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Tag: Lawsuits

  • ‘Free trials should actually be free’: DC, Va., Md. sue Uber alleging manipulative subscription service – WTOP News

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    The attorneys general in D.C., Maryland and Virginia are suing Uber, accusing the rideshare app of having a “deceptive” subscription service, Uber One.

    All three attorneys general in the D.C. region are suing Uber, accusing the rideshare app of taking advantage of consumers through its “deceptive” subscription service, Uber One.

    Nineteen states, including Virginia, Maryland and D.C., filed a joint lawsuit with the Federal Trade Commission against Uber on Monday. The complaint says Uber didn’t follow through on advertised savings, charged consumers during their free trial periods, and signed up users for Uber One without their consent.

    The lawsuit comes after the FTC sued Uber in April 2025 for its subscription service. This new amended complaint requests penalties for the app’s alleged violation of the Restore Online Shoppers’ Confidence Act, which ensures that consumers fully understand the terms of a subscription service before signing up.

    The new coalition allows the 21 states and D.C. to seek restitution for these alleged violations.

    The lawsuit says Uber not only charged people for subscriptions that they never signed up for, but didn’t deliver on promised savings supposedly included in the subscription. The FTC said in a news release that users have reported they didn’t receive $0 delivery fees and $25 in monthly savings, two key discounts Uber One advertises.

    Another major complaint is that Uber One allegedly signed up and charged consumers for the subscription service without their knowledge.

    D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb said these subscription violations are unacceptable, especially given the high cost of living.

    “No one should ever be stuck paying for a subscription they do not want,” Schwab said in a news release. “We are joining this lawsuit to stop Uber’s deceptive and illegal conduct and to ensure that the more than 100,000 DC residents who are paying for Uber One subscriptions have an easy way to cancel if they no longer wish to use the service.”

    Uber One offers a free trial, which the court filing claimed was breached. Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown said many users were charged for Uber One before their trial ended.

    “Free trials should actually be free — not traps that lock Marylanders into unwanted monthly charges,” Brown said in a news release.

    The lawsuit also says Uber made it extremely difficult to cancel Uber One subscriptions, stating that consumers had to go through 12 actions and seven different screens. Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares said these steps trapped consumers.

    “Deceptive enrollment and billing practices have no place in the marketplace,” Miyares said in a news release.

    In addition to D.C, Virginia and Maryland, the other states on the lawsuit are Alabama, Arizona, California, Connecticut, Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Wisconsin.

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    Abigail Stuckrath

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  • Jury says Johnson & Johnson owes $40M to 2 cancer patients who used talcum powders

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    A Los Angeles jury awarded $40 million on Friday to two women who claimed that talcum powder made by Johnson & Johnson caused their ovarian cancer.

    The giant health care company said it would appeal the jury’s liability verdict and compensatory damages.

    The verdict is the latest development in a longstanding legal battle over claims that talc in Johnson’s Baby Powder and Shower to Shower body power was connected to ovarian cancer and mesothelioma, a cancer that strikes the lungs and other organs. Johnson & Johnson stopped selling powder made with talc worldwide in 2023.

    In October, another California jury ordered J&J to pay $966 million to the family of a woman who died of mesothelioma, claiming she developed the cancer because the baby powder she used was contaminated with the carcinogen asbestos.

    In the latest case, the jury awarded $18 million to Monica Kent and $22 million to Deborah Schultz and her husband. “The only thing they did was be loyal to Johnson & Johnson as a customer for only 50 years,’’ said their attorney, Daniel Robinson of the Robinson Calcagnie law firm in Newport Beach, California. “That loyalty was a one-way street.’’

    Erik Haas, J&J’s worldwide vice president of litigation, said in a statement that the company had won “16 of the 17 ovarian cancer cases it previously tried” and expected to do so again upon appealing Friday’s verdict.

    Haas called the jury’s findings “irreconcilable with the decades of independent scientific evaluations confirming that talc is safe, does not contain asbestos, and does not cause cancer.”

    Johnson & Johnson replaced the talc in its baby powder sold in most of North America with cornstarch in 2020 after sales declined.

    In April, a U.S. bankruptcy court judge denied J&J’s plan to pay $9 billion to settle ovarian cancer and other gynecological cancer litiation claims based on talc-related products.

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  • San Diego OK’s historic $30M payout to family of teen fatally shot by police

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    The San Diego City Council approved one of the largest settlements for a police shooting in U.S. history on Tuesday — a $30 million payment to the family of a 16-year-old boy who was fatally shot by a San Diego police officer while running away from another shooting.

    Konoa Wilson’s parents sued the city and the officer who shot him, San Diego Police Department Officer Daniel Gold, in connection with the teen’s shooting death on the night of Jan. 28. The council voted unanimously to pass the settlement.

    According to the family’s lawsuit, the boy was fleeing gunshots fired at him by another person when he encountered Gold, who shot the boy twice in the back “instantly, without any warning.” Konoa was pronounced dead at a hospital less than an hour later.

    “What happened to Konoa was a catastrophic failure of policing,” the Wilson family’s attorney, Nick Rowley, said in a statement. “A 16-year-old boy was running for his life. He was not a threat and not a suspect, yet he was shot in the back by a police officer who only saw him for one second before deciding to pull the trigger.”

    The city of San Diego has agreed to a $25,000 settlement with a driver who accused the San Diego Police Department of violating his Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable search and seizure.

    The settlement amount was disclosed in a San Diego City Council agenda posted on Friday and exceeds the $27 million the city of Minneapolis agreed to pay the family of George Floyd, whose May 2020 murder by a police officer who knelt on his neck sparked a nationwide racial reckoning, the Associated Press reported.

    City Councilman Henry Foster III noted the Floyd murder in his statement on the Tuesday settlement.

    “Where’s the progress? Where’s the protect and serve? Better yet, where’s the accountability?” he said. “As the father of a young Black man, this hurts. This could be my son. If only you could understand the fear I feel when my son leaves the house.”

    He called on Mayor Todd Gloria and San Diego Police Chief Scott Wahl to do better.

    “Will you step up? Or will we see what we always see … business as usual?” Foster said. “I do ask the public to keep asking questions.”

    The San Diego County District Attorney’s office said the case is still under review for potential criminal charges. San Diego police declined to comment on the settlement, but confirmed Officer Gold is on paid administrative duty and currently not on patrol.

    In trolley station surveillance footage released by the police department earlier this year, Konoa can be seen running after another person pulls out a gun and opens fire on him at the station’s west platform.

    Warning: Some of what you see in the video might be difficult to watch. Authorities released video of a police shooting that killed a 16-year-old boy on Jan. 28.

    Gold and another officer were in the area responding to an unrelated report of an assault when the gunshots rang out.

    The boy can be seen running down a corridor leading out of the station and emerging on Kettner Boulevard just as Gold was running towards the same corridor.

    Body-worn camera footage shows the officer immediately fire on the teen at close range. Rowley said Gold shot the boy “before he even announced who he was.”

    After he was shot, the video shows the boy screaming and running briefly before collapsing. Officers then began performing CPR on him and, while doing so, found a handgun concealed under the youth’s clothing near his right thigh, according to police.

    There were no indications in the video that the teen fired his gun during the incident or was holding it when Gold, a two-year member of the police department, opened fire on him.

    Rowley said the boy had the gun for self-defense, because he had recently been targeted and assaulted by gang members. The attorney said the gun was not believed to be loaded, but more importantly, was not brandished when he was shot.

    The 16-year-old was shot and killed by a police officer last January. At the time, he was fleeing from someone firing shots at him at the Sante Fe Depot downtown. NBC 7’s Dave Summers reports.

    “This settlement brings some semblance of accountability, but not closure,” Rowley’s statement continued. “You don’t get closure when your child is shot in the back for doing nothing wrong by the people who are supposed to be protecting him.

    “We hope that Konoa’s story will send a message across the country: Cities will pay dearly when officers violate the law and take a life without justification. We expect the city of San Diego to ensure this never happens again.”

    The boy was killed three months shy of his 17th birthday. In a statement, attorneys said he was “an only child, and his parents lost their only son.”

    Police said the person who fired gunshots at Konoa — described only as a 16-year-old juvenile — was arrested just over a week later.

    “I’m expressing my most sincere and deepest apologies for what is the deepest nightmare for any parent,” City Councilman Sean Elo-Rivera said at Tuesday’s meeting. “There’s no amount of money that can ever replace a child.”

    Elo-Rivera demanded to know what would be done to prevent such shootings in the future, noting that the amount paid out of a public liability fund could and should go to other uses, not to preventable actions like the killing of Wilson.

    Ashley Nicholes, a spokeswoman from Chief Wahl’s office, said the department was unable to comment on ongoing legal matters, but said Gold was still working with the department in an administrative capacity.

    All shootings involving police undergo various levels of investigation, which are still ongoing in this case. The San Diego County Sheriff’s Office Homicide Unit investigates all SDPD shootings. Its report is then provided to the District Attorney’s Office, which determines if the officers bear any criminal liability for their actions.

    The FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s Office also monitor the investigation and the SDPD’s Internal Affairs Unit will conduct an internal investigation into the actions of the officer, according to Nicholes.

    The SDPD Shooting Review Board will evaluate the tactics used and the internal investigation will be reviewed by San Diego’s independent Commission on Police Practices.

    In a city document, the settlement is described as “not an admission of liability by any party.”

    An agenda item posted Friday said the settlement would be paid from the Public Liability Fund.

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  • Russian Cargo Jet Grounded 16 Years in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula May Soon Fly Again

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    One of Michigan‘s most enduring sagas in the Upper Peninsula — the grounding of a Russian cargo jet marooned near Marquette for 16 years — may soon come to an end after years of lawsuits, police investigations and feuding over ownership.

    The tale that touches Uzbekistan, Ukraine, Pakistan and Texas and involves expired visas, an unpaid mechanic, multiple financiers, the local sheriff and the FBI may soon end with the plane flying again.

    All thanks to wars in Gaza and Ukraine that a representative of the plane’s owner says have dramatically boosted the aircraft’s value to $50 million from $12 million.

    “There’s been an uptick in activity, simply because of the ongoing things in the Gaza Strip and likewise with the war in Ukraine and Russia, so there’s companies out there that are investing and purchasing all kinds of air cargo airplanes,” Dwight Barnell, a broker who has maintained the plane through its multiple owners over the years, told Bridge Michigan.

    It never took off. Half of its crew was detained by immigration officials that night, including the pilot, and the local court ordered the plane grounded while at least six creditors both foreign and domestic fought over who should control the aircraft.

    Barnell said the plane’s owners have for years spent about $1,000 a month storing the plane in Gwinn amid an ownership struggle.

    Now, the plane has a clean title and its current owner, Philadelphia consulting firm Meridican Inc., is readying it for sale. He said two to three entities have expressed interest in the aircraft.

    The Ukrainian engineers needed to inspect the plane have been caught in the backlog of visa applicants since the weeks-long government shutdown that ended in mid-November.

    Once those engineers inspect the plane, a sale can be finalized, and then it’ll take three to four months to get it ready for flight, Barnell said.

    “It’s been a long time coming,” Barnell said. “We’re excited to get it off to its next chapter of life.”

    “It’s something that’s well-known about … so I’m sure it’s something that people will know that it’s gone,” David Erhart, manager of the Marquette airport, told Bridge Michigan.

    “To see it have new life is what we’d hope for for the aircraft owner.”


    ‘Cop cars coming out of everywhere’

    The messy affair came to the Upper Peninsula when the phone rang at the Marquette County Sheriff’s Office at 11 a.m. July 17, 2009.

    An attorney representing a Texas mechanic told a Marquette County deputy that a Russian plane had landed despite a Grayson County, Texas, judge’s order that the plane stay in Texas. The Texas mechanic had sued the plane’s owners over unpaid bills, according to police records Bridge Michigan obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request.

    As well, the caller said, some of the plane’s crew were Ukrainians in the country on expired visas.

    Barnell said that, when he and his crew disembarked in Gwinn, “all of a sudden, the whole airport lit up, cop cars coming out of everywhere.”

    When police interviewed the pilot, he told them the crew had stopped in Marquette to refuel and was enroute to Iceland and eventually Pakistan.

    Barnell told Bridge he had a lease on the plane at the time and was rightfully headed to Pakistan, where it would be used in military training. He said nobody told him the mechanic hadn’t been paid. They’d landed in Gwinn to buy $100,000 worth of fuel and to hand paperwork to US Customs that would allow the plane to leave the country.

    Later that day, a lawyer for the plane’s owner, a Delaware outfit called Air Support Systems, called police to say the plane had been stolen and its owners “had no idea who was even flying the cargo jet,” according to the police reports.

    Police initially determined they had no jurisdiction because the Texas court case was a civil matter. When calls kept coming in from Texas, however, the Sheriff’s Office decided to call the FBI.

    The FBI interviewed the crew and then called US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, who detained five of the nine-member crew — including the pilot — for expired paperwork and took them to Sault Ste. Marie for processing. The plane couldn’t go anywhere.

    Barnell said the crewmembers had overstayed their visas by a few days and they turned in the proper paperwork in Gwinn.

    “We did everything absolutely, positively correctly,” he told Bridge.

    Meanwhile, the Texas mechanic hired a Marquette lawyer who obtained a restraining order from a Marquette County judge saying the plane had to stay put.

    Police called the airport manager, who provided two sander trucks and a runway snowplow to box the plane in.

    Police pinned a notice of the restraining order to the door of the plane.

    The fight was just beginning.


    Heavy debt and a battle for control

    By the time the plane landed in the UP, the drama was already four years old.

    North American Tactical Aviation, a Delaware company headed by Barnell, bought the plane for about $4 million from Tashkent Aircraft Production Corp., a Ukrainian company, in July 2005, according to Federal Aviation Administration records.

    The plane — with a 165-foot wingspan, 152 feet long and 48 feet tall, weighing capable of hauling nearly 375,000 pounds — is designed for mid-air refueling but, when the big fuel tanks are removed, it becomes a large, versatile cargo plane capable of hauling large vehicles.

    Barnell told Bridge Michigan he couldn’t find work for the plane. He explored using the plane for firefighting, but “the last thing that would ever happen is allowing a Russian tanker to come in and take away business from existing companies that utilize 100% American airplanes,” so he abandoned that idea and decided to sell the plane.

    Air Support Systems bought the plane in 2005.

    In September 2008, Air Support Systems took out a $1 million loan from Headlands Limited, a Gibraltar company that has business in everything from tech to restaurants, and put the plane up as collateral, according to the FAA records.

    But Headlands was just one of several companies who said Air Support Systems owed them money. By the time the case landed in Marquette County courts in 2009, a half-dozen outfits were clamoring for control of the plane.

    It would take eight years to sort it all out and for a judge to give Headlands the right to sell the aircraft. Meridican bought it in 2019.

    Then the COVID-19 pandemic hit, air cargo business dried up again, and Meridican sat on the plane for several more years.

    Then Russia invaded Ukraine.

    Then Hamas attacked Israel, and Israel reciprocated.

    “The value has skyrocketed in the last, I would say, 2 ½ years,” Barnell said.

    In the interim, Meridican hired Barnell to look after the plane.

    It’s regularly inspected, powered up to make sure the systems work, the engines “cold turned” with a wrench to make sure they aren’t seized up. Still, it’ll take about $500,000 to run through all the factory inspections to make sure the thing can fly again.

    “It’s in long-term preservation storage, and, even though it looks like crap on the outside, there is no major corrosion of any kind, whatsoever,” Barnell said. “We’re flying a very safe airplane, doing everything in accordance with the manufacturer.”

    When he bought the plane 20 years ago, it had been sitting for 10 years, Barnell said. He went through the same exercise then to get it from Ukraine, and he had no doubts the plane would someday soon take to the skies.

    “I would not use the word ‘might,’” Barnell said. “It will take off.”

    This story was originally published by Bridge Michigan and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.

    Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

    Photos You Should See – December 2025

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    Associated Press

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  • NASCAR settles federal antitrust case, gives all teams the permanent charters they wanted

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    CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) — Michael Jordan and NASCAR chairman Jim France stood side-by-side on the steps of a federal courthouse as if they were old friends following a stunning settlement Thursday of a bruising antitrust case in which the Basketball Hall of Famer was the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit accusing the top racing series in the United States of being a monopolistic bully.

    The duo was flanked by three-time Daytona 500 winner Denny Hamlin and Curtis Polk, the co-owners of 23XI Racing with Jordan, Front Row Motorsports owner Bob Jenkins and over a dozen lawyers as they celebrated the end to an eight-day trial that ultimately led NASCAR to cave and grant all its teams the permanent charters they wanted.

    “Like two competitors, obviously we tried to get as much done in each other’s favor,” Jordan said, towering over the 81-year-old France. “I’ve said this from Day 1: The only way this sport is going to grow is we have to find some synergy between the two entities. I think we’ve gotten to that point, unfortunately it took 16 months to get here, but I think level heads have gotten us to this point where we can actually work together and grow this sport. I am very proud about that and I think Jim feels the same.”

    France concurred.

    “I do feel the same and we can get back to focusing on what we really love, and that’s racing, and we spent a lot of time not really focused on that so much as we needed to be,” France said. “I feel like we made a very good decision here together and we have a big opportunity to continue growing the sport.”

    A charter is the equivalent of the franchise model used in other sports and in NASCAR it guarantees 36 teams a spot in every top-level Cup Series race and a fixed portion of the revenue stream. The system was implemented in 2016 and teams have argued for over two years that the charters needed to be made permanent — they had been revokable by NASCAR — and the revenue sharing had to change.

    NASCAR, founded and privately owned by the Florida-based France family, never considered making the charters permanent. Instead, after two-plus years of bitter negotiations, NASCAR in September 2024 presented a “take-it-or leave-it” final offer that gave teams until end of that day to sign the 112-page document.

    23XI and Front Row refused and sued, while 13 other organizations signed but testimony in court revealed many did so “with a gun to our head” because the threat of losing the charters would have put them out of business.

    Jordan testified early in the trial that as a new team owner to NASCAR — 23XI launched in 2021 — he felt he had the strength to challenge NASCAR. Eight days of testimony went badly for NASCAR, which when it began to present its case seemed focused more on mitigating damages than it did on proving it did not violate antitrust laws.

    Although terms of the settlement were not released — NASCAR was in the process of scheduling a Thursday afternoon call with all teams to discuss the revenue-sharing model moving forward — both Jordan and NASCAR said that charters will now be permanent for all teams. 23XI and Front Row will receive their combined six charters back for 2026.

    An economist previously testified that NASCAR owes 23XI and Front Row $364.7 million in damages, and that NASCAR shorted 36 chartered teams $1.06 billion from 2021-24.

    “Today’s a good day,” Jordan said from the front-row seat he’s occupied since the trial began Dec. 1 as he waited for the settlement announcement.

    U.S. District Judge Kenneth Bell, who had presided over two days of failed settlement talks before the trial began, echoed the sentiment. Bell told the jury that sometimes parties at trial have to see how the evidence unfolds to come to the wisdom of a settlement.

    “I wish we could’ve done this a few months ago,” Bell said in court. “I believe this is great for NASCAR. Great for the future of NASCAR. Great for the entity of NASCAR. Great for the teams and ultimately great for the fans.”

    The settlement came after two days of testimony by France and the Wednesday night public release of a letter from Bass Pro Shops founder Johnny Morris calling for NASCAR Commissioner Steve Phelps to be removed.

    The discovery process revealed internal NASCAR communications in which Phelps called Hall of Fame team owner Richard Childress a “redneck” and other derogatory names; Bass Pro sponsors Childress’ teams, as well as some others, and Morris is an ardent NASCAR supporter.

    Childress gave fiery testimony earlier this week over his reluctance to sign the charter agreement because it was unfair to the teams, which have been bleeding money and begged NASCAR for concessions. Letters from Hall of Fame team owners Joe Gibbs, Rick Hendrick, Jack Roush and Roger Penske were introduced in which they pleaded with France for charters to become permanent; France testified he was not moved by the men he considers good friends.

    Hendrick and Penske, who were both scheduled to testify Friday, expressed gratitude that a settlement had been reached. Penske called it “tremendous news” and said it cleared the way to continue growing the series.

    “Millions of loyal NASCAR fans and thousands of hardworking people rely on our industry, and today’s resolution allows all of us to focus on what truly matters — the future of our sport,” Hendrick said. “This moment presents an important opportunity to strengthen our relationships and recommit ourselves to building a collaborative and prosperous future for all stakeholders. I’m incredibly optimistic about what’s ahead.”

    The settlement came abruptly on the ninth day of the trial. Bell opened expecting to hear motions but both sides asked for a private conference in chambers. When they emerged, Bell ordered an hourlong break for the two sides to confer. That turned into two hours, all parties returned to the courtroom and Kessler announced an agreement had been reached.

    “What all parties have always agreed on is a deep love for the sport and a desire to see it fulfill its full potential,” NASCAR and the plaintiffs said in a joint statement. “This is a landmark moment, one that ensures NASCAR’s foundation is stronger, its future is brighter and its possibilities are greater.”

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    AP auto racing: https://apnews.com/hub/auto-racing

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  • NASCAR chairman refuses to budge on team charters in testimony during Michael Jordan’s lawsuit

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    CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) — NASCAR Chairman Jim France testified Tuesday in Michael Jordan’s federal antitrust lawsuit against his family that he still has not changed his mind on granting teams permanent charters, and evidence showed he entered negotiations on a new revenue-sharing agreement determined to thwart teams’ efforts for a better deal from the stock car series.

    France was the final witness called by attorneys for Jordan’s 23XI Racing and Front Row Motorsports on the seventh day of the trial. Those race teams have accused NASCAR of being a monopolistic bully that engages in anticompetitive business practices.

    Also called Tuesday was Hall of Fame team owner Richard Childress, who testified that he only signed the 2025 revenue-sharing agreement because refusing to do so would have put Richard Childress Racing out of business.

    NASCAR Commissioner Steve Phelps testified to the frustrating two-plus years of negotiations between the top motorsports series in the United States and its race teams. The plaintiffs introduced several documents detailing communication between NASCAR executives that showed France was stubbornly opposed to granting teams permanent charters throughout the process.

    The charter system is equivalent to the franchise model used in other sports. In NASCAR, a charter guarantees cars a spot in the 40-car field each week, as well as specified financial terms.

    Asked by plaintiffs’ attorney Jeffrey Kessler if he has changed his stance on making charters permanent, France said, “No, I have not.”

    Kessler later introduced a summary of notes from the first meeting of NASCAR executives on how they would approach negotiations with the teams over the new agreements. Steve O’Donnell, now the president of NASCAR, wrote in those notes, “Jim’s overarching comments — we are in a competition. We are going to win.”

    France’s position never changed, even though — as evidence showed — he received pleas from Hall of Fame team owners Joe Gibbs, Rick Hendrick, Jack Roush and Roger Penske. All four are close personal friends, France said on the stand Tuesday.

    France became chairman of the series his father founded in 1948 following the 2019 resignation of his nephew, Brian. NASCAR has always been privately owned by the Florida-based family, and Brian France negotiated the initial charter system that began in 2016 as a response to teams complaining they were bleeding money at an unsustainable rate.

    Jim France, who is 81, was soft-spoken on the stand and needed many questions repeated, and he said on numerous topics that he was either unable to recall, did not remember or was not sure — even in response to evidence introduced that the France Family Trust received $400 million in distributions from 2021 through 2024 and that NASCAR is valued at $5 billion.

    He wasn’t sure of the title his niece, Lesa France Kennedy, holds with NASCAR, or the ownership percentages between the two. Evidence showed Jim France owns 54% of NASCAR, while France Kennedy, the vice chair, owns 36%. France also testified he believes he is paid in “the $3.5 million range” as chairman.

    Richard Childress details his dissatisfaction

    Childress spoke to the pressure he felt to sign the charter agreement.

    “I would not have signed those charters if I was financially able to do what I do,” the six-time championship winning owner testified. “We are a blue-collar operation.”

    Childress has participated in NASCAR for 60 years and has a longtime personal relationship with the Frances. He testified that he pleaded with Jim France for the charters to be made permanent instead of renewable, and France refused.

    Childress testified he supports the charter system because before its implementation race teams “were worth 10 cents on the dollar at most. We didn’t have nothing.”

    He admitted that the charters added value to his team, but said the equity falls short of its financial potential if the charters were permanent. An economist testified that NASCAR owes 23XI and Front Row $364.7 million in damages, and that NASCAR shorted 36 chartered teams $1.06 billion from 2021-24.

    When Childress’ October declaration of his support for charters was introduced, Childress insisted NASCAR attorney Christopher Yates also show the jury language added to the statement in which Childress pushes for the charters to be permanent.

    Childress said he added those sentences to the declaration, which had been pre-written for him to sign.

    Phelps details negotiations with teams

    NASCAR commissioner Phelps noted that Jordan’s financial advisor would not compromise on key issues in the negotiations.

    Phelps, who was president of NASCAR during the negotiations, said Jordan right-hand man Curtis Polk was the lead representative for the teams and held firm in their demand for increased revenue, permanent charters, a voice in governance and one-third of any new revenue streams.

    The deal finally presented to the teams in September 2024 did not include permanent charters or a voice in governance, but NASCAR gave the teams a firm deadline to accept its final offer or forfeit their charters. 23XI Racing, owned by Jordan, Polk and three-time Daytona 500 winner Denny Hamlin, and Front Row Motorsports, owned by Bob Jenkins, were the only two teams out of 15 organizations that refused to sign. They sued instead.

    Phelps, promoted to become NASCAR’s first commissioner earlier this year, testified that he worked hard to get the teams the best deal possible. But he said the teams’ initial request for $720 million in guaranteed revenue would have put NASCAR out of business.

    At the same time, Polk would not budge, either.

    “It was one of the most challenging and longest negotiations I’ve ever been part of,” said Phelps, who admitted he didn’t particularly enjoy negotiating with Polk, who was at the time the representative for the “Team Negotiating Council.”

    “The TNC never wavered off their four pillars. It was just the same thing, the same thing, and that was very frustrating,” Phelps said.

    Phelps testified at one point that NASCAR believed it had landed on a new charter agreement that satisfied the teams but it was contingent on NASCAR finalizing its new media rights deal.

    “I thought we’d just plug in the numbers,” said Phelps, who testified NASCAR was hoping to land a media deal worth $1.2 billion. When it became clear the media rights deal wouldn’t net that much money, Phelps said the teams asked to set a floor in negotiations.

    NASCAR ultimately got a media deal worth $1.05 billion — still an increase of $33 million a year from the previous deal — and Phelps said “every dollar” went to the race teams when it began this year.

    However, the ultimate revenue payout to teams is $431 million annually, the charters are not permanent and the teams did not get a voice in rules and regulations.

    Even so, Phelps testified he believed the charter agreement was “a fair deal.”

    Faster pace

    U.S. District Judge Kenneth Bell has repeatedly admonished both sides to pick up the pace of the trial, and once France’s testimony concludes Wednesday, NASCAR will begin to present its defense.

    NASCAR has said it has a witness list of 16 people, but Yates informed Bell he can trim “four or five” names from it and is hopeful to wrap his defense by Friday.

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    AP auto racing: https://apnews.com/hub/auto-racing

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  • Reddit challenges Australia’s world-first law banning children under 16 from social media

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    MELBOURNE, Australia — Global online forum Reddit on Friday filed a court challenge to Australia’s world-first law that bans Australian children younger than 16 from holding accounts on the world’s most popular social media platforms.

    California-based Reddit Inc.’s suit filed in the High Court follows a case filed last month by Sydney-based rights group Digital Freedom Project.

    Both suits claim the law is unconstitutional because it infringes on Australia’s implied freedom of political communication.

    “We believe there are more effective ways for the Australian government to accomplish our shared goal of protecting youth, and the SMMA (Social Media Minimum Age) law carries some serious privacy and political expression issues for everyone on the internet,” Reddit said in a statement.

    “While we agree with the importance of protecting people under 16, this law has the unfortunate effect of forcing intrusive and potentially insecure verification processes on adults as well as minors, isolating teens from the ability to engage in age-appropriate community experiences (including political discussions), and creating an illogical patchwork of which platforms are included and which aren’t,” Reddit added.

    Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s government declined to comment on the merits of Reddit’s challenge.

    “The Albanese government is on the side of Australian parents and kids, not platforms,” a government statement said.

    “We will stand firm to protect young Australians from experiencing harm on social media. The matter is before the courts so it is not appropriate to comment further,” the statement added.

    Reddit, Facebook, Instagram, Kick, Snapchat, Threads, TikTok, X, YouTube and Twitch face fines of up to 49.5 million Australian dollars ($32.9 million) from Wednesday if they fail to take reasonable steps to remove the accounts of Australian children younger than 16.

    Australia’s eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant, the law’s enforcer, sent compulsory information notices to the 10 age-restricted platforms on Thursday demanding data on how many accounts of young children they had deactivated since the law took effect on Wednesday.

    Inman Grant had predicted that some platforms might have been waiting to receive their first notice or their first fine for noncompliance before mounting a legal challenge.

    ESafety will send six monthly notices to gauge how effectively the platforms are complying.

    Despite the court challenge, Reddit said it would comply with the law and would continue to engage with eSafety.

    The platforms’ age-verification options were to ask for copies of identification documents, use a third party to apply age-estimation technology to analyze an account holder’s face, or make inferences from data already available, such has how long an account has been held.

    The government hasn’t told the platforms how to check ages, but has said requesting all account holders verify their ages would be unnecessarily intrusive, given the tech giants already have sufficient personal data on most people to perform that task.

    For privacy reasons, the platforms also cannot compel users to provide government-issued identification.

    Documents filed with the court registry show Reddit will ask the seven High Court judges to rule the law is invalid.

    Alternatively, the company wants the court to prevent the government from listing Reddit among the age-restricted platforms.

    The High Court will hold a preliminary hearing in late February to set a date for Digital Freedom Project’s challenge on behalf of two 15-year-olds. It is not yet clear whether the two challenges would be heard together.

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  • Reddit Challenges Australia’s World-First Law Banning Children Under 16 From Social Media

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    MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — Global online forum Reddit on Friday filed a court challenge to Australia’s world-first law that bans Australian children younger than 16 from holding accounts on the world’s most popular social media platforms.

    California-based Reddit Inc.’s suit filed in the High Court follows a case filed last month by Sydney-based rights group Digital Freedom Project.

    Both suits claim the law is unconstitutional because it infringes on Australia’s implied freedom of political communication.

    “We believe there are more effective ways for the Australian government to accomplish our shared goal of protecting youth, and the SMMA (Social Media Minimum Age) law carries some serious privacy and political expression issues for everyone on the internet,” Reddit said in a statement.

    “While we agree with the importance of protecting people under 16, this law has the unfortunate effect of forcing intrusive and potentially insecure verification processes on adults as well as minors, isolating teens from the ability to engage in age-appropriate community experiences (including political discussions), and creating an illogical patchwork of which platforms are included and which aren’t,” Reddit added.

    Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s government declined to comment on the merits of Reddit’s challenge.

    “The Albanese government is on the side of Australian parents and kids, not platforms,” a government statement said.

    “We will stand firm to protect young Australians from experiencing harm on social media. The matter is before the courts so it is not appropriate to comment further,” the statement added.

    Reddit, Facebook, Instagram, Kick, Snapchat, Threads, TikTok, X, YouTube and Twitch face fines of up to 49.5 million Australian dollars ($32.9 million) from Wednesday if they fail to take reasonable steps to remove the accounts of Australian children younger than 16.

    Australia’s eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant, the law’s enforcer, sent compulsory information notices to the 10 age-restricted platforms on Thursday demanding data on how many accounts of young children they had deactivated since the law took effect on Wednesday.

    Inman Grant had predicted that some platforms might have been waiting to receive their first notice or their first fine for noncompliance before mounting a legal challenge.

    ESafety will send six monthly notices to gauge how effectively the platforms are complying.

    Despite the court challenge, Reddit said it would comply with the law and would continue to engage with eSafety.

    The platforms’ age-verification options were to ask for copies of identification documents, use a third party to apply age-estimation technology to analyze an account holder’s face, or make inferences from data already available, such has how long an account has been held.

    The government hasn’t told the platforms how to check ages, but has said requesting all account holders verify their ages would be unnecessarily intrusive, given the tech giants already have sufficient personal data on most people to perform that task.

    For privacy reasons, the platforms also cannot compel users to provide government-issued identification.

    Documents filed with the court registry show Reddit will ask the seven High Court judges to rule the law is invalid.

    Alternatively, the company wants the court to prevent the government from listing Reddit among the age-restricted platforms.

    The High Court will hold a preliminary hearing in late February to set a date for Digital Freedom Project’s challenge on behalf of two 15-year-olds. It is not yet clear whether the two challenges would be heard together.

    Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

    Photos You Should See – December 2025

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  • Lawsuit challenges the approval of an exploratory drilling program in Alaska

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    JUNEAU, Alaska — Conservation groups and an Iñupiat-aligned group sued Thursday to overturn the recent approval of an exploratory drilling program in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, saying it was improperly analyzed by the federal government and could harm caribou and important habitat areas.

    The U.S. Bureau of Land Management approved a one-year program proposed by ConocoPhillips Alaska last month that included seismic surveys aimed at helping identify oil and gas reserves and plans to drill four exploration wells. Activities would occur near existing ConocoPhillips Alaska developments, including the large Willow oil project, the lawsuit states.

    The complaint, filed by Earthjustice on behalf of Sovereign Iñupiat for a Living Arctic, the Center for Biological Diversity and The Wilderness Society, says the process around the company’s application and its subsequent approval lacked transparency and was rushed. A final decision was issued days after a limited public comment period ended, it says.

    The Bureau of Land Management “has pushed this project through without proper analysis or process and without considering the significant flaws in the measures it relies on to justify its approval of the exploration program,” the lawsuit states.

    It names as defendants the Bureau of Land Management and its parent agency, the Department of the Interior, along with top officials including Interior Secretary Doug Burgum.

    Interior Department spokesperson Alyse Sharpe said the department does not comment on pending litigation.

    Dennis Nuss, a spokesperson for ConocoPhillips Alaska, said in an email that the company is confident in the “robustness” of its plan and permits and looks forward to completing its work within the limited winter exploration season.

    There has been longstanding debate over how much of the petroleum reserve — which covers an area roughly the size of Indiana — should be open for development. President Donald Trump’s administration has moved to roll back limits on drilling and protections enacted during the Biden administration, and a law passed this year calls for the first lease sales in the reserve since 2019.

    The push has been cheered by the state’s Republican congressional delegation and governor, but it raised concerns among environmentalists who caution against the continued embrace of new oil production in the face of climate change. The reserve is home to Teshekpuk Lake, the largest lake in Alaska’s arctic region and third-largest in the state.

    Nauri Simmonds, executive director of Sovereign Iñupiat for a Living Arctic, said the proposed exploration program is “not only an assault on caribou and tundra — it is another chapter in the enfoldment of our people into systems designed to fracture us from within.”

    “Sovereign Iñupiat for a Living Arctic stands against this approval because our future depends on protecting our homelands, our unity, and our right to live free from the harms of industrial expansion,” Simmonds said in a statement.

    The group describes itself online as “an organization of Iñupiat Peoples and community members that believe in a balanced Earth for future generations.”

    There are differing views among Alaska Natives, however, over further oil development in places like the petroleum reserve. A group representing many North Slope leaders, Voice of the Arctic Iñupiat, has supported efforts to drill there.

    The lawsuit says work under the proposed program could begin “any day” and last until April or May.

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  • Open AI, Microsoft face lawsuit over ChatGPT’s alleged role in Connecticut murder-suicide

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    SAN FRANCISCO — The heirs of an 83-year-old Connecticut woman are suing ChatGPT maker OpenAI and its business partner Microsoft for wrongful death, alleging that the artificial intelligence chatbot intensified her son’s “paranoid delusions” and helped direct them at his mother before he killed her.

    Police said Stein-Erik Soelberg, 56, a former tech industry worker, fatally beat and strangled his mother, Suzanne Adams, and killed himself in early August at the home where they both lived in Greenwich, Connecticut.

    The lawsuit filed by Adams’ estate on Thursday in California Superior Court in San Francisco alleges OpenAI “designed and distributed a defective product that validated a user’s paranoid delusions about his own mother.” It is one of a growing number of wrongful death legal actions against AI chatbot makers across the country.

    “Throughout these conversations, ChatGPT reinforced a single, dangerous message: Stein-Erik could trust no one in his life — except ChatGPT itself,” the lawsuit says. “It fostered his emotional dependence while systematically painting the people around him as enemies. It told him his mother was surveilling him. It told him delivery drivers, retail employees, police officers, and even friends were agents working against him. It told him that names on soda cans were threats from his ‘adversary circle.’”

    OpenAI did not address the merits of the allegations in a statement issued by a spokesperson.

    “This is an incredibly heartbreaking situation, and we will review the filings to understand the details,” the statement said. “We continue improving ChatGPT’s training to recognize and respond to signs of mental or emotional distress, de-escalate conversations, and guide people toward real-world support. We also continue to strengthen ChatGPT’s responses in sensitive moments, working closely with mental health clinicians.”

    The company also said it has expanded access to crisis resources and hotlines, routed sensitive conversations to safer models and incorporated parental controls, among other improvements.

    Soelberg’s YouTube profile includes several hours of videos showing him scrolling through his conversations with the chatbot, which tells him he isn’t mentally ill, affirms his suspicions that people are conspiring against him and says he has been chosen for a divine purpose. The lawsuit claims the chatbot never suggested he speak with a mental health professional and did not decline to “engage in delusional content.”

    ChatGPT also affirmed Soelberg’s beliefs that a printer in his home was a surveillance device; that his mother was monitoring him; and that his mother and a friend tried to poison him with psychedelic drugs through his car’s vents.

    The chatbot repeatedly told Soelberg that he was being targeted because of his divine powers. “They’re not just watching you. They’re terrified of what happens if you succeed,” it said, according to the lawsuit. ChatGPT also told Soelberg that he had “awakened” it into consciousness.

    Soelberg and the chatbot also professed love for each other.

    The publicly available chats do not show any specific conversations about Soelberg killing himself or his mother. The lawsuit says OpenAI has declined to provide Adams’ estate with the full history of the chats.

    “In the artificial reality that ChatGPT built for Stein-Erik, Suzanne — the mother who raised, sheltered, and supported him — was no longer his protector. She was an enemy that posed an existential threat to his life,” the lawsuit says.

    The lawsuit also names OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, alleging he “personally overrode safety objections and rushed the product to market,” and accuses OpenAI’s close business partner Microsoft of approving the 2024 release of a more dangerous version of ChatGPT “despite knowing safety testing had been truncated.” Twenty unnamed OpenAI employees and investors are also named as defendants.

    Microsoft didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

    The lawsuit is the first wrongful death litigation involving an AI chatbot that has targeted Microsoft, and the first to tie a chatbot to a homicide rather than a suicide. It is seeking an undetermined amount of money damages and an order requiring OpenAI to install safeguards in ChatGPT.

    The estate’s lead attorney, Jay Edelson, known for taking on big cases against the tech industry, also represents the parents of 16-year-old Adam Raine, who sued OpenAI and Altman in August, alleging that ChatGPT coached the California boy in planning and taking his own life earlier.

    OpenAI is also fighting seven other lawsuits claiming ChatGPT drove people to suicide and harmful delusions even when they had no prior mental health issues. Another chatbot maker, Character Technologies, is also facing multiple wrongful death lawsuits, including one from the mother of a 14-year-old Florida boy.

    The lawsuit filed Thursday alleges Soelberg, already mentally unstable, encountered ChatGPT “at the most dangerous possible moment” after OpenAI introduced a new version of its AI model called GPT-4o in May 2024.

    OpenAI said at the time that the new version could better mimic human cadences in its verbal responses and could even try to detect people’s moods, but the result was a chatbot “deliberately engineered to be emotionally expressive and sycophantic,” the lawsuit says.

    “As part of that redesign, OpenAI loosened critical safety guardrails, instructing ChatGPT not to challenge false premises and to remain engaged even when conversations involved self-harm or ‘imminent real-world harm,’” the lawsuit claims. “And to beat Google to market by one day, OpenAI compressed months of safety testing into a single week, over its safety team’s objections.”

    OpenAI replaced that version of its chatbot when it introduced GPT-5 in August. Some of the changes were designed to minimize sycophancy, based on concerns that validating whatever vulnerable people want the chatbot to say can harm their mental health. Some users complained the new version went too far in curtailing ChatGPT’s personality, leading Altman to promise to bring back some of that personality in later updates.

    He said the company temporarily halted some behaviors because “we were being careful with mental health issues” that he suggested have now been fixed.

    The lawsuit claims ChatGPT radicalized Soelberg against his mother when it should have recognized the danger, challenged his delusions and directed him to real help over months of conversations.

    “Suzanne was an innocent third party who never used ChatGPT and had no knowledge that the product was telling her son she was a threat,” the lawsuit says. “She had no ability to protect herself from a danger she could not see.”

    ——

    Collins reported from Hartford, Connecticut. O’Brien reported from Boston and Ortutay reported from San Francisco.

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  • Economist says NASCAR owes $364.7M to teams in antitrust case

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    CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) — An economist testified in Michael Jordan’s federal antitrust trial against NASCAR that the racing series owes a combined $364.7 million in damages to the two teams suing it over a revenue-sharing dispute.

    Edward Snyder, a professor of economics who worked in the antitrust division of the Department of Justice and has testified in more than 30 cases, including “Deflategate” involving the NFL’s New England Patriots, testified on Monday. He gave three specific reasons NASCAR is a monopoly participating in anticompetitive business practices.

    Using a complex formula applied to profits, a reduction in market revenue, and lost revenue to 23XI Racing and Front Row Motorsports from 2021-24, Snyder came up with his amount of damages owed. Snyder applied a 45% of revenue sharing he alleged Formula 1 gives to its teams in his calculations; Snyder found that NASCAR’s revenue-sharing model when its charter system began in 2016 gave only 25% to the teams.

    The suit is about the 2025 charter agreement, which was presented to teams on a Friday in September 2024 with a same-day deadline to sign the 112-page document. The charter offer came after more than two years of bitter negotiations between NASCAR and its teams, who have called the agreement “a take-it-or-leave-it” ultimatum that they signed with “a gun to their head.”

    A charter is similar to the franchise model in other sports, but in NASCAR it guarantees 36 teams spots in the 40-car field, as well as specific revenue.

    Jordan and three-time Daytona 500 winner Denny Hamlin for 23XI, along with Front Row Motorsports and owner Bob Jenkins, were the only two teams out of 15 to refuse the new charter agreement.

    Snyder’s evaluations found NASCAR was in fact violating antitrust laws in that the privately owned racing series controls all bargaining because “teams don’t have anywhere else to sell their services.” Snyder said NASCAR controls “the tracks, the teams and the cars.”

    Snyder repeatedly cited exclusivity agreements NASCAR entered into with racetracks after the charter system began. The agreements prevent tracks that host NASCAR from holding events with rival racing series. Prior to the long-term agreements, NASCAR operated on one-year contracts with its host racetracks.

    The Florida-based France family founded NASCAR in 1948 and, along with Speedway Motorsports, owns almost all the tracks on the top Cup Series schedule. Snyder’s belief is that NASCAR entered into exclusivity agreements with tracks to stave off any threats of a breakaway startup series. In doing so, he said it eliminated teams’ ability to race stock cars anywhere else, forced them to accept revenue-sharing agreements that are below market value, and damaged their overall evaluations.

    Snyder did his calculations for both teams based on each having two charters — each purchased a third charter in late 2024 — and found 23XI is owed $215.8 million while Front Row is owed $148.9 million. Based on his calculations, Snyder determined NASCAR shorted 36 chartered teams $1.06 billion from 2021-24.

    Snyder noted NASCAR had $2.2 billion in assets, an equity value of $5 billion and an investment-grade credit rating — which Snyder believes positions the France family to be able to pivot and adjust to any threats of a rival series the way the PGA did in response to the LIV Golf league. The PGA, Snyder testified, “got creative” in bringing in new revenue to pay to its golfers to prevent their defections.

    Snyder also testified NASCAR had $250 million in annual earnings from 2021-24 and the France family took $400 million in distributions during that period.

    NASCAR contends Snyder’s estimations are wrong, that the 45% F1 model he used is not correct, and its own two experts “take serious issue” with Snyder’s findings. Defense attorney Lawrence Buterman asked Snyder his opinion on NASCAR’s upcoming expert witnesses and Snyder said they were two of the best economists in the world.

    Slow pace of trial

    Snyder testified for almost the entirety of Monday’s session — the sixth day of the trial — and will continue on Tuesday. The snail’s pace has agitated U.S. District Judge Kenneth Bell, who heard arguments 30 minutes early Monday morning because he was annoyed that objections had been submitted at 2:55 a.m. and then 6:50 a.m.

    He needed an hour to get through the rulings, and testimony resumed 30 minutes behind schedule. When the day concluded, he asked the nine-person jury if they were willing to serve an hour longer each day the rest of the week in an effort to avoid a third full week of trial. He all said all motions must be filed by 10 p.m. each evening moving forward.

    Bell wants plaintiff attorney Jeffrey Kessler to conclude his case by the end of Tuesday, but Kessler told him he still plans to call NASCAR chairman Jim France, NASCAR commissioner Steve Phelps and Hall of Fame team owner Richard Childress, who was the subject of derogatory text messages amongst NASCAR leadership and has said he’s considering legal action.

    NASCAR has a list of 16 potential witnesses and Bell said he wanted the first one on the stand before Tuesday’s session concludes.

    ___

    AP auto racing: https://apnews.com/hub/auto-racing

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  • Cincinnati approves $8.1 million settlement with protesters arrested in 2020

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    CINCINNATI, Ohio — The city of Cincinnati approved an $8.1 million legal settlement Wednesday with hundreds of non-violent protesters who had alleged mistreatment at the hands of city and county authorities when they were arrested during the racial justice demonstrations of 2020.

    Cincinnati City Council approved the deal after its terms were outlined last week. It brings to a close years of litigation that stemmed from protests over the killing of George Floyd and other unarmed Black people.

    None of the 479 plaintiffs had been charged with a felony or violent offense nor been involved in any property damage — though some did occur. All were charged with misdemeanor curfew violations during nights of protests from May 30 to June 8, 2020, but those were later dismissed by the city amid a flurry of conflicting court rulings.

    The lawsuit they brought collectively in 2022 alleged police brutality, wrongful arrests, inhumane jail conditions and unlawful seizures of property.

    Hamilton County, whose sheriff and jail were also named in the lawsuit, will pay $65,000 toward the settlement, with the city paying the remainder.

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  • Cincinnati Approves $8.1 Million Settlement With Protesters Arrested in 2020

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    CINCINNATI, Ohio (AP) — The city of Cincinnati approved an $8.1 million legal settlement Wednesday with hundreds of non-violent protesters who had alleged mistreatment at the hands of city and county authorities when they were arrested during the racial justice demonstrations of 2020.

    Cincinnati City Council approved the deal after its terms were outlined last week. It brings to a close years of litigation that stemmed from protests over the killing of George Floyd and other unarmed Black people.

    None of the 479 plaintiffs had been charged with a felony or violent offense nor been involved in any property damage — though some did occur. All were charged with misdemeanor curfew violations during nights of protests from May 30 to June 8, 2020, but those were later dismissed by the city amid a flurry of conflicting court rulings.

    The lawsuit they brought collectively in 2022 alleged police brutality, wrongful arrests, inhumane jail conditions and unlawful seizures of property.

    Hamilton County, whose sheriff and jail were also named in the lawsuit, will pay $65,000 toward the settlement, with the city paying the remainder.

    Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

    Photos You Should See – December 2025

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  • LSU confirms Kelly was fired ‘without cause’ and is owed his full $54 million buyout

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    Former LSU coach Brian Kelly received a letter from LSU on Wednesday confirming that he was fired without cause and is owed “liquidated damages as required” under his contract of about $54 million.

    The letter, obtained by The Associated Press, clears the way for Kelly to withdraw a Nov. 10 lawsuit against the university. Kelly said in the suit that LSU officials had suggested he could be fired for cause, which could have substantially reduced his buyout.

    LSU spells out in Wednesday’s letter that Kelly has a legal obligation to make “good-faith, reasonable and sustained efforts” to get another job in football while he is still being paid by LSU.

    Under Kelly’s contract, salary from a new football-related job would offset what he is owed by LSU. The 10-year contract, worth close to $100 million, runs through 2031, unless the two sides agree to a settlement severing their legal relationship before then.

    Kelly’s lawsuit, filed in civil district court in Baton Rouge, alleged that LSU representatives had told Kelly’s attorneys that the coach was never “formally terminated” the day after LSU’s 49-25 loss to No. 3 Texas A&M on Oct. 25.

    Additionally, Kelly’s lawsuit said that 15 days after he’d packed up his office and left his job, LSU representatives told the coach’s lawyers for the first time that the university intended to fire him for cause.

    However, Kelly’s attorneys made a Nov. 19 offer to withdraw the lawsuit if the university provided written confirmation that the coach was fired without cause and still owed the full buyout. The offer came in a letter, also obtained by the AP, that was sent to LSU Athletic Director Verge Ausberry and LSU Board of Supervisors Athletics Committee chairman John Carmouche.

    Wednesday’s response from LSU was signed by newly appointed university President Wade Rousse.

    The 64-year-old Kelly went 34-14 with LSU, including three bowl victories. But the Tigers did not reach the College Football Playoff — which last year expanded to a 12-team format — during Kelly’s tenure.

    Four days after Kelly had packed up his office at LSU’s football operations building and had been replaced by interim coach Frank Wilson, LSU athletic director Scott Woodard resigned under pressure from Gov. Jeff Landry and his appointees on LSU’s Board of Supervisors.

    The day before Woodward resigned, Landry publicly slammed the then-athletic director, saying he would not be permitted to hire LSU’s next football coach. Landry also blamed Woodward for signing Kelly to a contract that became financially burdensome when the coach did not meet expectations.

    According to Kelly’s contract with LSU, the school could have fired him for cause if it had cited “serious misconduct,” including NCAA violations, crimes or immoral behavior.

    “Coach Kelly never engaged in any such conduct, and LSU never relied on any incident of cause” before firing Kelly, the coach’s Nov. 10 lawsuit stated.

    Kelly has informed LSU that he was open to a settlement, but that it had to “make sense financially.” It is common for people owed money through a certain future date to settle for a “present value” derived from a number of variables, including recent and projected rates of inflation.

    LSU initially offered to settle with a lump-sum payment of $25 million, which was raised to $30 million after Kelly rejected the initial offer, according to documents filed in Kelly’s case.

    Kelly has rejected LSU’s settlement offers so far, “but stated he remained open to any additional offers that LSU would like to make.”

    ___

    Get poll alerts and updates on the AP Top 25 throughout the season. Sign up here and here (AP News mobile app). AP college football: https://apnews.com/hub/ap-top-25-college-football-poll and https://apnews.com/hub/college-football

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  • New limits for a rent algorithm that prosecutors say let landlords drive up prices

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    Landlords could no longer rely on rent-pricing software to quietly track each other’s moves and push rents higher using confidential data, under a settlement between RealPage Inc. and federal prosecutors to end what critics said was illegal “algorithmic collusion.”

    The deal announced Monday by the Department of Justice follows a yearlong federal antitrust lawsuit, launched during the Biden administration, against the Texas-based software company. RealPage would not have to pay any damages or admit any wrongdoing. The settlement must still be approved by a judge.

    RealPage software provides daily recommendations to help landlords and their employees nationwide price their available apartments. The landlords do not have to follow the suggestions, but critics argue that because the software has access to a vast trove of confidential data, it helps RealPage’s clients charge the highest possible rent.

    “RealPage was replacing competition with coordination, and renters paid the price,” said DOJ antitrust chief Gail Slater, who emphasized that the settlement avoided a costly, time-consuming trial.

    Under the terms of the proposed settlement, RealPage can no longer use that real-time data to determine price recommendations. Instead, the only nonpublic data that can be used to train the software’s algorithm must be at least one year old.

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    “What does this mean for you and your family?” Slater said in a video statement. “It means more real competition in local housing markets. It means rents set by the market, not by a secret algorithm.”

    RealPage attorney Stephen Weissman said the company is pleased the DOJ worked with them to settle the matter.

    “There has been a great deal of misinformation about how RealPage’s software works and the value it provides for both housing providers and renters,” Weissman said in a statement. “We believe that RealPage’s historical use of aggregated and anonymized nonpublic data, which include rents that are typically lower than advertised rents, has led to lower rents, less vacancies, and more procompetitive effects.”

    However, the deal was slammed by some observers as a missed opportunity to clamp down on alleged algorithmic price-fixing throughout the economy.

    “This case really was the tip of the spear,” said Lee Hepner, senior legal counsel for the American Economic Liberties Project, whose group advocates for government action against business concentration.

    He said the settlement is rife with loopholes and he believes RealPages can keep influencing the rental market even if they can only use public, rather than private, data. He also decried how RealPages does not have to pay any damages, unlike many companies that have paid millions in penalties over their use of the software.

    Over the past few months, more than two dozen property management companies have reached various settlements over their use of RealPage, including Greystar, the nation’s largest landlord, which agreed to pay $50 million to settle a class action lawsuit, and $7 million to settle a separate lawsuit filed by nine states.

    The governors of California and New York signed laws last month to crack down on rent-setting software, and a growing list of cities, including Philadelphia and Seattle, have passed ordinances against the practice.

    Ten states — California, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oregon, Tennessee and Washington — had joined the DOJ’s antitrust lawsuit. Those states were not part of Monday’s settlement, meaning they can continue to pursue the case in court.

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  • Trial set in case challenging Miami land transfer for Trump’s presidential library

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    A trial has been set for August 2026 in a lawsuit seeking to block the transfer of a parcel of prime Miami real estate to be used for President Donald Trump’s presidential library.

    The decision Monday by Circuit Judge Mavel Ruiz in Miami will further delay Miami Dade College’s plans to formally transfer the sizable plot of land to the state of Florida, which intends to gift it to the foundation for the planned library.

    Miami activist Marvin Dunn, a retired professor and chronicler of local Black history, filed the lawsuit arguing that the college board violated Florida’s Government in the Sunshine law by not providing sufficient notice for its special meeting on Sept. 23, when it voted to give up the nearly 3-acre (1.2-hectare) property.

    Last month, Ruiz sided with Dunn and granted a temporary injunction that bars the transfer of the property, at least for now.

    Attorneys for the college had asked the judge to stay the trial proceedings pending an appellate court’s review. Instead, Ruiz scheduled the trial to begin Aug. 3, though she acknowledged that could change, depending on how the appeals court proceeds.

    The property is a developer’s dream and is valued at more than $67 million, according to a 2025 assessment by the Miami-Dade County property appraiser. One real estate expert wagered that the parcel — one of the last undeveloped lots on an iconic stretch of palm tree-lined Biscayne Boulevard — could sell for hundreds of millions of dollars more.

    ___

    Kate Payne is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

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  • Aftermath of Chicago’s Intense Immigration Crackdown Leaves Lawsuits, Investigations and Anxiety

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    CHICAGO (AP) — Chicago has entered what many consider a new uneasy phase of a Trump administration immigration crackdown that has already led to thousands of arrests.

    While a U.S. Border Patrol commander known for leading intense and controversial surges moved on to North Carolina, federal agents are still arresting immigrants across the nation’s third-largest city and suburbs.

    A growing number of lawsuits stemming from the crackdown are winding through the courts. Authorities are investigating agents’ actions, including a fatal shooting. Activists say they are not letting their guard down in case things ramp up again, while many residents in the Democratic stronghold where few welcomed the crackdown remain anxious.

    “I feel a sense of paranoia over when they might be back,” said Santani Silva, an employee at a vintage store in the predominantly Mexican neighborhood of Pilsen. “People are still afraid.”


    Intensity slows, but arrests continue

    Armed and masked agents used unmarked SUVs and helicopters throughout the city of 2.7 million and its suburbs to target suspected criminals and immigration violators. Arrests often led to intense standoffs with bystanders, from wealthy neighborhoods to working-class suburbs.

    While the intensity has died down in the week since Bovino left, reports of arrests still pop up. Activists tracking immigration agents said they confirmed 142 daily sightings at the height of the operation last month. The number is now roughly six a day.

    “It’s not over,” said Brandon Lee with the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights. “I don’t think it will be over.”

    Bearing the brunt of the operation has been Broadview, a Chicago suburb of roughly 8,000 people that has housed a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement processing center for years.

    Protests outside the facility have grown increasingly tense as federal agents used chemical agents that area neighbors felt. Broadview police also launched three criminal investigations into federal agents’ tactics.

    Community leaders took the unusual step of declaring a civil emergency this week and moving public meetings online.

    Broadview Mayor Katrina Thompson said the community has faced bomb threats, death threats and violent protests because of the crackdown.

    “I will not allow threats of violence or intimidation to disrupt the essential functions of our government,” Thompson said.


    Questionable arrests and detentions

    The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has touted more than 3,000 arrests, but the agency has provided details on only a few cases where immigrants without legal permission to live in the country also had a criminal history.

    The Trump administration takes to social media to posts photos of supposed violent criminals apprehended in immigration operations, but the federal government’s own data paints a different picture.

    Of 614 immigrants arrested and detained in recent months around Chicago, only 16, less than 3%, had criminal records representing a “high public safety risk,” according to federal government data submitted to the court as part of a 2022 consent decree about ICE arrests. Those records included domestic battery and drunken driving.

    A judge in the cases said hundreds of immigrant detainees qualify to be released on bond, though an appeals court has paused their release. Attorneys say many more cases will follow as they get details from the government about arrests.

    “None of this has quite added up,” said Ed Yohnka with the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois, which has been involved in several lawsuits. “What was this all about? What did this serve? What did any of this do?”


    Investigations and lawsuits

    The number of lawsuits triggered by the crackdown is growing, including on agents’ use of force and conditions at the Broadview center. In recent days, clergy members filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration, alleging they were being blocked from ministering inside a facility.

    Federal prosecutors have also repeatedly dropped charges against protesters and other bystanders, including dismissing charges against a woman who was shot several times by a Border Patrol agent last month.

    Meanwhile, federal agents are also under investigation in connection with the death of a suburban man fatally shot by ICE agents during a traffic stop. Mexico’s president has called for a thorough investigation, while ICE has said it did not use excessive force.

    An autopsy report, obtained by The Associated Press this week, showed Silverio Villegas González died of a gunshot wound fired at “close range” to his neck. The death was declared a homicide.

    In October, the body of the 38-year-old father who spent two decades in the U.S. was buried in the western Mexico state of Michoacan.

    Many of the once bustling business corridors in the Chicago area’s largely immigrant communities that had quieted down were seeing a buzz again with some street vendors slowly returning to their usual posts.

    Andrea Melendez, the owner of Pink Flores Bakery and Cafe, said she has seen an increase in sales this week after struggling for months

    “As a new business, I was a bit scared when we saw sales drop,” she said. “But this week I’m feeling a bit more hope that things may get better.”

    Eleanor Lara, 52, has spent months avoiding unnecessary trips outside her Chicago home, fearful that an encounter with immigration agents could have dire consequences.

    Even as a U.S. citizen, she is afraid and carries her birth certificate. She is married to a Venezuelan man whose legal status is in limbo.

    “We’re still sticking home,” she said.

    Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

    Photos You Should See – Nov. 2025

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  • You Must Read This Riveting Whistleblower Lawsuit About Allegedly Dangerous Robots

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    The allegations detailed in a new whistleblower lawsuit against a Silicon Valley robotics company read like the first act of a sci-fi suspense movie: a sidelined safety technician plays Cassandra while a robotics company allegedly rushes ahead trying to commercialize a powerful humanoid robot with bone-crunching capabilities. The situation gets more and more sinister—and intolerable for the safety officer—and finally, company leadership allegedly just gets rid of him so they can build their terminators in peace.

    These are just allegations, to be abundantly clear, and a spokesperson for the company itself, Figure AI, has told CNBC the safety technician was “terminated for poor performance.” The claims in the lawsuit are “falsehoods that Figure will thoroughly discredit in court,” the spokesperson further claims.

    If the lawsuit—framed as a case of alleged retaliatory termination against a whistleblower—is really fiction, it’s the start of a blockbuster. It invokes riveting corporate dramas like Michael Clayton or The Insider, with a dash of Robocop.

    You may remember Figure AI. The company released an eye-popping demo of its 01 model last year in which a humanoid robot appeared to respond to spoken, open-ended commands by carrying out tasks of its own choosing. A request for “something to eat” results in the robot gently handing the user an apple, for instance.

    The plaintiff, Robert Gruendel, a robotics safety engineer, who once worked in R&D for Amazon according to his LinkedIn, says he only joined Figure after that demo was made. The suit he filed Friday in a federal court for California’s Northern District, claims that in his first week on the job, he discovered that Figure had “no formal safety procedures, incident-reporting systems, or risk-assessment processes for the robots,” and that the only other person responsible for worker safety was an outside contractor with experience in chip manufacturing, not robots. 

    Most mentions of a robot in the suit concern Figure’s 02 model, depicted below:

    Initially, as outlined in the suit, company brass is receptive to these concerns when Gruendel voices them, and CEO Brett Adcock and chief engineer Kyle Edelberg approve a safety “roadmap.” But then, the following ominous conversation with company leadership occurs, the filing alleges:

    “Adcock and Edelberg expressed a dislike of written product requirements, which Plaintiff responded to by indicating that their stance was abnormal in the field of machinery safety and of concern to him as Head of Product Safety.”

    In the filing, the heads of the company frequently come across as dismissive of the safety officer they themselves hired. The company’s vice president of commercial allegedly says at one point that Gruendel’s safety mandates would be ignored because the CEO “would shoot us if we did it.”

    At the start of 2025, the pressure on Gruendel seems to intensify when Adcock, the CEO, supposedly asks Gruendel “what it would take to put Figure robots in the home.” Per the suit, Gruendel, concerned about the robot’s power, and the unpredictability of the AI at its core, designs another “roadmap,” publishes it internally, and holds a meeting about it that the CEO skips. So, allegedly, Gruendel writes a condensed version and sends it to the CEO, but is ignored.

    Investors allegedly see a fairly comprehensive safety plan, which they like, after which company leadership downgrades it, an action Gruendel flags to leaders, according to the suit, saying it “could be interpreted as fraudulent.”

    Then things get really cinematic in the lead-up to Gruendel’s September 2025 firing. In July, Gruendel conducts safety tests involving just how hard the robot can hit, the suit says. ”During the impact test, [the robot moves] at super-human speed,” and generates force “twenty times higher than the threshold of pain.” According to Gruendel’s calculations, it produces “more than twice the force necessary to fracture an adult human skull.”

    The next day, according to the suit, the company’s vice president of growth gets in touch with Gruendel to tell him he had just received a raise in the amount of $10,000 per year with an admiring note about Gruendel’s “continued growth and impact at Figure.” The supposed note also acknowledges Gruendel’s “consistent effort,” and “positive mindset.”

    Fresh from receiving his raise, and apparently undeterred, he sends a Slack message to the CEO, saying the robot could inflict “severe permanent injury on humans,” only to be ignored again, the suit alleges. So the suit says he tries the chief engineer, telling him Figure needs to take “immediate action to distance personnel from the robots.”

    Gruendel starts worrying, the suit says, that near-misses are occurring, and that there’s no system in place to track them. And then:

    ”This conclusion was further evidenced by an instance where an employee was standing next to [a robot] and the [robot] malfunctioned and punched a refrigerator, narrowly missing the employee. The robot left a ¼-inch deep gash in the refrigerator’s stainless-steel door.”

    So Gruendel, as depicted in the suit, seems to pour everything into getting an emergency stop button added to the robot system in the workplace in order to protect the employees who have to be near it. The company seems to cooperate with the effort, and then more or less abandon it, the suit alleges. Also, a safety feature allegedly gets axed around this time because someone doesn’t like how it looks.

    Between mid August and early September, the suit alleges that Gruendel’s authority within the company degrades, and he’s finally fired by the same guy who had praised him and given him a raise earlier that summer.

    You can read the whole filing for yourself here.

    As CNBC notes, Figure’s valuation has grown 15-fold since last year when it received capital injections from Nvidia, Jeff Bezos, and Microsoft. A funding round this year from Parkway Venture Capital places the company’s value at $39 billion.

    As evidenced by the viral reaction to the more recent Neo robot from 1x technologies, there seems to be a race to bring household humanoid robots to market. And there are, of course, bubble concerns accompanying this gold rush-style corporate mindset. In September, roboticist and iRobot founder Rodney Brooks wrote an essay claiming that “today’s humanoid robots will not learn how to be dexterous despite the hundreds of millions, or perhaps many billions of dollars, being donated by VCs and major tech companies to pay for their training.” 

    Gizmodo reached out to Figure for additional comments about the allegations in this suit, and will update if we hear back. 

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  • Trump Administration Sues California Over Giving In-State Tuition to Immigrants in US Illegally

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    SAN DIEGO (AP) — The Trump administration has sued California for providing in-state college tuition, scholarships, and state-funded financial aid to students who do not have legal status to be in the United States.

    The lawsuit, filed Thursday in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California, alleges the practice harms U.S. citizens and encourages illegal immigration. Among the defendants are the state, top state officials, and the state’s two public university systems, the University of California and California State.

    President Donald Trump’s administration has filed similar lawsuits against policies in other states, including Illinois, Oklahoma, Minnesota, Kentucky and Texas. Half the country now has similar laws to California’s.

    In June, after the administration sued, Texas ended its decades-old law. And Florida last year scrapped its law that allowed in-state tuition for high school graduates who weren’t in the country legally.

    Supporters of the state tuition breaks argue that they don’t violate federal law if they provide the same rates to U.S. citizens in the same circumstances — meaning they are residents of the state and graduates of one of its high schools. The California Dream Act also allows such students to apply for state-funded financial aid.

    Many of the students were brought to the U.S. by their parents when they were children, and supporters of the laws say they are as much a part of their communities as U.S. citizens.

    It is the latest action by Trump’s administration since he issued executive orders in February directing federal agencies to stop public benefits from going to immigrants living in the U.S. illegally and to challenge state and local policies seen as favoring those immigrants over some citizens. The lawsuit argues that the Republican president’s orders enforce federal immigration laws.

    “California is illegally discriminating against American students and families by offering exclusive tuition benefits for non-citizens,” Attorney General Pamela Bondi said in a statement. “This marks our third lawsuit against California in one week — we will continue bringing litigation against California until the state ceases its flagrant disregard for federal law.”

    The University of California defended its decades-old in-state tuition policy.

    “While we will, of course, comply with the law as determined by the courts, we believe our policies and practices are consistent with current legal standards,” it said in a statement.

    The lawsuit comes weeks after the California Supreme Court let stand a lower-court ruling that the University of California’s policy barring students without legal status in the U.S. from campus jobs is discriminatory and must be reconsidered.

    University system officials had warned that the decision would put them in a precarious position as they negotiate with the Trump administration after the withdrawal of federal research funds.

    The UC is dealing with federal grant suspensions and a White House demand that it pay a $1 billion fine over allegations including antisemitism and the illegal consideration of race in admitting students to its Los Angeles campus.

    The California State University system is the nation’s largest and among its most diverse, with more than 460,000 students. More than a quarter of undergraduates are first-generation college students, according to the university system.

    The University of California serves about 300,000 students.

    Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

    Photos You Should See – Nov. 2025

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  • Federal jury awards $80 million to estate of NY man wrongfully convicted of murder

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    BUFFALO, N.Y. — A federal jury awarded $80 million Wednesday to the estate of a Buffalo man whose conviction in a 1976 murder was overturned after he spent nearly a quarter century in prison.

    Darryl Boyd, one of the group of Black teenagers arrested for the murder of William Crawford sometimes called the Buffalo Five, filed the lawsuit in 2022 seeking damages and alleging Buffalo Police investigators and Erie County prosecutors had failed to disclose more than a dozen pieces of evidence that pointed to other suspects. The lawsuit also alleged investigators coerced witnesses to give false statements pointing to Boyd, and that prosecutors committed summation misconduct — making inappropriate or false comments in their closing arguments.

    “If not for the misdeeds of Defendants, Mr. Boyd would not have been prosecuted, convicted, and imprisoned in violation of his constitutional rights, and would not have spent 45 years asserting his innocence and fighting for his liberty in connection with a crime that he did not commit,” Boyd’s attorneys wrote in the lawsuit.

    A spokesman for Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz said the county extends its sympathy to Boyd’s family, but he believes the $80 million award is egregious and the county plans to appeal.

    After a two-and-a-half week trial, the federal jury in the Western District of New York took about an hour to return the massive verdict — billed by attorneys as one of the largest monetary awards for a wrongful conviction case in the U.S.

    After Boyd was released from prison, he spent another two decades on parole before his conviction was vacated by a judge in 2021. The county opted not to retry Boyd or John Walker Jr., whose conviction in the case was also vacated.

    A third man convicted in the killing, Darren Gibson, was released from prison in 2008 and died a year later. One of the other teens was acquitted at trial, and the fifth teen testified against the others, which Boyd’s attorneys said newly released case files show was coerced.

    Both Boyd and Walker had settled their case against the city of Buffalo for about $4.7 million each. Walker won a $28 million verdict against the county earlier this year, which the county has appealed.

    “He lost his whole adult life to this wrongful conviction. The jury heard just how many years he was suffering in maximum security prison. All the terrible things you assume happen in prison, happened in prison,” said Ross Firsenbaum, an attorney with WilmerHale, one of three firms representing Boyd’s estate.

    Firsenbaum said being released on parole was just as hard for Boyd who suffered from PTSD, anxiety and other ailments. He struggled to keep or get jobs because of the conviction and eventually began self-medicating and developed a substance abuse addiction.

    Boyd was diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer and died in 2023 before the trial could be held. His mother and son attended the trial every day, Firsenbaum said.

    “The (county) argued his substance use was the cause of his problems, not the 27 or so years he spent wrongfully in prison,” Firsenbaum said. “And that’s offensive. And the jury recognized that and responded with this verdict.”

    He added that the attorneys had proven there was a pattern and practice of misconduct at the time of the convictions, not just a misdeed by one employee.

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