Ohio News

Fannie Mae and its former auditor KPMG LLP agreed Tuesday to pay $153 million to settle a long-running class-action lawsuit in which Ohio public pension funds and other shareholders accused the company of issuing false and misleading financial reports in the early 2000s.

An apology or other sympathetic statements health-care officials make to their patients can’t be used as evidence of liability in medical-malpractice cases. Lawmakers enacted this years ago.

His resignation comes about a month after the Kentucky Supreme Court disbarred him for professional misconduct, accusing Mr. Chesley of cheating clients out of millions of dollars in a widely followed settlement of a diet-drug lawsuit.

The judge who gave his blessing to Bank of America's $2.43 billion settlement with investors trimmed the total legal fees awarded in the case after challenging the fee request of a small Ohio firm that never appeared before him.

Ohio Gov. John Kasich signed groundbreaking legislation Thursday that will force plaintiffs suing a company over allegedly asbestos-related injuries to divulge any claims they have made with trusts established to compensate asbestos victims.

Ohio became the first state to pass workers' compensation reform legislation requiring claimants to disclose information about asbestos bankruptcy trust cases before going to trial against companies for tort claims.

Gov. John Kasich is expected to sign a controversial bill that critics argue will make it more difficult for victims to sue the corporations that made asbestos-related products or exposed them to the cancer-causing fibers.

Four Senate Republicans joined all 10 Democrats on Wednesday in opposing a bill that supporters argue would help to level the legal playing field in asbestos lawsuits, and that opponents counter is another attempt to bar the courthouse door to victims of the cancer-causing fibers.  In the end, the bill passed 19-14.