My name is Kelsey Juliana and I’m suing the United States government for causing and accelerating the climate change crisis. I’m 22 years old and I’ve been a climate advocate for more than half of my life. Read the rest

Just when you thought things couldn't get stupider, they do. Former Donald Trump senior campaign aide Jason Miller is suing Will Menaker, co-host of the politi-comedy podcast 'Chapo Trap House,' over a tweet in which Miller is described as a "rat face baby killer."

Okay. Read the rest

Sacha Baron Cohen, in character as an overbearing Israeli antiterrorism expert, scanned Republican politician Roy Moore with a "pedophile detector" during a comical interview shot for his series Who Is America? Moore, who was accused of molesting teenage girls and was once reportedly banned from an Alabama mall for doing so in public, is now suing the British comedian over the fake gadget, which beeped loudly in proximity to the disgraced judge.

His lawyers say the satirist falsely accused their client of being a sex offender. They are seeking $95m (£73m) in damages from Baron Cohen and from the Showtime and CBS networks. Representatives for Baron Cohen have not responded to the lawsuit, filed in a federal court in Washington. A spokeswoman for Showtime said it did not comment on pending litigation.

The clip is embedded above. Jump 3m in for the relevant portion. Read the rest

Boston Symphony Orchestra principal flutist Elizabeth Rowe is suing her employers for $200,000 in damages. The reason: her closest counterpart in the orchestra, a man, is making a shitload more money for doing almost the same damn job as she does. Rowe’s lawsuit was filed one day after the state of Massachusetts brought its equal pay law into effect. Before slamming the Boston Symphony Orchestra with her suit, Rowe attempted, on a number of occasions, to sort the issue of the pay gap out amiably and out of court. Since the Orchestra wouldn’t own up and do the right thing, I suspect they will now be skinned alive under the state’s wicked harsh new pay equality laws.

From NPR:

Rowe was hired for the Boston Symphony's top flutist job in 2004 — a high-profile and extremely competitive position at one of the world's foremost orchestras. According to her suit, she has been profiled as a soloist with the orchestra 27 times in the years since she was hired — more than any other BSO principal musician — and that the orchestra has repeatedly highlighted her in its marketing, publicity and social media materials.

Rowe says that she is currently the top-paid female principal player in the BSO, while the BSO's principal oboist, John Ferrillo, is the symphony's top-paid male principal musician. According to the BSO's 2016 IRS Form 990, Ferrillo was paid $286,621, the largest salary paid to any BSO principal musician. (Violinist Malcolm Lowe — the orchestra's concertmaster, who serves as something of a liaison between the symphony's musicians and its conductor — earned $415,402 in 2016.) The BSO's three other highest-paid musicians — its principal trumpet, principal viola and timpanist — are all male.

Sesame Street lawyers are not happy that Jim Henson's son Brian has a raunchy puppet film coming out called Happytime Murders. After they filed a suit against the film, Henson retained a crack puppet lawyer named Fred (above) to defend them. Read the rest

Dr. Joon Song, a gynecologist in New York, has filed a $1 million lawsuit against Michelle Levine for leaving bad reviews on Yelp and other review sites.

From CBS:

“After I got a bill for an ultrasound and a new patient visit, whatever that means, and it was not billed as an annual I wrote a review about it,” she told CBS2’s Lisa Rozner.

She says she complained to the doctor’s office, but nothing happened. The lengthy critical review, among other things, complained of “very poor and crooked” business practices and was posted on sites like Yelp, Zocdoc, and Healthgrades.

“And I gave them one star on Facebook, which they also put in their complaint,” Levine said.

After getting sued, Levine says she took down all her reviews but Dr. Song still wants her to pay around $1 million in damages plus legal fees.

Levine has so far spent $20,000 defending herself against the lawsuit. Dr. Song's attorney told CBS: "While everyone is entitled to their opinion, outright lies masquerading as reviews can inflict serious damage to a medical practice or small business."

Read the rest

Three former CBS employees are suing television journalist and talk show host Charlie Rose for sexual harassment and threatening their jobs when they were in their 20s. The lawsuit, which was filed in the New York Supreme Court today, "alleges that Rose habitually made sexually suggestive comments and engaged in inappropriate sexual contact with the three employees," reports Variety. The lawsuit also complains that CBS executives knew that Rose routinely harassed women but did not warn new employees.

From the lawsuit:

At various times, Mr. Rose threatened to fire Plaintiffs, intimidated them and/or verbally abused them as part of his predatory behavior, sexual dominance over them, and retaliation against them. A few examples of his conduct include:

(a)Mr. Rose told Ms. Harris that she lacked skills and talent and “I didn’t know that I hired a fucking kindergartner;”

(b)Mr. Rose told Ms. McNeal “you can’t be a fucking idiot and have this job”; and

(c)Mr. Rose told Ms. Wei she was a “fucking idiot” for booking a flight on a plane that did not have flat folding seats, when Ms. Wei had previously advised Mr. Rose of same before booking the flight

Corey Payne and his fiancée Kayla Harris bought a three-pack of eclipse glasses on Amazon. Now they say they are suffering from impaired vision and they filed a lawsuit in federal court in South Carolina on Tuesday.

From The Next Web:

On August 10, Amazon issued a recall of glasses it was unable to verify as safe. The retail giant emailed customers to return their units, although Payne and Harris say they didn’t receive an email. They aim to represent other people who suffered injuries and weren’t warned by Amazon.

There are almost two million independent sellers on Amazon’s platform, and counterfeiting has long been a problem for the service. In response, the company has launched initiatives designed to stem the flow, including a registry that makes it easier for shoppers and brands to flag counterfeit goods, and a program called “Transparency,” that lets companies label products with a code, which can later be used to check authenticity.

You only need to read the Table of Contents to know the ACLU of West Virginia's Amicus Brief on the case where coal company CEO Robert Murray, of Murray Energy, is suing John Oliver for defamation is gonna be special.

I am especially looking forward to section III.

Read the rest

Three students are taking Valencia College in Orlando because the institution required them to perform transvaginal (penetrative) ultrasound exams on each other.

From Washington Post:

The probe is also rather large and can be painful for some women. It requires heavy lubrication, and sometimes the technician will stimulate the patient to help insert the probe.

When teaching this procedure, the school asked the students to perform the procedure on each other. When possible, that is — one of the 12 students that year was a male.

Milward, Ugalde and Rose didn’t feel comfortable participating.

But when they stated as much, they were reprimanded.

In May 2014, Carla Denise Garrison's 8-year-old daughter picked up a hypodermic needle in the parking lot of a Target in Anderson, South Carolina. When Garrison swatted the needle away from her daughter, she accidentally jabbed herself with the needle. Garrison was prescribed medication to prevent contracting diseases from the needle, which made her bedridden. She asked Target to pay $12,000 to cover her medical bills. Target said no, so she sued Target and was awarded $4.6 million.

From USA Today:

According to court documents, the HIV drugs made Garrison sick and caused her to be bedridden. Garrison’s husband, Clint, had to take time off work to care for her, according to her attorney.

“When we started this, we were just trying to get Target to make my client whole, to pay for her medical bills and the time that her husband had to take off work,” said Garrison's attorney, Joshua Hawkins of Greenville. “We tried to be reasonable and not take this to trial. But Target took a really hard stance on it ... and I think the jury sent a message.”

Fox News chief Roger Ailes sexually harassed Gretchen Carlson and ended her career after being rebuffed, according to a lawsuit filed by the former Fox & Friends co-anchor.

Carlson alleged she was fired after rebuking sexual advances by Ailes and after trying to challenge the way that male colleagues treated her. She alleged that Ailes propositioned her sexually after she met with him last September to discuss discriminatory treatment. In one of the most inflammatory accusations, Carlson alleged Ailes told her, “I think you and I should have had a sexual relationship a long time ago and then you’d be good and better and I’d be good and better,” adding that “sometimes problems are easier to solve” that way. The lawsuit contends that in retaliation for Carlson’s complaints about the alleged harassment and discrimination, Ailes denied her “fair compensation, desirable assignments and other career-enhancing opportunities,” before eventually terminating her employment.

The Daily Beast openly suggests (albeit with a "Betteridge" headline) that Ailes is the "next Bill Cosby." The impression that presenters are hired at Fox to someone's tastes has long been in play; there's no mystery regarding whose.

In response to learning of Carlson’s complaints, Carlson’s lawsuit alleges, Ailes purportedly responded by calling Carlson a “man hater” and telling her she needed to learn to “get along with the boys.” The lawsuit cites examples of Ailes’ alleged sexual and sexist comments, including claims that Ailes engaged in “ogling Carlson in his office and asking her to turn around so he could view her posterior,” “commenting repeatedly about Carlson’s legs,” and “claiming that Carlson saw everything as if it ‘only rains on women’ and admonishing her to stop worrying about being treated equally and ‘getting offended so God damn easy about everything.'”

AMC claims that spoilers (and even predictions) of its show, The Walking Dead, infringe copyright. As spoilers are other people's descriptions of something they've seen, in their own words, this would put all unauthorized reviews and commentary in the same boat. But that hasn't stopped it issuing legal threats to fans.

AMC finally reached out to us! But it wasn’t a request not to post any info about the Lucille Victim or any type of friendly attempt at compromise, it was a cease and desist and a threat of a lawsuit by AMC Holdings, LLC’s attorney, Dennis Wilson. They say we can’t make any type of prediction about the Lucille Victim. Their stance is that making such a prediction would be considered copyright infringement. AMC tells us that we made some claim somewhere that says we received “copyright protected, trade secret information about the most critical plot information in the unreleased next season of The Walking Dead” and that we announced we were going to disclose this protected information. We still aren't sure where we supposedly made this claim because they did not identify where it was. ...

Basically what it all comes down to is if we post our Lucille Victim prediction and we're right, AMC says they will sue us. Whether there are grounds for it or not is not the issue, it still costs money to defend. That is the way our justice system works. Would we have defenses? Sure. But it also costs money to mount that defense.

An analysis from USA Today finds that Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is currently involved in 3,500 legal actions. Who else is involved? Everyone from the government to vodka makers. This number is unprecedented in scope for any presidential candidate in U.S. history, and likely far too many for the entire American press corps to really get down to the bottom of, in time for voters to determine what that means for their choice in November. Read the rest

Billionaire Pierre Omidyar "steps into the ring" in the long-running legal fight over privacy and journalistic freedom, fought lately between Hulk Hogan and Gawker Media. The intervention, on Gawker's side--Omidyar is himself a media man, now--came after it turned out billionaire Peter Thiel was secretly funding Hulk's suit.

Alternative subtitle: "No matter who wins, we news."

Cast it in the comments. I'm thinking Kenneth Branagh as Denton, Michael C. Hall as Thiel, Christopher Lambert as Omidyar, Hulk Hogan as Terry Bollea, and any random carnie as Hulk Hogan. Read the rest

Why would billionaire Peter Thiel want to bankrupt Gawker? That's the question circulating today, after Forbes reported that Thiel secretly backed Hulk Hogan's high-profile lawsuit against Nick Denton's publishing empire. Read the rest

In 2001, a Mississippi chicken breeder claimed a lumber company inflicted $300,000 worth of damage to his pasture. The New York Times' Brett Weiner dramatized a bizarre deposition from the lawsuit, using dialogue completely verbatim to the official transcripts.

From the original story:

As I research legal transcripts for the Op-Doc video series “Verbatim,” I search for unusually worded arguments and objections that tell us something about our judicial process. The transcript dramatized for this latest episode hooked me when I read how a plaintiff explained himself to a roomful of captive lawyers, telling them simply: “Because I follow the chicken.”

The case involves a plaintiff suing a lumber company for damaging his land and chicken coop. As the deposition goes on, the plaintiff answers simple questions with increasingly absurd non sequiturs, which become immortalized in the legal record.

Because the “Verbatim” series is about reinterpretation, I don’t try to recreate the body language and tone of voice used during the actual deposition. Instead, I use the transcripts as the basis for a heightened atmosphere — and a film that expresses a point of view about our legal system.

Fortunately, these “Follow the Chicken” transcripts are a wonderful starting point for my approach

See also "Photocopier," wherein the Cuyahoga County Records department was sued for charging $2 per page and a staffer played dumb over whether or not he knew what a photocopier was.

(The county lost) Read the rest