SANTA ANA, Calif. — The ex-wife of a Los Angeles Angels employee at the center of the overdose death of one of the team’s star pitchers will face more cross examination Tuesday after testifying she saw players and clubhouse attendants passing pills and alcohol while partying on the team plane.
Camela Kay told jurors in a Southern California courtroom on Monday she had traveled on the Angels team plane with her then-husband Eric Kay, who was convicted of providing drugs that led to the 2019 death of Angels pitcher Tyler Skaggs. She said she had seen players partying, playing card games, gambling and drinking.
“They’re treated like kings,” Camela Kay said of her observations on the plane. “I had seen them passing out pills or drinking alcohol excessively.”
The testimony came in a trial for a wrongful-death lawsuit filed by Skaggs’ family contending the Angels should be held responsible for letting Eric Kay, then the team’s communications director, stay on the job and access players while he was addicted to and dealing drugs. The Angels have said team officials did not know Skaggs was taking drugs and that any drug activity involving him and Eric Kay happened on their own time and in the privacy of the player’s hotel room.
Camela Kay testified she told an Angels employee that her then-husband may have been intending to sell drugs to Skaggs on at least one occasion. That was based on information Eric Kay told his sister during a hospital stay for a drug overdose, she said. Camela Kay said the sister then told her, and she told an Angels employee.
Defense attorneys for the Angels began their cross examination of Camela Kay on Monday and questioned her direct knowledge of Eric Kay’s interactions with Skaggs.
Camela Kay said she was concerned that her then-husband had a drug problem after observing his erratic behavior, and family members mounted an intervention with him in 2017. The next day, she said, two team officials came over to speak with him and one of them pulled a series of plastic baggies containing white pills from the bedroom, which fueled her concerns that Eric Kay was not only struggling with substance abuse but selling drugs to make money.
“Him being in the clubhouse with the players, my guess would be he is supplying to them,” she said.
Camela Kay also described how her then-husband was driven home by an Angels employee after he was dancing in his office, shirtless, at the stadium in 2019. After he got home, she found a bottle with blue pills inside and called police to press him to go to the hospital, where doctors diagnosed an overdose involving six different drugs, she said.
He was hospitalized for three days and then went to rehab, which was communicated in text messages between Camela Kay and team officials shown to jurors.
She said her sister-in-law told her after visiting Eric Kay in the hospital that he told her the pills were for Skaggs. She said she found text messages on his phone about him getting his “candy” at the stadium and relayed the information about both to Angels officials.
She said she was concerned about Eric Kay heading on the road with the Angels after completing a six-week stint in rehab, adding he was still acting erratic and she suspected he was abusing a drug meant to treat opioid addiction.
After Skaggs’ death, Camela Kay filed for divorce, according to Orange County court records.
The trial comes more than six years after Skaggs, then 27, was found dead in the suburban Dallas hotel room where he was staying as the Angels were supposed to open a four-game series against the Texas Rangers. A coroner’s report said Skaggs choked to death on his vomit and a toxic mix of alcohol, fentanyl and oxycodone was found in his system.
Eric Kay was convicted in 2022 of providing Skaggs with a counterfeit oxycodone pill laced with fentanyl and sentenced to 22 years in prison. His federal criminal trial in Texas included testimony from five MLB players who said they received oxycodone from him at various times from 2017 to 2019, the years he was accused of obtaining pills and giving them to Angels players.
Skaggs had been a regular in the Angels’ starting rotation since late 2016 and struggled with injuries repeatedly during that time. He previously played for the Arizona Diamondbacks.
Skaggs’ family is seeking $118 million in lost earnings, compensation for pain and suffering and punitive damages against the team.
After Skaggs’ death, the MLB reached a deal with the players association to start testing for opioids and to refer those who test positive to the treatment board.
Now a movie about the saga has been accused of stretching the truth too far.
The producers of “The Lost King” on Monday agreed to pay damages to an academic who sued for libel over his on-screen depiction.
Richard Taylor said he suffered “enormous distress and embarrassment” because of the 2022 film, which centers on amateur historian Philippa Langley’s quest to find the king’s remains despite what the movie depicts as indifference and condescension from the academic world.
A judge at a preliminary hearing last year said the film portrayed Taylor, the former deputy registrar at the University of Leicester, as “smug, unduly dismissive and patronizing.”
The case had been due to go to a full trial, but on Monday a lawyer for Taylor announced that the dispute had been settled. Attorney William Bennett said the defendants — actor-writer Steve Coogan, Coogan’s production company Baby Cow and Pathé Productions — had agreed to pay Taylor “substantial damages” and legal costs. The amount was not disclosed.
The defendants said they would also add an on-screen clarification at the start of the film stating that the depiction is “fictional and does not represent the actions of the real Mr. Taylor.”
Taylor, who is now chief operating officer at Loughborough University, said the settlement was vindication after “a long and grueling battle.”
“There have been moments over the last three years when I thought, when Philippa Langley approached me for the university’s support, I perhaps should have put the request in the bin,” he said. “But I didn’t, and I think I was right not to do that.”
Coogan, who co-wrote “The Lost King” and played Langley’s ex-husband, insisted that “this film is a true story, Philippa Langley’s story. That is the story I wanted to tell, and I am happy I did.
“If it wasn’t for Philippa Langley, Richard III would still be lying under a car park in Leicester,” Coogan said. “It is her name that will be remembered in relation to the discovery of the lost king, long after Richard Taylor has faded into obscurity.”
University of Leicester archaeologists worked with Langley in 2012 to locate Richard’s skeleton in the city in central England, more than five centuries after he was killed at the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485, the last act of a civil conflict known as the Wars of the Roses.
The victor took the throne as King Henry VII, and under the Tudor dynasty he founded, Richard was vilified. William Shakespeare depicted him as an evil, hunchbacked usurper who murdered his two young nephews because they were rivals for the crown.
Some historians, including Langley, believe Richard was unfairly maligned, arguing that he was a relatively enlightened monarch whose short reign between 1483 and 1485 saw reforms including the introduction of the right to bail and the lifting of restrictions on books and printing presses.
Scientists from the University of Leicester worked to confirm the remains belonged to the medieval king, and in 2015 Richard was reburied with royal ceremony in a tomb at Leicester Cathedral.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Exxon Mobil Corporation is suing the state of California over a pair of 2023 climate disclosure laws that the company says infringe upon its free speech rights, namely by forcing it to embrace the message that large companies are uniquely to blame for climate change.
The oil and gas corporation based in Texas filed its complaint Friday in the U.S. Eastern District Court for California. It asks the court to prevent the laws from going into effect next year.
In its complaint, ExxonMobil says it has for years publicly disclosed its greenhouse gas emissions and climate-related business risks, but it fundamentally disagrees with the state’s new reporting requirements.
The company would have to use “frameworks that place disproportionate blame on large companies like ExxonMobil” for the purpose of shaming such companies, the complaint states.
Under Senate Bill 253, large businesses will have to disclose a wide range of planet-warming emissions, including both direct and indirect emissions such as the costs of employee business travel and product transport.
ExxonMobil takes issue with the methodology required by the state, which would focus on a company’s emissions worldwide and therefore fault businesses just for being large as opposed to being efficient, the complaint states.
The second law, Senate Bill 261, requires companies making more than $500 million annually to disclose the financial risks that climate change poses to their businesses and how they plan to address them.
The company said in its complaint that the law would require it to speculate “about unknowable future developments” and post such speculations on its website.
A spokesperson for the office of California Gov. Gavin Newsom said in an email that it was “truly shocking that one of the biggest polluters on the planet would be opposed to transparency.”
As the financial world approaches a possible AI and tech bubble, you might be wondering, at what point does a bad business call about AI become a reason for your investors to sue you?
This may seem like a crazy notion. If you think so, you probably haven’t heard of the shareholder case against Citigroup in 2009. After the collapse of the market in 2008, shareholders sued the board of directors of Citigroup for breach of duty for allowing the company to take on excessive subprime mortgage risk prior to the collapse, resulting in significant losses.
Taken to court
A lawsuit against your company is never great news. In this case, not only had Citigroup suffered economic losses in the 2008 financial crisis, but the shareholders were also suing the company and the board for a lot more. At the time, the situation didn’t look good for Citigroup. The mob rule mentality and the legal community were looking for scapegoats. The investment bank Lehman Brothers had been allowed to collapse. Citigroup was in a tight spot.
The case of the Delaware Chancery Court came down to the legal notion of “business judgment.” Was the business judgment of the Citigroup board of directors sufficient or was it actionable? As a media attorney and professor at USC Gould School of Law, I teach my students and advise my clients, who are executives and board members, about the business judgment rule. I’m also working on a new book—TILT the Room, coming out in 2026—which explains how you can use timing, influence, leverage, and trust to better negotiate.
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What is the business judgment rule?
The business judgment rule protects corporate directors and officers from personal liability for bad business decisions. This is only true provided that the decisions were made in good faith, with the same care a reasonably prudent person would have used, and with the reasonable belief that the director or directors were acting in the best interests of the corporation.
The courts implement the business judgment rule with the idea that business decisions are better determined in the boardroom than the courtroom. This also helps keep the caseload down in the court system. So, what did this mean in the case of Citigroup? What does this mean for you and your company if you happen to be making business decisions about AI tech before a possible AI tech bubble?
The case of Citigroup
In the case of Citigroup, the shareholders claimed that the directors breached their “duty of care” by failing to monitor the bank’s risk profile and failing to control risk-taking by the bank. The evidence included “red flags” before the financial collapse that should have guided the directors’ business judgment.
One of these flags was raised by New York Times columnist and noted economist Paul Krugman, who pointed out in 2005 that there was a potential bubble in the market. Second, there was the incident of Ameriquest Mortgage closing 229 offices and dismissing 3,800 employees in 2006. Ameriquest was one of the largest subprime mortgage lenders in the United States, and it went under in 2007. With evidence like that, the case didn’t look good for Citigroup.
Hindsight is 20/20
However, one of the key aspects of any evaluation of the business judgment rule is something known as “ex-ante” review. This basically means there is no Monday-morning-quarterbacking in the law when it comes to business judgment. The Delaware Chancery Court evaluated the Citigroup business decision based on the information at the time, not after the fact, when it turned out to be bad.
Though the Citigroup board of directors had access to information about deteriorating market conditions, that didn’t mean they knew where the market conditions were going. It also didn’t that those conditions would lead to the worst financial crisis of the 21st century.
When the Chancery Court looked at the evidence available to Citigroup directors at the time, they determined the directors did not act in bad faith. They were acting in the best interests of the company, which ultimately was to make a profit. Citigroup and its board won that case because it had made a business judgment in good faith, which was an informed decision and ultimately determined to be in the best interests of the company.
So, as you consider your own AI tech business decisions in the face of chatter in the media and on the internet about a potential AI tech bubble, ask yourself this question: Are you and the executives and board of your company informed, acting in good faith, and doing so in the best interests of the corporation?
The business judgment rule could save your career, finances, and long-term viability of your company.
The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com.
On Wednesday, Reddit filed a lawsuit against AI company Perplexity and three other companies alleging the AI company illegally scraped Reddit data through the use of data scraping companies based in Europe and Texas.
“AI companies are locked in an arms race for quality human content—and that pressure has fueled an industrial-scale ‘data laundering’ economy,” said Ben Lee, Reddit’s Chief Legal Officer, in a statement to Inc and other publications. “Reddit is a prime target because it’s one of the largest and most dynamic collections of human conversation ever created.”
Reddit accused three data scraping companies Oxylabs UAB, AWM Proxy, and SerpApi of illegally scraping Reddit data and that Perplexity is a “willing customer of at least one of its co-defendants.” The lawsuit also accused Perplexity of operating “akin to a “North Korean hacker.” It also alleged that AWM Proxy was a “former Russian botnet.”
Perplexity responded to Reddit’s lawsuit with a Reddit post on Wednesday night. In the post, Perplexity denied the allegations and said the suit was “a show of force in Reddit’s training data negotiations with Google and OpenAI.” Reddit is currently renegotiating licensing deals with Google and OpenAI, and exploring a dynamic pricing model for licensing its content. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman owns an 8.7% stake in Reddit.
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Perplexity also said that the company cannot sign a content licensing agreement because they “don’t train their AI models on content” and that it is already “lawfully accessing Reddit data.”
“We strongly disagree with Reddit’s allegations and intend to vigorously defend ourselves in court,” says Alex Barron, a spokesperson for SerpApi. “SerpApi stands firmly behind its business model and conduct.”
Denas Grybauskas, Oxylabs’ Chief Governance and Strategy Officer, says Reddit made no attempt to contact them before the lawsuit was filed. “Oxylabs’ position is that no company should claim ownership of public data that does not belong to them,” Grybauskas says. “It is possible that it is just an attempt to sell the same public data at an inflated price.”
AWM Proxy could not be reached for comment.
In June, Reddit sued Anthropic, another major AI company, over allegations that Anthropic stole data from Reddit to train its AI model.
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) — NASCAR and two of its teams returned to court Thursday after two failed days of mediation and resumed their bitter antitrust fight with a hearing that included team owner Michael Jordan laughing in disbelief at some of the testimony as the two sides hurtle toward a trial.
“Today’s hearing confirmed the facts of NASCAR’s monopolistic practices and showed NASCAR for who they are — retaliatory bullies who would rather focus on personal attacks and distract from the facts,” Jeffrey Kessler, who represents the two teams, said afterward. “My clients have never been more united and committed to ensuring a fair and competitive sport for all teams, partners, drivers and fans. We’re going to trial to hold NASCAR accountable.”
The lawsuit was filed a year ago by 23XI Racing, co-owned by Jordan and three-time Daytona 500 winner Denny Hamlin, and Bob Jenkins-owned Front Row Racing. They are the only two organizations out of 15 to refuse to sign extensions for new charter agreements following more than two years of negotiations. Charters are at the heart of NASCAR’s business model, guaranteeing revenue and access to weekly races, and without them both teams say they will almost surely go out of business.
Other teams have called for a settlement to clear the air and move the stock car series forward, but three mediation sessions have apparently gone nowhere and the hearing laid bare how far apart they are. The trial is scheduled for Dec. 1.
U.S. District Judge Kenneth Bell and Jeffrey Mishkin, a former executive vice president and chief legal officer of the NBA, both participated in mediation Monday and Tuesday and Bell opened the session by thanking both sides for working in good faith during the sessions. NASCAR wants Bell to throw the lawsuit out and the hearing focused on the series’ bid to narrow the scope of damages the two teams say they are owed.
NASCAR has accused 23XI and FRM of manipulating other teams and conducting themselves with “classic cartel behavior, ultimately because they received less than they would have” under charter extensions signed late last year. It struggled to make those arguments Thursday.
NASCAR repeatedly insisted that teams are free to compete in both IndyCar and F1, failing to disclose that entry into F1 is nearly impossible and the financials of IndyCar are simply not even close to the value of competing in the stock car series. Kessler likened a NASCAR move to IndyCar to a Major League Baseball team moving to the minors.
“Experts found that the (IndyCar) prize money and TV ratings were too low to make them a minor league team,” Kessler argued. “Michael Jordan, if you put a gun to his head and said you have to join IndyCar, it better be a pretty big gun.”
NASCAR also mischaracterized Chip Ganassi Racing’s sale of its NASCAR team to Trackhouse Racing ahead of the 2021 season as an opportunity for Ganassi — whose name was repeatedly mispronounced by NASCAR attorney Christopher Yates — to reinvest in IndyCar and expand that program to four cars. Ganassi has long run three to four cars in IndyCar and for more than three decades has been considered one of the top two teams in IndyCar.
Jordan multiple times laughed and smiled at NASCAR’s claims, and at one point Hamlin and Jenkins vehemently shook their heads at NASCAR’s assertion that it pays its teams a higher percentage of revenue than F1 does to its teams. Jordan did not speak with reporters afterward.
The original charters lasted from 2016 through 2020 and were automatically renewed to continue through Dec. 31, 2024. NASCAR contends they have added more than $1 billion in equity for its teams but owners have pushed for changes.
23XI and FRM initially won a preliminary injunction to be recognized as chartered teams this season while the case played out, but that was overturned and the combined six cars have competed as “open” teams as the season nears its season finale Nov. 2.
Kessler argued that damages in the case should date to the 2021 season because of 28 exclusionary items he says prevent NASCAR teams from competing in any motorsports series that closely resembles their version of stock car racing. NASCAR conceded that there was at least one exclusionary item in that charter agreement that began in 2021.
Bell was supposed to hear testimony from expert witnesses but scheduled two November court dates, two weeks after Hamlin will race for the Cup Series title in suburban Phoenix.
DETROIT — DETROIT (AP) — The state of Michigan has acquired a life ring that washed ashore 50 years ago from the Edmund Fitzgerald, a rare artifact that strangely became part of a settlement in a lawsuit that had nothing to do with the famous shipwreck.
Taxpayers are paying $600,000 to settle the lawsuit by Larry Orr, who accused a state police officer of violating his rights during a sexual abuse investigation that was discredited, court records show.
Orr, in turn, agreed to give up the life ring, which he owned. U.S. Magistrate Judge David Grand said it was an “unusual settlement conference” when lawyers appeared in court on Oct. 8 and put the deal on the record.
The Associated Press reached out to the state police this week to try to learn why it wanted the life ring and who had authorized Lt. David Busacca’s attorney to bargain for it.
“Upon learning the details of the settlement, we are not comfortable with the life preserver being included and will be reaching out to Mr. Orr’s attorney,” spokesperson Shanon Banner said in an email Thursday.
Banner wouldn’t answer follow-up questions. The state already has the orange ring.
Orr found it on the Lake Superior shore after the Fitzgerald sank during an incredible storm in November 1975. All 29 men on the ore vessel died. Canadian singer-songwriter Gordon Lightfoot memorialized the disaster with an iconic ballad, “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.”
Orr had planned to auction the ring, figuring it might attract more attention around the 50th anniversary in a few weeks, said his attorney Shannon Smith.
Busacca apparently knew that Orr had one, and it was suddenly brought up during talks to settle Orr’s lawsuit against him, Smith said.
She said it probably represented half the value of the $600,000 deal reached over allegations of police misconduct.
“Are we at a mediation for a wrongful prosecution or an estate sale?” Smith said she wondered.
Busacca’s lawyer, Audrey Forbush, declined to comment when reached by AP. Orr, who is in his 70s, also declined to comment.
The life ring had been on loan to the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula until Orr retrieved it this year.
“They’re pretty unusual,” museum director Bruce Lynn said. “I don’t honestly have any idea how many are out there.”
SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — A lawsuit by actor Alec Baldwin alleging malicious prosecution in the 2021 fatal shooting of a cinematographer on the set of the Western movie “Rust” has been reinstated and moved to federal court by the defendants.
Baldwin initially filed the lawsuit in state court in January, claiming civil rights violations and seeking damages after a charge of involuntary manslaughter against the actor was dismissed at trial in 2024 on allegations that police and prosecutors withheld evidence from the defense.
A petition to move the malicious prosecution case to federal court was filed Monday by the defendants — special prosecutor Kari Morrissey and Santa Fe District Attorney Mary Carmack-Altwies, along with three investigators from the Santa Fe County sheriff’s office and the county board of commissioners.
The change of court venue raises the stakes in Baldwin’s yearslong conflict with New Mexico authorities. Here are some things to know.
Baldwin, the lead actor and co-producer for “Rust,” was pointing a gun at cinematographer Halyna Hutchins during a rehearsal on a movie set outside Santa Fe in October 2021 when the revolver went off, killing Hutchins and wounding director Joel Souza.
Baldwin has said he pulled back the hammer — but not the trigger — and the revolver fired.
Few people testified at Baldwin’s July trial before it was upended by revelations that ammunition was brought into the Santa Fe County sheriff’s office in March 2024 by a man who said it could be related to Hutchins’ killing.
Prosecutors said they deemed the ammo unrelated and unimportant, while Baldwin’s lawyers say investigators “buried” the evidence in a separate case file and filed a successful motion to dismiss. A judge threw out the charge against Baldwin and later refused a request from prosecutors to reconsider.
“Rust” movie weapons supervisor Hannah Gutierrez-Reed has fulfilled a 1.5 year prison sentence on an involuntary manslaughter conviction in Hutchins’ death in a jury trial. An appeal of the conviction to a higher court has been initiated.
“Rust” assistant director David Halls pleaded no context to unsafe handling of a firearm and was sentenced to six months of probation.
A settlement agreement was reached in 2022 in a wrongful-death lawsuit against Baldwin and other “Rust” producers by Matthew Hutchins, widower of Halyna Hutchins, and their son.
But the parents and younger sister of Hutchins are still pursuing damages and compensation from Baldwin and “Rust” producers in New Mexico civil court. Those claims could result in a deposition by Baldwin under oath in November, according to recent court documents.
The allegations in Baldwin’s tort claim include defamation, with his attorneys saying that prosecutors and investigators targeted the actor and co-producer for professional or political gain.
Defendants say it is a matter for federal authorities to resolve under terms of the Constitution and other U.S. laws.
Baldwin’s lawsuit for damages initially lingered with little activity, was dismissed in July, only to be reinstated in September at Baldwin’s request. Attorneys for the “Rust” lead actor and co-producer say they have approached state and county officials about the prospects for a settlement.
Prosecutors and an attorney for Baldwin did not immediately respond to requests Wednesday for comment.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Social media platform Reddit sued the artificial intelligence company Perplexity AI and three other entities on Wednesday, alleging their involvement in an “industrial-scale, unlawful” economy to “scrape” the comments of millions of Reddit users for commercial gain.
Reddit’s lawsuit in a New York federal court takes aim at San Francisco-based Perplexity, maker of an AI chatbot and “answer engine” that competes with Google, ChatGPT and others in online search.
Also named in the lawsuit are Lithuanian data-scraping company Oxylabs UAB, a web domain called AWMProxy that Reddit describes as a “former Russian botnet,” and Texas-based startup SerpApi.
It’s the second such lawsuit from Reddit since it sued another major AI company, Anthropic, in June.
But the lawsuit filed Wednesday is different in the way that it confronts not just an AI company but the lesser-known services the AI industry relies on to acquire online writings needed to train AI chatbots.
“Scrapers bypass technological protections to steal data, then sell it to clients hungry for training material. Reddit is a prime target because it’s one of the largest and most dynamic collections of human conversation ever created,” said Ben Lee, Reddit’s chief legal officer, in a statement Wednesday.
Perplexity said it has not yet received the lawsuit but “will always fight vigorously for users’ rights to freely and fairly access public knowledge. Our approach remains principled and responsible as we provide factual answers with accurate AI, and we will not tolerate threats against openness and the public interest.”
Oxylabs and SerpAPI didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment Wednesday. AWMProxy could not immediately be reached for comment.
Reddit compares the companies it is suing to “would-be bank robbers” who can’t get into the bank vault, so they break into the armored truck instead. The lawsuit alleges they are evading Reddit’s own anti-scraping measures while also ”circumventing Google’s controls and scraping Reddit content directly from Google’s search engine results.”
Lee said that because they’re unable to scrape Reddit directly, “they mask their identities, hide their locations, and disguise their web scrapers to steal Reddit content from Google Search. Perplexity is a willing customer of at least one of these scrapers, choosing to buy stolen data rather than enter into a lawful agreement with Reddit itself.”
Much like its lawsuit against Anthropic, maker of the chatbot Claude, Reddit claims that Perplexity has accessed Reddit’s content despite being asked not to do so.
Reddit made a similar argument in its lawsuit against Anthropic. That case was initially filed in California Superior Court but was later moved to federal court and has a hearing scheduled for January.
Along with digitized books and news articles, websites such as Wikipedia and Reddit are deep troves of written materials that can help teach an AI assistant the patterns of human language.
Reddit has previously entered licensing agreements with Google, OpenAI and other companies that are paying to be able to train their AI systems on the public commentary of Reddit’s more than 100 million daily users.
The licensing deals helped the 20-year-old online platform raise money ahead of its Wall Street debut as a publicly traded company last year.
NEW YORK — NEW YORK (AP) — A former Amazon delivery driver has filed a lawsuit accusing a federal civil right agency of abruptly and unlawfully abandoning her sex discrimination case and others like it following an executive order from President Donald Trump.
The lawsuit filed by the former Colorado driver demands that the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission resume investigating her claims that Amazon discriminates against female drivers by failing to provide adequate bathroom breaks.
The lawsuit is the latest example of workers and others scrambling to find recourse as federal agencies abandon their cases in response to Trump’s shake-up of the country’s civil rights enforcement infrastructure.
The EEOC, which enforces civil rights laws in the workplace, decided last month to discharge any complaints based on “disparate impact liability,” which holds that policies that are neutral on their face can be discriminatory if they impose unnecessary barriers that disadvantage different demographic groups.
The EEOC’s decision came in response to an executive order in April directing federal agencies to deprioritize the use of disparate impact liability. The Trump administration argues that disparate impact assumes any racial or gender imbalance in workplaces is the result of discrimination and leads to practices that undermine meritocracy.
The former driver, Leah Cross, filed a motion Tuesday asking the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to stay the EEOC’s new rule prohibiting investigations and enjoin the agency from enforcing it.
The EEOC has already dropped its sole lawsuit arising from a disparate impact liability charge, a case alleging that the Sheetz convenience store chain’s background check practices discriminated against Black, Native American and multiracial job applicants.
Separately, the agency has dropped lawsuits on behalf of transgender workers and subjected new complaints to a higher level of scrutiny, following Trump’s executive order declaring that the government would only recognize two unchangeable sexes.
It’s unclear how many worker complaints involving disparate impact liability or LGBTQ+ workers have been sidelined by the EEOC. In her lawsuit, Cross demanded that the EEOC, which handled more than 88,000 discrimination charges in 2024, give the court a list of the disparate impact liability charges it has shut down.
The EEOC referred questions about the lawsuit to the Department of Justice, which declined to comment.
Cross, who worked as a driver from August to November 2022, filed her EEOC charge two years ago, arguing that the company’s delivery schedules make it nearly impossible for drivers to find time to use bathrooms. An EEOC investigator told her lawyers last month it was closing her case because of the disparate impact rule, according to the lawsuit.
Amazon declined to comment on Cross’ case but referred The AP to its policies around its drivers, who deliver packages in Amazon-branded vehicles but work indirectly for the company through third-party companies called Delivery Service Partners. Amazon says its technology builds routes that ensure time for two 15-minute rest breaks and a 30-minute meal break. The company also said its Amazon Delivery app provides a list for drivers to see nearby restroom facilities and gas stations.
But in an interview with The AP, Cross said it was so hard for to her stop for breaks that she had to pack a Shewee — a portable urination device for women — as well as a change of pants “in case I ended up accidentally urinating on myself.”
Cross’ lawsuit against the EEOC argues that the agency is legally obligated to investigate all charges based on disparate impact liability, which Congress codified in the 1991 Civil Rights Act.
The EEOC “isn’t allowed to throw away an entire category of charges without looking into their facts just because the president doesn’t like the type of discrimination those charges are based on,” said Karla Gilbride, an attorney at Public Citizen Litigation Group, one of the organizations that filed the lawsuit.
Gilbride was the EEOC’s general counsel until she was fired in January along with two Democratic commissioners in a purge that cleared the way for the Trump administration to root out diversity and inclusion programs, roll back protections for transgender workers and elevate religious rights. ________
The Associated Press’ women in the workforce and state government coverage receives financial support from Pivotal Ventures. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.
HONOLULU (AP) — A lawsuit filed Monday in U.S. court in Honolulu challenges an admissions policy of a wealthy and prestigious private school that gives preference to applicants who are Native Hawaiian.
A leading opponent of affirmation action launched a campaign last month to test the policy’s legality and stop Kamehameha Schools from favoring Hawaiians. It’s part of a movement to expand the legal definition of racial discrimination in education, which comes on the heels of a Supreme Court ruling against affirmative action in college admissions and is bolstered by the Trump administration’s war against diversity, equity and inclusion.
Now, they’re targeting scholarships, academic programs and admissions policies tied directly or indirectly to race.
The lawsuit was expected after Students for Fair Admissions — led by Edward Blum, a leading opponent of affirmative action — set up a website posing the question, “Is your child barred from Kamehameha Schools based on ancestry?”
The lawsuit doesn’t include any named or anonymous plaintiffs other than Students for Fair Admissions. But the complaint says the group has members who are “injured by Kamehameha’s discrimination,” and members who are “ready and able” to apply to the private school system, which has an endowment valued at more than $15 billion.
A Kamehameha spokesperson didn’t immediately respond to an email from The Associated Press seeking comment on the lawsuit.
Trustees said previously they are confident the policy aligns with established law.
Kamehameha Schools was founded by the will of Bernice Pauahi Bishop, the great-granddaughter of King Kamehameha I. When she died in 1884, her will directed the establishment of schools that give preference to Native Hawaiians.
Each year, the number of applications exceeds the number of spaces by as much as 17 to 1, depending on the campus and grade, according to the Kamehameha website. Alumni and parents of current students say a Kamehameha education is highly desirable because it’s affordable, offers stellar academics and is grounded in the culture of Hawaii’s Indigenous people.
“Nothing about training future leaders, or preserving Hawaii’s unique culture, requires Kamehameha to block its students from learning beside children of different ancestries — Asian, black, Hispanic, or white,” the lawsuit said.
The comment shows the group behind the lawsuit doesn’t understand what is means to be Hawaiian or multiracial, said state Sen. Jarrett Keohokalole, who is running for Congress.
He noted that his mother, Marilyn Stewart, is a white woman from Medford, Oregon, making him Scottish, German, French, Tahitian and Hawaiian.
The challenge to Kamehameha Schools is coming from “tone deaf outsiders who know nothing about Hawaii,” said Keohokalole, who applied in 1995 for seventh grade, and two years later for high school, but was rejected and graduated from a Catholic boys school.
There’s an understanding among Hawaii residents that only students with Hawaiian blood will be admitted. Many see the policy as a way to remedy disparities stemming from U.S. colonization and the 1893 overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom by a group of American business owners.
The lawsuit says that if not for the admissions policy, there are non-Hawaiian families who would apply for reasons including: “bad experiences with local public schools,” Kamehameha’s “high-quality programs” and for its networking and career opportunities “that would benefit the daughter for the rest of her life.”
This isn’t the first time Kamehameha has had to defend its admissions policy.
More than 15,000 people protested after a 2005 ruling by a panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals struck down the policy of restricting admission to Hawaiians, ruling it violated federal civil rights law. Kamehameha sought a rehearing.
The following year, the court upheld the policy. Kamehameha later settled with the family of the white student who brought the case when he was denied admission.
According to the recent lawsuit, that settlement was $7 million.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
About 260 sexual abuse lawsuits were paused when the Catholic Diocese of Santa Rosa filed for bankruptcy in 2023. That has been a frustration for survivors who want the actions of their abusers, and the failings of the powerful institution that obscured the crimes, dragged into the daylight.
Now, it looks like a few of those survivors may have their days in court.
The judge in the bankruptcy, Charles Novack of the Northern District of California, recently put a small set of lawsuits on the path to trial, where they are expected to set a baseline for the diocese’s potential financial liability.
It’s an important step, those involved say, in pushing insurance companies to enter into a global settlement with the diocese and the dozens of people who say they were harmed by predatory church figures. And it could offer a rare chance for claimants to speak openly of their abuse in a courtroom, and to gather additional information through the legal discovery process.
When cases are “quieted” by bankruptcy, said Dan McNevin, who is on the board of directors of the advocacy group Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, or SNAP, it means “the public won’t have a clear read on who enabled the abuse, who covered it up and whether those people are still in power and behaving in that fashion.”
When McNevin was molested in the Oakland Diocese, he said, the bishop there told him his abuser, the Rev. James Clark, had no prior record. After he sued, McNevin found out Clark had in fact been convicted of a sex crime before moving into his parish.
“His file was sanitized. There was no record of his probation,” McNevin said. “We got the information by deposing the former chancellor of the diocese. So discovery is really important.”
Little has been revealed publicly about the cases Novack is allowing to proceed.
Should any of the plaintiffs win those lawsuits, it’s likely funds recovered in judgment would be held in trust, said Jennifer Stein, an attorney with Jeff Anderson & Associates, a Los Angeles-based firm that has represented thousands of victims of predatory priests. That money would be distributed later among qualifying survivors.
The Santa Rosa Diocese, which oversees 42 parishes reaching from American Canyon in Napa County to Crescent City near the Oregon border, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in March 2023. Like Catholic dioceses across the U.S., the local jurisdiction said it was facing an existential threat from a massive wave of sex abuse suits.
Bishop Robert Vasa of the Catholic Diocese of Santa Rosa, Oct. 13, 2025. (Kent Porter / The Press Democrat)
Christopher Chung/The Press Democrat
Mike Tarvid filed a lawsuit against the Santa Rosa Catholic Diocese after harboring a secret for nearly 50 years involving his abuse at the hands of North Coast priest Gary Timmons. Photo taken in Santa Rosa on Dec. 12, 2022. (Christopher Chung/The Press Democrat)
Kent Porter/The Press Democrat
Father John Crews, the former executive director of the Hanna Boys Center in Sonoma Valley, was among 39 names released in 2019 by the Santa Rosa Diocese, listing those who committed child sexual abuse or were credibly accused of such crimes. Hanna Boys Center is a co-defendant in dozens of lawsuits against the Santa Rosa Diocese. Crews resigned in 2013, when he was first accused of child sex abuse by the widow of a man who had been assaulted at a Sebastopol church. He was last known to be in South Carolina. (Kent Porter/The Press Democrat)
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Bishop Robert Vasa of the Catholic Diocese of Santa Rosa, Oct. 13, 2025. (Kent Porter / The Press Democrat)
By that time, the Santa Rosa Diocese had been served with about 160 claims of sexual abuse under a 2019 state law that opened a three-year window for survivors 40 and older to file personal injury cases for past child sex abuse cases.
By August 2023, the diocese had paid out at least $35 million in settlements, dating back to the 1990s, at the onset of a painful worldwide reckoning with sexual abuse by clergy within the Catholic church.
In January 2019, the diocese released a list of 39 of its priests and bishops who committed sexual abuse and misconduct, or had been credibly accused of doing so, between the 1960s and the 2010s.
The efforts of survivors are now moving along two tracks. There is Novack’s courtroom, the setting for one of 17 bankruptcy cases nationwide involving Catholic dioceses, including six in California — Oakland, San Francisco and Sacramento among them. Another 20 dioceses have emerged from bankruptcy since 2005.
And there’s Judicial Council Coordinated Proceeding 5108, or JCCP 5108, which consolidates hundreds of lawsuits against multiple Catholic dioceses in Northern California. That proceeding is being administered in Alameda County Superior Court.
The decision by religious leaders to file for bankruptcy demonstrates the strength of the abuse cases, according to Stein. “They would not be taking such expensive, egregious measures if there weren’t fear of liability,” she said.
Bishop Robert F. Vasa of Santa Rosa, leader of the diocese since 2011, acknowledges the gravity of the threat.
“It’s absolutely no secret that sexual abuse lawsuits, even in the secular world, bring huge judgments in a court of law,” Vasa said. “So there’s no doubt in the case of the church they be equally large if not larger. But it’s beyond our scope to generate the money to pay for those. Regardless of whether it’s a $1 million judgment or a $2 million judgment, we don’t have the resources in a million years is to pay for those.”
Long list of co-defendants
A bankruptcy court exhibit filed in April offers detail on sites connected to the alleged abuse in the Santa Rosa Diocese.
The largest share of complaints, 60 in all, name Hanna Boys Center, the 80-year-old residential school and service campus for at-risk youth that has sought to remake itself with a retooled mission even as new suits piled up alleging long-ago abuse.
But the list of diocesan sites is long and varied.
Camp St. Michael, an outdoor ministry in Mendocino County that ceased operation in 2011, is named in 25 claims. The diocesan cathedral, St. Eugene’s in Santa Rosa, is named in 13. Nine are tied to St. Bernard’s Catholic Church in Eureka, nine to St. Rose of Lima church in Santa Rosa, seven to St. Apollinaris in Napa and six to Cardinal Newman High School in Santa Rosa.
In all, 27 diocese sites are represented.
The exhibit laying out that information pertains to a subset of 207 cases that include co-defendants. The state court is currently weighing a request to allow those suits to proceed against the co-defendants, even if they are paused against the diocese. The church is fighting the effort, arguing that because co-defendants such as Hanna Boys Center and Cardinal Newman are covered by the same insurance policies as the diocese, any legal fees or settlements they end up paying will only further deplete the money potentially available for the wider pool of survivors.
The Santa Rosa Diocese estimates the sexual abuse cases levied against it would average $2 million each in monetary demands — liability that could surpass half a billion dollars if the church were to lose all the cases. In its bankruptcy petition, the diocese reported unidentified assets valued between $10 million and $50 million.
To get a more accurate read on liability, it is common in litigation spanning multiple districts for the court to select one or more cases to proceed to trial. Novack signaled his approval in the bankruptcy, and the diocese worked with a committee of unsecured creditors in the case — made up of sex abuse survivors — to identify a handful of representative cases.
“The committee wanted several cases released for trial to kind of set a benchmark — what are these cases worth in a real trial?” Vasa said. “Just to say to the insurers, ‘If these go to trial, there may be a huge judgment.’”
Insurers called out
Insurance companies are a major player in these bankruptcy proceedings. Some of the other parties believe they are an impediment.
The insurers have been “woefully deficient in fulfilling contractual promises” to pay claims, said attorney Rick Simons, who serves as a liaison for the hundreds of sex abuse cases that make up JCCP 5108, the consolidated civil action.
“They sold these policies in the ’70s, the ’80s, the ’60s, some into the 2000s, for $25,000, $35,000 and $55,000 apiece,” Simons said of the insurers. “Now they owe, nationally, billions and billions of dollars in claims. They don’t care about rules and laws. They just want to keep saying no so they can negotiate a lump sum that’s like 8 cents on the dollar.”
Just over a year ago, the creditors committee petitioned for a two-hour court conference allowing survivors to read personal statements. “This proceeding is likely the only opportunity that Survivors in Santa Rosa will have to seek acknowledgement and justice for the decades of isolation and pain they endured,” the committee argued.
The church supported the motion. At least five insurance companies opposed it — Lloyd’s of London, Pacific Indemnity, Pacific Employers Insurance, Century Indemnity and Westchester Fire Insurance, the latter four all under the umbrella of Pacific. Novack granted the petition over their objections, and survivors were allowed to read statements during a private conference on Feb. 6.
Meanwhile, committee members have joined the diocese and its insurers in several rounds of court-approved mediation. Vasa insists all parties, including the church, are working hard to reach an agreement everyone can live with.
“It’s kind of a dance,” the bishop said. “What is a reasonable number that the committee will accept, so that survivors will see they’ve done their due diligence? We can never compensate for all the harm done. But we can manifest care and concern, and demonstrate that we are not trying to stand in the way of what is just.”
You can reach Phil Barber at 707-521-5263 or phil.barber@pressdemocrat.com. On X (Twitter) @Skinny_Post.
Britain’s Prince Andrew was forced to relinquish use of his remaining royal titles after the latest revelations about his relationship with the convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein proved one scandal too many for his brother, King Charles III.
Andrew’s antics have tried the patience of the royal family for more than 40 years, triggering embarrassing headlines, lawsuits and suspicions that the prince, now 65, was using his position for personal gain.
Here are some of the episodes that tarnished the reputation of the late Queen Elizabeth II’s second son and finally forced his older brother to banish him from public life.
1984 — Andrew sprays reporters and photographers with paint while touring a construction project in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles. “I enjoyed that,” Andrew said, while wiping his hands on a piece of newspaper.
2007 — The prince sells his house at Sunninghill Park, near Windsor Castle, with news reports suggesting the buyer paid 20% more than the asking price of 15 million pounds. The buyer was reported to be Timur Kulibayev, son-in-law of Nursultan Nazarbayev, then president of Kazakhstan, raising concerns that the deal was an attempt to buy influence in Britain.
2010 — An undercover reporter posing as a wealthy Arab films Andrew’s ex-wife, Sarah Ferguson, apparently offering to sell access to the prince for 500,000 pounds ($670,000 at the current exchange rate).
2011 — Andrew is forced to resign as Britain’s special trade envoy following the first reports of his links to Epstein. The prince was also facing questions about his friendship with Said Gadhafi, son of the late Libyan strongman Moammar Gadhafi, as well as his links to a convicted Libyan gun smuggler.
July 2019 — Epstein is arrested for a second time on charges of sex trafficking and later commits suicide in a New York jail cell. The news focuses public attention on allegations that Andrew had sex with at least one underage teenager trafficked by Epstein. Andrew denies the allegations.
Nov. 16, 2019 — Andrew attempts to staunch the flood of criticism by agreeing to an on-camera grilling by BBC reporter Emily Maitlis. The interview backfires when Andrew defends his relationship with Epstein, fails to show empathy for his victims and offers explanations of his behavior that many people find hard to believe. Andrew says he broke off contact with Epstein in December 2010, a date that will come back to haunt him.
Nov. 20, 2020 — Buckingham Palace announces that Andrew will suspend all royal duties “for the foreseeable future.” Four days later, the prince is stripped of his role as patron of 230 charities.
2022 — Andrew agrees to settle a New York civil lawsuit filed by Virginia Giuffre, who alleged that she was forced to have sex with Andrew when she was 17. While Andrew didn’t admit to any of Giuffre’s allegations, he acknowledged that she had suffered as a victim of sexual abuse. Legal experts estimate that the undisclosed settlement cost Andrew as much as $10 million.
2024 — Andrew’s ties to a suspected Chinese spy are revealed in court documents. The businessman and suspected spy was barred from the U.K. because of concerns he posed a threat to national security. Security officials were concerned that the man could have misused his influence over Andrew.
April 25, 2025 — Virginia Giuffre dies of suicide in Australia, where she had lived since about 2002.
Oct. 12, 2025 — British newspapers reveal that Andrew sent an email to Epstein on Feb. 28, 2011, more than two months after the prince had told Maitlis he cut off all contact with his one-time friend. Andrew wrote the email after continued media reporting about the Epstein scandal, telling him they were “in this together” and would “have to rise above it.”
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California ramped up its efforts to curb plastic pollution Friday — suing three plastic-bag makers, alleging the companies falsely claimed their products were recyclable.
State Attorney General Rob Bonta, a Democrat, said companies Novolex Holdings, Inteplast Group and Mettler Packaging violated a state law passed in 2014 that banned plastic bags at grocery store checkouts that weren’t recyclable.
Under the law, shoppers could pay 10 cents for thicker plastic bags that needed to be reusable and recyclable. But the makers of the bags labeled them as recyclable even though they were not — recycling facilities cannot process them and they end up dumped in landfills, incinerated, or in the state’s waterways, Bonta said.
“In California, we’re making it clear,” he said at a news conference. “Truth matters. Public trust matters. Environmental protection matters.”
The companies did not respond to email and phone requests for comment.
The state filed a similar lawsuit against ExxonMobil about a year ago over the oil giant’s plastic products. The lawsuit said the company deceived the public by falsely promising that its plastic products would be recycled. The oil giant said California’s recycling system was ineffective and that the state should have worked with the company to keep plastics out of landfills.
California lawmakers later decided the 2014 law didn’t go far enough. Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a law last year that will ban all plastic shopping bags at grocery stores starting next year.
At least a dozen states have some type of statewide plastic bag ban, according to the environmental advocacy group Environment America Research and Policy Center. Hundreds of cities also have their own bans.
Bonta announced Friday the state reached settlements with four other companies California alleged violated the 2014 law: Revolution Sustainable Solutions, Metro Poly, PreZero US Packaging and Advance Polybag. The businesses agreed to collectively pay the state nearly $1.8 million and halt plastic bag sales in California after selling the rest of their existing stock.
The lawsuit and settlements hold companies accountable for mislabeling their products as recyclable, said Nick Lapis, director of advocacy for environmental group Californians Against Waste.
“Plastic bags are a uniquely wasteful product,” he said in an email. “Nothing we use for minutes should pollute our environment for centuries, especially something so lightweight that it’s practically designed to become litter.”
Kevin Costner denied claims of sexual harassment on the set of Horizon: An American Saga — Chapter 2found in a lawsuit filed in May 27 by stunt performer Devyn LaBella against Costner. Now, several months later, Los Angeles judge Jon Takasugi denied Costner’s bid to have the case thrown out under California’s anti-SLAPP law on October 16. Only one of LaBella’s ten claims was removed, one that was related to the Bane Act; in the original filing, LaBella claimed that Costner “demanded” she was in the scene. “Plaintiff does not identify anything Costner, or any other individual, said to her that would constitute ‘threats, intimidation, or coercion’ of the kind contemplated by the Bane Act,” the judge explained in the published filing.
Originally, in a declaration filed on August 19 in the Los Angeles Superior Court, Costner called the allegations “absolutely false” in response to LaBella’s claims that Costner directed an improvised rape scene without an intimacy coordinator or proper protocols. “Devyn’s description of this shot as a ‘violent simulated rape’ is absurd and sensationalistic. It is more than false. It is a bold-faced lie intended to create wide, publicly viewed shock value and damage the movies and me personally,” Costner says in the declaration. “Devyn’s claims against me are absolutely false, and it is deeply disappointing to me that a woman who worked on our production would claim that I or any other member of my production team would make one of our own feel uncomfortable, let alone suffer the ‘nightmare’ she has invented. My belief is that Devyn’s claims were designed, through the use of false statements and sensationalistic language, to damage my reputation.”
Horizon intimacy coordinator Celeste Chaney has supported LaBella’s claims that the scene “was unexpectedly sprung on the actors and stunt professionals” in an amended complaint on June 18. Per Chaney, Ella Hunt was called in to film a more graphic scene than planned but Hunt did not want to participate without an intimacy coordinator. “Due to a lack of communication and the lack of an intimacy coordinator on set (a contractual obligation),” Chaney wrote, “Ella Hunt was not prepared to give this performance. Visibly upset, she left set. It was at this time that Devyn Labella, Juliette’s stunt double, who was also not briefed or prepared for the scene, was asked to stand in to ‘line up the shot.’”
Megan Thee Stallion is standing ten toes down in her defamation lawsuit against blogger Milagro Gramz, and she just won a major sanction in their case.
The two will face off in a Houston court via trial, but in the meantime, Meg’s team won a sanction against Milagro after claiming she “deleted thousands of text messages” despite being told not to. Meg was granted an “adverse inference jury instruction” as well as “monetary” sanctions against Milagro—whose full name is Milagro Elizabeth Cooper—for what the court is calling “spoliation of evidence.” According to the legal documents, Cooper was instructed not to delete any correspondence about Meg, but she did so anyway.
Meg’s team said “not so fast” once Milagro was unable to turn over the evidence and requested that the judge make it permissible in court to let the jury know that she attempted to hide things that could have harmed her defense. She is also now responsible for giving Meg back her coins for having to bring the issue up to the court though they have not agreed on what the compensation will be just yet, according to Hot 97. Either way, Milagro is digging herself quite the hole ahead of the trial.
She was already ordered to pay $5,000 towards Meg’s lawyer fees back in July for tampering with evidence, and she’s also accused of circulating a deep fake pornographic image of the “Cobra” artist, which is now considered a federal crime. The entire case stems from Milagro’s commitment to allegedly disseminating falsified information in support of Tory Lanez.
Meg claims that the blogger participated in fueling a smear campaign against her alongside the imprisoned singer’s father, Sonstar Peterson, that contributed to immeasurable harassment in the years after her shooting. Allegedly, the fake porn video was the final straw on the stallion’s back that led her to march Milagro into court.
Apple was hit with a lawsuit in California federal court by a pair of neuroscientists who say that the tech company misused thousands of copyrighted books to train its Apple Intelligence artificial intelligence model.
Susana Martinez-Conde and Stephen Macknik, professors at SUNY Downstate Health Sciences University in Brooklyn, New York, told the court in a proposed class action on Thursday that Apple used illegal “shadow libraries” of pirated books to train Apple Intelligence.
A separate group of authors sued Apple last month for allegedly misusing their work in AI training.
Tech companies facing lawsuits
The lawsuit is one of many high-stakes cases brought by copyright owners such as authors, news outlets, and music labels against tech companies, including OpenAI, Microsoft, and Meta Platforms, over the unauthorized use of their work in AI training. Anthropic agreed to pay $1.5 billion to settle a lawsuit from another group of authors over the training of its AI-powered chatbot Claude in August.
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Spokespeople for Apple and Martinez-Conde, Macknik, and their attorney did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the new complaint on Friday.
Apple Intelligence is a suite of AI-powered features integrated into iOS devices, including the iPhone and iPad.
“The day after Apple officially introduced Apple Intelligence, the company gained more than $200 billion in value: ‘the single most lucrative day in the history of the company,’” the lawsuit said.
According to the complaint, Apple utilized datasets comprising thousands of pirated books as well as other copyright-infringing materials scraped from the internet to train its AI system.
The lawsuit said that the pirated books included Martinez-Conde and Macknik’s “Champions of Illusion: The Science Behind Mind-Boggling Images and Mystifying Brain Puzzles” and “Sleights of Mind: What the Neuroscience of Magic Reveals About Our Everyday Deceptions.”
The professors requested an unspecified amount of monetary damages and an order for Apple to stop misusing their copyrighted work.
Reporting by Blake Brittain in Washington, Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi and Rod Nickel.
A federal judge partially blocked the Trump administration’s deployment of National Guard troops to the Chicago area, but did not detail specifics in her ruling Thursday.
U.S. District Judge April Perry didn’t lay out details of any order or say what part of the request she was granting as she spoke from the bench in her crowded courtroom. She promised more on Friday.
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By CHRISTINE FERNANDO and SUDHIN THANAWALA – Associated Press
President Donald Trump’s deployment of National Guard troops in Illinois faces legal scrutiny Thursday at a pivotal court hearing that will occur the day after a small number of Guard troops started protecting federal property in the Chicago area.
U.S. District Judge April Perry will hear arguments over a request to block the deployment of Illinois and Texas Guard members. Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker and local officials strongly oppose use of the Guard.
An “element” of the 200 Texas Guard troops sent to Illinois started working in the Chicago area on Wednesday, according to a spokesperson for the U.S. Northern Command, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity in order to discuss operational details not been made public. The spokesperson did not say where specifically the troops were sent.
The troops, along with about 300 from Illinois, arrived this week at a U.S. Army Reserve Center in Elwood, southwest of Chicago. All 500 troops are under the Northern Command and have been activated for 60 days.
The Guard members are in the city to protect U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement buildings and other federal facilities and law enforcement personnel, according to Northern Command. Trump earlier sent troops to Los Angeles and Washington, and a small number this week started assisting law enforcement in Memphis.
Those troops are part of the Memphis Safe Task Force, a collection of about a dozen federal law enforcement agencies ordered by Trump to fight crime in the city. Tennessee Republican Gov. Bill Lee supports using the Guard.
The nearly 150-year-old Posse Comitatus Act limits the military’s role in enforcing domestic laws. However, Trump has said he would be willing to invoke the Insurrection Act, which allows a president to dispatch active duty military in states that are unable to put down an insurrection or are defying federal law.
Chicago and Illinois have filed a lawsuit to stop the deployments, calling them unnecessary and illegal. Trump, meanwhile, has portrayed Chicago as a lawless “hellhole” of crime, though statistics show a significant recent drop in crime.
The Republican president said Wednesday that Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and Pritzker, both Democrats, should be jailed for failing to protect federal agents during immigration enforcement crackdowns.
In a court filing in the lawsuit, the city and state say protests at a temporary ICE detention facility in the Chicago suburb of Broadview have “never come close to stopping federal immigration enforcement.”
“The President is using the Broadview protests as a pretext,” they wrote. “The impending federal troop deployment in Illinois is the latest episode in a broader campaign by the President’s administration to target jurisdictions the President dislikes.”
Also Thursday, a panel of judges in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals was scheduled to hear arguments over whether Trump had the authority to take control of 200 Oregon National Guard troops. The president had planned to deploy them in Portland, where there have been mostly small nightly protests outside an ICE building. State and city leaders insist troops are neither wanted nor needed there.
U.S. District Judge Karin J. Immergut on Sunday granted Oregon and California a temporary restraining order blocking the deployment of Guard troops to Portland. Trump had mobilized California troops for Portland just hours after Immergut first blocked him from using Oregon’s Guard.
The administration has yet to appeal that order to the 9th Circuit.
Immergut, who Trump appointed during his first term, rejected the president’s assertions that troops were needed to protect Portland and immigration facilities, saying “it had been months since there was any sustained level of violent or disruptive protest activity in the city.”
___
Associated Press writers Gene Johnson in Seattle and Konstantin Toropin in Washington contributed to this report.
President Donald Trump’s deployment of National Guard troops in Illinois faces legal scrutiny Thursday at a pivotal court hearing that will occur the day after a small number of Guard troops started protecting federal property in the Chicago area.
U.S. District Judge April Perry will hear arguments over a request to block the deployment of Illinois and Texas Guard members. Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker and local officials strongly oppose use of the Guard.
An “element” of the 200 Texas Guard troops sent to Illinois started working in the Chicago area on Wednesday, according to a spokesperson for the U.S. Northern Command, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity in order to discuss operational details not been made public. The spokesperson did not say where specifically the troops were sent.
The troops, along with about 300 from Illinois, arrived this week at a U.S. Army Reserve Center in Elwood, southwest of Chicago. All 500 troops are under the Northern Command and have been activated for 60 days.
The Guard members are in the city to protect U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement buildings and other federal facilities and law enforcement personnel, according to Northern Command. Trump earlier sent troops to Los Angeles and Washington, and a small number this week started assisting law enforcement in Memphis.
Those troops are part of the Memphis Safe Task Force, a collection of about a dozen federal law enforcement agencies ordered by Trump to fight crime in the city. Tennessee Republican Gov. Bill Lee supports using the Guard.
The nearly 150-year-old Posse Comitatus Act limits the military’s role in enforcing domestic laws. However, Trump has said he would be willing to invoke the Insurrection Act, which allows a president to dispatch active duty military in states that are unable to put down an insurrection or are defying federal law.
Chicago and Illinois have filed a lawsuit to stop the deployments, calling them unnecessary and illegal. Trump, meanwhile, has portrayed Chicago as a lawless “hellhole” of crime, though statistics show a significant recent drop in crime.
The Republican president said Wednesday that Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and Pritzker, both Democrats, should be jailed for failing to protect federal agents during immigration enforcement crackdowns.
In a court filing in the lawsuit, the city and state say protests at a temporary ICE detention facility in the Chicago suburb of Broadview have “never come close to stopping federal immigration enforcement.”
“The President is using the Broadview protests as a pretext,” they wrote. “The impending federal troop deployment in Illinois is the latest episode in a broader campaign by the President’s administration to target jurisdictions the President dislikes.”
Also Thursday, a panel of judges in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals was scheduled to hear arguments over whether Trump had the authority to take control of 200 Oregon National Guard troops. The president had planned to deploy them in Portland, where there have been mostly small nightly protests outside an ICE building. State and city leaders insist troops are neither wanted nor needed there.
U.S. District Judge Karin J. Immergut on Sunday granted Oregon and Californiaa temporary restraining order blocking the deployment of Guard troops to Portland. Trump had mobilized California troops for Portland just hours after Immergut first blocked him from using Oregon’s Guard.
The administration has yet to appeal that order to the 9th Circuit.
Immergut, who Trump appointed during his first term, rejected the president’s assertions that troops were needed to protect Portland and immigration facilities, saying “it had been months since there was any sustained level of violent or disruptive protest activity in the city.”
Associated Press writers Gene Johnson in Seattle and Konstantin Toropin in Washington contributed to this report.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
