Supreme Court Rules on Insurance, Death Penalty, Discrimination Cases

These are among the actions taken by the Supreme Court yesterday:

• Sided with two insurance companies in a case involving alleged violations of the Fair Credit Reporting Act.

• Denied an appeal from a widow in Alabama who was seeking to sue oil companies in connection with her late husband's health problems.

• Reinstated a death sentence in Washington state against Cal Coburn Brown, who was convicted in a carjacking, rape, and murder.

• Declined to intervene in the case of a death-row inmate whose lawyers won a court order to have him committed indefinitely for psychiatric evaluation.

• Declined a death penalty case from Kentucky in which Jeffrey Devan Leonard was represented by a lawyer and convicted by a jury that didn't know his real name.

• Made it harder to collect legal fees from the government, in a lawsuit involving nude performers in a Florida park.

• Agreed to consider next term whether an age-discrimination lawsuit against FedEx Corp. (FDX) can proceed.

• Ordered a federal court in Colorado to take another look at a lawsuit by an inmate who says the decision by state prison officials to cut off his treatment for hepatitis C amounts to cruel and unusual punishment.