Nation & World Business

The New Mexico Supreme Court says personal injury lawsuits brought against tribal casinos can no longer be heard by state courts. The decision issued Tuesday marks the end of a long battle for Native American tribes in the state to keep such claims within their own jurisdictions. The case stemmed from a 2016 claim in which a man was injured while making a delivery at Pojoaque Pueblo's casino. Several other pueblos weighed in as the case made its way through the courts. They suggested that the jurisdictional shift eroded sovereignty. The state Supreme Court pointed to two federal court decisions that effectively terminated a provision in gambling compacts for shifting jurisdiction.

The prospect of a JetBlue-Spirit Airlines merger has taken a major hit in court. A federal judge on Tuesday sided with the Biden administration and blocked the $3.8 billion deal to combine the two carriers. The judge ruled that JetBlue’s purchase of Spirit, the nation’s largest low-cost airline, would harm competition — and increase prices for air travelers as a result. Meanwhile, JetBlue has maintained that it needs such a deal to compete with industry rivals. JetBlue and Spirit say they are considering whether to appeal the decision. But the ruling could also open the door for Frontier Airlines to make another attempt to buy the Florida-based Spirit.

Alex Murdaugh faces a steep uphill battle in his push for a new murder trial. Former South Carolina Supreme Court Justice Jean Toal on Tuesday set a high burden of proof surrounding claims that the court clerk committed jury tampering during last year's proceedings. Toal says the defense team must show that Colleton County Clerk of Court Becky Hill acted specifically with prejudice against Murdaugh. Toal also does not plan to ask about other wide-ranging accusations of wrongdoing against Hill. That includes allegations that Hill misused public funds as an elected official and the revelation that Hill plagiarized parts of her new book. A three-day hearing is scheduled later this month on the motion for a retrial.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is expected to propose rules this week that further rein in banks’ ability to charge customers a fee when they overdraw their bank account. Opponents of the fees often cite the example of a $3 cup of coffee costing someone $40. The banking industry is gearing up to fight back with a multimillion-dollar marketing and lobbying campaign. While banks have drastically cut back on overdraft fees in the past decade, the nation’s biggest banks still take in roughly $8 billion in overdraft fees every year, according to data from the CFPB and bank public records.

Fujitsu, the company whose faulty computer accounting system resulted in the wrongful conviction of hundreds of Post Office branch managers across the U.K., has apologized to the victims for its role in the country’s biggest ever miscarriage of justice and said it was long aware that the software had bugs. Paul Patterson, the Europe director of Japan’s Fujitsu Ltd., told a committee of lawmakers on Tuesday that the company has a “moral obligation” to contribute to a fund to compensate the branch managers who, over decades, suffered from the failures of the accounting system, which was introduced in 1999. The Post Office’s chief executive, Nick Read, says it has earmarked around a billion pounds ($1.3 billion) for compensation.

A top Federal Reserve official said he's increasingly confident that inflation will continue falling this year back to the Fed’s 2% target level, after two years of accelerating price spikes that hurt millions of American households. The official, Christopher Waller, an influential member of the Fed’s Board of Governors, noted that inflation is slowing even as growth and hiring remain solid — a combination that he called “almost as good as it gets.” Waller’s remarks follow recent comments from other senior Fed officials that suggest the central bank remains on track to cut its benchmark short-term interest rate this year. In December, the Fed’s policymakers collectively forecast that they would cut their rate three times in 2024.