In late December, Circuit Court JudgeRoger Couch finalized a $327 million verdict against pharmaceutical giantJohnson & Johnson for the way it marketed its antipsychotic drug, Risperdal.  On or about the same day, he also gave another drug maker, AstraZenecaPharmaceutical, the green light to move forward with a challenge to SouthCarolina’s action against the company for the marketing of its own antipsychotic drug, Seroquel, on the grounds that the state attorney general’s office had compromised its independence in pursuing the case. 

Chris Dusseault’s Blackberry lit up just as soon as he and his wife had settled in at their table in a Nantucket restaurant on an August 2010 evening. He knew the simple message — “Perry, 09-2292, release set for tomorrow” — signaled an interruption to their long-delayed holiday.

Lawyers for Wilmington and four other North Carolina cities challenging the constitutionality of new provisions of the state’s annexation laws are due back in Wake County Superior Court on Thursday, when they will ask Special Superior Court Judge William Pittman to block enforcement of the new laws pending a hearing and ruling on their claims. While the challenge is based on a specific legal question – whether only property owners should have a say in a proposed annexation – there’s a larger play here.

After spending the past several years as the founding executive director of the NC Institute for Constitutional Law, former Supreme Court Justice Robert Orr is returning to private practice, joining Raleigh’s Poyner Spurill.

For-profit companies rushed into the public school market at the same time the first charter schools took hold. Some 17 years later, can we safely say that this profit experiment has run its course? Or has it simply moved out of brick and mortar buildings and into cyber space?

Two charter schools in one city, competing for similar resources, space and students. One is rooted in the community of Newark; the other belongs to a national network. One is led by Newark educators, the other by out-of-town Teach for America alumni. One has plans to stay small, the other has aggressive plans to expand. One wants to change how children learn, the other aims to prepare them for life. One needs money, the other – not so much

DURHAM, N.C. - It’s Wednesday afternoon, and the usual collection of suits has gathered to discuss the past week’s revenues and assess the progress of their financial plan. Board room? Rotary club? Stock exchange? Not exactly.

RED BANK, N.J. - Small town America loves a parade. But the sight of an 1865 Victorian lumbering down local streets five years ago was a spectacle unlike any seen by residents of this Jersey shore town.

It’s been twenty years since Tracy Kidder sat at a desk in Room 205 of the Kelly School, Holyoke, Mass., witness to a year in the life of Christine Zajac’s fifth grade.Yet the class Kidder portrayed in “Among Schoolchildren” – filled with immigrant children, most free lunch eligible, testing far below average and battered by home lives that were transient at best and abusive at worst – could just as easily exist today.