The Arkansas Supreme Court has upheld the dismissal of a lawsuit that challenged the state Game and Fish Commission's authority to lease public land to natural gas companies so they can drill.

The Thursday ruling affirmed a circuit court ruling turned away James Dockery's claim that proceeds from the wells should go to the Legislature instead of the commission.

The commission voted in 2008 to lease drilling rights to Chesapeake Energy Corp. of Oklahoma City for $32.2 million. Dockery sued in Pulaski County the following year.

The leased areas include include more than 7,500 acres in the Petit Jean River Wildlife Management Area in Yell County and nearly 4,000 acres in the Gulf Mountain Wildlife Management Area in Van Buren County.

Dick's Sporting Goods Inc. has reached a settlement with a former employee over just payment for her work.

Court records show U.S. District Judge Joseph Bataillon dismissed the lawsuit filed by Dannette Stackhouse, citing the settlement. Details were not disclosed.

Stackhouse's attorney Peter Glennon declined to comment. A message left Wednesday for a Dick's attorney wasn't immediately returned.

Stackhouse said in her lawsuit that employees were forced to work through breaks, were unpaid for overtime and were sometimes locked in the store until work was finished. Her lawsuit was filed on behalf of roughly 900 Dick's workers in Nebraska and sought class-action status.

Stackhouse worked in the sporting goods retailer's Papillion location.

A federal judge in Maine says 40 residents with cerebral palsy, epilepsy and other conditions can join a lawsuit seeking to force the state to provide opportunities for them to live outside nursing homes.

On Monday, U.S. District Court Judge John Woodcock granted class-action status to a lawsuit filed by three men with cerebral palsy who want to live on their own but retain services provided by the Maine Department of Health and Human Services.

In the lawsuit filed in December 2009, the three argued the state violated the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Nursing Home Reform Act because it failed to make it possible for them to live outside nursing homes.

The Bangor Daily News says state officials couldn't be reached Wednesday because of the storm.

The Supreme Court won't overturn the convictions of a suburban New York City couple convicted of enslaving two Indonesian housekeepers.

The high court on Tuesday refused to hear appeals from Mahender and Varsha Sabhnani that sought to overturn their forced-labor convictions.

The couple was convicted of enslaving two domestic servants the couple brought from Indonesia by keeping their travel documents and having them perform forced labor on their behalf.

Prosecutors said Varsha Sabhnani was primarily responsible for inflicting years of abuse on the poorly educated servants. They said her husband let the abuse take place and benefited from the work the women performed in their $2 million Long Island home.

Varsha Sabhnani says pre-trial publicity prevented her from getting a fair trial, while her husband argues that he shouldn't have been convicted for aiding and abetting because he didn't stop his wife.

Federal regulators on Monday charged the co-founder of a New York hedge fund and three other individuals with insider trading, the latest action in what the government has called the biggest insider-trading case in U.S. history.

The Securities and Exchange Commission announced it filed a civil lawsuit against hedge fund Trivium Capital Management, its co-founder Robert Feinblatt and analyst Jeffrey Yokuty. The SEC also filed charges against Sunil Bhalla, a former senior executive of tech company Polycom, and Shammara Hussain, a former employee at a consulting firm that did work for Google. The agency said Bhalla and Hussain provided confidential information that enabled Feinblatt and Yokuty to make about $15 million from trading on the information.

So far the SEC has filed civil charges against 27 people and hedge funds in a wide-ranging probe of the Galleon group of hedge funds and its founder. The government says Galleon funds made about $69 million in illegal profits. Raj Rajaratnam, the one-time billionaire founder of the Galleon funds, has pleaded not guilty. Federal authorities have arrested 23 people on criminal charges in the case; 14 have pleaded guilty.

The SEC alleged in its suit that Feinblatt and Yokuty traded using confidential information they received from Roomy Khan, a Florida investor who pleaded guilty in 2009 to conspiracy and securities fraud in the Galleon case. Khan has been cooperating in the government's investigation.