A proposed settlement has been reached in a federal class-action lawsuit against LegalZoom Inc., the online vendor of legal forms and documents.

The lawsuit had been scheduled go to trial Monday in U.S. District Court in Jefferson City.

But California-based LegalZoom has announced an agreement in principle to settle the lawsuit that claimed the company wasn't licensed to provide legal services in Missouri. LegalZoom says it contains no admission of wrongdoing and lets the company continue offering services to Missouri residents with certain changes.

The original plaintiffs were a Missouri resident who used LegalZoom to prepare a will, and two others who used it to organize a remodeling business.

An attorney for the plaintiffs says only that the settlement involves compensation for Missouri customers and changes to how LegalZoom operates.

The law firm of Berman DeValerio filed a securities class action lawsuit today against Miller Energy Resources, Inc.

The lawsuit alleges violations of United States securities laws on behalf of purchasers of common stock from December 16, 2009 through and including August 1, 2011 (the “Class Period”).

Berman DeValerio (www.bermandevalerio.com) brought the complaint against the Company and certain of its directors and officers (the “Defendants”) in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee. The case is filed as 3:11-cv-00397.

Pursuant to the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, investors wishing to serve as the lead plaintiff are required to file a motion for appointment with the court no later than October 11, 2011.

The claims arise under Sections 10(b) and 20(a) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, 15 U.S.C. §§ 78j(b) and 78t(a), (the “Exchange Act”), and Rule 10b-5 promulgated thereunder by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”) for class period purchasers.

The complaint alleges that throughout the Class Period, Miller, an oil and gas exploration, production and drilling firm, and the other Defendants made material false statements about Miller’s financial results and about the valuation of certain oil-and-gas-producing assets it acquired in Alaska. Specifically, the complaint alleges that Defendants: (1) issued false and misleading consolidated balance sheets, statements of operations and cash flows; (2) failed to properly classify royalty expenses; (3) failed to properly record sufficient compensation expense on equity awards; (4) did not properly calculate the liability for derivative instruments; (5) did not properly consolidate entities under its control; and (6) improperly reported the value of certain oil and gas assets that it acquired in Alaska. As a result of these problems, the Company was required to restate its financial results. Over a series of almost daily disclosures occurring on July 28, 2011, July 29, 2011 and August 1, 2011, Miller’s stock price dropped from $7.04 per share on July 27, 2011 to a close of $3.37 per share on August 2, 2011, a total drop of $3.67 or 52%.

To receive a copy of the complaint, please call Berman DeValerio at (800) 516-9926.

If you are a member of the class, you may, no later than October 11, 2011, request that the court appoint you as lead plaintiff for the class. In addition, you may contact the attorneys at Berman DeValerio to discuss your rights and interests in the case. Please note: you may also retain counsel of your choice and need not take any action at this time to be a class member.

Berman DeValerio is a national law firm representing plaintiffs in lawsuits against corporate wrongdoers, chiefly for violations of securities and antitrust laws. The firm has 49 lawyers in Boston, San Francisco and South Florida.

A U.S. appeals court on Tuesday threw out the 4 1/2-year corruption sentence of a long-powerful former Pennsylvania state senator.

The court agreed with prosecutors that U.S. District Judge Ronald Buckwalter did not explain why he sentenced Vincent Fumo far below federal sentencing guidelines.

The court also upheld 68-year-old Fumo's conviction and ordered a new sentencing of an aide convicted at trial with him.

A jury in 2009 convicted Fumo of defrauding the state Senate, a museum and a South Philadelphia nonprofit of millions. The Philadelphia Democrat had been a wealthy power broker during his 30-year state Senate career. He remains incarcerated at a federal prison in Kentucky.

Dunn Lampton, a former U.S. attorney in Mississippi who prosecuted two civil rights-era cold cases and a complex corruption case involving a wealthy attorney and state judges, has died. He was 60.

Among Lampton's best known cases was the prosecution of James Ford Seale, a reputed Ku Klux Klansman who died in prison this month. Seale was convicted in 2007 of two counts of kidnapping and one of conspiracy to commit kidnapping in the 1964 deaths of Henry Hezekiah Dee and Charles Eddie Moore, both 19.

Lampton died Wednesday evening, according to former acting U.S. Attorney Donald Burkhalter, one of the prosecutors who served after Lampton's 2009 retirement

"He was a hell of a trial lawyer and he did a good job as U.S. attorney," Burkhalter said Thursday. "I think he always tried to do the right thing."

The cause of death was not immediately released, but Lampton had been in declining health. The U.S. attorney's office said the funeral will be at 1 p.m. Saturday at Covenant Presbyterian Church in Jackson. Burial will be private.

President George W. Bush appointed Lampton as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Mississippi in September 2001, putting him in charge of federal prosecutions in 45 counties.

Among the highlights of Lampton's career were prosecutions in two civil rights-era cases that led to the convictions of reputed Klansmen Seale and Ernest Avants.

The Justice Department is investigating whether the Standard & Poor's credit ratings agency improperly rated dozens of mortgage securities in the years leading up to the financial crisis, The New York Times reported Wednesday.

The investigation began before Standard & Poor's cut the United States' AAA credit rating this month, but it's likely to add to the political firestorm created by the downgrade, the newspaper said. Some government officials have since questioned the agency's secretive process, its credibility and the competence of its analysts, claiming to have found an error in its debt calculations.

The Times cites two people interviewed by the government and another briefed on such interviews as its sources. According to people with knowledge of the interviews, the Justice Department has been asking about instances in which the company's analysts wanted to award lower ratings on mortgage bonds but may have been overruled by other S&P business managers.

If the government finds enough evidence to support a case, it could undercut S&P's longstanding claim that its analysts act independently from business concerns. The newspaper said it was unclear whether the Justice Department investigation involves the other two major ratings agencies, Moody's and Fitch, or only S&P.

A judge gave Facebook access to the personal email accounts of a man suing for half ownership of the social networking website and ordered him to explain why he can't produce documents its lawyers believe are evidence.

Proof that Paul Ceglia's case is a fraud has been sitting on a Chicago law firm's email server since 2004, Facebook attorney Orin Snyder told the federal judge on Wednesday.

An email that Ceglia sent to a former business associate at the firm includes a scanned version of the two-page contract he and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg signed, Snyder said. Unlike the one Ceglia filed, it doesn't mention Facebook, only a street-mapping database Ceglia had hired Zuckerberg to work on, he said.

"The noose is tightening around the neck of this plaintiff, and he knows it," Snyder said during a four-hour procedural hearing that had each side accusing the other of dirty tricks.

Snyder said Ceglia had artificially aged his "phony" contract with light and chemicals, backdated computer files and transferred others to portable storage devices, which he'd likely tossed into Lake Erie.

Ceglia's attorney, Jeffrey Lake, countered that Facebook had tried to "poison the jury pool" by releasing what should have been confidential documents and implied Facebook had planted damning evidence on Ceglia's computers, a statement he backed away from after the hearing.