Summary of actions by the Supreme Court on Tuesday

Summary of actions by the Supreme Court on Tuesday

The Supreme Court on Tuesday:

—Jumped in again to the bitter fight over the estate of billionaire Texas oilman J. Howard Marshall, who married Anna Nicole Smith in 1994 and died a year later. The court heard an earlier round in the fight between Smith and Marshall’s son, J. Pierce Marshall. Both Smith and the younger Marshall have since died, but their estates have continued the legal tussle.

—Agreed to decide whether the government can demand repayment from defense contractors Boeing Co. and General Dynamics Corp. over a long-ago canceled contract for a Navy attack plane while also claiming that national security would be compromised if it turned over classified information the companies wanted in developing the plane and later defending themselves in court.

—Said it will decide whether corporations can assert personal privacy interests to prevent the government from turning over information under the federal Freedom of Information Act.

—Voted to hear a case involving the use of lab reports at criminal trials, part of its recent examination of the consitutional requirement that defendants be able to confront witnesses against them.

—Agreed to resolve a split among federal appeals courts about whether a conviction for using a vehicle to flee from the police constitutes the kind of violent crime that can be used to lengthen a prison sentence.

—Announced it would decide whether the relatives of two teenagers from North Carolina who were killed in a bus accident in France can sue foreign tire makers in state court over alleged defects that led to the accident.

—Waded into a case over the limits on police entering a residence without a warrant, in this instance, bursting into an apartment in pursuit of a fleeing suspect and, not finding the suspect, arresting the occupants for possession of marijuana and cocaine.

— Said it would decide whether public hospitals and health clinics can go into federal court to sue drug makers for charging too much for the medicines they provide under a federal program.

— Agreed to decide whether a whistleblower may use information obtained through FOIA to allege violations of the federal False Claims Act by a government contractor.

—Voted to consider allowing two West Virginia residents to revive a lawsuit against Bayer AG over its anti-cholesterol drug Baycol, which was withdrawn from the market in 2001 after reports of a severe and sometimes fatal muscle disorder.