Advanced Call Center Technologies tried to collect $200 on a disputed debt from Allen Jones a few years ago. Part of the company’s advanced technology is its innovative voicemail strategy, where its employees leave wildly offensive, racist messages for people. Jones sued the company, and last week the jury awarded him $50k for mental anguish and $1.5 million in punitive damages. [More]
lawsuits
Woman Sues Google Maps After Getting Hit By Car
By 5.31.10
A woman from L.A. has filed a lawsuit against Internet leviathan Google, claiming that the walking directions she was given by its Google Maps site led her to walk down a Utah highway, where she was hit by a car. [More]
Sleeping Passenger Left On Plane Wakes Up, Sues United
By 5.31.10
The woman United left sleeping on the plane for four hours after touchdown in Philadelphia is suing the airline, AIRwise reports, citing the Detroit Free Press. [More]
Hospital Cleared After Patient Catches Cancer From Kidney Transplant
By 5.29.10
A NY hospital has been cleared in a lawsuit after a kidney transplant patient developed cancer and died after receiving an organ from someone who had the disease but had not yet been diagnosed. [More]
Verizon Bill Collector Threatens To Blow Up Man's House
By 5.25.10
A man in New Mexico is suing Verizon Wireless over a series of harassing phone calls made by Verizon bill collectors last year. The man, Al Burrows, says the calls were concerning a relative’s unpaid cellphone bill. When he hung up on one of them, the disconnected Verizon rep called back, said she knew where Burrows lived, and added, “I am gonna blow your mother fucking house up.” [More]
Lady Enters Security With $24,000 Rolex, Leaves Without, Suit Alleges
By 5.25.10
A woman is suing the TSA after she says she was forced to take off her $24,000 Rolex to pass through security, and when she went to retrieve it, it had mysteriously vanished. [More]
Fix Mortgage Errors By Promising The CSR "Phone Fun," At Least At Wells Fargo
By 5.24.10
According to a lawsuit filed in New Jersey, a CSR at Wells Fargo’s Home Mortgage Division refused to correct a payment error for Jamie Nelson unless she had some “phone fun” with him first. Phone fun, in this case, seemed to mean naked pics of the woman. She’s suing for emotional distress, since you can’t take someone to court simply for being a skeevy jackass. Wells Fargo says they’re taking the allegations seriously. [More]
To Settle Lawsuit, AT&T Lets You Unlock Anything That's Not An iPhone
By 5.24.10
AT&T has settled a class action suit by providing codes that unlock any phones that were bound to AT&T. That includes any phones but that pesky iPhone, which is bound by an exclusivity agreement that lasts til 2012 but may or may not have already been renegotiated. [More]
Jets Fan Sues Patriots For Cheating, Loses
By 5.21.10
A Jets fan who sued the New England Patriots on behalf of other fans has lost his case, says Reuters. The case concerned the “spygate” scandal in which the Patriots were caught videotaping the signals from the Jets’ sideline. The fan was seeking “damages of $61.6 million representing the cost of tickets for Jets-Patriots games at Giants Stadium from 2000 through 2007, covering Belichick’s tenure as coach, and wanted that sum tripled under federal racketeering laws.” [More]
ACLU Jumps In On Amazon's Privacy Fight
By 5.21.10
The North Carolina Department of Revenue wants to hit up Amazon for detailed info about purchases by residents of the state, but Amazon is fighting back in federal court, and now has won over the American Civil Liberties Union as a tag-team partner, WRAL of North Carolina reports. [More]
Lawsuit-Happy Producer Tells Boycotter He's A 'Stupid Moron' Whose Kids Hopefully Get Arrested
By 5.19.10
BoingBoing relays an entertaining name-calling tirade from Hurt Locker producer Nicolas Chartier, who responds with a vengeance to a writer who told him he’d boycott his company Voltage Picture’s films because it’s suing people who illegally downloaded the film. [More]
Woman Sues Cellphone Company For $600,000 For "Exposing" Her Adultery
By 5.17.10
A woman has sued her wireless provider for $600,000 for outing her as a cheater to her husband. After the they added internet and TV services to the woman’s previously single-user cellphone bill, the wireless company began sending the husband a unified bill, which included several hours long conversations to an unknown number. The husband walked out, and the lawsuits began. [More]
Home Depot Called "Arrogant," Must Actually Pay Inventor For Invention
By 5.12.10
Home Depot had a problem: their employees kept sawing off their own extremities with the saws they used to cut lumber for customers. Michael Powell invented a gadget which fixed the problem, and offered to sell the device to the chain for $2,000 each. Then, the inventor’s lawsuit alleged, Home Depot simply stole the gadget’s design, made their own, and wouldn’t compensate him. “F*** Michael Powell. Let him sue us.” one executive said at the time. Now the chain must pay him a judgment of about $25 million. [More]
Lawsuit: Woman Claims She Was Attacked By Big Black Walmart Snake
By 5.11.10
It’s really quite shocking how often we found ourselves typing the words “lawsuit,” “snake” and “Walmart” in the same headline. Anyhow, here we go again. A woman is suing Walmart after she says a giant black snake attacked her as she was choosing plants. [More]
Samsung Sues Journalist For Satirically Pointing Out That Its Chairman Keeps Getting Convicted Of Crimes
By 5.11.10
Did you know that the chairman of Samsung, Lee Kun-hee, was convicted in 2008 for tax evasion in South Korea? Or that he was convicted in the 90s for bribing politicians? A British journalist, Michael Breen, wrote a satirical column in a South Korean newspaper last December, and now the electronics giant is suing him for libel. If found guilty, Breen could face jail time. [More]
Lindsay Lohan's $100 Million Defamation Lawsuit Against E*Trade Turning Ugly
By 5.10.10
E*Trade has filed papers in an attempt to move the $100 million Lindsay Lohan defamation lawsuit to Manhattan — and those papers apparently contain a treasure trove of rude comments people have made about Ms. Lohan on the internet. [More]
BoA Sued For Taking TARP $ But Not Helping Foreclosures
By 5.7.10
A class action lawsuit has been filed against Bank of America for taking $25 billion in federal TARP bailout money but intentionally failing to live up to its part of the bargain. The deal was that banks were supposed to use use the money to allow struggling homeowners to reduce their payments to affordable levels. “Bank of America came up with every excuse to defer the Kahlo family from a home loan modification, from stating they ‘lost’ their paperwork to saying they never approved the new terms of the mortgage agreement,” said the plaintiff’s attorney. “And we know from our investigation this isn’t an isolated incident.” Bank of America declined to comment.
Washington homeowners file class action against Bank of America [Seattle PI]
Countrywide Settles Class-Action Suit For $624 Million
By 5.7.10
Bank of America took a little kick in the shins today as Countrywide Financial Corp, the mortgage lender they acquired in 2008 as it suck into the quicksand, has agreed to a $624 million settlement of a class-action lawsuit accusing it of misleading investors about its lending practices. [More]
