A Bush administration lawyer urged justices today to throw out a lawsuit in which former Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft, at left, and former FBI director Robert Mueller are accused of ordering the jailing of hundreds of Muslim men after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

An administration lawyer says plaintiffs haven’t shown that ex-Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft and FBI chief Robert Mueller were involved in discrimination.

The lawysers for the Muslim detainees’ who brought the suit see a Catch-22.

U.S. Solicitor General Gregory G. Garre said the suit against Ashcroft and Mueller should be thrown out because the Muslim men could not show the “personal involvement of those high-ranking officials in the alleged discriminatory acts.” Because they lacked this proof in their original complaint, the suit should be dismissed at the pleading stage, Garre said.

Lawyers for the Muslim men called this a classic Catch-22 because such Plaintiffs will never be able to provide the level of detail Ashcroft and Mueller would demand at the beginning of a lawsuit, because that information is in the exclusive control of the government.

A federal judge in Brooklyn as well as the U.S. Court of Appeals in Manhattan allowed his suit to proceed.

But most of the justices who spoke during Wednesday’s argument said Ashcroft and Mueller should be dismissed from the suits. In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, they said, it was expected that top officials at the Justice Department would seek to arrest and question those who might know something about the hijackers or other terrorist plots.

Only Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and David H. Souter spoke up for allowing the lawsuit to proceed. They said the federal rules for civil lawsuits allow claims from plaintiffs who say their rights were violated.

Later this week, the court will meet to decide whether to hear an appeal from four former prisoners who say they were abused and tortured at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Their suit against top Defense officials was thrown out by an appeals court, which said the prisoners did not have constitutional rights.

The majority of fatal medical helicopter crashes in 2008 can be traced to poor weather conditions and lax safety standards, according to an analysis by the Houston Chronicle. The newspaper cites halting progress by federal regulators to strengthen safety standards and an explosion in the number of carriers as contributing factors in the record number of fatal crashes reported in past year. Sixty-five fatal medical helicopter crashes have occurred since 1989, according the National Safety Transportation Board

A Florida appeals court has ruled that a plastic surgeon may not have the body of a former patient exhumed in order to lessen civil damages from a wrongful death lawsuit. The 1st District Court of Appeal panel in Tallahassee found there was not sufficient evidence that an exhumation would yield new information relevant to the case. Attorneys for the plastic surgeon had asserted that the patient may have used drugs that would have shortened his life expectancy.

A group of Massachusetts doctors is asking that a wrongful death lawsuit against them be dismissed and the case handled as a medical malpractice claim. The widow of a man who was struck and killed by the vehicle of an elderly cancer patient claims that Compass Medical and four of its doctors were responsible for the accident because they failed to warn the patient that her medication may have rendered her unable to drive. Defendants in the case ask that it be reviewed by a medical malpractice tribunal.

In a first-of-its-kind action, Los Angeles city attorneys filed a lawsuit seeking to recover monetary damages from local gang leaders on behalf of those affected by gang violence. Specifically, the lawsuit targets nine leaders of Los Angeles’ 18th Street Gang for property damage, loss in property value, emotional distress, personal injury, medical expenses, and out-of-pocket expenses. Any damages recovered as a result of the lawsuit will be distributed to local communities, the city attorneys’ office said.

A new report by the World Health Organization and Unicef says childhood accidents account for approximately 830,000 deaths around the world each year. According to the first-of-its-kind report, injury accidents are to blame for 40 percent of childhood deaths in developed countries. A report from the Centers for Disease Control, released in conjunction with the W.H.O. and Unicef found accidents kill more than 12,000 children in the United States each year.

A new USA Today analysis of government emissions reports reveals that schools around the country face dangerous levels of toxic chemicals from industrial pollution. The report used a computer model to predict where chemical concentrations are highest, and then compared those results to school locations to rank schools at the highest risk. In some cases, the air quality was 10 times worse outside the school than in surrounding neighborhoods.

According to U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission estimates, nearly 11,000 peopled suffered injuries related to riding an escalator last year. An industry trade group said that escalators are “inherently safe” despite those injuries. Others questions their safety, especially in states where escalator owners, and not regulators, test the machines for compliance.

Families of diabetic children are finding they must resort to litigation to ensure their children have access to appropriate supplies and care at their public schools. In many cases, diabetics’ needles are banned from school buses, children may only test their blood in the nurse’s office, and no one other than the school nurse is trained in diabetic care. Parents say their kids are at risk of serious complications if students can not access supplies when needed, or if teachers are not trained to respond in an emergency.

A New York Giants concessions vendor has paid $26 million to settle a lawsuit filed by the parents of a girl who was paralyzed following a 1999 auto accident. According to the complaint, employees of Philadelphia-based Aramark Corp. continued to serve beer to the man responsible for the accident despite the fact that he was visibly intoxicated. The family had previously settled lawsuits against the Giants and the NFL.