We label all sorts of products with country names — Italian ice, French dressing, Swedish meatballs — regardless of where they were made, or even if they have any actual ties to the country being name-checked. But a court in the UK has ruled that Chobani can’t label its product as “Greek Yogurt” because it is made in the U.S. [More]
lawsuits
Former AIG CEO Loses Bid To Sue Fed Over Bailout
By 1.29.14
More than five years after AIG received nearly $200 billion from taxpayers to prevent the insurance giant’s inevitable collapse, and a year after the company finished repaying that money, its former CEO is still attempting to sue the U.S. government and Federal Reserve over this very bailout, saying it violated shareholders’ Constitutional rights and that the Fed violated Delaware state law. Today, a federal appeals court dealt a serious blow to his case. [More]
E-Mail Shows Big Corn Exec Wary Of Using “Natural” To Describe High-Fructose Corn Syrup
By 1.23.14
Though the FDA rejected the bid to relabel high-fructose corn syrup as “corn sugar” in 2012, the legal battle over ads about the sweetener is still ongoing. Newly uncovered e-mails from executives at huge agri-business firms reveal that not everyone was on board with all the messaging in the pro-HFCS ads. [More]
Supreme Court To Decide If Cops Can Search Phones Without A Warrant
By 1.17.14
The U.S. Supreme Court announced today that it will hear two cases that involve the ability of law enforcement officials to search arrestees’ phones without a warrant, an issue that has divided multiple lower courts around the country. [More]
Aereo Coverage Expands To Cincinnati Area Next Week
By 1.17.14
While the Supreme Court won’t be making its decision on Aereo’s streaming video service until later this year, the people of Cincinnati (and surrounding area) will soon get a chance to make up their minds about whether Aereo is worth all this fuss. [More]
Man Suing Unilever After Toothpaste Failed To Help Him Attract All The Single Ladies
By 1.16.14
Can’t get a date with any pretty singles after seven years of flashing your best and brightest smile? Maybe it’s not your personality or your antique doll collection hanging out on your bed. One man blames his string of dating strikeouts on Close-Up toothpaste’s failure to attract women, and is suing the product’s manufacturers as a result. [More]
Do Snowboarders Have A Constitutional Right To Ski Slopes?
By 1.16.14
Only three ski resorts in the U.S. have outright prohibitions on snowboarding, and only one of them — Alta Ski Area in Utah — is located on public land controlled by the U.S. Forest Service. According to the plaintiffs in a lawsuit filed against Alta and the USFS, the resort’s ban on snowboards violates the Constitution. [More]
More Strippers Sue Club Owners To Be Treated Like Employees
By 1.15.14
While much attention has been paid to the growing movement to improve the wages of fast food and retail workers in the U.S., there have been a number of of lawsuits in the last year involving long-held payment practices at the nation’s gentlemen’s clubs. Dancers at an Atlanta strip club are the latest to sue club owners, alleging that they are being forced to pay the owners for the right to work at the club. [More]
Appeals Court Strikes Down Net Neutrality Rules
By 1.14.14
A federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., today released a ruling that strikes down key provisions of the FCC’s net neutrality rule. [More]
Pimp Sues Nike For Not Warning Against Use Of Shoes As Dangerous Face-Stomping Weapons
By 1.13.14
A man convicted of second-degree assault after beating a john’s face to a pulp with his Jordans is now suing Nike from his jail cell — where he’s serving a 100-year prison sentence for his crimes — for not warning consumers that the shoes could be used as a dangerous weapon. [More]
Supreme Court Agrees To Hear Aereo Case; Ruling Could Impact All Cloud-Based Tech
By 1.10.14
The Supreme Court announced this afternoon that it will hear the lawsuit filed by the broadcast networks against streaming video startup Aereo. How the court rules will have an impact not just on consumers’ ability to stream live network feeds online, but on all cloud-based media storage. [More]
Close To 20,000 Workers Join Lawsuit Claiming Darden Restaurants Underpaid Employees
By 1.9.14
There’s a storm a’brewin’ and it’s made of almost 20,000 former and current Darden Restaurants employees who have joined a federal lawsuit against the company. The suit alleges that Darden underpaid workers at 2,000 restaurants in all 50 states. [More]
Malpractice Suits Denied For Lack of Damages, Not Merit
By 1.9.14
Infections, additional surgeries, a long recovery or preventable death are what make up a number of potential malpractice suits. But what if, after years of suffering because of a doctor’s mistakes, you were told your case isn’t worth the time? [More]
Facebook Sued For Allegedly Selling Private Message Info To Marketers
By 1.3.14
Facebook, never exactly a paragon of privacy, has once again been sued by users over allegations of profiting off users’ personal data. This time, the plaintiffs claim that the website is turning links shared in private messages into public “likes,” from which Facebook earns ad revenue. [More]
Wells Fargo To Pay Fannie Mae $541 Million Over Toxic Loans
By 12.30.13
All those mortgages that weren’t worth the cocktail napkins they were written on are continuing to sting big banks, with Wells Fargo announcing this morning that it had reached a $591 million deal with Fannie Mae to resolve the mortgage-backer’s claims that Wells sold it a pile of loans that the bank knew were toxic. [More]
Judge: NSA’s Mass Collection Of Telephone Data Is Legal
By 12.27.13
A U.S. District Court judge in New York has dismissed a lawsuit filed by the ACLU against James Clapper, Director of National Intelligence, and others over the National Security Agency’s mass collecting of information about U.S. consumers’ telephone use, saying that the program is legal while leaving it up to lawmakers to decide whether it’s a program that should exist at all. [More]
Hyundai & Kia To Refund Total Of $395 Million To Customers Over Misstated Mileage Claims
By 12.23.13
Last year, the Environmental Protection Agency found that Hyundai and Kia had misrepresented the gas mileage on around 900,000 vehicles sold between 2010 and 2012, leading to several current and former owners of these vehicles to sue the South Korean car makers. Today, the companies announced they had reached a settlement deal that would refund up to $395 million to customers. [More]
Costco Settles Gender-Discrimination Lawsuit for $8 Million
By 12.20.13
Giant wholesale retailer Costco has tentatively settled a gender-discrimination class-action lawsuit for $8 million, the Seattle Times reports. The settlement will become finalized if the court approves it at a hearing in February. [More]
