courts
—>Good news for Pepsico: the lawsuit two Wisconsin men filed, accusing the company of stealing from them the idea that eventually became Aquafina, will have to be judged on its actual merits. The default judgment of $1.26 billion that they received when Pepsi failed to acknowledge the suit has been vacated. More »
—>The judicial system has spoken in the case of the spreadsheet full of personal data accidentally e-mailed to a random Gmail user by an employee of Rocky Mountain Bank. Google must reveal the account holder's identity, and the account has been deactivated. More »
—>A woman who was allegedly raped while working for Halliburton/Kellogg Brown & Root in Iraq will have her civil claims heard in court, not by a company-selected arbitrator, thanks to a ruling by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. More »
—>There's a judge in Brooklyn, NY, who has tossed out nearly half of the foreclosure cases brought before him over the past year, because the lenders have such messy paper trails that they can't prove ownership anymore. More »
—>Thanks to a Texas judge's ruling earlier this week, Microsoft has been prohibited from selling or supporting any more copies of Word that can edit XML-based documents. A Toronto-based company, i4i, sued Microsoft in 2007 over its XML editing patent, and the judge ruled in i4i's favor. The ruling kicks in 60 days from now, unless Microsoft decides to appeal. We have a feeling it will. More »
—>Last month, the Minnesota Attorney General brought an oppressive arbitration regime to its knees. Nation Arbitration Forum handled over 200,000 arbitrations per year. But many of those cases will end up in the 50 states' district courts, where consumers may fare no better. More »
—>The perils of forced arbitration and the need for the Arbitration Fairness Act were recently featured on an NPR piece. The story discusses the case of Jamie Leigh Jones, the former Halliburton employee who was gang raped in Iraq by her coworkers, then was sent to arbitration when she tried to sue her employer. More »
—>Meet Michelle. We met Michelle at Arbitration Fairness Day and she told us about being forced into arbitration when she tried to get her poorly constructed home repaired. Now she'd like to share her story with you. More »
—>Two recent Supreme Court cases on federal pre-emption have made a mess of tort law, confusing and endangering consumers by holding that a patient who is injured by a dangerous drug can sue the manufacturer, but a patient injured by a dangerous medical device cannot. How this happened, and what to do about it, inside. More »
—>Mother Jones has an excellent writeup of Deborah Williams and Richard Welshans, the Maryland couple whose horrific experience with franchising a Coffee Beanery we've covered before. Inside, MoJo breaks down the arbitration award to show just how much more expensive arbitration is than litigation. More »
—>The Santa Rosa, California Press Democrat says that Korbel Champagne Cellars will ask a Sonoma County judge to force Comcast to reveal the names of anonymous Craigslist posters who criticized the company. More »
—>The Arbitration Fairness Act, which will ban binding mandatory arbitration clauses from consumer, employment, and franchise contracts, was reintroduced in the House yesterday. More »
—>Mandatory binding arbitration agreements are bad for consumers for so many reasons that, unless you're the victim of one, it's hard to keep track of the various ways you can be screwed. So we've come up with this helpful illustration: a choose-your-own-adventure-styled trip through the arbitration process. More »
—>A Michigan court has struck an arbitration clause in a wrongful death case against a nursing home that allegedly allowed one of its senile residents to wander outside and freeze to death. More »
—>A New York state Supreme Court justice threw out Amazon's sales tax lawsuit earlier today, opening the way for New York to begin collecting sales taxes on Amazon purchases. More »
Under the terms of a preliminary settlement agreement, [Timberland and e-commerce company GSI] will pay $7 million into a cash fund to reimburse those who received the messages, according to KamberEdelson LLC, one of the law firms that helped bring the suit. More »
—>Earlier this week, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals overturned an arbitration decision in a dispute between Coffee Beanery and a franchisee. The court found that the arbitrator, hired by the American Arbitration Association, "showed a manifest disregard of the law" by siding with Coffee Beanery. More »
