Michigan lawyer David Fink has filed a lawsuit against Yahoo's board of directors. His client, the Wayne County Employee's Retirement System, owns 13,600 shares of Yahoo, and wants Yahoo's board to consider Microsoft's $31-a-share offer. Before you laugh at the scrappy pension fund's move, know this: It has sued public companies before.
Lisa Krinsky, former chairman of a drug-testing concern, sued some of her Yahoo Finance message board detractors for libel and fraud, claiming their "scathing verbal attacks" were defamatory. An appeals court in Santa Clara County reversed a decision that would have required Yahoo to cough up the posters' true identities. Rest easy knowing you can get away with being an anonymous jackass online, thanks to the First Amendment. (Photo by David Quinn)
Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey denied benefits to two minors because they have eating disorders. Eating disorders, the insurance company claims, are emotional, not biological. It gets more fun: Horizon has demanded access to the kids MySpace and Facebook accounds, to "shed light on the causes of the disorders, which determines the insurer's responsibility for payment." So think twice before you make your Facebook status something lame and emo: it could be used as evidence that you're uninsurable. If you can even afford it! [Law.com]
Earlier this month, a $150 million lawsuit was filed against Time Warner and AOL, with some stunning charges: Credit card fraud, civil rights violations, and discrimination towards people with "bowel problems." Why haven't you heard of this scandal? Probably the same reason you haven't heard of the other recent lawsuits against Martha Stewart, Brad Pitt, Jake Gyllenhaal, George Clooney, Padma Lakshmi, Anderson Cooper, Oprah Winfrey, Slobodan Milosevic, Mumia Abu-Jamal, Lemony Snicket, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, and Mack's Famous Boardwalk Pizza: They were all filed by Jonathan Lee Riches, the most suing-est federal prisoner you ever could hope to meet! Just this month, Riches has filed hundreds of suits against the most famous people, places, and things in the world. And he has some VERY serious complaints.
We know that we're only eight years into the Aughts, but we're pretty sure that Joe Simpson has got the Worst Father Of The Decade Award wrapped up. Ever since the sinister minister took the reigns of boobalicious daughter Jessica's "career" (which was like, on her 2nd birthday), he's managed to turn his dingbat cupcake into an oh-no-she-didn't laughingstock (ChickenOrFishGate 2004, anyone?), a divorcee at 25, and a has-been in the music industry. Oh, and then there's the rousing success story that was Blonde Ambition (still stuck at $6,422). The latest double-whack Joe's served to Jess include setting her up on a doomed-from-the-start fiasco of a relationship with Cowboys QB Tony Romo, who's since dumped her admittedly fine ass, and now, turning against the always Simpsons-friendly OK Magazine by (yes, really) handing them a "strongly worded letter" demanding a retraction.
Instead of computers, Jason Calacanis's Mahalo Web directory depends on entirely on humans to make sure its listings are accurate. Calacanis contends that humans are cheaper than servers and more accurate, too. Good theory, but here's the problem: computers only rise up against you in science fiction. Humans? Yeah, they ask for more all the time. One such fleshy Web crawler says Mahalo hasn't paid him enough for the work he's done. As a result, he plans to sue.
Judith Regan, the maverick publisher fired from Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation after she pressed ahead with a book by O.J. Simpson, has settled with her former employer. Regan is not an anti-Semite; Murdoch henchman, Roger Ailes, did not pressure her to keep quiet about her former lover, dodgy Giuliani aide Bernie Kerik; and O.J. is not guilty. Whatever. The only question: how much did Rupert Murdoch pay to make the increasingly deranged Regan Books founder shut up? Answer: not as much as she would would have received before the primaries began. Rudy Giuliani's campaign is faltering and, with it, Regan's leverage. It's moot whether Fox News creator and former Nixon aide, Ailes, pressured Regan to save the Giuliani's presidential bid. It's now beyond saving. Update: A newspaper source says Regan's settlement is $25m. Pah, nothing!
Don Imus can't catch a break, besides the many inexplicable ones he's been handed on platters made of various precious metals over the course of his infuriating career! The cruel and stupid old prick is now, gratifyingly, getting sued for $4 million. Sadly it's for something actually kind of amusing: "Flatsigned Press Inc., a book publisher based in Nashville, Tenn., says Imus insulted the company last year in ads it paid for to promote a book by Ford on the Warren Commission's investigation into the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy." Imus called the ads "cheesy," considered an actionable insult only when spoken by a character in Happy Days, and mocked the ad copy as he read it. This all happened last January, by the way. CBS and WFAN offered to settle last February, but Flatsigned rejected the offer. Let this be a lesson to Imus—you can crack racist all you like, but lay off the sponsors. [AP]
The first civil suit against alleged former Radar investor and theoretical billionaire Jeffrey Epstein is underway! An anonymous 14-year-old girl is suing Epstein for $50 million for various terrible, terrible things. Epstein, you see, (allegedly!) enjoys the company of destitute young teenagers. According to Jane Doe, an Epstein associate would offer the girls $200 to $300 for performing a simple massage on a creepy billionaire. When they arrived in his bedroom, Epstein would "remove his towel, lay down naked on the massage table, and direct the girl to remove her clothes. He then would perform one or more lewd, lascivious and sexual acts, including masturbation and touching the girl's vagina with a vibrator." Then he would pay them. Don't worry, Epstein fans: Page Six has been on top of this story since well before day one and they already peremptorily attacked the credibility of any girl anywhere who might eventually come forward with similar stories. [Radar]
MSNBC's appeal to block Nevada courts from forcing them to include magical elfin candidate Dennis Kucinich in tonight's debate is going before the Supreme Court right now! But we have no idea what network to turn to for coverage, as no one wants to report a story about the UFO-riding leprechaun with the only consistent voting record on the war. [Media Mob]
Update: The ladies of The View side with Dennis. Even Elisabeth! [NYT (last graf)]
Nicholas Negroponte's One Laptop Per Child project may be better named "No Laptop Per Child," at the rate it's going. Back in November, the Wall Street Journal essentially labeled the project a failure. Now, the group is being sued for $20 million by a Nigerian company for patent infringement. Let's hope OLPC doesn't get hit for the full amount. At almost $200 each, the judgment would be equal to more than 100,000 laptops — laptops that the OLPC can't give away, never mind sell. A copy of the lawsuit, obtained exclusively by Valleywag, is after the jump.
Internet telephone provider Vonage has reached a settlement in its patent dispute with Nortel. Vonage won't pay for past damages, and both companies have agreed to a cross-licensing deal instead. The settlement ends the last of the company's pending legal battles with major telecom carriers and equipment makers. If the Internet telephone company has truly put its legal problems in its past — not a forgone conclusion — the company may now move on to address problems. Problems like providing reliable service at a profit. Oh yes, that. [Reuters]
FedEx was hit with a $319 million tax bill over the job classification of FedEx ground employees. A number of lawsuits have been filed by FedEx ground drivers who believed the company was responsible for their taxes; FedEx maintained that they were independent contractors. That's not the interesting part, though. FedEx, in a tried and true public relations move, "took out the trash" and released the bad news late Friday on a holiday weekend. The earliest story we could find on the IRS charge was released at 6:34 pm Eastern, well beyond when most people were reading news stories. Very clever, FedEx. (Photo by Brosner)
As his three-year legal battle with Apple reaches a settled end, Nick Ciarelli, the writer behind Think Secret, states that shutting down the Mac rumor site while not revealing his sources is a "positive solution for both sides." Most people aren't buying it, blaming Apple for shutting down Think Secret. Which is exactly why it is a positive result for Ciarelli.
Facebook has closed the door on one opportunity to make money off the popular social network. Mark Zuckerberg's enterprise has settled a lawsuit, before it reached class-action status, over unwanted text messages being delivered to reused mobile-phone numbers. Lindsey Abrams, the Indiana woman who filed the suit, alleged she received thousands of unsolicited messages at a cost of 10 cents each after purchasing a mobile phone with a number previously owned by a Facebook user. She had no way to stop the unwanted messages, since she didn't have access to that user's account.
Working at Scores: it's not all giving candy to school children, recovering lost dogs and exchanging glimpses of your breasts for charitable canned goods donations. Sometimes you are asked to exchange sex for money. The Daily News, always your best source for the strip club stories that matter to you, reports today on a lawsuit brought against the famed Manhattan institution by former cocktail waitress Francis Vargas, who charges that Scores managers are terribly sleazy and have some workplace boundary issues.
