Three months after the Supreme Court left Apple on the hook for $450 million in the settlement of a 2012 antitrust case against the company and five major book publishers, the tech giant is poised to begin handing out payments to customers starting tomorrow. [More]
lawsuit
Star Trek Fan Film Lawsuit Will Live On
By 6.17.16
While the makers of the crowdfunded Star Trek fan fiction film Axanar had once hoped to reach a settlement with Paramount and CBS over a lawsuit accusing the filmmakers of copyright infringement, the much discussed lawsuit will live to see another day, as the two companies told a California federal judge this week that their action remains pending. [More]
Lawsuit Claims GM Exaggerated Fuel Mileage On Some SUVs For Seven Years
By 6.16.16
General Motors announced last month that it would provide compensation to owners of their models of SUVs after admitting it had incorrectly calculated the fuel economy on the vehicles. But that apparently isn’t enough for some GM owners who have filed a potential class action against the carmaker. [More]
Budweiser Accused Of Illegally Using Official Tribal Logo & Slogan In Local Beer Ads
By 6.15.16
“Immoral, unethical, oppressive, unscrupulous”: those are the adjectives a Native American tribe in North Carolina chose in a recently filed lawsuit to describe Anheuser-Busch InBev’s use of the official tribal logo and slogan in a local ad campaign. [More]
Minneapolis Man Sues TSA For $500 Over Missed Flight
By 6.13.16
For the better part of the spring, airlines, airports, and federal regulators have received the ire of consumers who say they have waited in endless security checkpoints. The back and forth between these groups and travelers has now reached another level: litigation, as one passenger has filed a federal lawsuit seeking to recoup the cost of a ticket for a flight he missed due to excessive wait times at security. [More]
Yelp Ordered To Remove Allegedly Defamatory Reviews Of Law Firm
By 6.10.16
Two years after a California lawyer won a default judgment against a former client accused of posting defamatory reviews of the law firm on Yelp, those reviews remained online. However, this week a California appeals court ruled that Yelp must finally remove these reviews. [More]
Former Old Country Buffet Employees Sue Company After Abrupt Closures
By 6.7.16
Earlier this year, the owner of Hometown Buffet, Ryan’s Buffet, Fire Mountain, and Old Country Buffet abruptly closed ore than 160 restaurants without giving any advance notice to employees and then filed for bankruptcy — but not before hiring auctioneers to sell anything in the restaurants that wasn’t leased or nailed down. Now, a group of former employees have filed a lawsuit seeking class-action status against Food Management Partners, the company that once ran the buffet restaurants, for not giving them a heads up as required by federal law. [More]
Feds Sue Gold, Silver Investment Company That Allegedly Bilked Millions From Retirees
By 6.3.16
Buying gold and silver is in many ways no different than anything else: You pay your money and expect to get what you paid for within a reasonable amount of time. Unlike most other products, when that gold and silver never arrives, you could be out thousands of dollars.
[More]
Amazon Goes After Third-Party Sellers For Buying, Creating Fake Reviews
By 6.2.16
Months after filing several lawsuits to block companies from selling fraudulent positive reviews on its site, Amazon is now turning its focus to those that purchase the fake reviews, taking action against one company and two individuals who sell on the e-commerce site. [More]
Supreme Court: Sprint Must Face $300M Lawsuit Over Uncollected Sales Tax
By 5.31.16
Four years after New York sued Sprint for allegedly failing to collect more than $100 million in sales tax in the state, the U.S. Supreme Court has shot down the wireless carrier’s effort to avoid liability. [More]
Michigan Cafe To Change Name After Caribou Coffee Wins Trademark Lawsuit
By 5.26.16
Several years ago a small New Hampshire coffee roaster won a legal victory (twice) against coffee giant Starbucks over its name “Charbucks.” Things didn’t go so well for a Michigan cafe that must retire its name “Blue Caribou Cafe” after losing a trademark lawsuit filed by Caribou Coffee. [More]
Altria Sues FDA To Keep “Black & Mild” Name
By 5.26.16
Earlier this month, the Food & Drug Administration expanded its oversight of tobacco products, effectively banning the use of “mild” to describe cigars. That’s a problem for Altria Group, which makes the Black & Mild brand, and so the tobacco behemoth has sued the federal government to keep using the name. [More]
Macy’s To Pay $15M Over Escalator That Mangled Girl’s Foot
By 5.20.16
In 2013, a young New Jersey girl’s leg became trapped in a Macy’s escalator while on a shopping trip with her family. Nearly three years later, the family, the retailer, and the company tasked with maintaining the escalator are ready to put the ordeal behind them, agreeing to a $15 million settlement. [More]
Former Wells Fargo Employee Claims Bank Defrauded Government Of $1.4B In Foreclosure Funding
By 5.16.16
There has been no shortage of lawsuits filed against Wells Fargo in recent years, from accusations the bank pushed mortgages on borrowers who couldn’t repay them to claims the company pressed employees to engage in fraudulent conduct with regard to customer accounts. Now, a recently unsealed whistleblower lawsuit melds together those issues, claiming the bank encouraged employees to withhold information from customers that could potentially lead to foreclosure proceedings. [More]
Walmart Sues Visa Over Security Of Debit Card Authorizations
By 5.10.16
While retailers across the country installing chip-and-PIN card readers to better protect consumers’ bank information during checkout, Walmart claims in a recently filed lawsuit that Visa is urging the retailer to use a less-secure method for verifying debit card payments. [More]
Defunct Beauty School Settles Whistleblower Suit Accusing It Of Falsifying Records
By 5.5.16
Two months after abruptly closing its doors as a result of losing access to federal student financial aid, the for-profit Marinello Schools of Beauty has settled a whistleblower case that accused the school of engaging in various schemes to defraud the government of federal financial aid dollars. [More]
Amazon Sues Five Sites Promising Reviews For Cash
By 4.26.16
Since filing its first lawsuit to block companies from selling fraudulent positive reviews last April, Amazon has taken a number of steps to cutback on the number of fake review peppering its site: data mining reviewers’ personal relationships, tweaking how reviews appear on product pages, and suing more than 1,100 individual reviewers who sell their kind words. Now the e-commerce giant has sued five additional sites, accusing them of selling sham reviews. [More]
Debt Collection Lawsuit Mill Hit With $2.5M Penalty
By 4.25.16
A New Jersey-based law firm that handed out hundreds of thousands of debt-collection lawsuits based on false or nonexistent information must — along with an associated debt buyer — pay $2.5 million in penalties to settle federal accusations that they were operating a lawsuit mill in violation of the law. [More]
