About 25 law firms seeking class action status for lawsuits filed against Toyota Motor Corp. in more than 20 states have formed a consortium, an attorney coordinating the group said Thursday.

Approximately 20 other lawsuits seeking class action status on behalf of consumers also have been filed against the automaker because of accelerator problems that have led to the recall of more than 8 million automobiles.

Those 40 suits do not include individual personal injury claims that consumers have filed against Toyota.

Tim Howard, coordinator of the Attorneys Toyota Action Consortium, said a court hearing on whether all the class action cases will be consolidated is expected March 25 before a multidistrict panel in U.S. District Court in San Diego.

Mr. Howard is a professor of law and policy at Northeastern University and an attorney at Howard Associates P.A. in Tallahassee, Fla.

The lawsuits seeking class action status share common allegations that consumers lost value in and the use of their cars because of defective parts that sparked the recall.

Gov. Bob Riley's gambling task force won another victory Thursday when the Alabama Supreme Court tossed out a court order blocking a raid on the state's largest casino.

In a 7-2 decision, the court said a Macon County judge lacked jurisdiction to halt the pre-dawn raid Jan. 29.

"This is another victory for the rule of law," Gov. Bob Riley said Thursday night.

VictoryLand, 15 miles east of Montgomery, closed its casino Monday night. Shortly before the Supreme Court's ruling came out Thursday, the company closed all other facilities, including its dog track, restaurants and new luxury hotel. The closure was designed to keep the Governor's Task Force on Illegal Gambling from returning without getting a judge to approve a search warrant.

Task force commander John Tyson said last week a search warrant was not needed for the thwarted raid because the casino was open and undercover officers were inside observing the gambling machines. He declined to reveal his next step Thursday night, but said he was reviewing the complete closure of VictoryLand.

Former Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau said he’s joining the New York-based law firm of Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz.

Morgenthau, 90, left office last month after 34 years as New York City’s top prosecutor. At Wachtell, the firm known for advising Wall Street clients on merger advice, he will be of counsel, a non-partner position.

“I have long admired Wachtell Lipton for not only its outstanding reputation as a law firm, but also for its devotion to and support for advancing the law and the legal profession, education and service to New York and the nation,” Morgenthau said in a statement.

Morgenthau began his prosecutorial career when President John F. Kennedy appointed him U.S. Attorney in 1961. As district attorney he prosecuted money-laundering, securities-fraud and tax-evasion cases, including one against former Tyco International Ltd.’s former chief L. Dennis Kozlowski, who was convicted in 2005 of looting the company.

Wachtell has its sole office in New York. It advised Bank of America Corp. in its purchase of Merrill Lynch & Co., JPMorgan Chase & Co. in its purchase of Bear Stearns Cos. and Wells Fargo & Co. in its acquisition of Wachovia Corp. A co- founder, Martin Lipton, created the “poison-pill” takeover defense.

Chinese software developers over the Green Dam Youth Escort monitoring program suffered several targeted attacks earlier this week, when documents containing malicious exploits were sent to attorneys, the firm stated late Wednesday.

On Monday evening, lawyers at the firm of Gipson Hoffman & Pancione received e-mails that appeared to have been sent by associates, the group said in its statement. The Trojan e-mail messages contained either links to Web sites or attachments and were specially constructed to retrieve data from the victim's computer or the company's server.

"The specific source of the attacks has not yet been determined, but it appears that they attacks were initiated within China," the firm said in its statement.

Last week, filtering software firm CYBERsitter announced that it had retained Gipson Hoffman & Pancione to sue the Chinese government, two Chinese software developers and seven PC makers for allegedly distributing its software code as part of the Chinese state-sponsored filtering and monitoring program known as Green Dam Youth Escort. The latest incident follows Google's announcement on Tuesday that it was considering pulling out of China following serious attacks on its networks that resulted in stolen intellectual property and the surveillance of human-rights activists in China.

The attacks on law firm GHP are not the first attempt to infiltrate companies involved in the claims against China and Green Dam. Last summer, CYBERsitter also received two PDF files containing malicious code.

The law firm has contacted the FBI and the U.S. government and the incident is under investigation, according to its statement.

Under terms of a settlement announced by Oregon Attorney General John Kroger, a California law firm is prohibited from providing loan modifications in Oregon and is required to pay $28,857.

"I will not hesitate to take action against companies that attempt to take advantage of Oregon homeowners in distress," Kroger said.

The settlement followed an Oregon Department of Justice investigation that determined The USMAC Law Group had violated state law by collecting advance fees for loan modifications to prevent foreclosure sales.

The DOJ's investigation also focused on alleged non-compliant contract language and deceptive infomercial advertisements for the firm's loan modification program that aired nationally on satellite television.

Loan modification companies are prohibited from collecting advance fees and using confusing contract language by the 2008 Oregon Mortgage Rescue Fraud protection Act.

The USMAC Law Group will provide $6,857 in refunds to two Oregon consumers and an additional nine Oregon consumers who contracted with The USMAC Law Group may also be eligible for refunds. The remaining $22,000 will be paid to the Oregon Department of Justice. No wrongdoing was admitted by The USMAC Law Group in agreeing to the settlement.

The settlement with The USMAC Law Group comes as part of a crack down on unscrupulous loan modification work to fight the foreclosure crisis by the Department of Justice, the Department of Consumer and Business Services, the Oregon Legislature and consumer groups, Kroger said.

The state Supreme Court is considering changing Indiana's rules governing advertising by attorneys.

State Trial Court Services Director Tom Carusillo says many of the proposed changes are designed to clarify the rules' language or update the rules to fit modern communications technologies such as the Internet.

He says one proposed change would broaden a rule to allow more attorneys to advertise as specialists if they are certified in a particular field of law.

The Supreme Court's rules committee will be accepting comments on the proposed changes from judges, lawyers and the public until March 1.