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A struggling iron ore mining project in Minnesota’s Iron Range is suing Cleveland-Cliffs Inc. for allegedly thwarting its efforts to emerge from bankruptcy by pressuring contractors and customers to cease business with the smaller company, Dow Jones Newswires reported on Friday. The lawsuit, filed Thursday by Mesabi Metallics Co. LLC, alleges Cleveland-Cliffs engaged in an “anticompetitive scheme to thwart competition by threatening contractors, local businesses and customers” to obstruct completion of the project and thwart Mesabi’s plan to refinance its business. Mesabi said in its lawsuit that some of its construction, engineering and legal contractors resigned unexpectedly in recent months. The lawsuit said that one longtime contractor, Barr Engineering Co., abruptly resigned in August because of alleged “threats and pressures from Cliffs … that it would cease doing current and future work with Barr” if it continued working on the Minnesota project.

Judges can be Facebook friends with lawyers who appear before them, a state appeals court in Miami ruled, the Wall Street Journal reported today. Yesterday’s decision was the latest pronouncement on the propriety of social media relationships between litigants and the bench. The boundaries of virtual “friendships” have divided the legal world as more judges have created public profiles and are engaging with others online. In 2013, the American Bar Association cautioned judges about their use of social media. In code-of-conduct guidelines, the association said that while social media can help judges keep connected to the wider world, they should think twice before “friending,” “liking,” or “following” somebody. A three-judge panel of Florida’s Third District Court of Appeal said a Facebook friendship in itself isn’t grounds for recusal. That is because the act of “friending” someone these days says little about the closeness of the Facebook users in real life. “Because a ’friend’ on a social networking website is not necessarily a friend in the traditional sense of the word, we hold that the mere fact that a judge is a Facebook ’friend’ with a lawyer... does not provide a basis for a well-grounded fear that the judge cannot be impartial,” wrote Judge Thomas W. Logue, who wrote the opinion.