In the years since the the United States Postal Service sponsored Lance Armstrong’s multiple Tour de France victories, the USPS has fallen into a serious financial crisis, and Armstrong has been exposed as a doping cheater and/or cheating dope. This chain of events has an obvious solution: why doesn’t the government sue Armstrong’s management and get that sponsorship money back? [More]
lawsuits
Fitbug Keeps Getting Fitbit’s Phone Calls, Notices Similar Name, Sues
By 4.22.13
Tiny movement-trackers are the new hotness in gadgets, and there’s a lot of competition. Still, we’d love to know why it is that U.K.-based Fitbug just now noticed that the American brand Fitbit has a very similar product to theirs, with a very similar name, when the latter product has been around since 2007. [More]
Supreme Court Agrees: Cigarette Warning Labels Don’t Violate Big Tobacco’s Free Speech
By 4.22.13
For the last several years, the tobacco industry has been fighting a federal law that requires, among other restrictions, cigarette manufacturers to place graphic warning labels on packaging. Big Tobacco may need to finally get with the program, now that the U.S. Supreme Court has rejected the companies’ challenge to the law on the grounds that it violates their First Amendment rights. [More]
eBay Seller Who Sued Customer Claims He’s Sorry, Has Filed Dozens Of Feedback Suits
By 4.19.13
The owner of an eBay business who sued an unhappy customer over a negative feedback item is contrite. Mostly, he’s very sorry that he (allegedly) never read the lawsuit filed on his behalf accusing his customer of defamation. He should probably also be sorry that the customer has a relative who works in the litigation department of consumer advocacy group Public Citizen. The seller has used lawsuits to bully customers into retracting feedback before, and may have done it again if not for Public Citizen. [More]
Customer Sues CVS For Writing Her Name As “Ching Chong” On Receipt
By 4.18.13
How many times do we have to tell the cashiers of America to STOP PUTTING STUPID AND OFFENSIVE NAMES ON CUSTOMERS’ RECEIPTS? Sorry we had to go all-caps on you there, but after all the stories of idiotic name-calling that have gotten employees fired and retailers sued, you’d think people would stop. And yet here we have the story of a CVS customer of Korean descent who is suing the drugstore chain after allegedly being labeled “Ching Chong Lee” on her receipt. [More]
EA Triples Original Payouts In Settlement Of Football Games Class-Action Suit
By 4.17.13
If you bought an EA football game — Madden NFL, NCAA Football, or Arena Football — between 2005 and 2012, here’s some good news. Not only are you due a few bucks thanks to a class-action settlement with the reigning two-time Worst Company In America champ, but the dollar amount of the individual payouts to affected consumers have been tripled. [More]
Royal Caribbean Passenger Says Crew Wouldn’t Let Her Leave Her Cabin After Daughter Fell Overboard
By 4.17.13
Last September, a 21-year-old woman on board a Royal Caribbean cruise ship fell overboard and lost her life. In a recently filed lawsuit, the woman’s mother says she was kept under guard in her cabin for days after the incident and that she was not allowed to leave her room or contact her other children. [More]
FTC Accuses Company Of Cramming Millions Of Dollars Of Bogus Charges On Wireless Bills
By 4.17.13
In the first case of its kind for the wireless industry, the Federal Trade Commission has accused a company and its owners of raking in millions of dollars by charging wireless customers for text services they never signed up for. [More]
Bank Of America To Shell Out Another $500 Million To Settle Another Investors’ Lawsuit
By 4.17.13
Nearly five years after swallowing the rancid slab of meat that was Countrywide Financial, Bank of America is still vomiting up hundreds of millions of dollars to settle lawsuits tied to that failed company’s misdeeds. The latest is a $500 million class-action settlement with groups that invested in Countrywide’s radioactive mortgages. [More]
eBay Seller Freaks Out And Sues Customer Over Bad Feedback That’s Actually True
By 4.16.13
An eBay vendor shipped their customer’s package with insufficient postage by mistake. That’s not ideal, but it happens. The customer, upset that she owed extra postage, left negative feedback on eBay. That may have been an overreaction, as she could have asked for a refund instead. Again, not ideal, but that happens. What doesn’t usually happen is the seller filing a lawsuit seeking damages from the customer and eBay. [More]
Septuagenarian Sues Kroger After Being Attacked For Handing Out Food In Parking Lot
By 4.12.13
You may remember the story from last August about an Atlanta-area man who said he was physically assaulted by a Kroger manager when he attempted to help out another customer in need by giving her some food he’d just purchased. Now the victim has now sued that former manager, the grocery chain, and a private security firm over the incident. [More]
News Corp. Exec Threatens To Pull FOX From Airwaves Rather Than Let Aereo “Steal” Its Signal
By 4.9.13
We’ve told you before about the lawsuits filed against Aereo, the startup service that charges customers a monthly fee to stream broadcast networks over the Internet. Now comes news that TV execs are genuinely considering making their broadcasts unavailable to the antenna-using public rather in an effort to stop Aereo and others from selling their signals. [More]
A-B InBev Inches Closer To Dominating Boring Beer Market
By 4.8.13
Though Anheuser-Busch InBev may have failed in its Worst Company In America battle against Electronic Arts, the beer behemoth is getting much closer to owning even more big-name beer brands, saying it has reached an agreement in principle with the Dept. of Justice that would allow it to acquire the rest of Mexico’s Grupo Modelo. [More]
Waiters Sue Employer For Taking Wages To Cover Walk-Outs
By 4.5.13
Earlier this week, we wrote about the legality (or lack thereof) of employers docking tipped workers’ wages to cover walk-outs and bad orders. Little did we know that the same day, dozens of current and former servers at a Milwaukee restaurant were filing a class-action suit, alleging these sorts of violations. [More]
Court Ruling Highlights Huge Roadblock To Reselling Digital Content
By 4.2.13
Even though huge online players like Amazon and Apple are working on ways to provide users a marketplace to resell “used” digital downloads like mp3s and e-books, neither plan really deals with the most salient problem with reselling digital products — getting rid of the original copy. [More]
Another Day, Another 9-Figure Settlement For Bank Of America
By 4.2.13
For most companies, a $165 million settlement would be huge news. For Bank of America, it’s like a paper cut on a guy that’s been swimming in the piranha tank all day. Not that we feel any sympathy. [More]
UPS Hit With $40 Million Settlement In Illegal Online Pharmacy Probe
By 3.29.13
UPS may have lost to FedEx in the first round of the Worst Company In America competition, but the shipping giant is getting away relatively unscathed from a Dept. of Justice criminal probe into deliveries it made for illegal online pharmacies. [More]
Man Who Spent 30 Minutes Trapped In ‘It’s A Small World’ At Disneyland Awarded $8K For Pain And Suffering
By 3.27.13
To be strictly accurate, the $8,000 award a man received last week was only half for pain and suffering. The other $4,000 was for a disability violation. In 2009, the ride “It’s a Small World” at Disneyland broke down, but the music didn’t stop. Most of the guests were able to escape this horror, except for one man, who is paralyzed and confined to a wheelchair. [More]
