Campton Hills leaders are attempting to catch up on the village's mounting legal bills.

Village board members Tuesday voted 4 to 0 to pay Chicago-area legal firm Arnstein & Lehr LLP nearly $124,000 for services dating from July to November. Trustees Bern Bertsche and Al Lenkaitis were absent.

While there is currently enough money in municipal coffers to square up the latest bill, Village Treasurer Kathy Catalano said officials might soon need to dig into contingency funds earmarked for budget overruns.

Legal expenses are expected to only mount as the village wages ongoing legal battles with several groups of property owners who are trying to detach their land from the new municipality.

The latest bill is in addition to a roughly $50,000 tab the village paid off around the beginning of the year.

"I'd prefer it wasn't that much," Village President Patsy Smith said Tuesday. "But that's the cost of starting a new village when you're being challenged legally."

Village Attorney Bill Braithwaite has said his firm attempted to help the village by delaying invoices until the municipality, which incorporated after a referendum last April, began receiving state-shared revenue.

Catalano said while "there have been some invoices lagging because of this," the money is finally arriving.

"We've got the ability to pay these bills," she said.

No one at Tuesday's meeting addressed when to expect legal bills from November through today or how much they will be.

The U.S. Supreme Court rejected on Monday an appeal by Adelphia Communications Corp founder John Rigas and his son Timothy of their conspiracy and fraud convictions.

The justices declined to review a ruling by a U.S. appeals court in New York which upheld the pair's convictions on 22 of 23 counts of conspiracy and securities and bank fraud.

A jury found the father and son guilty in 2004 of the charges that accused them of concealing loans and stealing millions from the cable operator.

John Rigas, formerly Adelphia's president and chief executive officer, was sentenced in 2005 to 15 years in prison, while Timothy Rigas, the former finance chief, was sentenced to 20 years. They began serving their prison terms last year.

In the appeal, defense attorneys argued that federal prosecutors were required to prove that John and Timothy Rigas had violated Generally Accepted Accounting Principles or call an expert accounting witness in order to convict them of securities fraud.

The attorneys also argued that the reversal by the appeals court of the bank fraud convictions on count 23 for John and Timothy Rigas required the reversal of their bank fraud convictions on count 22.

Peloton Partners LLP, a London-based hedge fund that formerly held nearly $3 billion in assets, is liquidating its two funds and shutting down, the firm told investors on Wednesday, according to two people familiar with the situation.

Peloton last week told investors that it was liquidating its $2 billion ABS Fund after lender banks pulled back on credit. It held out hopes that it could salvage its second fund, the $1.6 billion Multi-Strategy Fund, even though some 40 percent of that fund's assets were invested in the ABS Fund.

Today, however, the fund told investors that the Multi-Strategy Fund is being liquidated in coming days, with the proceeds returned to investors, the source said.

It is unclear at this point what proceeds, if any, investors will get from the liquidation of the two funds, the company told investors.

That's significant not only in it being leap year, but it's also exactly six months until the deadline for anyone with a Katrina insurance dispute to file a lawsuit against insurance companies. Now one law firm is launching a campaign telling people who haven't decided whether to take their claim to court, not to wait until it's too late.

The Merlin Law Group has already fought for hundreds of people unhappy with how their insurance companies handled their Katrina claims. Attorney Chip Merlin says he worries about the thousands who have yet to join the battle.

"There's a whole bunch of people who've filed claims and they've been paid," said Merlin. "Sometimes they've been paid a little bit, sometimes they've been paid a lot. But they're still owed some more. Insurance companies bank on people just giving up."

Beginning February 29th, the Merlin Law Group will start running print and television ads letting people know the clock it ticking down.

"The deadline effectively stops people's ability to collect from the insurance company," Merlin said. "You have to have a lawsuit filed by that time. It doesn't mean the lawsuit is over with. It just means you have to have it filed."

Merlin says he's not concerned about where people who lost their homes and businesses go to find legal representation, just that they go and quickly.

"I don't think it's right for insurance companies to cheat people and not pay the full amount that's owed," said Merlin. "I've devoted my adult life to this and I believe that, regardless if they go to my law firm or any other law firm anywhere, it would be really wrong in our society if we allowed insurance companies to cheat people. They shouldn't just let the claim go away because they don't think it's worth the hassle."

Attorney Chip Merlin says many attorneys don't charge to review the merits of a claim, and will work on contingency. He says as the deadline for Katrina suits loomed in Louisiana last year, people were lined up outside the courthouse.

On Long Island, where public education is a multi-billion-dollar enterprise, four law firms control more than 60 percent of the estimated cost for legal services.

In 106 of the 124 school districts, $56.9 million was spent for legal fees from 2000 through 2004 -- $16.4 million alone during the 2003-2004 school year. Experts say legal costs have grown since then, with lawyers handling a wide range of issues from personnel and union issues to special education lawsuits.

The four law firms -- Guercio & Guercio in Farmingdale; Ingerman Smith in Hauppauge; Ehrlich, Frazer & Feldman, and Jaspan Schlesinger Hoffman, both of Garden City -- earned the majority of that total amount during that period, the most recent data available to Newsday.

Some experts say that consolidation of legal services is expected because educational law is highly specialized and few lawyers are experts at it.

In an unprecedented series of moves that have unfolded in rapid-fire fashion in the past week, three of these firms -- Guercio & Guercio being the exception -- that have attorneys whose arrangements with school dalso heard oral arguments in Warner-Lambert v. Kent, 06-1498, where the Court considered whether federal law preempts a Michigan law that allows personal injury lawsuits against prescription drug manufacturers only when the drug at issue was approved by the US Food and Drug Administration based on the fraudulent submission or withholding of information.

The US Supreme Court on Monday agreed to hear three cases, including Arizona v. Gant (07-542) where the Court will consider whether "the Fourth Amendment requires law enforcement officers to demonstrate a threat to their safety or a need to preserve evidence related to the crime of arrest in order to justify a warrantless vehicular search incident to arrest conducted after the vehicle's recent occupants have been arrested and secured?" Arizona is appealing an Arizona Supreme Court ruling that Rodney Joseph Gant's constitutional rights were violated when police searched his car after he was handcuffed and seated in a polialso heard oral arguments in Warner-Lambert v. Kent, 06-1498, where the Court considered whether federal law preempts a Michigan law that allows personal injury lawsuits against prescription drug manufacturers only when the drug at issue was approved by the US Food and Drug Administration based on the fraudulent submission or withholding of information.