“Half our customers are drunk and vaping like mo-fos, who the fuck is going to notice the quality of our pods?” Juul's then-CEO Kevin Burns allegedly said when a senior vice president told him Juul should include an expiration date on the packaging of the nicotine pods it makes. The quote is in a lawsuit filed against the company by an aggrieved former employee.

From Buzzfeed:

A former Juul executive is alleging in a lawsuit that the fast-growing startup shipped out 1 million contaminated e-cigarette pods earlier this year — but did not tell customers or issue a recall.

The lawsuit was filed Tuesday by Siddharth Breja, a former senior vice president of global finance who worked at the San Francisco–based company from May 2018 to March 2019. In the lawsuit — filed in US District Court for the Northern District of California on the same day that Juul confirmed its plans to lay off about 500 people — Breja claims he was retaliated against for raising concerns about the contaminated shipment.

Photo by Jordan Whitfield on Unsplash Read the rest

The owners of the copyright for the theme song to the “Charlie Brown Christmas” TV special are suing Dolly Parton's 'Dollywood' in federal court for copyright infringement. Read the rest

Attorney and disgraced anti-Trump media gadfly Michael Avenatti has been sued again, this time over allegations he siphoned off a paraplegic client's $4 million settlement. Read the rest

LuLaRoe, a multi-billion dollar maker of garishly patterned garments, has been hit with multiple lawsuits for being a pyramid scheme. Vice has a 30-minute documentary about the company. Read the rest

In Grand Rapids, Michigan, an unidentified man, age 40 is suing his parents for $87,000 for dumping his porn collection. Apparently he had been living with his folks following a divorce but recently moved into his own home. When his folks delivered his stuff to the new digs, his 12 boxes of porn magazines and films were nowhere to be found. He called the cops but the Ottawa County prosecutor would not pursue charges.

In an email filed as evidence in the suit, the man's father wrote: "I did you a big favor by getting rid of all this stuff."

According to the Associated Press, the porn has an estimated value of $29,000 but "the man is seeking triple financial damages."

(image: Frank Carroll/CC BY-NC-SA 2.0) Read the rest

The city attorney for Los Angeles is suing the company behind The Weather Channel and its mobile app, and says the app covertly mined user data. Read the rest

Stephen Keys, an actor who has appeared in many movies, including Soul Plane, was on a flight from Reno to Los Angeles last week. When he raised his armrest so he could get his seatbelt, his pinky got stuck in a hole under the armrest. According to a lawsuit he filed against American Airlines and SkyWest Airlines, "The spring mechanism embedded inside of this hole in the armrest applied intense pressure to plaintiff's finger, immediately inflicting injury, swelling and pain."

"By this time, dozens of passengers became aware of Mr. Keys' perilous condition, causing his dire situation to become a humiliating public spectacle," the suit alleges. "By the end of it all, he remained entrapped in this nightmarish condition, suffering for nearly an hour."

From NBC:

Flight personnel and members of a fire department rescue team were unable to free Keys' finger, which was finally accomplished with the help of an airline mechanic who disassembled the armrest, the suit says.

The injury to his finger left Keys unable to perform such previously routine tasks as driving and playing with his children, according to his complaint, which says he experienced weeks of intense pain and severe emotional distress. Read the rest

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.