CHELMSFORD — Officials broke ground Wednesday on a major project to build the Crooked Spring PFAS Treatment Facility for the Chelmsford Water District.
The Crooked Spring facility is Phase 1 of the water district’s larger PFAS remediation project, which also includes a new PFAS treatment facility at the Riverneck Treatment Plant, and a new water main line to connect the Smith Street Treatment Plant. The $43 million project was approved by voters in the water district in the spring of 2024, and the Massachusetts Clean Water Trust Board of Trustees approved a 0% interest loan for the entire project cost. It is being funded through the Massachusetts State Revolving Fund along with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and is estimated to take about two years to completion.
Officials at the groundbreaking included state Reps. Rodney Elliott and Jim Arciero, a representative from state Sen. Michael Barrett’s office, Chelmsford Select Board member Pat Wojtas, members of the Board of Water Commissioners and officials from AECOM Engineering and Design, Waterline Construction and ResilientCE, the owner’s project manager.
The treatment for PFAS, which is shorthand for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, will consist of three process trains of pressurized vessels 12 feet in diameter filled with granular activated carbon, which will remove PFAS chemicals to meet state and federal water quality standards. In 2022, PFAS levels of more than 20 parts-per-trillion were detected in the district’s water.
The project will also include upgrades to the Crooked Springs Water Treatment Plant’s main building and the building of a two-celled spent wash tank with a floating decanting system and recycling pumps.
The Chelmsford Board of Water Commissioners retained legal counsel in May 2021 to prosecute legal claims related to negligence resulting in PFAS contamination in the town’s water supplies. The water district would eventually join a larger, multi-district litigation over PFAS contamination discovered across the country.
PFAS chemicals, sometimes called “forever chemicals,” are manmade substances that do not easily break down in nature, and can build up over time in the environment and in our bodies, causing a wide range of possible health complications. The lawsuits the water district joined allege that corporations like 3M, DuPont, Tyco and BASF knew about the dangers of these chemicals, but concealed them anyway.
In April 2024, 3M settled for $12.5 billion in their case, and a $1.185 billion settlement was preliminarily approved for DuPont earlier that year. In November, a $750 million settlement was approved for Tyco, as was a $316.5 million settlement for BASF.
The Chelmsford Water District received its first payment of $401,951.24 from its gross $4.2 million award in the 3M settlement in June, while the district’s awards from the other settlements are yet to be disbursed. The district separately filed a $44.5 million special needs claim against 3M and DuPont for the expenses related to this PFAS treatment project, as well as an $83,622 special needs lawsuit against Tyco and BASF.
The lawsuit filed in Nassau County State Supreme Court on Wednesday claims that Mamaroneck-based Project Veritas has not paid for legal services rendered by the firm and that the client has yet to make any payments on a balance due of $103,672.03.
The complaint asserts that between Jan. 5, 2021 and Sept. 19, 2023, Abrams Fensterman worked on a number of cases on behalf of Project Veritas, including a defamation lawsuit the nonprofit lodged against The New York Times in 2020, after the newspaper described some videos from Project Veritas as part of a “coordinated disinformation effort.” The suit was withdrawn in July 2025.
In the lawsuit filed by Abrams Fensterman, the firm stated that the amount owed by Project Veritas is “above the threshold amount” for arbitration, so it had to sue for the money instead.
Attorney MarieRose Apice, who filed the lawsuit on behalf of her firm, has yet to respond to a request for comment.
Project Veritas could not be reached for comment.
Founded by James O’Keefe in 2010, Project Veritas is described in published reports as a far-right activist group, which targeted main-stream media outlets and progressive organizations. In the exposé published by the Times in 2020, for which Project Veritas sued for defamation, the newspaper chronicled the group’s use of undercover operatives to infiltrate “Democratic congressional campaigns, labor organizations and other groups considered hostile to the Trump agenda.”
Project Veritas suspended its operations “amidst severe financial woes,” in Sept. 2023, according to Mediaite.com.
Headquartered in Lake Success, Abrams Fensterman also has offices in Brooklyn, White Plains, Albany and Rochester, according to its website.
Jacksonville law enforcement officers violated the civil rights of a 22-year-old Black college student when they pulled him from his car and beat him during a traffic stop, according to a lawsuit filed in a federal court in Jacksonville on Wednesday.
A video showing a Jacksonville Sheriff’s officer punching and dragging William McNeil from his car during a stop in February went viral online this summer and sparked nationwide outrage.
Prosecutors announced in August they would take no action after determining the conduct of Officer D. Bowers of the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office did not constitute a crime, according to an investigative report released by the State Attorney’s Office for the Fourth Judicial Circuit of Florida.
McNeil’s attorneys Ben Crump and Harry Daniels say Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office’s policies allow officers to engage in racial profiling and “illegal or excessive use of force” without fear of consequences. Crump is a Black civil rights attorney who has gained national prominence representing victims of police brutality and vigilante violence.
“It’s an unjustifiable, unnecessary and most importantly unconstitutional use of force,” Crump said.
The attorneys said the lawsuit is aimed not only at addressing the treatment of their client, but at changing the culture of policing in the area.
Jacksonville Sheriff T.K. Waters has said there’s more to the story than the viral cellphone video and that McNeil was repeatedly asked to exit his vehicle. Waters, who is Black, said the footage from inside the car “does not comprehensively capture the circumstances surrounding the incident.”
The lawsuit names Waters, Bowers, and another officer named D. Miller, as well as the City of Jacksonville and Duval County government. A spokesperson for the sheriff’s office declined to comment, citing the pending litigation.
According to a prosecutors’ report, Bowers stopped McNeil for failing to turn on his headlights and buckle his seatbelt, after seeing his SUV parked outside a house the officer was surveilling for “drug activity.”
William McNeil Jr.
CBS
Questioning the justification for the stop, McNeil requested a supervisor respond to the incident. Based on a review of body camera footage, interviews with officers and statements by McNeil, prosecutors said Bowers gave McNeil a dozen “lawful commands,” which he disobeyed.
“The suspect continued to refuse to comply, at which time I broke the driver’s window and opened the driver’s door. I along with other officers on scene removed the suspect from the vehicle,” Bowers said in the arrest report obtained by CBS News. “The suspect was reaching for the floor board of the vehicle where a large knife was sitting.”
Crump has claimed officers’ accounts of the incident are unreliable and has fiercely criticized prosecutors’ finding that officers did not commit any criminal wrongdoing, saying his client remained calm while the officers who are trained to de-escalate tense situations were the ones escalating violence. Crump said the case harkened back to the Civil Rights movement, when Black people were often attacked when they tried to assert their rights.
According to his attorneys, McNeil suffered a laceration to the chin and lip, a fractured tooth, and has been diagnosed with an “ongoing traumatic brain injury.” McNeil also continues to suffer post-traumatic stress disorder-like symptoms, including nightmares and flashbacks of the incident, his lawyers wrote in a legal filing.
Speaking at the National Bar Association’s annual convention in Chicago in July, McNeil said the incident left him traumatized.
“I’m still afraid of police. I’m still frightened at night. I don’t sleep still as much as I used to,” he said.
McNeil’s attorneys have also formally called on the Department of Justice to conduct its own investigation of the incident and what they described as “excessive force” and “systemic failures” by Jacksonville officials.
U.S. District Judge David M. Lawson said the city’s flagpoles are reserved for government speech, not a public forum for residents.
In his 12-page opinion, Lawson ruled against Hamtramck Human Relations Commission members Russ Gordon and Cathy Stackpoole, both of whom filed the lawsuit in November 2023. In an act of defiance, Gordon and Stackpoole displayed a Pride flag on public property on Joseph Campau Avenue on July 9. Two days later, the city council removed the pair from the commission.
As a matter of law, the plaintiffs’ claims under the First and Fourteenth Amendments fail, the judge ruled, saying the “well-settled rule that government speech in a nonpublic forum is not subject to First Amendment regulation.”
The ruling is a victory for mayor Amer Ghalib and Hamtramck’s all-Muslim city council, which in June 2023 unanimously adopted a “flag neutrality” ordinance allowing only government and national flags to be displayed on public poles. Although the resolution barred religious, political, and ethnic flags, it was widely understood to target the Pride flag after months of heated debate in the city, where more than half of the residents are believed to be Muslim.
In their lawsuit, Gordon and Stackpoole argued the flag ban violated their free speech and equal protection rights.
“It is unconstitutional for the government to select what speech will be permitted, and what speech will be prohibited, based on the content or viewpoint of the message conveyed by the speech,” the lawsuit alleged.
But Lawson rejected that argument, holding that Hamtramck was entitled to close the flagpoles to private expression and reclaim them “for government speech.”
“The First Amendment’s Free Speech Clause does not prevent the government from declining to express a view,” the judge wrote.
Lawson also dismissed claims that the ordinance favored religion or discriminated against LGBTQ+ residents, noting that the resolution only authorized American, Michigan, Hamtramck, and Prisoner of War flags, along with flags of nations reflecting the city’s international character.
Viola Klocko
Police remove an LGBTQ+ Pride flag in Hamtramck.
“No such transparent motive to advance religiosity is patent in the resolution entered here, which did not endorse the flying of any banner representing any religious sect or creed, and where the roster of flags prescribed consists exclusively of secular standards of local, state, national, and international entities,” Lawson wrote.
City attorney Odey K. Meroueh said the decision vindicated the city’s policy.
“Today’s ruling confirms that Hamtramck has the right to decide what it communicates on its own property,” Meroueh said in a written statement. “The Court’s decision vindicates Mayor Amer Ghalib and the City Council for adopting a neutral policy that treats every group and every viewpoint the same. The plaintiffs were removed from their appointed seats on the Human Relations Commission because they knowingly violated a valid rule while acting in their official roles. This case was about neutral rules, fair enforcement, and responsible city governance, not about suppressing anyone’s speech.”
The ordinance reversed a 2021 council vote that allowed the Pride flag to fly outside City Hall. That decision was one of the final acts of then-Mayor Karen Majewski, who lost reelection after Ghalib campaigned against the flag policy.
Federal immigration arrests in Colorado surged this summer as the Trump administration charged ahead with its plans to mass-deport undocumented immigrants.
But as arrests have spiked, law enforcement agencies increasingly have detained people without any prior criminal convictions or charges, internal data show.
Between June 11 and July 28, ICE arrested 828 people in Colorado, according to a Denver Post analysis of data obtained by the Deportation Data Project at the University of California, Berkeley. That amounted to more than 17 arrests per day, a more than 50% increase from the first five months of the Trump administration, through June 10, a period covered in a previous Post story. The rate from this summer was also more than five times higher than the daily arrest average from the same time period in 2024.
Of those detained over the summer, only a third had prior criminal convictions noted in the records. Another 18% had pending charges, indicating that nearly half had been neither convicted nor charged with a crime and that their only violation was immigration-related.
That, too, is a shift: In the earlier months of President Donald Trump’s second term, two-thirds of the 1,639 people arrested in Colorado had either been convicted of a crime (38%) or charged with one (29%).
“That tracks with what we would have expected (and) what we’ve been hearing from community sources,” said Henry Sandman, the co-executive director of the Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition. “The data and the reality disproves ICE’s talking points that they’re going after criminals. We’re seeing tactics increase. They’re trying to increase arrest numbers as high as possible, whatever the reason may be for detaining folks.”
Steve Kotecki, a spokesman for Denver’s ICE field office, did not respond to a request for comment late last week.
The data, obtained directly from ICE by the UC Berkeley researchers through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, offers the clearest look at immigration enforcement activities available, as ICE doesn’t post recent information online. For this analysis, The Post examined arrests that occurred in Colorado; arrests that were listed in the dataset as occurring in Wyoming but which took place in a Colorado city; and arrests lacking a listed state but which occurred in a Colorado town or county.
The Post removed several apparent duplicate arrests and a similarly small number of arrests in the region that did not have a specific location listed. The analysis also included a handful of people who appeared to have been arrested twice in the span of several months.
When listing a detainee’s criminal background, the data provides no details about the criminal charges or prior crimes. Illegally entering the country is typically treated as a civil matter upon first offense, but a subsequent entry is a felony criminal offense.
More info about July operation
The newly released data includes the same nine-day period in July during which ICE has said it arrested 243 immigrants without proper legal status “who are currently charged with or have been convicted of criminal offenses after illegally entering the United States.” The arrests, the agency said, all occurred in metro Denver.
But the data published by the UC-Berkeley researchers does not fully match ICE’s public representations.
During the same time frame, the agency arrested 232 people, according to the data. Most of those arrested during that time had never been convicted or charged with a crime, at least according to what’s in the records. Sixty-six people had a previous criminal conviction, and 34 more had pending charges.
Kotecki did not respond to questions about the July operation.
The Post previously reported that ICE falsely claimed that it had arrested a convicted murderer in Denver as part of the July operation. The man had actually been arrested at a state prison facility shortly after his scheduled release, state prison officials said last month.
While ICE claimed the man had found “sanctuary” in the capital city — a shot taken at Denver’s immigration ordinances — The Post found that state prison officials had coordinated his transfer directly to ICE. He was then deported to Mexico, and information matching his description is reflected in the UC Berkeley data.
It’s unclear if all of ICE’s arrests are fully reflected in the data, making it difficult to verify ICE’s claims. The researchers’ data is imperfect, experts have told The Post. The records likely represent the merging of separate datasets before they were provided by the government, increasing the likelihood of mistakes or missing data.
Some arrests in Colorado were listed as occurring in other states or had no state listed at all. Other arrests were duplicated entirely, and researchers have cautioned that ICE’s data at times has had inaccurate or missing information.
The anonymized nature of the data, which lacks arrestees’ names but lists some biographical information, also can make it difficult to verify. When ICE announced the results of the July operation, it named eight of the people it had arrested. Court records and the UC Berkeley data appear to match up with as many as seven of them.
The eighth, Blanca Ochoa Tello, was arrested on July 14 by ICE’s investigative branch in a drug-trafficking investigation, court filings show. But it’s unclear if she appears in the ICE data, as she was arrested in La Plata County and no woman arrested in that county was listed in the data.
To verify ICE’s July operation claims, The Post examined arrest data in Colorado and Wyoming, which jointly form the Denver area of operations for the agency. The Post also searched for arrests in every other state to identify any arrests that may have occurred in a Colorado area but were errantly listed under other states.
Federal agents detain a man as he exits a court hearing in immigration court at the Jacob K. Javitz Federal Building on July 30, 2025 in New York City. (Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)
Nationally, immigration authorities had their most arrest-heavy months this summer, according to data published by researchers at Syracuse University. Immigration officials arrested more than 36,700 people in June, its highest single-month total since June 2019, during Trump’s first term. More than 31,200 were arrested across the country in July.
The Trump administration has also set out to increase its detention capacity to accommodate the mass-deportation plans.
As of late July, ICE planned to triple its detention capacity in Colorado, according to documents obtained last month by the Washington Post. That plan includes opening as many as three new facilities and the expansion of Colorado’s sole existing facility in Aurora.
DHS officers watch from the parking lot as protesters gather at the entrance to the ICE Colorado Field Office on Aug. 30, 2025, in Centennial. (Photo By Kathryn Scott/Special to The Denver Post)
Over the course of this year, ICE arrested people in Colorado who were originally from more than 60 countries, according to the data. That included 10 Iranians arrested in late June or early July. Six of those people were arrested on June 22, the day after the U.S. bombed Iranian nuclear facilities. Three more were arrested over the next 48 hours.
The vast majority of the undocumented immigrants who were arrested and deported were returned to their home countries, though roughly 50 were sent somewhere else, the data show. Nine Venezuelans were sent to El Salvador in the first two weeks of the Trump administration, when alleged gang members were dispatched to a notorious prison there.
ProPublica identified roughly a dozen Coloradans who were sent to that prison. It reported that several were arrested in late January, which matches information listed in the ICE data published by UC Berkeley.
Advocates’ fears of continued arrests have escalated as ICE’s funding has surged. On Aug. 30, several immigration advocates picketed outside an ICE field office in Centennial after a number of immigrants received abrupt notices to check in at the facility.
Four people were detained, said Jordan Garcia, the program director for the American Friends Service Committee’s immigrant-rights program in Colorado.
Among them, he said, was an older Cuban man with dementia. Garcia and other advocates spoke with the man and his son before they entered the facility. The son later came out, Garcia said, and said that his father had been detained.
A federal judge on Friday decided not to rule in the case of two Northern Virginia school systems suing to prevent the Department of Education from freezing federal funding because the districts haven’t changed their policies for intimate spaces.
A federal judge on Friday decided not to rule in the case of two Northern Virginia school systems suing to prevent the Department of Education from freezing federal funding because the districts haven’t changed their policies for intimate spaces.
In a 13-page filing, Judge Rossie D. Alston Jr. of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia said that because Fairfax and Arlington Public Schools’ complaints are about requests “to order the payment of money,” the court lacks subject matter jurisdiction.
The filing stated that jurisdiction lies with the U.S. Court of Federal Claims.
The decision comes days after the divisions first filed the lawsuit, hoping to stop the department from freezing federal funds. The two districts, as well as Loudoun, Prince William and the City of Alexandria school systems, have been scrutinized by the agency because of their bathroom policies.
The Education Department has said policies that let students use bathrooms based on gender identity violate Title IX, and that schools should adopt policies that allow kids to use bathrooms based on biological sex.
“We are considering our next steps in the courts as we strongly believe the Department of Education’s classification of FCPS as a ‘high-risk’ entity effectively holds the division hostage and violates binding precedent from the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals,” Fairfax County Public Schools said in a statement. “This designation unfairly harms tens of thousands of our most vulnerable students who depend on these federal dollars.”
WTOP has contacted Arlington Public Schools and the Department of Education for comment.
Last month, the Education Department announced it had placed five Northern Virginia districts on “high risk” status and would scrutinize their federal reimbursement requests, because they didn’t change their policies. While Fairfax and Prince William counties have said they don’t get federal funding through Title IX, they do receive federal dollars as a small fraction of their budgets.
“These critical federal dollars are used to support food and nutrition services, as well as the staffing of cafeterias,” the Fairfax County schools’ statement said. “Other funding is used for services and instruction for students with disabilities and students from low-income families, to increase student achievement, support technical education, promote teacher development, and fund community education programs.”
Arlington, meanwhile, previously said the Education Department’s move resulted in freezing $23 million in funding. In a post on the division’s website announcing the lawsuit, Superintendent Francisco Durán said that money pays for free breakfast and lunch for thousands of low-income students and support for special education students.
The Education Department gave the five Northern Virginia school systems a deadline to comply with the request to change their policies. All of them told the agency they believe their current practices are in compliance with the law.
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Anthropic, which operates the Claude artificial intelligence app, has agreed to pay $1.5 billion to settle a class-action lawsuit by book authors who alleged the company took pirated copies of their works to train its chatbot.
The company has agreed to pay authors about $3,000 for each of an estimated 500,000 books covered by the settlement. A trio of authors — thriller novelist Andrea Bartz and nonfiction writers Charles Graeber and Kirk Wallace Johnson — sued last year, and now represent a broader group of writers and publishers whose books Anthropic downloaded to train its chatbot Claude.
The landmark settlement could mark a turning point in legal battles between AI companies and the writers, visual artists and other creative professionals who accuse them of copyright infringement. A judge could approve the settlement as soon as Monday.
“As best as we can tell, it’s the largest copyright recovery ever,” said Justin Nelson, a lawyer for the authors. “It is the first of its kind in the AI era.”
In a statement to CBS News, Anthropic Aparna Sridhar deputy general counsel said the settlement “will resolve the plaintiffs’ remaining legacy claims.”
Sridhar added that the settlement comes after the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in June ruled that Anthropic’s use of legally purchased books to train Claude did not violate U.S. copyright law.
“We remain committed to developing safe AI systems that help people and organizations extend their capabilities, advance scientific discovery and solve complex problems,” Sridhar said.
Anthropic, which was founded by former executives with ChatGPT developer OpenAI, introduced Claude in 2023. Like other generative AI bots, the tool lets users ask natural language questions and then provides summarized answers using AI trained on millions of books, articles and other material.
Settlement terms
If Anthropic had not settled, experts say losing the case after a scheduled December trial could have cost the San Francisco-based company even more money.
“We were looking at a strong possibility of multiple billions of dollars, enough to potentially cripple or even put Anthropic out of business,” said William Long, a legal analyst for Wolters Kluwer.
U.S. District Judge William Alsup of San Francisco has scheduled a Monday hearing to review the settlement terms.
Books are known to be important sources of data — in essence, billions of words carefully strung together — that are needed to build the AI large language models behind chatbots like Anthropic’s Claude and its chief rival, OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
Alsup’s June ruling found that Anthropic had downloaded more than 7 million digitized books that it “knew had been pirated.” It started with nearly 200,000 from an online library called Books3, assembled by AI researchers outside of OpenAI to match the vast collections on which ChatGPT was trained.
Debut thriller novel “The Lost Night” by Bartz, a lead plaintiff in the case, was among those found in the Books3 dataset.
Anthropic later took at least 5 million copies from the pirate website Library Genesis, or LibGen, and at least 2 million copies from the Pirate Library Mirror, Alsup wrote.
The Authors Guild told its thousands of members last month that it expected “damages will be minimally $750 per work and could be much higher” if Anthropic was found at trial to have willfully infringed their copyrights. The settlement’s higher award — approximately $3,000 per work — likely reflects a smaller pool of affected books, after taking out duplicates and those without copyright.
On Friday, Mary Rasenberger, CEO of the Authors Guild, called the settlement “an excellent result for authors, publishers, and rightsholders generally, sending a strong message to the AI industry that there are serious consequences when they pirate authors’ works to train their AI, robbing those least able to afford it.”
Anthropic has agreed to pay at least $1.5 billion to settle a lawsuit brought by a group of book authors alleging copyright infringement, an estimated $3,000 per work. In a court motion on Friday, the plaintiffs emphasized that the terms of the settlement are “critical victories” and that going to trial would have been an “enormous” risk.
This is the first class action settlement centered on AI and copyright in the United States, and the outcome may shape how regulators and creative industries approach the legal debate over generative AI and intellectual property. According to the settlement agreement, the class action will apply to approximately 500,000 works, but that number may go up once the list of pirated materials is finalized. For every additional work, the artificial intelligence company will pay an extra $3,000. Plaintiffs plan to deliver a final list of works to the court by October.
“This landmark settlement far surpasses any other known copyright recovery. It is the first of its kind in the AI era. It will provide meaningful compensation for each class work and sets a precedent requiring AI companies to pay copyright owners. This settlement sends a powerful message to AI companies and creators alike that taking copyrighted works from these pirate websites is wrong,” says colead plaintiffs’ counsel Justin Nelson of Susman Godfrey LLP.
Anthropic is not admitting any wrongdoing or liability. “Today’s settlement, if approved, will resolve the plaintiffs’ remaining legacy claims. We remain committed to developing safe AI systems that help people and organizations extend their capabilities, advance scientific discovery, and solve complex problems,” Anthropic deputy general counsel Aparna Sridhar said in a statement.
The lawsuit, which was originally filed in 2024 in the US District Court for the Northern District of California, was part of a larger ongoing wave of copyright litigation brought against tech companies over the data they used to train artificial intelligence programs. Authors Andrea Bartz, Kirk Wallace Johnson, and Charles Graeber alleged that Anthropic trained its large language models on their work without permission, violating copyright law.
This June, senior district judge William Alsup ruled that Anthropic’s AI training was shielded by the “fair use” doctrine, which allows unauthorized use of copyrighted works under certain conditions. It was a win for the tech company but came with a major caveat. As it gathered materials to train its AI tools, Anthropic had relied on a corpus of books pirated from so-called “shadow libraries,” including the notorious site LibGen, and Alsup determined that the authors should still be able to bring Anthropic to trial in a class action over pirating their work. (Anthropic maintains that it did not actually train its products on the pirated works, instead opting to purchase copies of books.)
“Anthropic downloaded over seven million pirated copies of books, paid nothing, and kept these pirated copies in its library even after deciding it would not use them to train its AI (at all or ever again). Authors argue Anthropic should have paid for these pirated library copies. This order agrees,” Alsup wrote in his summary judgement.
A bankruptcy attorney in Indianapolis is suing Meta, Facebook’s parent company, over repeated account suspensions.Mark S. Zuckerberg claims that having the same name as Facebook’s founder has led to significant business disruptions. Zuckerberg alleges that Meta has accused him of impersonating a celebrity, resulting in the shutdown of his business pages.”I’ve got better things to do than sue Facebook,” he told WTHR-TV. “I’d rather not pick a fight with them, but I don’t know how else to make them stop.”In the past eight years, his business account has been suspended five times, while his personal account has faced four suspensions.Emails from Meta show apologies for the errors, but Zuckerberg insists it takes months to regain access.”The last time they did it, it was over six months before I got my account turned back on,” he said.The bankruptcy attorney estimates that these suspensions have cost him thousands in advertising revenue.”It’s like buying a billboard and then having it covered up. It’s not fair,” he added.The lawsuit seeks to compel Meta to keep his accounts active and cover his attorney fees and lost advertising money.As for the other Mark Zuckerberg, he joked, “If he wants to fly here personally and say ‘I’m sorry,’ I’d probably take him up on that.”Currently, his account is back online, and a Meta spokesperson stated that it had been disabled in error, expressing appreciation for his patience.
INDIANAPOLIS —
A bankruptcy attorney in Indianapolis is suing Meta, Facebook’s parent company, over repeated account suspensions.
Mark S. Zuckerberg claims that having the same name as Facebook’s founder has led to significant business disruptions.
Zuckerberg alleges that Meta has accused him of impersonating a celebrity, resulting in the shutdown of his business pages.
“I’ve got better things to do than sue Facebook,” he told WTHR-TV. “I’d rather not pick a fight with them, but I don’t know how else to make them stop.”
In the past eight years, his business account has been suspended five times, while his personal account has faced four suspensions.
Emails from Meta show apologies for the errors, but Zuckerberg insists it takes months to regain access.
“The last time they did it, it was over six months before I got my account turned back on,” he said.
The bankruptcy attorney estimates that these suspensions have cost him thousands in advertising revenue.
“It’s like buying a billboard and then having it covered up. It’s not fair,” he added.
The lawsuit seeks to compel Meta to keep his accounts active and cover his attorney fees and lost advertising money.
As for the other Mark Zuckerberg, he joked, “If he wants to fly here personally and say ‘I’m sorry,’ I’d probably take him up on that.”
Currently, his account is back online, and a Meta spokesperson stated that it had been disabled in error, expressing appreciation for his patience.
A federal jury has ordered Google to pay $425.7 million for improperly snooping on people’s smartphones during a nearly decade-long period of intrusions.
The verdict reached Wednesday in San Francisco federal court followed a more than two-week trial in a class-action case covering about 98 million smartphones operating in the United States between July 1, 2016, through Sept. 23, 2024. That means the total damages awarded in the five-year-old case works out to about $4 per device.
Google had denied that it was improperly tracking the online activity of people who thought they had shielded themselves with privacy controls. The company maintained its stance even though the eight-person jury concluded Google had been spying in violation of California privacy laws.
“This decision misunderstands how our products work, and we will appeal it,” Google spokesman Jose Castaneda said Thursday. “Our privacy tools give people control over their data, and when they turn off personalization, we honor that choice.”
The lawyers who filed the case had argued Google had used the data they collected off smartphones without users’ permission to help sell ads tailored to users’ individual interests — a strategy that resulted in the company reaping billions in additional revenue. The lawyers framed those ad sales as illegal profiteering that merited damages of more than $30 billion.
Even though the jury came up with a far lower calculation for the damages, one of the lawyers who brought the case against Google hailed the outcome as a victory for privacy protection.
“We hope this result sends a message to the tech industry that Americans will not sit idly by as their information is collected and monetized against their will,” said attorney John Yanchunis of law firm Morgan & Morgan.
The San Francisco jury verdict came a day after Google avoided the U.S. Department of Justice’s attempt to break up the company in a landmark antitrust case in Washington, D.C., targeting its dominant search engine. A federal judge who had declared Google’s search engine to be an illegal monopoly ordered less radical changes, including requiring the company to share some of its search data with rivals.
Warren police confront a man having a mental health emergency, leading to him being hospitalized with injuries to his heart and kidneys.
The Warren Police Department is refusing to release public records to Metro Times, including video footage that shows cops allegedly beating a man with a mental health emergency.
Christopher Gibson, 26, was “brutally battered, tasered and threatened with a barking K-9” by Warren cops while detained in December 2022, according to a recent lawsuit filed by the ACLU of Michigan. He ended up in the hospital with damage to his heart and kidneys.
Ironically, an attorney for Warren claimed in the city’s denial that releasing the records would somehow harm Gibson because he “did not authorize release of his protected or private information to any third-party,” calling the information “an invasion of privacy.”
“Your demand for copies of everything obtained by Mr. Gibson’ attorneys is therefore improper,” city attorney Raechel M. Badalamenti wrote to Metro Times on Wednesday.
Michigan’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) laws are very clear: Public agencies are required to disclose records that document official actions by government employees, regardless of whether the subject of the records authorizes their release.
Badalamenti also insisted that law enforcement personnel records are exempt, a claim that has been repeatedly contradicted by Michigan courts. In general, routine information, such as disciplinary records, complaints, use-of-force reports, and internal affairs findings, are considered public because they reflect how government employees perform their official duties.
Notably, Badalamenti’s firm Kirk, Huth, Lange & Badalamenti, PLC is representing the city in the lawsuit filed by the ACLU of Michigan.
Hoping to learn more about the allegations against the officers accused of assaulting Gibson, Metro Times sent a request to Warren police on Aug. 18 that sought the same records turned over to the ACLU of Michigan under a FOIA request. But Badalamenti appeared to suggest that some of those records were received through discovery in the lawsuit, not a FOIA request.
“As you may know, there is ongoing litigation regarding the subject-matter of this request,” Badalamenti wrote to Metro Times. “In this regard, you are not entitled to the same documents and tangible things requested by the American Civil Liberties Union as this organization represents the Plaintiff in that ongoing case. Documents available to an attorney, in discovery or with a client release, are not necessarily available under the Freedom of Information Act (the “Act”).”
Badalamenti’s argument is moot because Metro Times only asked for documents that were already turned over to the ACLU under a FOIA request.
Metro Times plans to appeal the denial. In the meantime, Warren police are exposing the city to a potential lawsuit for refusing to release the records.
According to the ACLU’s lawsuit, Gibson was diagnosed with schizophrenia and was experiencing a mental health emergency. His mother asked police to take him to a psychiatric hospital, but instead, cops arrested him and locked him in a jail cell.
While in police custody, Gibson repeatedly told the officers he was struggling with mental issues and was clearly disoriented and confused. An officer responded, “You’re mental, that’s fine. You can still follow directions,” according to the ACLU of Michigan.
Video obtained by the ACLU shows Gibson clearly agitated and unwell when he was in a jail cell. Rather than get Gibson psychiatric help, as he and his mother requested, officers forced their way into his cell, pepper-sprayed him, covered his head with a mesh fabric hood, and tasered him while he was pinned to the ground, causing serious injuries to his body.
“I have a mental illness going on,” Gibson yelled out as officers approached him.
After cops wrestled him to the ground, a confused Gibson screamed, “They are killing me, literally! Judge! Judge!”
Police then forced him into an elevator, which malfunctioned, causing Gibson more confusion. When the elevator opened, cops carried him out as he screamed.
At no point during these confrontations did Warren police use mental health professionals or get Gibson psychiatric help.
Asked about the way police handled the situation, Lt. John Gajewski declined to answer any of Metro Times’s questions.
“At the recommendation of attorneys for the City, no additional statement or response is available,” Gajewski told us in an email.
His mother said police refused to give her any information, and it wasn’t until three days later that she found out he was in the hospital with severe injuries.
This is not the first time Badalamenti and Warren cops were accused of withholding public records. In March 2024, the Michigan Commission on Law Enforcement Standards (MCOLES) told Metro Times it was investigating a 2018 email that appears to show Badalamenti attempting to hide public records. In an August 2018 email, Badalamenti offered to keep in her office “the entire original file” involving an internal affairs investigation into a deputy police commissioner accused of punching a suspect that was in custody. By doing so, the deputy commissioner would have had an easier time finding another job at a police department following a 2017 law intended to crack down on wandering cops, or officers who move from department to department amid allegations of misconduct. The law requires police to reveal those records to state officials if the documents are related to an officer leaving the department.
A Colorado jury on Friday awarded $21 million to a woman who was paralyzed when she fell from a ski lift at Crested Butte Mountain Resort three years ago.
The jury verdict comes just over a year after the Colorado Supreme Court considered the woman’s case and ruled that liability waivers do not protect ski resorts when resorts violate state laws or regulations. That ruling allowed the lawsuit to go forward and likely ended a push by ski resorts to use such waivers to shield themselves from almost all lawsuits.
The case and its $21 million verdict may open up new avenues for skiers to sue ski operators, particularly over incidents involving chairlifts, said Brian Aleinikoff, an attorney for Annie Miller, the woman who fell in 2022.
“For the longest time, ski areas have been so insulated from lawsuits,” he said. “…At the end of the day the ‘inherent dangers’ and risks of skiing aren’t going to change. If you are skiing and you hit a rock or a bare patch or some ice or you go over a cliff, that is on you. But I think how some of the ski lifts operate — that is really where this will have the biggest impact moving forward.”
Jurors on Friday awarded the family $5.3 million in non-economic damages, $10.5 million in economic damages and $5.3 million in damages for physical impairment and disfigurement, according to an order from 17th Judicial District Court Judge Jeffrey Smith.
The jury assigned 25% of the fault for the incident to Miller and 75% of the fault to Vail Resorts, which owns Crested Butte Mountain Resort. Vail Resorts expects to pay a total of $12.4 million in damages both because of the jury’s assignment of fault and a statutory cap on non-economic damages.
“We disagree with the decision and believe that it was inconsistent with Colorado law,” Katie Lyons, communications manager for Vail Resorts, said in an email. “Still, we recognize the personal toll this accident has taken on Ms. Miller and her family, and we wish her continued strength in her recovery. We remain committed to the highest safety standards in our operations.”
Miller, now 20, was 16 when she fell 30 feet from a four-seat, high-speed chairlift at Crested Butte on March 16, 2022. Miller boarded the Paradise Express lift with her father, but couldn’t get properly seated, and grabbed the chairlift to keep from falling.
Her father and others began to yell for the lift to be stopped as she was dragged forward, but the lift continued with Miller hanging from the chair and her father trying to pull her back to safety.
Eventually, Miller fell and landed on her back. Even then, the lift did not stop, and her father, Michael Miller, was forced to ride to the top and ski down to his daughter, who suffered severe injuries and was paralyzed after the fall.
Michael Miller brought a negligence lawsuit against Crested Butte, arguing that the resort employees should have stopped the lift before his daughter fell.
Annie Miller is now a junior at the University of Tulsa, where she is studying music and psychology, Aleinikoff said.
“We are trying to hold ski areas accountable to ensure they are following the safety rules and violations they have agreed to follow, in order to protect folks like Annie Miller who come out and want to ski,” he said. “To me it is not asking that much of them.”
The Patrick V. McNamara Federal Building in downtown Detroit, where immigration hearings take place.
A longtime Detroit resident and father of five U.S. citizen children was released from immigration detention on Wednesday after a federal judge ruled that the Trump administration unlawfully denied him due process.
Juan Manuel Lopez-Campos, who has lived in the U.S. for 26 years and has no criminal record, was arrested during a traffic stop in June and held for more than two months without a chance to seek bond.
The ACLU of Michigan took up his case and sued on his behalf. In response to the suit, U.S. District Judge Brandy R. McMillion ruled that the Trump administration’s new directive to deny bond hearings is “not only wrong but also fundamentally unfair.”
Lopez-Campos walked free Wednesday.
“I am happy to finally be with my family with the help of my legal team,” Lopez-Campos said in a statement. “I hope to continue to fight my case.”
The Trump administration’s directive in July attempted to reverse decades of policy by eliminating access to bond hearings for immigrants facing civil detention. If left in place, the directive would have subjected immigrants to mandatory detention without judicial review, a process that can take months or even years, legal experts said.
“There are hundreds, if not thousands, of others still being wrongly denied what Juan just experienced: the opportunity to fight your immigration case from home,” Ramis J. Wadood, staff attorney for the ACLU of Michigan, said. “Because of that, we will not rest until every affected individual is allowed to exercise the same right to due process and has a chance to come home to their families.”
Lopez-Campos’s attorney, Shahad Atiya, who worked with the ACLU on the case, said the government had “no legitimate reason” to keep him locked up.”
“The cruelty was the point, but we’re glad that justice prevailed,” Atiya said.
A jury gave Cardi B a quick and absolute victory Tuesday at a trial in the lawsuit of a security guard who alleged the rap star assaulted her at a doctor’s office during her first pregnancy.
The jury at a small courthouse in Alhambra, California, deliberated for only about an hour before finding Cardi not liable in the lawsuit brought by Emani Ellis, who alleged Cardi cut her face with a fingernail and spat on her in the hallway of a Beverly Hills obstetrician in February 2018.
Cardi said her pregnancy was a secret to most of the world at the time, and she feared that Ellis was going to make it public. She acknowledged that the two argued, but said it never got physical.
Her testimony over two days last week was streamed live and widely viewed. After several days off, the trial resumed with closing arguments on Tuesday, and the jury got the case in mid-afternoon.
Cardi B is seen leaving the Alhambra Courthouse on Sept. 2, 2025, in Alhambra, California.
PG/Bauer-Griffin
Cardi said she had been visiting Los Angeles doing promotional work in February 2018 around that year’s NBA All-Star Game. She was four months into her pregnancy with the first of her three children with rapper Offset. She said, at the time, she had told her inner circle she was having a baby, but not the public or her parents.
The obstetrician’s office had been closed to other patients on a Saturday for her privacy.
She said Ellis, a security guard for the building, followed her to her fifth-floor appointment. Cardi told jurors last week that she heard Ellis say her name into a phone and appeared to be filming her.
“I told her, ‘Why are you recording?’” Cardi testified, “and she said, ‘Oh my bad.’ She practically apologized.”
But the argument grew increasingly heated, she said.
“As we were arguing she’s backing me, she’s walking into me,” Cardi said.
Ellis testified that the incident left her humiliated and traumatized, and the scar on her face required cosmetic surgery. Ellis, who lost her job over the incident, sought damages that include medical expenses, compensation for emotional and physical suffering, and lost wages, along with punitive damages. She does not specify a total amount in the lawsuit, but Cardi said from the stand that she is “suing me for $24 million.”
A receptionist who broke up the argument between Cardi and Ellis largely backed the rapper’s account in testimony.
A Mesa County sheriff’s deputy resigned Tuesday, almost three months after he was accused of violating state law by sharing information with federal officials that led to a Utah college student’s immigration arrest, according to court records.
Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser on Thursday dropped the lawsuit he filed against Investigator Alexander Zwinck over the incident because of the deputy’s resignation, according to court records. Weiser agreed to dismiss the case because the law no longer applies to Zwinck after his resignation, according to a motion filed last week.
A larger investigation into whether other state law enforcement officers in the region collaborated with federal officials in a Signal group chat for the purposes of federal immigration enforcement will continue, said Lawrence Pacheco, spokesman for the attorney general’s office.
“Because the laws he is accused of violating apply only to state and local employees, the attorney general’s office is dismissing the lawsuit against Mr. Zwinck but retaining the right to re-file the case if Mr. Zwinck becomes a state or local employee in the future,” Pacheco said.
Weiser alleged in the lawsuit that Zwinck knowingly assisted in federal immigration enforcement by sharing information about 19-year-old Caroline Dias Goncalves in the Signal group chat during a June 5 traffic stop on Interstate 70 near Loma.
Colorado law prohibits local law enforcement officers from carrying out civil immigration enforcement and largely blocks local police agencies from working with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The deputy purposely stalled Dias Goncalves so federal immigration officers could get into position to arrest her, and passed on details about the make and model of her car, her license plate, and her direction and timing of travel to the federal officers, knowing it would be used for immigration enforcement, Weiser said.
Zwinck pulled Dias Goncalves over because she was following a semitrailer too closely. At about 1:40 p.m., he shared a picture of her driver’s license in the Signal group chat so that federal agents could run her information through a number of databases that are only accessible to them, Weiser alleged in the lawsuit.
Zwinck questioned Dias Goncalves about her accent and where she was from — she said she was born in Brazil. He shared his location with the federal agents, who responded that they were en route. He kept Dias Goncalves for about 15 minutes, then let her go with a warning at about 1:55 p.m.
The federal agents then arrested her on immigration grounds. Dias Goncalves, who attends the University of Utah, came to the U.S. from Brazil with her family when she was 7 and overstayed a tourist visa. She has a pending asylum application, according to the Salt Lake Tribune.
The Signal group chat included a mix of local and federal officers and was used for regional drug-smuggling enforcement, according to the Mesa County Sheriff’s Office.
The Venetian Resort has filed a nearly $2 million lawsuit against QTLST Management and Shawn Copeland, claiming the media management company and its CEO breached a contract for a corporate event that the Las Vegas casino resort had to cancel earlier this summer.
An aerial view of The Venetian Resort Las Vegas. The venue is teaming up with Hyatt on a new loyalty-sharing program. (Image: The Venetian)
QTLST is an LA-based media production company that employs 2-10 people, according to its LinkedIn page, which lists a website (qtlst.com) that was never set up.
According to court documents filed Aug. 27 in Clark County District Court, QTLST entered into an agreement in May 2024 to host “QTLST World Media Week” at the resort from July 26 to August 2, 2025. The contract included extensive room reservations — over 1,500 per night for four nights — as well as dozens of luxury suites, meeting spaces, and a $500,000 minimum commitment for food and beverage services.
The payment schedule required an initial deposit of $229,200 by June 10, 2024, followed by two additional installments. Faire to meet these deadlines, as stipulated by the contract, would trigger a cancellation fee of $1,946,000.
According to the lawsuit, QTLST Management failed to make any of the required payments.
After missing the first deposit deadline, the Venetian issued a formal warning in late October 2024. When no payment was received, the resort terminated the agreement on November 2, 2024. Additional invoices and demand letters sent in November and December went unanswered, the filing states.
The casino resort’s claim alleges three counts of breach of contract, fraud, and unjust enrichment. The Venetian seeks the full cancellation fee, plus 18% interest on the unpaid balance, reimbursement for legal costs, and any other damages deemed appropriate by the court.
“QTLST reserved 1,535 hotel rooms per night for four consecutive nights (from July 28, 2025, through and including July 31, 2025), as well as twenty-five (25) suites for July 26, 2025, thirty (30) suites for July 27, 2025, and twenty-five (25) suites for August 1, 2025,” the lawsuit reads.
Industry observers note that disputes like this underscore the financial risks tied to large-scale corporate events on the Las Vegas Strip, where contracts often involve thousands of expensive room nights and substantial food and beverage guarantees.
The case is currently awaiting adjudication in Clark County District Court. If the court rules in favor of The Venetian, Copeland and QTLST could face a significantly larger financial burden once interest and legal fees are factored in.
The lawsuits come after the Education Department requested Arlington Public Schools, Fairfax County Public Schools, and three other Northern Virginia school districts to change their policies that allow transgender students to use bathrooms and locker rooms that align with their gender identity, rather than their biological sex.
Arlington and Fairfax counties’ public school districts are suing the Department of Education in an effort to protect their federal funding from being frozen in retaliation for the school systems’ gender policies surrounding the use of bathrooms and locker rooms.
The lawsuits come after the Education Department requested Arlington Public Schools, Fairfax County Public Schools, and three other Northern Virginia school districts to change their policies that allow transgender students to use bathrooms and locker rooms that align with their gender identity, rather than their biological sex.
The school systems refused, and the Education Department responded by placing them on “high-risk” status, meaning the department will scrutinize their federal reimbursement requests.
In their complaints, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Arlington and Fairfax county schools are seeking to have that status reversed. The school districts say tens of millions of dollars for critical services for students are on the line.
“These federal funds are not abstract numbers on a spreadsheet; they represent vital support for our most vulnerable children. This funding supports our food and nutrition services, services for our students with disabilities, students from low-income families, and programs that promote teacher development and student achievement across the division,” Fairfax County Public Schools Superintendent Michelle Reid said in a letter addressed to staff and families.
“The DOE’s ‘high-risk’ designation unfairly harms tens of thousands of our students by threatening these essential services,” Reid continued.
FCPS said in a statement up to $167 million in federal funding has been essentially frozen.
In his letter to the Arlington Public Schools community, Superintendent Francisco Durán said the Education Department’s “high-risk” designation effectively halts $23 million in funding that the school district relies on.
That funding, Durán said, is mainly used to provide more than 8,000 low-income students with free meals and thousands of special needs students with counseling and other educational support.
In its complaint filed Friday, Arlington Public Schools asserts the Education Department’s funding freeze violates Title IX, the Administrative Procedures Act and the Spending Clause of the U.S. Constitution. The school system also said the department is incorrectly interpreting Title IX.
Fairfax County schools state, in its complaint also filed Friday, that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit’s ruling in Grimm v. Gloucester County School board binds the school system. In that decision, FCPS wrote, the Fourth Circuit ruled that the Equal Protection Clause and Title IX compel local school boards to provide students with access to facilities that correspond with their gender identity.
This week, Reid said in her letter that her school system reached out to the Education Department, “to address the impossible position that the DOE has placed on our school division — whether to violate a federal court ruling regarding the support of our transgender students or risk this critical funding. The DOE did not respond.”
Durán said he expects a judge to hear the case quickly and issue an order that will preserve federal funding.
WTOP has reached out to the Department of Education for comment.
The Washington Post first reported the lawsuit.
WTOP’s Scott Gelman contributed to this report.
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Amazon is facing a new legal challenge following a proposed class action lawsuit over how it markets movies and television shows on its Prime Video platform.
The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Seattle, alleges that the company misleads consumers by describing digital transactions as “purchases” when, in fact, customers receive only a revocable license.
Why It Matters
The lawsuit dives into a broader question over digital ownership and when consumers click “buy” on a streaming platform.
Is the customer truly purchasing permanent rights, or only renting access at the company’s discretion? At stake is whether Amazon and other digital retailers must clearly explain that so-called purchases can disappear, an issue that could reshape how millions of people understand—and pay for—movies, TV shows, games and other digital goods.
What To Know
The complaint, filed August 21 in the Western District of Washington, was brought by California resident Lisa Reingold.
According to the filing, Reingold bought Bella and the Bulldogs — Volume 4 from Amazon in May 2025 for $17.79 after applying a credit. Soon afterward, she says, the program was no longer available in her library.
Newsweek contacted Amazon and attorney Wright Noel for comment by email outside of normal office hours on Thursday.
Bella And The Bulldogs arrive at the Kids’ Choice Awards on Saturday, March 12, 2016, in Inglewood, California. Bella And The Bulldogs arrive at the Kids’ Choice Awards on Saturday, March 12, 2016, in Inglewood, California. Chris Pizzello/AP
The central claim is that Amazon’s use of terms such as “buy” or “purchase” gives consumers the impression of permanent ownership. In reality, access to the content depends on Amazon retaining licensing rights from studios and distributors.
“Instead, they receive ‘non-exclusive, non-transferable, non-sublicensable, limited license’ to access the digital audiovisual work, which is maintained at Defendant’s sole discretion,” the complaint says.
Clarifying Digital Ownership Rights
The practice is not unique to Amazon, but the case comes as a number of moves have been made to attempt to clarify digital ownership rights.
Earlier this year, California implemented the Digital Property Rights Transparency Law (AB-2426), which makes it unlawful to market a digital good as a “purchase” unless sellers either obtain clear acknowledgment from buyers that they are receiving a license or provide “a clear and conspicuous statement” explaining the limits of the transaction (Cal. Bus. & Prof. Code §17500.6).
Reingold’s suit argues Amazon fails to meet either condition.
Amazon’s website in its Terms of Use/Help pages acknowledges that purchased digital content may not remain permanently accessible.
According to the filing, Amazon does not require customers to affirmatively acknowledge they are receiving a license, nor does it present conspicuous disclosures. Instead, the only notice appears “buried at the very bottom” of the confirmation screen in smaller font: “BY BUYING OR RENTING, YOU RECEIVE A LICENSE TO THE VIDEO AND YOU AGREE TO OUR TERMS AT PRIMEVIDEO.COM/TERMS.”
The lawsuit claims violations of California’s Unfair Competition Law (§17200), False Advertising Law (§17500), and Consumer Legal Remedies Act (§1750).
It seeks restitution, disgorgement of profits, damages, and an injunction requiring Amazon to revise its practices.
The company has not yet responded publicly to this complaint.
An Amazon Prime shipping container is viewed while being transported by railway, Wednesday, July 9, 2025, in Holly Hill, Florida. An Amazon Prime shipping container is viewed while being transported by railway, Wednesday, July 9, 2025, in Holly Hill, Florida. Phelan M. Ebenhack/AP
Similar Disputes
Similar disputes have previously arisen.
In 2020, a consumer filed a class action in California alleging that Amazon’s use of “buy” for digital goods was deceptive. That case was dismissed because the plaintiff had not lost access to her purchases. In later litigation in Washington, a federal judge allowed certain claims to proceed, finding that a reasonable consumer could be misled by the terminology.
The difference in 2025 is that California’s new statute sets a clearer benchmark. The legislative history cited in the complaint points to concerns raised after Ubisoft shut down servers for the video game The Crew, cutting off access for players who had paid for the title. Lawmakers concluded that “consumers clearly know and understand the nature of their transactions … including the reality that they may not have genuine ownership of their purchase.”
Reingold’s complaint describes Amazon’s interface in detail, including screenshots showing the “Buy movie” button and the placement of the disclaimer. It argues the notice is not “clear and conspicuous,” as defined by the statute, which requires larger or contrasting text or other markers that call attention to the disclosure.
The proposed class includes all California residents who purchased digital audiovisual works through Amazon.
Attorneys representing the plaintiff include Carson Noel PLLC of Washington and Bursor & Fisher, a firm experienced in consumer class actions.
For Amazon, the case highlights a broader industry challenge: how to market digital goods in a way that matches consumer expectations. While many users understand that streaming rights are time-limited, others view the term “buy” as equivalent to owning a physical DVD or book.
What People Are Saying
Amazon Prime Video terms explain that digital titles: “will generally remain available to you but may become unavailable … for reasons such as potential content provider rights restrictions.”
Wright Noel, counsel for the plaintiff in the complaint said: “Amazon does not meet the standards set by the statute for a clear and conspicuous notice that the thing they are purchasing is a revocable license to access the digital good. The warning is buried at the very bottom of the screen, in font that is considerably smaller than the other text on the screen.”
What Happens Next
Amazon will be required to respond in court, either by filing a motion to dismiss or by answering the allegations. If the case survives, it will move into class certification, discovery, and potentially settlement talks or trial. Because the claims rest on a new California statute, the outcome could set an important precedent for how streaming and digital platforms label and market purchases to consumers.
A federal judge has severely rebuked Donald Trump‘s attorneys for attempting to alter a litigation schedule they themselves established months ago.
The court, in an August 25 order, said the defense could not now object to a process they had proposed, rejecting their bid to alter the course of the case. U.S. District Judge Amir H. Ali made clear that Trump’s lawyers could not reverse their positions after shaping the very schedule they now opposed, stating, “It would violate basic notions of fair play to grant the relief requested.”
The ruling, issued in Washington, D.C., highlights judicial frustration with inconsistent arguments that appear aimed at delaying proceedings.
Why It Matters
The ruling matters because it curbs one of Trump’s key legal strategies—delaying cases through shifting procedural arguments. By holding his lawyers to the very schedule they proposed, Judge Ali reinforced the principle that courts demand consistency and fairness from litigants. The decision also ensures that nonprofits challenging Trump’s foreign aid freeze are not subjected to further delays, keeping the case on track to resolve a broader constitutional fight over Congress‘s control of federal spending.
President Donald Trump speaks in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, Jan. 21, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson, File) President Donald Trump speaks in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, Jan. 21, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson, File) Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP
What To Know
The dispute centers on the schedule of proceedings in one of Trump’s pending cases.
After initially agreeing to the framework for how filings and hearings should proceed, Trump’s attorneys returned to court asking for equitable relief to delay or alter that schedule.
The judge concluded that because the defense had not pursued a stay at the appropriate time and had, in fact, proposed the very sequence they were now contesting, they could not credibly demand a change.
The court’s reference to “basic notions of fair play” highlights a principle of equity: relief is discretionary, and it is often denied when a party’s conduct appears inconsistent. Judges rely on the expectation that litigants will maintain coherence in their legal positions. The concept of ‘judicial estoppel’ thereby prevents parties from shifting arguments to gain advantage in different phases of a case.
The Case
The case itself is one of several Trump faces with the underlying issues procedural, rather than substantive: the fight is over timing and process, not yet about the merits of the claims. Still, the court’s rebuke illustrates how Trump’s defense team is encountering obstacles in its broader effort to slow down or reshape litigation schedules.
The dispute stems from Trump’s January 20, 2025, executive order freezing most foreign aid. Nonprofit organizations sued, arguing the freeze violated Congress’s constitutional power over appropriations.
On March 10, U.S. District Judge Amir H. Ali partially granted an injunction requiring the administration to release certain funds.
Litigation has continued over how and when compliance should occur.
Trump’s lawyers initially proposed a schedule that anticipated appeals and gave the government until September 30 to obligate funds. But after losing in district court and facing further litigation, they sought to delay that same schedule.
Shifting Strategies
Judge Ali refused, pointing out the contradiction. He noted that the defense had filed an appeal in March but declined to seek a stay at that time. Instead, they urged the court to adopt a timeline beginning August 15, which they said would allow for appellate review and still leave “sufficient time to obligate the balances.”
Months later, they then asked to halt obligations under the very timeline they had endorsed.
“Defendants cannot credibly claim irreparable harm from compliance they themselves proposed,” Ali wrote, rejecting claims that logistical burdens justified delay, and observed: “The reasons asserted for a stay conflict with Defendants’ own litigation decisions.”
This strategy is consistent with Trump’s broader legal approach of seeking delays, but it left them in the awkward position of fighting against their own earlier plan.
A Self-Inflicted Emergency
Ali emphasized that any urgency was of the defense’s own making. “To the extent there is any ’emergency’ here, it is one Defendants created through their own strategic choices,” he wrote. Having bypassed the chance to seek a stay earlier, the lawyers could not return to court claiming prejudice.
This reasoning reflects a broader judicial concern with consistency. Courts depend on parties to advance positions they can stand behind. Sudden reversals, judges warn, risk turning litigation into gamesmanship.
What People Are Saying
Judge Ali in his Order on Motion to Stay of August 25, 2025, said: “But in a circumstance like this—where a party not only declined to seek a stay pending appeal five months ago but also, in the meantime, proposed that the proceedings unfold in the very way they now object to—it would violate basic notions of fair play to grant the equitable relief requested.”
Global Health said: “The harm here goes to the very subsistence of the organizations, many of which are on the brink of shuttering entirely, and poses an existential threat to the viability of their humanitarian missions.”
Virginia Law Reviewsays: “Judicial estoppel … prevents a party from taking a position contradictory to a position which that party adopted previously.”
Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, joined by Justices Anthony Kennedy and David Souter, U.S. Supreme Court, in the matter of Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833 (1992), agreed that: “The very concept of the rule of law … requires such continuity over time that a respect for precedent is … indispensable.”
What Happens Next
The case will proceed under the timeline Trump’s lawyers originally proposed, with the government required to continue preparations to obligate funds before the September 30 deadline.
The defense may still appeal, but higher courts rarely disturb a trial judge’s discretionary denial of equitable relief. That means the litigation stays on track, and the central constitutional question—whether the president can override Congress’s control of federal spending—will move forward without further delay.
President Donald Trump signs an executive order in the Oval Office at the White House, Monday, Feb. 10, 2025, in Washington. (Photo/Alex Brandon, File) President Donald Trump signs an executive order in the Oval Office at the White House, Monday, Feb. 10, 2025, in Washington. (Photo/Alex Brandon, File) Alex Brandon/AP
A federal judge ruled last week that 11 Texas school districts, including Cypress-Fairbanks, Fort Bend, and Houston ISDs, don’t have to display the Ten Commandments in every classroom as required by a state law passed earlier this year. On Monday, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said only nine districts are covered by the temporary injunction, and those that aren’t, including Houston ISD, must hang the posters when the law takes effect on September 1.
It’s not clear why the federal judge’s order named 11 districts — which were sued by a group of parents and civil rights advocates in Rabbi Nathan v. Alamo Heights Independent School District .— and Paxton’s press release mentions nine, exempting Austin ISD and Houston ISD from relief. Paxton’s press office did not respond to calls or emails on Monday.
Repeated phone calls and emails to Houston ISD went unanswered for most of the day. A spokesman responded in the afternoon, saying by email, “The District will not be discussing matters with pending litigation.”
In his latest public statement about the case, Paxton said: “From the beginning, the Ten Commandments have been irrevocably intertwined with America’s legal, moral, and historical heritage. Schools not enjoined by ongoing litigation must abide by SB 10 and display the Ten Commandments. The woke radicals seeking to erase our nation’s history will be defeated. I will not back down from defending the virtues and values that built this country.”
Paxton is currently challenging longtime U.S. Sen. John Cornyn in the Republican primary and will soon be vacating his seat as attorney general. Cornyn seized the opportunity Monday to make a social media dig at Paxton, who has been accused of adultery and whose wife, Texas Sen. Angela Paxton, recently filed for divorce on “biblical grounds.”
The school districts affected by the injunction according to Paxton are Alamo Heights, North East, Cypress-Fairbanks, Lackland, Lake Travis, Fort Bend, Dripping Springs, Plano, and Northside, Paxton said in his statement. “All other ISDs must abide by the law once it takes effect on September 1, 2025,” he said.
In a 55-page ruling issued August 20, U.S. District Judge Fred Biery said the Texas law was unconstitutional and crossed the line from exposure to coercion.
“[Most people] just want to be left alone, neither proselytized nor ostracized, including what occurs to their children in government-run schools,” Judge Biery wrote in his ruling. “Even though the Ten Commandments would not be affirmatively taught, the captive audience of students likely would have questions, which teachers would feel compelled to answer. That is what they do.”
Paxton said he immediately appealed the “flawed ruling.” Biery isn’t the only judge who took issue with the Ten Commandments display. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals deemed it “plainly unconstitutional” just days before Senate Bill 10, authored by Republican Sen. Phil King of Weatherford, was signed into law.
The Texas law requires that the scripture be displayed on a donated 16-by-20 poster. “While no school is compelled to purchase Ten Commandments displays, schools may choose to do so,” Paxton said in his statement. “However, schools must accept and display any privately donated posters or copies that meet the requirements of SB 10.”
Kristi Gross, press strategist with the American Civil Liberties Union, said the attorney general’s demand that school districts implement Senate Bill 10 is “unwise and unlawful.”
“A federal court has ruled that SB 10 is plainly unconstitutional, and school districts have an independent legal obligation to respect the constitutional rights of children and families,” she said. “Districts that flout the First Amendment will be opening themselves up to litigation.”
