The four-year legal battle over former NYSE Chairman Richard Grasso's $187.5 million compensation package ended Tuesday when a New York appeals court dismissed claims against him of excessive pay and the state's top prosecutor said the case was closed.

"We have reviewed the court's opinion and determined that an appeal would not be warranted," Attorney General Andrew Cuomo's spokesman Alex Detrick said. "Thus, for all intents and purposes, the Grasso case is over."

Cuomo's announcement came soon after the Appellate Division of State Supreme Court ruled the attorney general's authority to pursue two remaining claims against Grasso lapsed when the New York Stock Exchange changed in 2005 from a nonprofit to a for-profit corporation. Last week, the Court of Appeals, New York's highest court, dismissed four common law claims against the 2003 compensation package.

The midlevel court concluded Tuesday that seeking to recover money for two remaining claims under New York's Not-For-Profit Corporation Law would simply benefit the NYSE's private owners. The court also dismissed a claim against Home Depot founder Kenneth Langone, who was chairman of the exchange's compensation committee and was accused of misleading other NYSE board members about Grasso's pay.

Justice James McGuire wrote that based on case law and the "evident purpose" of the not-for-profit law, the attorney general's authority to pursue the claims "lapsed" when the NYSE became a for-profit corporation. He wrote for the court majority.

Nossaman Guthner Knox & Elliott LLP plans to merge with O'Connor & Hannan LLP.

O'Connor & Hannan LLP, a D.C.-based firm with 23 attorneys and lobbyists at 1666 K St. NW, will rename as Nossaman LLP/O'Connor & Hannan and have more than 150 attorneys and lobbyists in eight offices. The merger takes effect Tuesday.

Los Angeles-based Nossaman will add D.C. to its list of locations, which includes Arlington County and offices in Austin, Texas, and a handful of cities in California.

Recently brought together through several joint new business proposals, the two firms found similarities in environmental law, government relations and infrastructure.

"The attorneys joining Nossaman add another dimension to our core practice areas and to the services we can offer our clients at the federal level," said Michael Heumann, managing partner at Nossaman. "We are further differentiating ourselves from other mid-sized California law firms and offering our clients something new."

Next month, Nossaman's D.C. office will elect members to the firm's executive and compensation committees.

Timothy Jenkins, a legislative advocate with 51-year-old O'Connor & Hannan, will become chairman of Nossaman's national government relations practice group.

New York's top court has affirmed dropping four claims against former chairman New York Stock Exchange Chairman Richard Grasso, dealing a major setback to the legacy of former state Attorney General Eliot Spitzer.

Two claims remain against Grasso's $187.5 million compensation package from the exchange, which was challenged by Spitzer as exorbitant for a not-for-profit organization.

In the decision affirming a lower court's ruling, Chief Judge Judith Kaye says the challenges were based on the size of the compensation package. But she says state law required more evidence to void such a payment.

Grasso argued that a private interest like NYSE should be free to set its own compensation.

The Supreme Court ruled Monday that a collection agency with no financial stake in a case can sue on behalf of its customers.

The 5-4 decision addresses a basic legal point, that courts can only hear cases when plaintiffs suffer actual injuries that are traceable to a defendant's conduct.

In the case before the court, APCC Services Inc. is trying to collect from Sprint Communications Co. and AT&T Inc. for coinless long-distance calls over the networks of Sprint and AT&T.

APCC provides billing and collection services on behalf of pay-phone service providers.

Writing for the majority, Justice Stephen Breyer said APCC may pursue the claim, even though it has promised to turn over any money from the lawsuit to pay-phone service providers.

A federal appeals court said the case could go forward because the pay-phone providers transferred the compensation claims to the collection agency and agreed to finance APCC's lawsuit. Breyer agreed, saying that for centuries, courts have found ways to allow those to whom compensation claims are assigned to bring suit.

In dissent, Chief Justice John Roberts said APCC has "nothing to gain from their lawsuit" and that under settled legal principles, that fact required dismissal of their complaint. Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito joined the dissent.

Last year, the Supreme Court ruled that pay-phone companies that complained they hadn't been adequately compensated could sue long-distance carriers.

A Johnson City law firm will pay $100,000 to the state and has agreed to help authorities in their probe of the firm's founder, John Hogan, to end an investigation by Attorney General Andrew Cuomo into whether lawyers were inappropriately receiving state pensions.

While agreeing to the settlement, the firm of Hogan, Sarzynski, Lynch, Surowka & DeWind LLP denied any impropriety.

Cuomo announced settlements Wednesday with the local firm and an Albany firm over private attorneys who were listed as school employees in order to receive public pensions and other benefits.

Overall, the deal includes a $600,000 settlement with Hogan, Sarzynski, as well as the Albany firm of Girvin & Ferlazzo. Cuomo said the settlement is the largest he has reached with private attorneys in his ongoing probe.

The Milberg law firm has admitted former partners paid about $11.3 million in kickbacks to professional plaintiffs in class-action cases that brought it roughly $239 million in legal fees, the U.S. attorney's office said.

The admission came as part of a $75 million settlement in a case involving more than 165 lawsuits filed against some of the nation's largest corporations from the 1970s through 2005, prosecutors said in a statement released late Monday.

Then known as Milberg Weiss, the firm dominated the field of securities class-action lawsuits involving shareholders who claim they suffered losses because executives misled them about a company's financial condition. Milberg's lawsuits targeted AT&T Inc., Lucent, WorldCom, Microsoft Corp., Prudential Insurance and other companies.

As part of the settlement, prosecutors will not pursue criminal charges against Milberg, which has retained a compliance monitor.

U.S. Attorney Thomas P. O'Brien said the settlement reflects the seriousness of what was probably the longest-running scheme ever conducted by a law firm.

"The monetary payment will punish the firm for allowing this conduct to occur, and the compliance monitor should ensure that Milberg will not again lie to judges presiding over cases it is litigating." O'Brien said.

The deal was initially disclosed Monday by Sanford Dumain, a member of Milberg's executive committee. If the criminal case had gone forward, the firm risked having to pay forfeitures and penalties of hundreds of millions of dollars, he said.

The firm was charged with aiding and abetting mail fraud and with money-laundering conspiracy. A trial had been expected to start in August.

A seven-year investigation has resulted in guilty pleas by three former partners.

The first Bush administration official convicted in the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal is entitled to a new trial, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday.

David Safavian, the former chief of staff for the General Services Administration, was convicted of lying to investigators about his relationship with Abramoff, the disgraced lobbyist who has admitted bribing government officials. Safavian was sentenced to 18 months in prison but the sentence was put on hold while the appeal played out.

"David Safavian has been destroyed by this," attorney Barbara Van Gelder, who defended Safavian at trial, said Tuesday. "He has been debarred. He's been unemployable and he's been seen as a villain. This is vindication."

His conviction was based on statements he made to Senate investigators, GSA ethics officials and the agency's inspector general. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit threw out the charges related to ethics officials and the inspector general and ordered a new trial on the other charges.

The court unanimously agreed that when Safavian asked whether he could ethically travel to Scotland for a golf trip with Abramoff, he was not required to tell ethics officials that he'd been providing Abramoff information about government-owned properties.