Health care real estate investment trust Ventas Inc. said a federal court has ruled it can immediately collect $102 million in damages awarded by a federal jury in 2009 in a judgment against HCP Inc.

The two companies had agreed to delay payment of the funds while HCP appealed the decision. In May, the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the judgment and ordered a second trial to decide punitive damages. Those proceedings are set to begin in February.

Ventas, based in Chicago, said late Monday that the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Kentucky ruled that HCP could not further delay enforcement of the judgment. In the case, Ventas accused HCP of driving up the purchase price of Sunrise Senior Living real estate investment trust.

HCP of Long Beach, Calif., said in a separate statement it will promptly pay the $102 million. It had accrued the full amount in the third quarter of 2009, and the payment will have no additional impact on its earnings.

Ventas operates a portfolio of senior housing communities, skilled nursing facilities, hospitals, medical office buildings and other properties in 47 states and two Canadian provinces.

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.

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.

Attorney General Gary King and a state agency can take charge of legal efforts to recover money for New Mexico for some investment deals allegedly influenced by political considerations, a state court ruled Wednesday.

District Judge Stephen Pfeffer also dismissed portions of a whistleblower's lawsuit involving allegations of a pay-to-play scheme in investment deals by the State Investment Council, which oversees permanent funds worth more than $15 billion. The judge's ruling allows the council and the attorney general to handle those legal claims.

The lawsuit by Frank Foy, a former chief investment officer of the state's educational pension fund, will continue on other allegations, including that the state lost money on bad investments by the Educational Retirement Board and some by the council and that politics influenced some of the pension's fund investments.

The Investment Council filed a lawsuit in May claiming that its former top manager and a financial advisory firm improperly steered New Mexico investments to political supporters of former Democratic Gov. Bill Richardson. More than a dozen other defendants were named, including third-party placement agents who earned millions of dollars in fees on investment deals.

Former State Investment Officer Gary Bland has said the allegations are "absurd" and he was not involved in any wrongdoing.

More than 20,000 South Korean iPhone users have filed a class action lawsuit against US technology giant Apple for alleged privacy violations over the collection of location data, a law firm said.

The suit came after lawyer Kim Hyung-Suk was awarded one million won (US $950) in compensation in June, the first such payout by Apple's Korean unit, following an interim order by a court in the southeastern city of Changwon.

Kim has since led online preparations for a class action suit against Apple and its South Korean unit.

"The suit accuses Apple of breaching articles 10 and 17 of the constitution that ensure pursuit of happiness and protection of privacy, and the South Korean law on protection of location data," a spokesman for Kim's firm Miraelaw said. The suit involves 26,691 people demanding one million won each.

The longtime girlfriend of reputed Boston crime boss James "Whitey" Bulger pleaded not guilty Thursday to helping him elude authorities during his 16 years as a fugitive.

Catherine Greig, 60, entered her plea in a brief appearance in federal court in Boston that lasted less than five minutes. She also waived a reading of the indictment.

Greig was indicted last week on a charge of conspiracy to harbor and conceal a fugitive, a crime that carries a maximum sentence of five years. Greig has been jailed since she and Bulger were captured in June in Santa Monica, Calif. Bulger has pleaded not guilty to participating in 19 murders.

Prosecutors say Greig actively helped Bulger escape capture, but her attorney says she's a subservient woman who wasn't aware of the extent of Bulger's alleged crimes when she fled with him.

On Thursday, Greig smiled at her twin sister when she entered the courtroom. She did not speak during the hearing, except to tell the judge she understood the charges against her and was ready to enter her plea.

After the hearing, Greig's attorney Kevin Reddington was asked if Greig was cooperating with authorities against Bulger.