1.   But Thursday, the judge, Denny Chin, rejected that request, setting the stage for a trial at which the messy legal dispute would be fought out.

2.   For one thing it leads to messy disputes over details in which dueling economists fight for the technical high ground.

3.   Others say that police officers on the scene of a messy domestic dispute are often ill trained and unable to discern who is to blame.

4.   The resulting conflict is fast turning into a messy contractual dispute.

5.   This new twist in the recent spate of North Korean defections via diplomatic compounds in China pulls the United States into the thick of a messy diplomatic dispute.

6.   It is a messy environmental dispute unfolding near some of the cleanest waters of the Black Sea.