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Tag: Lawsuits

  • Widow of murdered Woodland Hills doctor files lawsuit against his ex-wife

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    The family of a Woodland Hills doctor who was gunned down outside his clinic is suing his ex-wife, whom prosecutors say orchestrated his murder.

    Ghazal Simorgh, the widow of Dr. Hamid Mirshojae, still gets emotional as she speaks about her late husband. She says his untimely death greatly impacted the couple’s family.

    “This was not fair for my 1-year-old baby – to lose her dad at a very young age,” Simorgh said.

    While the victim’s ex-wife, Ahang Mirshojae, remains behind bars in connection with his death, she and four others are facing a wrongful death lawsuit filed on behalf of Simorgh and her daughter. The complaint accuses Ahang of trying to hide financial assets and real estate.

    “Through an extensive family network, we do believe there’s assets that have been hidden and/or moved,” said Alex Guerrero, Simorgh’s attorney.

    “We also believe there’s currently, in the past year, some movement of the assets that’s going on right now,” said Arya Tahmassebi, another one of Simorgh’s attorneys.

    The brother of the Woodland Hills doctor who was fatally shot allegedly in a murder-for-hire plot speaks out about his family’s grief. Tracey Leong reports for the NBC4 News at 11 p.m. on Monday, Dec. 16, 2024.

    According to the lawyers and prosecutors, bitterness and hatred are what drove Ahang to allegedly orchestrate the murder-for-hire plot on Hamid. The widow’s attorneys described Ahang as resentful after seeing her ex-husband move on with his life 15 years after their divorce.

    The doctor, who resided in Calabasas, was shot to death on Aug. 23, 2024,  as he left his urgent care clinic on Topanga Canyon Boulevard in the San Fernando Valley.

    Ahang, who pleaded not guilty to his murder, was charged in connection with his death, along with Evan Hardman, 41, of Tomball, Texas; and Sarallah Jawed, 26, of Canoga Park.

    NBC4 has reached out to Ahang’s criminal defense attorney for comment.

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    Gordon Tokumatsu and Karla Rendon

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  • Is There a Hidden Agenda Behind These New Crypto Laws? | Entrepreneur

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    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    Recent crypto laws have sparked debate about their true political motivations. The GENIUS Act, signed on July 18, 2025, represents the cornerstone of the administration’s cryptocurrency strategy.

    Officially, the initiative aims to remove excessive administrative barriers and legalize stablecoins – crypto assets backed by real American assets: dollars, treasury bonds or gold.

    According to legislators, these coins should simplify transactions and position the United States as a global leader in digital finance. The administration has framed this legislation as part of a comprehensive strategy to enhance financial innovation while maintaining America’s economic leadership.

    Understanding cryptocurrency laws in the U.S. requires looking beyond official narratives. The stablecoin market, currently valued at over $260 billion, is projected to reach $2 trillion by 2028 under this new regulatory framework. This explosive growth will fundamentally alter the financial landscape in ways that may not align with stated objectives.

    Related: The Hidden Problems That Could Threaten Crypto’s Future

    Who regulates crypto in the U.S.?

    The question of who regulates cryptocurrency in the U.S. is becoming complex under the new legislation. The hidden agenda behind these laws appears to be weakening the Federal Reserve System’s control. As a reminder, the Fed, established in 1913, consists of twelve regional reserve banks and is considered a private structure independent of executive power.

    The prerogative of issuing “national money” is firmly secured by the Fed, and attempts to interfere with its powers have invariably met with strong opposition. Understanding who regulates cryptocurrency in the U.S. reveals the political power struggle behind recent laws.

    The new stablecoin law represents a half-measure, as it cannot solve the task of creating an alternative digital central bank. Instead, it allows private players to issue their own “money” backed by government securities, effectively fragmenting the Fed’s monopoly on emission.

    Read More: People Really Only Care About These 3 Things at Work — Do You Offer Them?

    Stablecoin influence as a tool for political influence

    New stablecoin regulation allows private entities to issue currency-like assets backed by government securities. This represents a significant departure from traditional monetary policy, where currency issuance is tightly controlled by central banking authorities.

    The approach to stablecoin regulation may fragment the Federal Reserve’s monopoly on currency issuance. By allowing private entities to create dollar-backed digital assets, the legislation effectively creates a parallel monetary system that operates under different rules and oversight.

    Critics argue that current stablecoin regulation could create a shadow emission system outside traditional controls. This system could potentially undermine the Fed’s ability to implement monetary policy effectively and respond to economic crises.

    Related: Why Institutional Investors Are Embracing Crypto–TradFi Partnerships

    The political agenda driving recent legislation

    The cryptocurrency political agenda behind recent legislation extends beyond promoting innovation. As a result, the U.S. economic system risks losing part of its budget revenues and deviating from its usual course. Businesses, having received the right to issue and use stablecoins, may begin to evade tax control and the stablecoins themselves, under unfavorable regulation, will depreciate and lose trust.

    To understand the politics around crypto, you have to look at the power struggles between government institutions. Hidden money printing creates slower growth and shaky forecasts, which is risky in an election year when political pressure is already high.

    Some in the crypto space even push for reducing the Federal Reserve’s control over monetary policy — a major change to the financial system that has shaped the U.S. for more than 100 years.

    The potential consequences of these hidden agenda crypto laws include:

    • Budget Revenue Loss: Reduced tax collection from cryptocurrency transactions compared to traditional financial operations.
    • Monetary Policy Fragmentation: Multiple entities issuing dollar-backed assets could complicate coordinated monetary policy.
    • Financial Stability Risks: A parallel financial system with different rules could introduce new systemic risks.
    • Political Power Shifts: Reduction in Federal Reserve independence and increased executive branch influence over monetary policy.
    • Economic Uncertainty: Potential for market volatility and reduced predictability during political transitions.

    Analysts are questioning whether Trump’s crypto ventures are designed to weaken Federal Reserve control. The legislation creates a framework where private entities can issue dollar-backed assets with potentially less oversight than traditional banking institutions.

    The Trump administration has framed its cryptocurrency laws as forward-looking reforms designed to position the U.S. as a leader in digital finance. But beneath that narrative lies a more complex political agenda. The legislation could reduce the Federal Reserve’s influence over monetary policy, introduce alternative currency-like instruments with favorable tax treatment and shift power among key financial institutions.

    Related: This Trillion-Dollar Industry Is Where You Need to Look For Your Next Investment — Here’s Why

    The full impact will only become clear over time. What is certain is that the effects will extend well beyond cryptocurrency markets, with the potential to reshape core elements of America’s financial and political order. The central question is whether these changes will bolster or weaken U.S. economic stability and global leadership. Understanding the implications requires looking past official narratives to the shifting power dynamics they conceal — only then can we judge whether the reforms serve the public good or narrower political aims.

    Recent crypto laws have sparked debate about their true political motivations. The GENIUS Act, signed on July 18, 2025, represents the cornerstone of the administration’s cryptocurrency strategy.

    Officially, the initiative aims to remove excessive administrative barriers and legalize stablecoins – crypto assets backed by real American assets: dollars, treasury bonds or gold.

    According to legislators, these coins should simplify transactions and position the United States as a global leader in digital finance. The administration has framed this legislation as part of a comprehensive strategy to enhance financial innovation while maintaining America’s economic leadership.

    The rest of this article is locked.

    Join Entrepreneur+ today for access.

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    Vladimir Gorbunov

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  • Apple Sues Chinese Phonemaker Oppo For Alleged Trade Secrets Theft

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    Apple is suing Chinese consumer electronics company Oppo for poaching a member of the Cupertino giant’s Apple Watch team to allegedly steal trade secrets.

    Apple, represented by lawyers from Kirkland & Ellis, is bringing the lawsuit against the company’s former sensor system architect Dr. Cheng Shi, and his new employers China-based Oppo and California-based Innopeak.

    Dr. Shi now leads a team developing sensing technology at Oppo’s U.S. office, according to a complaint filed by Apple on Thursday in the Northern District of California.

    What is Shi accused of doing?

    Dr. Shi was a highly paid engineer at Apple between January 2020 and June 2025 where Apple says he had “a front row seat to Apple’s development of its cutting-edge health sensor technology, including highly confidential roadmaps, design and development documents, and specifications for ECG sensor technology,” which helps Apple Watches measure heart activity, according to the complaint. 

    Apple accuses Dr. Shi of downloading 63 confidential documents on the company’s shared drive for employees to a USB drive just three days before leaving. The documents allegedly included sensitive information on the technological capabilities of yet to be released products and “technical specifications concerning hardware and software implementations” of Apple’s sensor products like temperature sensors in its Apple Watch offerings.

    Before downloading the documents from Apple’s shared drive onto his Macbook, Dr. Shi’s internet search history allegedly revealed that he looked up “how to wipe out macbook” and “Can somebody see if I’ve opened a file on a shared drive?”

    Apple also claims that Dr. Shi stole confidential technical information from the team that is developing Apple’s custom chips. Apple develops its own custom silicon chips for its Mac, iPhone, and iPad products. The company has also been working on designing custom AI chips for some time now, and the effort is considered key to CEO Tim Cook’s AI overhaul.

    Oppo is known for its high-tech smartphones, and the China-based company got some heat online back in 2020 for releasing what many deemed an Apple Watch clone.

    Oppo’s smartphones, although ano match yet to Apple’s iPhones, do remarkably well in Asian markets, particularly in China, one of Apple’s largest markets.

    Along with Huawei and Xiaomi, Oppo has eaten away at Apple’s China market share, causing Apple to fall off from the list of top five smartphone vendors in China in 2024. But the tech giant has recently started turning this narrative around: iPhone sales rose to the top spot in China in May, Reuters reported in June citing preliminary third-party data, driving an overall increase in global sales for Apple.

    Although Oppo does not do business in the U.S., the company does own and operate a “research center” in Silicon Valley under both Oppo and Innopeak’s names, according to the complaint.

    Oppo has not yet responded to Gizmodo’s request for comment.

    What does Apple say happened?

    Apple points to evidence from Dr. Shi’s work-issued phone, which allegedly shows his communications with Oppo senior leadership from April 2025 to until he left Apple at the end of June.

    “This week I’ll inform my team about my resignation,” he allegedly wrote in messages included in the lawsuit. “Lately, I’ve also been reviewing various internal materials and doing a lot of 1:1 meetings in an effort to collect as much information as possible – will share with you all later.”

    In the month before he left Apple, Dr. Shi allegedly scheduled 33 one-on-one meetings covering projects he was not involved in, compared to an average of seven per month a year earlier.

    Then when he did resign at the end of the month, Dr. Shi did not tell colleagues that he would begin work at Oppo, but instead said that he was “returning to China to tend to his elderly parents and had no plans to seek new employment,” according to the complaint.

    Apple is seeking an injunction prohibiting Oppo from using Apple’s trade secrets, and is asking the court to award restitution and damages in an amount to be determined at trial.

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    Ece Yildirim

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  • North Carolina Supreme Court says bar owners’ COVID-19 lawsuits can continue

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    RALEIGH, N.C. — The North Carolina Supreme Court issued favorable rulings Friday for bars and their operators in litigation seeking monetary compensation from the state for COVID-19 restrictions first issued by then-Gov. Roy Cooper that shuttered their doors and, in their view, treated them unfairly compared to the way restaurants were regulated.

    The majority decisions by the justices mean a pair of lawsuits — one filed by several North Carolina bars and their operators and the second by the North Carolina Bar and Tavern Association and other private bars — remain alive, and future court orders directing the state pay them financial damages are possible.

    As a way to ease the spread of coronavirus, Cooper — a Democrat who left office last December and is now running for U.S. Senate — issued a series of executive orders that closed bars starting in March 2020. By that summer, bars still had to remain closed, but restaurants and breweries could serve alcohol during certain hours. Later in 2020, bars could serve alcoholic drinks in outdoor seating, with time limits later added, but the plaintiffs said it was unprofitable to operate. All temporary restrictions on bars were lifted in May 2021.

    Lawyers defending Cooper have said the orders in the ninth-largest state were based on the most current scientific studies and public health data available at a time when thousands were ill and dying and vaccines weren’t widely available.

    On Friday, the court’s five Republican justices in one lawsuit agreed it could continue to trial, rejecting arguments from state attorneys that the litigation must be halted based on a legal doctrine that exempts state government from most lawsuits. That decision largely upheld a Court of Appeals decision from two years ago that had affirmed a trial judge’s order to allow the action filed by Tiffany Howell, seven other individuals and nine businesses to be heard.

    “We acknowledge that the COVID-19 pandemic was a chaotic period of time,” Chief Justice Paul Newby wrote in the prevailing opinion. “It is important to remember, however, that the Governor was not the only person facing uncertainty. Small business owners across the state dutifully shuttered their doors and scaled back operations without knowing exactly when they could open or operate fully again.”

    A broader group of plaintiffs — the North Carolina Bar and Tavern Association and private bars — that sued separately but made similar claims received a favorable ruling last year from a Court of Appeals panel that reversed a trial judge’s decision to dismiss the lawsuit.

    Friday, the same five justices ruled that the Court of Appeals shouldn’t have allowed the association to sue based on claims its members’ constitutional rights for equal treatment were violated.

    But the plaintiffs can return to a trial judge now and present evidence on the claim that their right under the state constitution to earn a living was violated, Associate Justice Phil Berger Jr. wrote in the majority opinion. A trial judge had previously dismissed the case.

    The association and the private bars “sufficiently alleged unconstitutional interference, and thus have a right to seek discovery to prove those allegations are true,” Berger wrote.

    The Supreme Court’s two Democratic justices opposed decisions made by the majority in both cases and said the lawsuits should be dismissed. Associate Justice Allison Riggs wrote that the Bar and Tavern Association failed to signal it had evidence of a more reasonable plan to contain the virus’ impact than what Cooper chose.

    Writing the dissent in the Howell case, Associate Justice Anita Earls said the majority “grants itself a roving license to second-guess policy choices, reweigh trade-offs, and displace decisions appropriately made by the political branches.”

    The state Attorney General’s Office, which represented Cooper in both cases, said Friday it was reviewing the decisions. Through a spokesperson, Cooper’s Senate campaign declined to comment.

    The Bar and Tavern Association called the decision in its case a “major victory” because the lawsuit can proceed on so-called “fruits of their own labor” claims in the state constitution. ”From the beginning, we never asked for special treatment, only equal treatment,” association President Zack Medford said.

    Chuck Kitchen, a lawyer representing plaintiffs in the Howell case, also praised the ruling in their litigation.

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  • Why Diddy’s Legal Team Is Still on the Offensive

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    Near the peak of the intrigue surrounding Sean “Diddy” Combs last year, a purported memoir by Kim Porter, the late mother of four of his children, rose to the top of the Amazon best-seller list. Kim’s Lost Words recounted a supposed array of startling sexual adventures and violence, and ended with Porter seeming to predict her own murder at her partner’s hands. It was independently published by Chris Todd, a little-known but enthusiastic peddler of celebrity conspiracy; Amazon quickly pulled the book, which a friend of Porter’s described to me at the time as “all lies.”

    In the lead-up to his trial this spring on sex trafficking and racketeering charges, Combs was primarily fighting his criminal case, but his lawyers also began combatting the cottage industry of media projects that had sprung out of the allegations against him. Following his acquittal on the most severe counts he faced—he was convicted on two prostitution charges and remains in jail ahead of his sentencing in October—he has ratcheted up that offensive. Combs last week amended a defamation complaint he had filed in January to seek at least $100 million in damages from Todd affiliate Courtney Burgess, an itinerant social media player who advertises ties to the music industry, as well as Burgess’s attorney and the parent company of a news outlet that aired Burgess’s claims.

    According to Combs’s suit, Burgess, lawyer Ariel Mitchell, and Nexstar Media’s NewsNation undertook a scheme to broadcast lies about the mogul. Mitchell said in an interview with the outlet in September that “there already have been tapes leaking around Hollywood, being shopped around to individuals in Hollywood,” and the host replied, “It sounds like there was probably a lot of hidden cameras as well.” Burgess has claimed that Porter provided him with a draft of her memoir as well as videos depicting Combs sexually assaulting inebriated celebrities and minors, and he has said that he was the source of the memoir edited and published by Todd. (Todd previously told me, “I stand by this book 100%”; when reached now for comment on the book’s removal from Amazon, he suggested I interview Burgess. Mitchell didn’t return a request for comment on her or Burgess’s behalf; her attorney recently moved to dismiss the suit against her. Nexstar declined to comment.)

    “Anybody who read about the trial as it was going on,” Combs’s attorney Teny Geragos said in an interview this week, “will know by now that none of what was publicly alleged or part of these conspiracy theories prior to the trial are true.”

    Geragos said that Combs’s efforts to push back on the prevailing social media chatter should be considered separate from his criminal fight—an attempt to protect his legacy and family. “After the sentencing,” she said, “we will continue to focus on clearing out all the misinformation that was spread about him.” Combs has also sued NBCUniversal and Peacock over their documentary Diddy: The Making of a Bad Boy, in which the R&B singer Al B. Sure! claims that Porter, with whom he had a child, was murdered. (The Los Angeles coroner’s office said in early 2019 that Porter’s death resulted from lobar pneumonia. A representative for Peacock didn’t return a request for comment, but the company has moved to dismiss the suit.)

    Simultaneously, an effort to secure a pardon for Combs is apparently underway. Another of his attorneys, Nicole Westmoreland, recently told CNN, “It’s my understanding that we’ve reached out and had conversations in reference to a pardon.” Donald Trump, a regular companion of Combs’s in the New York ’90s, has seemed to enjoy toying with the idea, telling Newsmax, “I was very friendly with him. I got along with him great and he seemed like a nice guy.”

    Still, Trump added, “When I ran for office, he was very hostile,” noting how that would make pardoning Combs “more difficult to do.”

    Geragos declined to comment on any effort to secure a pardon. For his part, Marc Agnifilo, Combs’s lead attorney, said in an interview with CBS News that he has “nothing to do with a possible pardon” and has “had conversations with nobody.”

    To a large degree, Burgess’s and Mitchell’s claims reflected the overall tenor of the discussion around Combs since he was first accused of sexual and physical abuse by his ex-girlfriend Casandra “Cassie” Ventura in November 2023. (Combs and Ventura quickly settled Ventura’s lawsuit. Combs denied any wrongdoing in connection to Ventura’s claims but apologized after video surfaced of him beating her in the hallway of a hotel.) Combs’s decades of fame and his bountiful photographs with other celebrities made him a natural subject for the legions of streamers, podcasters, and social media personalities who have proliferated in recent years. The terms “Diddy parties” and “freak-offs” became catch-all slang for sexual deviance. When the verdict in Combs’s trial arrived last month, the YouTuber Armon Wiggins poured baby oil on himself amid the celebrations, a reference to the product frequently invoked by prosecutors for having been stocked by Combs. (Wiggins soon issued an Instagram apology for the stunt.)

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    Dan Adler

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  • Musk’s X reaches tentative settlement with former Twitter workers in $500M lawsuit

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    SAN FRANCISCO — Elon Musk’s X has reached a tentative settlement with former employees of the company then known as Twitter who’d sued for $500 million in severance pay.

    The parties disclosed the deal in a Wednesday court filing asking for a scheduled Sept. 17 hearing in the case to be postponed. The San Francisco federal appeals court on Thursday agreed to postpone the hearing so that both sides could finalize the settlement agreement.

    The terms of the settlement were not disclosed. The proposed class action lawsuit by former Twitter employees Courtney McMillan and Ronald Cooper, who said the company failed to pay them and other fired workers severance they were owed.

    Musk took over the social media platform in 2022 and let thousands of employees go, eliminating entire teams dedicated to trust and safety, human rights and making the site accessible to people with disabilities. Other lawsuits, including one filed by Twitter executives including former CEO Parag Agrawal, are still pending.

    The billionaire’s approach to gutting Twitter’s workforce served as a template for his months-long leadership of President Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, as it cut tens of thousands of federal workers earlier this year.

    An email announcing a “deferred resignation offer” to federal workers, promising pay through September without having to work, was titled “Fork in the Road,” echoing a similar email Musk sent to the Twitter workforce in 2022.

    Musk’s drawn-out legal battles with more than 2,000 former Twitter workers were also a precursor to the court battles the Trump administration is now fighting over federal downsizing, though the circumstances are different.

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  • Passengers sue United and Delta for selling ‘window’ seats next to blank walls

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    NEW YORK — A pair of federal lawsuits filed in San Francisco and New York this week accuse Delta Air Lines and United Airlines of misleading passengers by charging premium fees for window seats next to blank walls.

    A New York law firm brought the cases as proposed class actions on behalf of any passengers who say they wouldn’t have selected or paid more for their reserved places if they had known the seats did not include a window.

    “We have received a flood of interest from passengers who feel they have been harmed by this practice and who wish to join the lawsuits,” the Greenbaum Olbrantz firm said in a statement. “It makes sense that people are upset. The majority of Americans fly on one of these airlines at some point and a large proportion of them want or need a window, and they pay good money for the privilege.”

    Both Delta and United declined to comment, citing pending litigation.

    The lawsuit against Delta Air Lines states that when New York resident Nicholas Meyer arrived at row No. 23 for a flight to California earlier this month, he discovered the seat he bought was next to a blank wall.

    At no point during the seat selection process did Delta warn him that 23F was a windowless window seat, according to Meyer, one of the lead plaintiffs.

    Alaska Airlines and American Airlines also sell such seats but disclose the information when customers choose their seats, the lawsuits assert.

    The lawsuits allege that United and Delta long have been aware of consumer complaints posted on social media about the windowless seats yet continued charging extra for window seats without windows.

    The Delta lawsuit includes screenshots of some of those complaints.

    “Your seat map should not consider this premium, nor should it call it a window seat … There is actually LESS leg room and no perks,” one Delta customer said in a post on Reddit.

    The proposed class actions are seeking millions of dollars in damages from each carrier.

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  • Prosecutors link LA contract to Smartmatic ‘slush fund’ as voting tech firm battles Fox in court

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    MIAMI (AP) — Smartmatic, the elections-technology company suing Fox News for defamation, is now contending with a growing list of criminal allegations against some of its executives — including a new claim by federal prosecutors that a “slush fund” for bribing foreign officials was financed partly with proceeds from the sale of voting machines in Los Angeles.

    The new details about the criminal case surfaced this month in court filings in Miami, where the company’s co-founder, Roger Pinate, and two Venezuelan colleagues were charged last year with bribing officials in the Philippines in exchange for a contract to help run that country’s 2016 presidential elections. Pinate, who no longer works for Smartmatic, has pleaded not guilty.

    To buttress the case, federal prosecutors are seeking to introduce evidence they argue shows that some of the nearly $300 million the company was paid by Los Angeles County to help modernize its voting systems was diverted to a fund controlled by Pinate through the use of overseas shell companies, fake invoices and other means.

    Smartmatic itself hasn’t been charged with breaking any laws, nor have U.S. prosecutors accused Smartmatic or its executives of tampering with election results. Similarly, they haven’t accused Los Angeles County officials of wrongdoing, or said whether they were even aware of the alleged bribery scheme. County officials say they weren’t.

    But the case against Pinate is unfolding as Smartmatic is pursuing a $2.7 billion lawsuit accusing Fox of defamation for airing false claims that the company helped rig the 2020 U.S. presidential election. Fox says it was legitimately reporting newsworthy allegations.

    Smartmatic said the Justice Department’s new filing was filled with “misrepresentations” and is “untethered from reality.”

    “Let us be clear: Smartmatic wins business because we’re the best at what we do,” the company said in a statement. “We operate ethically and abide by all laws always, both in Los Angeles County and every jurisdiction where we operate.”

    Fox questions Smartmatic’s dealings in LA

    Still, Fox has gone to court to try to get more information about L.A. County’s dealings with Smartmatic. The network has long tried to leverage the bribery allegations to undermine Smartmatic’s narrative about its business prospects – a key component in calculating any potential damages — and portray it as a scandal-plagued company brought low by its own legal problems, not Fox’s broadcasts.

    South Florida-based Smartmatic was founded more than two decades ago by a group of Venezuelans who found early success working for the government of the late Hugo Chavez, a devotee of electronic voting. The company later expanded globally, providing voting machines and other technology to help carry out elections in 25 countries, from Argentina to Zambia.

    It was awarded its contract to help with Los Angeles County elections in 2018. The contract, which Smartmatic continues to service, gave the company an important foothold in what was then a fast-expanding U.S. voting-technology market.

    But Smartmatic has said its business tanked after Fox News gave President Donald Trump’s lawyers a platform to paint the company as part of a conspiracy to steal the 2020 election.

    Fox itself eventually aired a piece refuting the allegations after Smartmatic’s lawyers complained, but it has aggressively defended itself against the defamation lawsuit in New York.

    “Facing imminent financial collapse and indictment, Smartmatic saw a litigation lottery ticket in Fox News’s coverage of the 2020 election,” the network’s lawyers said in a court filing.

    Smartmatic has disputed Fox’s characterization in court filings as “lies” and “another attempt to divert attention from its long-standing campaign of falsehoods and defamation.”

    LA clerk deposed about trip, gifted meal

    As part of its effort to investigate Smartmatic’s work in Los Angeles, Fox has sued to force LA County Clerk Dean Logan to hand over public records about his dealings with Smartmatic’s U.S. affiliate.

    Fox’s lawyers also questioned Logan in a deposition about a dinner a Smartmatic executive bought for him at the members-only Magic Castle club and restaurant in Los Angeles and a Smartmatic-paid trip that Logan made to Taiwan in 2019 to oversee the manufacturing of equipment by a Smartmatic vendor. U.S. prosecutors claim that vendor was deeply involved in the alleged kickback scheme in the Philippines. The five-day trip included business class airfare, hotel and numerous meals as well as time for sightseeing, Fox said.

    “The trip’s itinerary demonstrates that the trip was not a financial inspection or audit. It was a boondoggle,” Fox said in court filings.

    Logan, who did not report the gifts in his financial disclosures, said in his 2023 deposition that the meal at the Magic Castle was a “social occasion” unrelated to business and that he was not required to report the trip to Taiwan because his visit was covered by the contract.

    Mike Sanchez, a spokesman for Logan’s office, said in a statement that the bribery allegations are unrelated to the company’s work for L.A. County and that the county had no knowledge of how the proceeds from its contract would be used. All of Smartmatic’s work has been evaluated for compliance with the contract’s terms, Sanchez added, and as soon as Pinate was indicted he and the other defendants were banned from conducting business with the county.

    As for the trip to Taiwan, Sanchez said another county official joined Logan for the trip and the two conducted several on-site visits and conducted detailed reviews of electoral technology products that were required prior the start of their manufacturing. Logan’s spouse accompanied him on the trip, but at the couple’s own expense, the spokesman added.

    “Unfortunately, this is an attempt to use the County as a pawn in two serious legal actions to which the County is not a party,” Sanchez said.

    Smartmatic has settled two other defamation lawsuits it brought against conservative news outlets Newsmax and One America News Network over their 2020 U.S. election coverage. Settlement terms weren’t disclosed.

    Prosecutors claim bribe paid in Venezuela

    U.S. prosecutors in Miami have also accused Pinate of secretly bribing Venezuela’s longtime election chief by giving her a luxury home with a pool in Caracas. Prosecutors say the home was transferred to the election chief in an attempt to repair relations following Smartmatic’s abrupt exit from Venezuela in 2017 when it accused President Nicolas Maduro ‘s government of manipulating tallied results in elections for a rubber-stamping constituent assembly.

    Smartmatic has denied the bribery allegations, saying it ceased all operations in Venezuela in 2017 after blowing the whistle on the government and has never sought to secure business there again.

    “There are no slush funds, no gifted house,” the company said. Instead, it accused Fox of engaging in “victim-blaming” and attempts to use “frivolous” court filings “to smear us further, twisting unproven Justice Department allegations.”

    ___

    Peltz reported from New York.

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  • Prosecutors link LA contract to Smartmatic ‘slush fund’ as voting tech firm battles Fox in court

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    MIAMI — Smartmatic, the elections-technology company suing Fox News for defamation, is now contending with a growing list of criminal allegations against some of its executives — including a new claim by federal prosecutors that a “slush fund” for bribing foreign officials was financed partly with proceeds from the sale of voting machines in Los Angeles.

    The new details about the criminal case surfaced this month in court filings in Miami, where the company’s co-founder, Roger Pinate, and two Venezuelan colleagues were charged last year with bribing officials in the Philippines in exchange for a contract to help run that country’s 2016 presidential elections. Pinate, who no longer works for Smartmatic, has pleaded not guilty.

    To buttress the case, federal prosecutors are seeking to introduce evidence they argue shows that some of the nearly $300 million the company was paid by Los Angeles County to help modernize its voting systems was diverted to a fund controlled by Pinate through the use of overseas shell companies, fake invoices and other means.

    Smartmatic itself hasn’t been charged with breaking any laws, nor have U.S. prosecutors accused Smartmatic or its executives of tampering with election results. Similarly, they haven’t accused Los Angeles County officials of wrongdoing, or said whether they were even aware of the alleged bribery scheme. County officials say they weren’t.

    But the case against Pinate is unfolding as Smartmatic is pursuing a $2.7 billion lawsuit accusing Fox of defamation for airing false claims that the company helped rig the 2020 U.S. presidential election. Fox says it was legitimately reporting newsworthy allegations.

    Smartmatic said the Justice Department’s new filing was filled with “misrepresentations” and is “untethered from reality.”

    “Let us be clear: Smartmatic wins business because we’re the best at what we do,” the company said in a statement. “We operate ethically and abide by all laws always, both in Los Angeles County and every jurisdiction where we operate.”

    Still, Fox has gone to court to try to get more information about L.A. County’s dealings with Smartmatic. The network has long tried to leverage the bribery allegations to undermine Smartmatic’s narrative about its business prospects – a key component in calculating any potential damages — and portray it as a scandal-plagued company brought low by its own legal problems, not Fox’s broadcasts.

    South Florida-based Smartmatic was founded more than two decades ago by a group of Venezuelans who found early success working for the government of the late Hugo Chavez, a devotee of electronic voting. The company later expanded globally, providing voting machines and other technology to help carry out elections in 25 countries, from Argentina to Zambia.

    It was awarded its contract to help with Los Angeles County elections in 2018. The contract, which Smartmatic continues to service, gave the company an important foothold in what was then a fast-expanding U.S. voting-technology market.

    But Smartmatic has said its business tanked after Fox News gave President Donald Trump’s lawyers a platform to paint the company as part of a conspiracy to steal the 2020 election.

    Fox itself eventually aired a piece refuting the allegations after Smartmatic’s lawyers complained, but it has aggressively defended itself against the defamation lawsuit in New York.

    “Facing imminent financial collapse and indictment, Smartmatic saw a litigation lottery ticket in Fox News’s coverage of the 2020 election,” the network’s lawyers said in a court filing.

    Smartmatic has disputed Fox’s characterization in court filings as “lies” and “another attempt to divert attention from its long-standing campaign of falsehoods and defamation.”

    As part of its effort to investigate Smartmatic’s work in Los Angeles, Fox has sued to force LA County Clerk Dean Logan to hand over public records about his dealings with Smartmatic’s U.S. affiliate.

    Fox’s lawyers also questioned Logan in a deposition about a dinner a Smartmatic executive bought for him at the members-only Magic Castle club and restaurant in Los Angeles and a Smartmatic-paid trip that Logan made to Taiwan in 2019 to oversee the manufacturing of equipment by a Smartmatic vendor. U.S. prosecutors claim that vendor was deeply involved in the alleged kickback scheme in the Philippines. The five-day trip included business class airfare, hotel and numerous meals as well as time for sightseeing, Fox said.

    “The trip’s itinerary demonstrates that the trip was not a financial inspection or audit. It was a boondoggle,” Fox said in court filings.

    Logan, who did not report the gifts in his financial disclosures, said in his 2023 deposition that the meal at the Magic Castle was a “social occasion” unrelated to business and that he was not required to report the trip to Taiwan because his visit was covered by the contract.

    Mike Sanchez, a spokesman for Logan’s office, said in a statement that the bribery allegations are unrelated to the company’s work for L.A. County and that the county had no knowledge of how the proceeds from its contract would be used. All of Smartmatic’s work has been evaluated for compliance with the contract’s terms, Sanchez added, and as soon as Pinate was indicted he and the other defendants were banned from conducting business with the county.

    As for the trip to Taiwan, Sanchez said another county official joined Logan for the trip and the two conducted several on-site visits and conducted detailed reviews of electoral technology products that were required prior the start of their manufacturing. Logan’s spouse accompanied him on the trip, but at the couple’s own expense, the spokesman added.

    “Unfortunately, this is an attempt to use the County as a pawn in two serious legal actions to which the County is not a party,” Sanchez said.

    Smartmatic has settled two other defamation lawsuits it brought against conservative news outlets Newsmax and One America News Network over their 2020 U.S. election coverage. Settlement terms weren’t disclosed.

    U.S. prosecutors in Miami have also accused Pinate of secretly bribing Venezuela’s longtime election chief by giving her a luxury home with a pool in Caracas. Prosecutors say the home was transferred to the election chief in an attempt to repair relations following Smartmatic’s abrupt exit from Venezuela in 2017 when it accused President Nicolas Maduro ‘s government of manipulating tallied results in elections for a rubber-stamping constituent assembly.

    Smartmatic has denied the bribery allegations, saying it ceased all operations in Venezuela in 2017 after blowing the whistle on the government and has never sought to secure business there again.

    “There are no slush funds, no gifted house,” the company said. Instead, it accused Fox of engaging in “victim-blaming” and attempts to use “frivolous” court filings “to smear us further, twisting unproven Justice Department allegations.”

    ___

    Peltz reported from New York.

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  • Legal claim by ex-Los Angeles fire chief alleges mayor orchestrated smear campaign after her ouster

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    LOS ANGELES — The former Los Angeles fire chief filed a legal claim Wednesday against the city, alleging that her ouster by Mayor Karen Bass was followed by an orchestrated effort to smear her conduct and decision-making during the most destructive wildfire in LA history.

    Former Chief Kristin Crowley’s dismissal a month after January’s Palisades Fire was followed by finger-pointing between her and City Hall over the blaze’s devastation and the fire department’s funding. In March, Crowley lost an appeal to the City Council to win back her job.

    Crowley’s legal claim this week alleges that Bass led “a campaign of misinformation, defamation, and retaliation” to protect the mayor’s political reputation following the fire.

    The mayor’s office said Wednesday that it would not comment on “an ongoing personnel claim.” A message seeking comment was also sent to the LA City Attorney’s office.

    Crowley accuses the first-term Democrat of defaming her to distract from criticism of the mayor for being in Africa as part of a presidential delegation when the blaze started, even though weather reports had warned of dangerous wildfire conditions in the days before she left.

    In the filing, the former chief demands “that Bass immediately cease and desist her defamatory and illegal public smear campaign of Crowley, retract her false statements about Crowley, and apologize for lying about Crowley.”

    Such legal claims are often precursors to lawsuits. Crowley’s legal team wouldn’t say if a lawsuit was imminent or what it might seek.

    Bass fired Crowley on Feb. 21, six weeks after the LA fire started. She praised Crowley in the firefighting effort’s early going, but she said she later learned that an additional 1,000 firefighters could have been deployed on the day the blaze ignited. Furthermore, she said Crowley rebuffed a request to prepare a report on the fires that is a critical part of investigations into what happened and why.

    Crowley’s legal filing disputes both those claims.

    The Palisades Fire began Jan. 7 in heavy winds. It destroyed or damaged nearly 8,000 homes, businesses and other structures, and it killed at least 12 people in the Pacific Palisades, an affluent LA neighborhood. Another fire started that day in Altadena, a suburb east of LA, killing at least 17 people and destroying or damaging more than 10,000 homes or other buildings.

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  • FTC sues LA Fitness operators for ‘exceedingly difficult’ gym cancellation policies

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    NEW YORK — The U.S. Federal Trade Commission is suing the operators of LA Fitness, over allegations that they make it “exceedingly difficult” for consumers to cancel gym memberships and other related services offered in their clubs nationwide.

    In a Wednesday complaint, the FTC accused Fitness International and its subsidiary Fitness & Sports Clubs of illegally charging consumers “hundreds of millions of dollars in unwanted recurring fees” as a result of cumbersome cancellation processes. The agency said that tens of thousands of customers have reported difficulties with these policies to date.

    “The FTC’s complaint describes a scenario that too many Americans have experienced — a gym membership that seems impossible to cancel,” Christopher Mufarrige, director of the agency’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, said in a statement.

    Beyond LA Fitness, California-based Fitness International operates brands like Esporta Fitness, City Sports Club, and Club Studio — spanning across more than 600 locations with over 3.7 million members nationwide. And the FTC pointed to two “unfair and unlawful” cancellation processes that it says these gyms have used for years: in-person cancellation or cancellation by mail.

    Both of these options require consumers to print out a form on the gym’s website, which includes logging in with credentials that the agency says some customers don’t have or remember. And if a customer opts for in-person cancellation, there’s limited hours and often difficulty finding a manager to process the forms, the complaint notes — while mailing the form comes with additional costs.

    “Each of these cancellation methods is opaque, complicated, and demanding — far from simple,” the FTC writes in its complaint. It also alleges that the company doesn’t adequately disclose cancellation offerings when consumers sign up for memberships, and that some will be signed up for additional services with recurring charges without realizing there may be different cancellation requirements.

    According to the FTC, Fitness International now offers website cancellations for subscriptions “with stand-alone agreements” — but the agency said the process “still imposes unnecessary burdens” on customers and claims that that option is buried online. It’s also still not possible to cancel memberships on the company’s mobile apps, the FTC added.

    Fitness International did not immediately respond to The Associated Press’ request for comment on Wednesday.

    This isn’t the first time that federal regulators have accused gym operators — and other companies with subscription services — of making their cancellation processes too difficult for consumers.

    Under the Biden administration, the FTC adopted a “click to cancel” rule, which would have made it easier for consumers to end unwanted subscriptions. But last month, days before that rule was poised to go into effect, a federal appeals court blocked the proposed changes.

    In its litigation against Fitness International, the FTC says it’s seeking a court order prohibiting the allegedly unfair conduct and money back for consumers who were harmed by difficult cancellation processes.

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  • 9/11 victims’ fund architect slams changes to New Hampshire abuse settlement program

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    CONCORD, N.H. — An attorney who helped design and implement the 9/11 victims’ compensation fund says New Hampshire lawmakers have eroded the fairness of a settlement program for those who were abused at the state’s youth detention center.

    Deborah Greenspan, who served as deputy special master of the fund created after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, recently submitted an affidavit in a class-action lawsuit seeking to block changes to New Hampshire’s out-of-court settlement fund for abuse victims. She’s among those expected to testify Wednesday at a hearing on the state’s request to dismiss the case and other matters.

    More than 1,300 people have sued the state since 2020 alleging that they were physically or sexually abused as children while in state custody, mostly at the Sununu Youth Services Center in Manchester. Most of them put their lawsuits on hold after lawmakers created a settlement fund in 2022 that was pitched as a “victim-centered” and “trauma-informed” alternative to litigation run by a neutral administrator appointed by the state Supreme Court. But the Republican-led Legislature changed that process through last-minute additions to the state budget Gov. Kelly Ayotte signed in June.

    The amended law gives the governor authority to hire and fire the fund’s administrator and gives the attorney general — also a political appointee — veto power over settlement awards. That stands in stark contrast to other victim compensation funds, said Greenspan, who currently serves as a court-appointed special master for lawsuits related to lead-tainted water in Flint, Michigan.

    She said it “strains credulity” to believe that anyone would file a claim knowing that “the persons ultimately deciding the claim were those responsible for the claimant’s injuries.”

    “Such a construct would go beyond the appearance of impropriety and create a clear conflict of interest, undermining the fairness and legitimacy of the settlement process,” she wrote.

    Ayotte and Attorney General John Formella responded by asking a judge to bar Greenspan’s testimony, saying she offered “policy preferences masquerading as expert opinions” without explaining the principles beyond her conclusions.

    “Her affidavit is instead a series of non sequiturs that move from her experience to her conclusions without any of the necessary connective tissue,” they wrote.

    The defendants argue that the law still requires the administrator to be “an independent, neutral attorney” and point out that the same appointment process is used for the state’s judges. They said giving the attorney general the authority to accept or reject settlements is necessary to give the public a voice and ensure that the responsibility for spending millions of dollars in public funds rests with the executive branch.

    As of June 30, nearly 2,000 people had filed claims with the settlement fund, which caps payouts at $2.5 million. A total of 386 had been settled, with an average award of $545,000.

    One of the claimants says he was awarded $1.5 million award in late July, but the state hasn’t finalized it yet, leaving him worried that Formella will veto it.

    “I feel like the state has tricked us,” he said in an interview this week. “We’ve had the rug pulled right out from underneath us.”

    The Associated Press does not name those who say they were sexually assaulted unless they come forward publicly. The claimant, now 39, said the two years he spent at the facility as a teenager were the hardest times of his life.

    “I lost my childhood. I lost things that I can’t get back,” he said. “I was broken.”

    Though the settlement process was overwhelming and scary at times, the assistant administrator who heard his case was kind and understanding, he said. That meeting alone was enough to lift a huge burden, he said.

    “I was treated with a lot of love,” he said. “I felt really appreciated as a victim and like I was speaking to somebody who would listen and believe my story.”

    Separate from the fund, the state has settled two lawsuits by agreeing to pay victims $10 million and $4.5 million. Only one lawsuit has gone to trial, resulting in a $38 million verdict, though the state is trying to slash it to $475,000. The state has also brought criminal charges against former workers, with two convictions and two mistrials so far.

    The 39-year-old claimant who fears his award offer will be retracted said he doesn’t know if he could face testifying at a public trial.

    “It’s basically allowing the same people who hurt us to hurt us all over again,” he said.

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  • Lawyer argues Meta can’t be held liable for gunmaker’s Instagram posts in Uvalde families’ lawsuit

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    LOS ANGELES — A lawsuit filed by families of the Uvalde school shooting victims alleging Instagram allowed gun manufacturers to promote firearms to minors should be thrown out, lawyers for Meta, Instagram’s parent company, argued Tuesday.

    Nineteen children and two teachers were killed in the May 2022 shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas.

    The families sued Meta in Los Angeles in May 2024, saying the social media platform failed to enforce its own rules forbidding firearms advertisements aimed at minors. The families, who were present at last month’s hearing, did not appear in court, with a lawyer citing the back-to-school season. Many plaintiffs attended the hearing virtually, he said.

    In one ad posted on Instagram, the Georgia-based gunmaker Daniel Defense shows Santa Claus holding an assault rifle. In another post by the same company, a rifle leans against a refrigerator, with the caption: “Let’s normalize kitchen Daniels. What Daniels do you use to protect your kitchen and home?”

    The lawsuit alleges those posts are marketed toward minors. The Uvalde gunman opened an online account with Daniel Defense before his 18th birthday and purchased the rifle as soon as he could, according to the lawsuit. He also owned various Instagram accounts and had an “obsessive relationship” with the platform, at times opening the app more than 100 times a day, plaintiffs’ lawyers found in an analysis of the shooter’s phone.

    Meta attorney Kristin Linsley argued that the families provided no proof that minors, including the Uvalde gunman, even read the Daniel Defense posts on Instagram. She also said the posts didn’t violate Meta’s policies because they weren’t direct advertisements and did not include links to purchase any products.

    Katie Mesner-Hage, representing the victims’ families, said the defense’s claim is “fundamentally unfair,” as the plaintiffs don’t have access to Meta data that would indicate whether the shooter encountered those posts. She added that if the content had landed on the shooter’s feed, as the plaintiffs allege, then Meta “not only knew about it, they designed the system so it would be delivered to him.”

    “They knew more about him than anyone else on the planet,” she said.

    Linsley said content advertising firearms for sale on Instagram is allowed if posted by “brick-and-motor and online retailers,” but visibility of those posts was restricted for minors under Meta’s advertising policies from the end of 2021 to October 2022.

    “This is not a playbook for how to violate the rules. This is actually what the rules are,” Linsley said.

    The plaintiff’s team, however, showed a fake profile they created for a 17-year-old boy earlier this month, through which they were able to search Daniel Defense’s Instagram account and see a post that included a picture of a gun, as well as a link to the gun manufacturer’s website.

    When the link was clicked, the gun-maker’s website opened, and the team was able to select a firearm and add it to their cart, all within Instagram’s app — an experiment that refutes Meta’s assertion that posts relating to firearms aren’t visible to users under 21, Mesner-Hage said.

    Linsley said in her rebuttal that the experiment was done this year and not in 2021 to 2022, which is when the policy she described was in effect.

    The families have also sued Daniel Defense and video game company Activision, which produces “Call of Duty.”

    Linsley said the Communications Decency Act allows social media platforms to moderate content without being treated as publishers of that content.

    “The only response a company can have is to not have these kinds of rules at all,” Linsley said. “It just gets you down a rabbit hole very quickly.”

    Mesner-Hage argued Meta is not protected by the act because social media platforms don’t just host speech, but help curate it through its algorithms. Daniel Defense, she said, didn’t have to pay for ads to get free access to Meta’s analytical data through its business account on Instagram. That data shows the company which age bracket and gender engaged most with a specific post.

    “Daniel Defense is not on Instagram to make friends. … They’re on there to promote their product,” Mesner-Hage said. “It’s not a paid advertisement, but I would struggle to describe this as anything other than an advertisement.”

    The lawsuit alleges that firearm companies tweaked their online marketing to comply with Meta’s policies, including by avoiding the words “buy” or “sell” and not providing links to purchase, and that the social media company did not protect users against such strategies.

    Last month, lawyers for Activision also argued that legal proceedings against them should be thrown out, saying the families allegations are barred by the First Amendment. The families alleged that the war-themed video game Call of Duty trained and conditioned the Uvalde gunman to orchestrate his attack.

    Lawyers for the plaintiffs asked the judge to allow them to amend their lawsuit with the new information they presented Tuesday before ruling on the defense’s motion. The defense claimed that was unnecessary, as the case would not have merit even with the amendments.

    The judge has yet to rule on Activision’s motion and did not immediately rule on the Meta case.

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  • Deel scores a lawsuit win, but not against Rippling | TechCrunch

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    A Florida judge on Tuesday dismissed a lawsuit filed against embattled HR and payroll provider Deel. And while Deel described this as a “Rippling-aligned” and “Rippling-supported” lawsuit, this is not the infamous lawsuit filed by its rival earlier this year that involved an alleged corporate spy.

    Rippling CEO Parker Conrad even went so far as to write “This litigation has nothing to do with Rippling, we are not a party to it, did not fund it,” in a tweet. (Rippling representatives declined further comment.)

    Still, this is some good news for Deel. In January, a lawsuit was filed in Florida by Melanie Damian, who accused Deel of helping Russian entities sidestep U.S. sanctions by processing payments for Surge Capital Ventures.

    Surge had been subject to a separate U.S. SEC action alleging that the company was involved in a Ponzi scheme that defrauded church members out of $35 million. Damian, a court-appointed receiver for Surge, was tasked with recovering assets, Semafor reported at the time. She filed the lawsuit on behalf of investors, alleging that Deel was responsible for processing the payments. This is the case that was dismissed.

    Deel is attempting to tie this case to the suit filed by Rippling, in part because Damian’s lawyers cited the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO).

    Rippling, which is suing Deel in California, is also alleging that Deel violated RICO, as well as the Defend Trade Secrets Act, and California state law, as TechCrunch previously reported. RICO is famously the statute that was originally used to prosecute mobsters.

    Rippling’s lawsuit, however, involves a different set of allegations centered on a Rippling employee who testified in an Irish court that he had been acting as a paid corporate spy for Deel. 

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    Deel is clearly hoping that if one court dismisses a lawsuit alleging RICO violations, another court will follow suit. “The ruling invites further questions about the credibility of another baseless set of RICO accusations by Rippling in California,” a Deel spokesperson told TechCrunch in an emailed statement. 

    But as these cases involve different actions and circumstances, we’ll all have to wait and see how the California court responds. Meanwhile, Deel is also suing Rippling, claiming that one of Rippling’s employees was unlawfully impersonating a customer.

    On top of all of that, the person who confessed to being Deel’s alleged corporate spy, Keith O’Brien, successfully obtained a restraining order against people he said were following him and scaring his family. O’Brien is now Rippling’s star witness in its case against Deel. 

    At first, lawyers for Deel denied involvement, but later admitted the company had hired “discreet surveillance” of O’Brien, according to court testimony seen by TechCrunch and first reported by the Irish Independent. 

    “Alex and his father can deflect and delay but they will face the music when we get our day in court,” Conrad added in his tweet, referring to Rippling’s case that names Deel’s founder and CEO Alex Bouaziz and his father, who is chairman and CFO, Philippe Bouaziz.

    “Deel will explore all its options for relief, defend itself vigorously against pending cases and continue to focus on winning in the marketplace,” a Deel spokesperson said in that statement.

    We’re always looking to evolve, and by providing some insight into your perspective and feedback into TechCrunch and our coverage and events, you can help us! Fill out this survey to let us know how we’re doing and get the chance to win a prize in return!

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  • Minnesota sues TikTok, alleging it preys on young people with addictive algorithms

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    ST. PAUL, Minn. — Minnesota on Tuesday joined a wave of states suing TikTok, alleging the social media giant preys on young people with addictive algorithms that trap them into becoming compulsive consumers of its short videos.

    “This isn’t about free speech. I’m sure they’re gonna holler that,” Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison said at a news conference. “It’s actually about deception, manipulation, misrepresentation. This is about a company knowing the dangers, and the dangerous effects of its product, but making and taking no steps to mitigate those harms or inform users of the risks.”

    The lawsuit, filed in state court, alleges that TikTok is violating Minnesota laws against deceptive trade practices and consumer fraud. It follows a flurry of lawsuits filed by more than a dozen states last year alleging the popular short-form video app is designed to be addictive to kids and harms their mental health. Minnesota’s case brings the total to about 24 states, Ellison’s office said.

    Many of the earlier lawsuits stemmed from a nationwide investigation into TikTok launched in 2022 by a bipartisan coalition of attorneys general from 14 states into the effects of TikTok on young users’ mental health. Ellison, a Democrat, said Minnesota waited while it did its own investigation.

    Sean Padden, a middle-school health teacher in the Roseville Area school district, joined Ellison, saying he has witnessed a correlation between increased TikTok use and an “irrefutable spike in student mental health issues,” including depression, anxiety, anger, lowered self-esteem and a decrease in attention spans as they seek out the quick gratification that its short videos offer.

    The lawsuit comes while President Donald Trump is still trying to broker a deal to bring the social media platform, which is owned by China’s ByteDance, under American ownership over concerns about the data security of its 170 million American users. While Trump campaigned on banning TikTok, he also gained more than 15 million followers on the platform since he started sharing videos on it.

    No matter who ultimately owns TikTok, Ellison said, it must comply with the law.

    TikTok disputed Minnesota’s allegations.

    “This lawsuit is based on misleading and inaccurate claims that fail to recognize the robust safety measures TikTok has voluntarily implemented to support the well-being of our community,” company spokesperson Nathaniel Brown said in a statement. “Teen accounts on TikTok come with 50+ features and settings designed to help young people safely express themselves, discover and learn.

    “Through our Family Pairing tool, parents can view or customize 20+ content and privacy settings, including screen time, content filters, and our time away feature to pause a teen’s access to our app,” Brown added.

    Minnesota is seeking a declaration that TikTok’s practices are deceptive, unfair or unconscionable under state law, a permanent injunction against those practices, and up to $25,000 for each instance in which a Minnesota child has accessed TikTok. Ellison wouldn’t put a total on that but said, “it’s a lot.” He estimated that “hundreds of thousands of Minnesota kids” have TikTok on their devices.

    “We’re not trying to shut them down, but we are insisting that they clean up their act,” Ellison said. “There are legitimate uses of products like TikTok. But like all things, they have to be used properly and safely.”

    Minnesota is also among dozens of U.S. states that have sued Meta Platforms for allegedly building features into Instagram and Facebook that addict people. The messaging service Snapchat and the gaming platform Roblox are also facing lawsuits by some other states alleging harm to kids.

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  • Business spat between Daryl Hall and John Oates has been resolved in arbitration, attorneys say

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    NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Daryl Hall and John Oates have resolved their dispute over a Hall & Oates business partnership through arbitration, reaching a private ending after details of their rift went public in court documents filed in a 2023 lawsuit by Hall against Oates, according to a court filing Monday.

    In Monday’s status report, attorneys for Hall noted the case received a final judgment in arbitration and they filed a proposed order for the judge, Nashville Chancellor Russell Perkins, to dismiss the case. In mid-July, Perkins ordered Hall’s attorneys to offer an update in the case, which had last seen a public filing in December 2023.

    It’s unclear when the arbitration process was finalized. And details were not revealed about the arbitration outcome between the duo who made music together for more than a half century, including hits in the 1970s and ’80s such as “Maneater,” “Rich Girl” “Kiss on My List” and “I Can’t Go for That (No Can Do).”

    Robb Harvey, an attorney for Hall, declined to comment. Representatives for Oates did not immediately respond to The Associated Press’ request for comment.

    Rick Springfield performs at Live Aid, a famine relief concert at JFK Stadium in Philadelphia Pa., Jon uly 13, 1985. (AP Photo/Amy Sancetta, File)

    In 2023 filings in the case, Hall accused Oates of blindsiding and betraying him, saying their relationship and his trust in Oates have deteriorated. Oates replied that he was “deeply hurt” that Hall was making “inflammatory, outlandish, and inaccurate statements” about him.

    The judge had paused the sale of Oates’ stake in Whole Oats Enterprises LLP to Primary Wave IP Investment Management LLC. Whole Oats includes valuable Hall & Oates materials such as trademarks, personal name and likeness rights, record royalty income and website and social media assets, a court declaration says.

    The dispute went public in November 2023, when Hall filed the lawsuit asking the judge to stop the sale by Oates so private arbitration could begin.

    Hall gave a scathing account of their relationship in early November 2023 during arbitration, and it was made public later in the month in the lawsuit. It alleges that Oates and his team engaged in the “ultimate partnership betrayal” by pushing to sell his share while telling Hall’s associates that he wanted to maintain his ownership.

    In his own declaration, Oates expressed disappointment with his longtime partner’s words, saying Hall’s accusations that Oates went behind his back and breached their agreement aren’t true. Oates declined to go into specifics, saying he’s obligated to keep details private, even if Hall didn’t.

    Last year, Oates told The Associated Press that he’s had “no communication” with Hall and declined to discuss the legal proceedings. He did not see a Hall & Oates reunion in his future.

    “I personally don’t see it happening. It’s not in my plans at all. You can ask Daryl Hall what he thinks. But for me personally, no,” he says.

    The Times asked Hall in February if the ship had sailed on mending the pair’s relationship.

    “That ship has gone to the bottom of the ocean,” Hall told the news outlet. “I’ve had a lot of surprises in my life, disappointments, betrayals, so I’m kind of used to it.”

    ___

    Maria Sherman in New York contributed to this report.

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  • Nevada lithium mine will crush rare plant habitat US said is critical to its survival, lawsuit says

    Nevada lithium mine will crush rare plant habitat US said is critical to its survival, lawsuit says

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    RENO, Nev. — Conservationists and a Native American tribe are suing the U.S. to try to block a Nevada lithium mine they say will drive an endangered desert wildflower to extinction, disrupt groundwater flows and threaten cultural resources.

    The Center for Biological Diversity promised the court battle a week ago when the U.S. Interior Department approved Ioneer Ltd.’s Rhyolite Ridge lithium-boron mine at the only place Tiehm’s buckwheat is known to exist in the world, near the California line halfway between Reno and Las Vegas.

    It is the latest in a series of legal fights over projects President Joe Biden’s administration is pushing under his clean energy agenda intended to cut reliance on fossil fuels, in part by increasing the production of lithium to make electric vehicle batteries and solar panels.

    The new lawsuit says the Interior Department’s approval of the mine marks a dramatic about-face by U.S wildlife experts who warned nearly two years ago that Tiehm’s buckwheat was “in danger of extinction now” when they listed it as an endangered species in December 2022.

    “One cannot save the planet from climate change while simultaneously destroying biodiversity,” said Fermina Stevens, director of the Western Shoshone Defense Project, which joined the center in the lawsuit filed Thursday in federal court in Reno.

    “The use of minerals, whether for EVs or solar panels, does not justify this disregard for Indigenous cultural areas and keystone environmental laws,” said John Hadder, director of the Great Basin Resource Watch, another co-plaintiff.

    Rita Henderson, spokeswoman for Interior’s Bureau of Land Management in Reno, said Friday the agency had no immediate comment.

    Ioneer Vice President Chad Yeftich said the Australia-based mining company intends to intervene on behalf of the U.S. and “vigorously defend” approval of the project, “which was based on its careful and thorough permitting process.”

    “We are confident that the BLM will prevail,” Yeftich said. He added that he doesn’t expect the lawsuit will postpone plans to begin construction next year.

    The lawsuit says the mine will harm sites sacred to the Western Shoshone people. That includes Cave Spring, a natural spring less than a mile (1.6 kilometers) away described as “a site of intergenerational transmission of cultural and spiritual knowledge.”

    But it centers on alleged violations of the Endangered Species Act. It details the Fish and Wildlife Service’s departure from the dire picture it painted earlier of threats to the 6-inch-tall (15-centimeter-tall) wildflower with cream or yellow blooms bordering the open-pit mine Ioneer plans to dig three times as deep as the length of a football field.

    The mine’s permit anticipates up to one-fifth of the nearly 1.5 square miles (3.6 square kilometers) the agency designated as critical habitat surrounding the plants — home to various pollinators important to their survival — would be lost for decades, some permanently.

    When proposing protection of the 910 acres (368 hectares) of critical habitat, the service said “this unit is essential to the conservation and recovery of Tiehm’s buckwheat.” The agency formalized the designation when it listed the plant in December 2022, dismissing the alternative of less-stringent threatened status.

    “We find that a threatened species status is not appropriate because the threats are severe and imminent, and Tiehm’s buckwheat is in danger of extinction now, as opposed to likely to become endangered in the future,” the agency concluded.

    The lawsuit also discloses for the first time that the plant’s population, numbering fewer than 30,000 in the government’s latest estimates, has suffered additional losses since August that were not considered in the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s biological opinion.

    The damage is similar to what the bureau concluded was caused by rodents eating the plants in a 2020 incident that reduced the population as much as 60%, the lawsuit says.

    The Fish and Wildlife Service said in its August biological opinion that while the project “will result in the long-term disturbance (approximately 23 years) of 146 acres (59 hectares) of the plant community … and the permanent loss of 45 acres (18 hectares), we do not expect the adverse effects to appreciably diminish the value of critical habitat as a whole.”

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  • Colorado settles with two drug companies for $49 million in antitrust lawsuits – The Cannabist

    Colorado settles with two drug companies for $49 million in antitrust lawsuits – The Cannabist

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    Colorado will settle antitrust claims against two pharmaceutical companies for nearly $50 million as part of ongoing lawsuits that allege some of the country’s largest generic prescription drug producers conspired to raise prices and reduce competition.

    Attorney General Phil Weiser announced the $10 million settlement with Heritage Pharmaceuticals and $39.1 million settlement with Apotex on Thursday.

    Colorado joined three multistate lawsuits against dozens of companies and executives between 2016 and 2020. The lawsuits claimed manufacturers such as Pfizer and Teva Pharmaceuticals “embarked on one of the most egregious and damaging price-fixing conspiracies in the history of the United States.”

    Read the rest of this story on TheKnow.DenverPost.com.

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  • Lyft pays $2.1 million to settle case alleging the ride-hailing service deceived drivers

    Lyft pays $2.1 million to settle case alleging the ride-hailing service deceived drivers

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    SAN FRANCISCO — Lyft is paying $2.1 million to settle a lawsuit accusing the ride-hailing service of exaggerating how much money drivers could make while the company was trying to recover from a steep downturn in demand during the pandemic.

    The agreement resolves a case filed by the U.S. Justice Department a week ago in San Francisco federal court on Oct. 25 — the same day that Lyft disclosed it had negotiated the terms of the settlement revolving around the same issues with the Federal Trade Commission.

    U.S. Magistrate Judge Peter Kang signed an order formalizing the settlement Thursday before it was made publicly available Friday. Besides having to pay $2.1 million, Lyft also has been prohibited from engaging in the misleading practices flagged in the case.

    Both the Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission have been investigating Lyft since uncovering evidence that it was advertising inflated compensation rates while trying to to recruit more drivers as the pandemic began to ease and ride-hailing demand perked up.

    The lawsuit alleged Lyft exaggerated the amounts that its drivers could make in a variety of major U.S. cities from April 2021 through June 2022. Lyft advertised drivers could make more than $40 per hour in cities such as San Francisco, Los Angeles and Boston and more than $30 per hour in cities such as Atlanta, Dallas and Miami.

    But those figures were based on the earnings among the top 20% of Lyft’s drivers, leaving them unattainable for most others who picked up passengers for the ride-hailing service, the lawsuit alleged. much as $44 per hour in San Francisco.

    “The Justice Department will vigorously enforce the law to stop companies from misleading Americans about their potential earnings in the gig economy,” Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Brian M. Boynton said in a Friday statement.

    Lyft has already changed many of the practices cited in the lawsuit and is now overseen by a CEO, David Risher, who came on board last year.

    “We agreed to this settlement because we recognize the importance of transparency in maintaining trust in the communities we serve,” Lyft said last week when it first disclosed the agreement with the Federal Trade Commission.

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  • Security tech company Evolv fires its chief executive

    Security tech company Evolv fires its chief executive

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    NEW YORK (AP) — Amid the backdrop of a sales misconduct investigation and other looming legal troubles, security technology company Evolv is now firing its CEO.

    Evolv’s board of directors terminated chief executive Peter George on Wednesday, effective immediately, according to a Thursday announcement from the company. Michael Ellenbogen, Evolv’s current chief innovation officer, will step into the role as interim CEO and president.

    Specifics behind George’s firing were not immediately clear — but Evolv noted the dismissal was without cause and followed months of “careful planning and deliberation” by the board.

    The move arrives just days after Evolv disclosed an ongoing investigation into the company’s sales practices, warning shareholders to no longer rely on recent financial statements. The board acknowledged this investigation Thursday, but maintained that it had been “evaluating leadership and performance for several months — long before we became aware of any potential issues relating to the Company’s sales practices and financial reporting.”

    Evolv shared initial findings this investigation last week. An internal committee found that certain employees engaged in sales “subject to extra-contractual terms and conditions,” the company noted, some of which were not shared with accounting personnel. Evolv says it’s trying to determine if this misconduct impacted revenue reports and other financial metrics, and if so, when senior personnel became aware.

    How high up that could be has yet to be confirmed, but Evolv said it would take any remedial actions as necessary. As of Friday’s disclosure, the investigating committee estimated that sales transactions at issue resulted in premature or incorrect revenue recognition of about $4 million to $6 million through the end of June.

    This is far from the first time Evolv has found itself in hot water. The company has faced other legal issues over the years, including separate federal probes into its marketing practices led by the Federal Trade Commission and the Securities Exchange Commission.

    And earlier this year, investors filed a class-action lawsuit, accusing company executives of overstating the devices’ capabilities and claiming that “Evolv does not reliably detect knives or guns.”

    Evolv, which provides security screening technology powered by artificial intelligence, also made headlines after a pilot testing program used its portable weapons scanners inside some New York City subway stations this summer.

    That program faced ample criticism from some civil liberties groups, as well as questions of efficacy. Recently released police data showed that the scanners did not detect any passengers with firearms — and had more than 100 false alerts over the one-month test.

    Following the news of George’s firing, shares for Evolv were down nearly 10% Thursday afternoon.

    According to the company, Evolv’s board formed a succession planning committee to evaluate leadership performance and plan for a CEO transition back in May. The company noted that it’s been actively recruiting candidates for CEO, and intends to announce an official successor “expeditiously.”

    In a statement Thursday, the board added that a leadership change was necessary “to improve the company’s culture as we prepare for the next phase of growth.”

    Ellenbogen, the current interim CEO, is one of Evolv’s co-founders and previously served as chief executive for seven years.

    In August, Waltham, Massachusetts-based Evolv reported second-quarter revenue was $25.5 million, up 29% from $19.8 million for the same period last year. Its next earnings report is delayed due to the ongoing sales misconduct investigation.

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