The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is weighing in on a lawsuit over graphic cigarette warning labels that include the sewn-up corpse of a smoker and a picture of diseased lungs, saying the federal government has no legitimate authority to take space on a tobacco company's packaging or advertising to persuade consumers not to buy the product.

The pro-business lobbying group filed a friend of the court brief with the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington late Monday in the lawsuit brought by some of the largest U.S. tobacco companies, including R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. and Lorillard Tobacco Co., challenging the Food and Drug Administration's plan to require the new labels be placed on cigarette packs later this year.

A U.S. District Court judge in November blocked the labels while deciding whether they violate the companies' free speech rights, ruling that it is likely the cigarette makers would succeed in a lawsuit. The FDA has appealed that decision and oral arguments are set for April.

Shoe retailer Zappos is facing a national class action suit one day after it warned customers that its servers had been hacked.

On Monday, the Amazon-owned shoe company sent a mass email stating that 24 million customer accounts had been breached. The incident resulted in hackers obtaining names, phone numbers, emails, encrypted passwords and the last four numbers of customer credit cards.

The lawsuit claims Amazon violated a part of the Fair Credit Reporting Act by failing to properly encrypt and secure customer information, and seeks unspecified damages for 24 million customers.

The lead plaintiff in the case is a Texas woman but the suit was filed in federal court in Louisville, Kentucky on the grounds that Amazon has servers located in that state.

As these type of hacking incidents have become more common, so too have related lawsuits. So far, though, few of these lawsuits been successful because customers have been unable to show that they have been harmed by the data breaches.

The Kentucky lawsuit appears based in part on a novel legal theory that customers will now be more susceptible to phishing and other online scams because hackers have their email. It also alleges the plaintiffs suffered emotional distress. Other high-profile data breach cases such as one involving Sony’s Play Station have been based in part on state consumer laws.

Although courts have been reluctant to find that customers have been harmed by data breaches, there is evidence this may be changing. A security publication recently reported
that an appeals court allowed customers to claim they suffered harm in the form of having to buy insurance for identity theft.

Some media publications this week praised Zappos’ for having a pre-arranged plan to respond to the data theft. The company claims that its customer credit cards remained secure because they were stored in a separate server.

Vulcan Materials has sued Martin Marietta in federal court, accusing the smaller gravel, sand and stone supplier of launching an illegal takeover attempt of Vulcan.

Vulcan, based in Birmingham, Ala., also on Wednesday strongly recommended that its shareholders not tender their stock to Martin Marietta, which announced a hostile bid for the company earlier this month.

Martin Marietta, based in Raleigh, N.C., has said it plans to take a stock offer directly to Vulcan shareholders after Vulcan cut off negotiations that started more than a year and a half ago.

Under the offer, valued at about $4.74 billion, Vulcan Materials Co. shareholders would get half a share of Martin Marietta Materials Inc. stock for each of their Vulcan shares. That offer valued Vulcan at $36.69 per share, a 9.4 percent premium, based on the stock's closing price Dec. 9, the last trading day before Martin Marietta's announcement.

Martin Marietta also said when it announced its bid that it had filed lawsuits in both Delaware Chancery Court and New Jersey state court to ensure Vulcan shareholders get a chance to consider its offer.

Bank holding company Washington Mutual Inc. has agreed to a settlement with some creditors involved in its Chapter 11 bankruptcy case and has filed a new reorganization plan.

Washington Mutual said in a statement late Monday that the settlement will allow it to distribute more than $7 billion to its creditors. The settlement must still be approved by the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware.

"The comprehensive settlement announced today represents a fair and reasonable recovery for the thousands of equity holders of the company who have been following this case closely for three years," Michael Willingham, chairman of the committee of equity security holders appointed in the company's Chapter 11 proceedings.

Washington Mutual's bankruptcy case is three years old and its reorganization plans have twice been rejected by Bankruptcy Court Judge Mary Walrath. The company is hoping to exit bankruptcy protection by the end of February. It has a hearing scheduled for Jan. 11, 2012 in which the bankruptcy court will consider approval of the reorganization plan's disclosure statement. The company also plans to ask the bankruptcy court for a mid-February hearing to confirm its reorganization plan.

Attorneys for the Los Angeles Dodgers and Fox Sports squared off in court Wednesday over the team's plan to sell the media rights to games starting in 2014 as part of its plan to exit bankruptcy.

The Dodgers are asking a U.S. Bankruptcy Court judge in Delaware to approve a process for selling the television rights to future games as part of a settlement with Major League Baseball that also calls for the sale of the team and Dodger Stadium.

Fox, whose Prime Ticket subsidiary owns the current television contract with the Dodgers, is challenging the proposed sale process, saying it would violate Fox's rights under the existing contract. That contract gives Fox an exclusive 45-day period starting in October 2012 to negotiate a new TV deal and prohibits the Dodgers from talking to any other party until Nov. 30 of next year.

The Dodgers contend that a sale of the media rights is the best way to maximize value for the team's creditors and emerge from bankruptcy in a timely fashion.

The Supreme Court will consider throwing out an $18 million penalty against Texas-based Southern Union Co. for illegally storing mercury at a rundown building in Rhode Island.

The justices said Monday they will hear the natural gas company's appeal of the criminal penalty that was imposed by a federal judge and upheld by an appeals court.

What makes the case unusual is that the company is challenging the size of the penalty under a line of Supreme Court cases concerning prison sentences.

Southern Union had used the building in Pawtucket to store outdated mercury-sealed gas regulators that it removed from customers' homes. The mercury was initially removed and shipped to a recycling center. But when that work stopped, the regulators and loose mercury were left to accumulate inside the building.

A Russian court on Friday rejected a $16 billion claim against BP PLC filed by an obscure minority shareholder in BP's Russian venture, TNK-BP.

The court victory may have softened the blow that BP sustained when Rosneft dropped it as a partner in developing Russia's untapped Arctic oil and gas riches. The multibillion dollar deal broke down after TNK-BP's Russian billionaire shareholders blocked it, claiming that BP should be pursuing it through TNK-BP.

The Arbitration Court in the Tyumen region in Siberia on Friday dismissed two motions filed by a group of minority shareholders led by Andrei Prokhorov, who owns 0.0000106 percent in TNK-BP. The lawsuits are a $13 billion claim against BP and a $2.8 billion suit against two BP-nominated directors on TNK-BP's board.

Prokhorov and other shareholders claimed that BP and its representatives damaged TNK-BP's interests by failing to include the Russian venture in the Arctic deal with Rosneft.

BP's Russian partners in TNK-BP have denied any connection to the minority shareholder's suit. The claim was the reason why Russian police raided BP's office in August, which happened just days after Rosneft teamed up with ExxonMobil to develop the Arctic.