that in the lawsuit against the nation's largest private employer, "That is entirely absent here."

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, writing for the court's four liberal justices, said there was more than enough uniting the claims. "Wal-Mart's delegation of discretion over pay and promotions is a policy uniform throughout all stores," Ginsburg said.

Business interests lined up with Wal-Mart while civil rights, women's and consumer groups have sided with the women plaintiffs.