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Facebook Case Has Echoes Of MySpace Suicide Case
Areas of Focus |
2008/09/23 15:40
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A dad says someone used a Facebook account to torment his mentally disturbed teen-age daughter, and he wants the social-networking site to release that person's account information so he or she can be held liable.
Fred Beuckman III says his 16-year-old daughter befriended a Jane Doe on Facebook, and that Doe found out that his daughter had a psychiatric condition that included an obsession with a boy. Doe then created a persona called Jennifer Litzinger, who purportedly was a rival for the boy's affections, according to the suit in St. Louis County Court.
Beuckman claims Doe used a photo of an attractive, well-endowed model as her profile picture and told the daughter that she "looked like a troll," that she had a "worthless life" and that Doe and the boy "almost had sex."
His daughter had a severe psychological reaction to these statements, Beuckman says. He says she was admitted to a hospital for four days to get stabilized and was admitted as an in-patient to the Menninger Residential Clinic in Houston, a psychiatric facility.
Beuckman wants Facebook ordered to release Doe's identity and damages for his daughter's care, including transportation to and from Houston.
The case has echoes of another local case involving MySpace, a similar social-networking Internet site. That case made national headlines after Megan Meier, a teen-ager with a history of depression, killed herself after receiving negative messages from a person she thought was a boy on MySpace. The boy turned out to be a neighborhood mom, Lori Drew, who was trying to find out what Meier was saying about her daughter. Drew is on trial for related charges in Los Angeles, where MySpace is based.
Facebook was not named as a defendant in this case; Doe is. Beuckman is represented by Joe Jacobson.
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Potash Price-Fixing Conspiracy Alleged
Areas of Focus |
2008/09/15 15:58
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The world's leading potash suppliers conspired to fix U.S. prices on the fertilizer, Gage's Fertilizer & Grain claims in a federal antitrust class action. It claims they did this after potash prices tanked in the 1990s because "potash producers, particularly those located in the former Soviet Union, increased the supply of potash in world markets".
A similar antitrust class action was filed in Minneapolis Federal Court by Minn-Chem Inc.
Gage's claim in Chicago states, "As part of, and in furtherance of, this conspiracy, defendants exchanged sensitive, non-public information about prices, capacity, sales volumes, and demand; allocated market shares, customers, and volumes to be sold; and coordinated on output, including the limitation of production."
During the class period, July 1, 2003 until today, "defendants sold millions of tons of potash in the United States."
Potash is, or are, mineral and chemical salts that contain potassium, a necessary nutrient for plants. "There is no cost-effective substitute for potash," the complaint states.
"Potash is mined from naturally occurring ore deposits that were formed when seas and oceans evaporated, many of which are now covered with several thousand feet of earth. ...
"Belarus, Canada, Germany, Israel, Jordan and Russia have about 90% of the global potash supply within their borders," the complaint states. "Over half of the world's global capacity is located in just two regions - Canada and the former Soviet Union, specifically Russia and Belarus."
Here are the defendants: Agrium Inc., Agrium US Inc., Mosaic Co., Mosaic Crop Nutrition LLC, Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan Inc., PCS Sales (USA) Inc., JSC Uralkali, RUE PA Belaruskali, RU PA Belarussian Potash Co., BPC Chicago LLC, JSC Silvinit, and JSC International Potash Co.
Plaintiffs are represented by Steven Hart with Segal McCambridge Singer & Mahoney. |
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Nevada Sex Laws Tossed
Areas of Focus |
2008/09/12 15:58
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Nevada's new sex-offender laws are unconstitutional, a federal judge ruled Wednesday. U.S. District Judge James Mahan made permanent the temporary injunction he issued in July that stopped the state from applying the new laws retroactively.
The new laws, which were to take effect July 1, faced numerous lawsuits from sex offenders who said they are unconstitutional.
"Sex offenders who committed even misdemeanors with any sexual element since July 1, 1956 would have fallen within the purview of registration and some notification provisions," said the American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada, which represented about a dozen sex offenders in a lawsuit challenging the new laws.
"Many, many rehabilitated, low-risk offenders whom the state of Nevada determined to be unlikely to reoffend would have retroactively become Tier 3 - high risk - offenders based solely on the crime committed," the ACLU said.
In his decision, however, Judge Mahan stopped short of ruling on whether the new laws could be applied to convicted sex offenders in the future. |
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2nd Circuit Won't Change NY's Apportionment Method
Areas of Focus |
2008/09/11 15:50
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The 2nd Circuit denied a voter's assertion that New York's method of congressional district apportionment should be changed from overall population to voting-age population.
Michael Kalson sued Gov. David Paterson and the state election board. Kalson claimed his vote didn't count as much as those of voters in other congressional districts with a smaller percentage of adults.
Judge Calabresi agreed with the trial court that Kalson's claim lacked merit.
The judge noted that Kalson does not assert that "districts must be comprised of the same number of actual voters or eligible voters; he asserts only that they must have the same voting-age population."
Although one district may have a more adults than another, the second district could have a lower percentage of felons, noncitizens, and people who choose not to vote, Calabresi noted.
For that reason, the judge ruled, the plaintiff's request for a voting-age requirement would not remedy his complaint. |
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'Rear Window' Copyright Holder Sues Spielberg & Viacom
Areas of Focus |
2008/09/09 15:42
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Steven Spielberg, Dreamworks and Viacom stole the copyrighted story on which the Hitchcock film "Rear Window" was based and used it as the basis for their movie, "Disturbia," the copyright holder claims in Federal Court. Hitchcock based his movie on the Cornell Woolrich story, under a license, but the defendants in this case just swiped it, the plaintiff says.
The Sheldon Abend Revocable Trust sued Steven Spielberg, Dreamworks, Paramount Pictures, Viacom, NBC Universal, Universal Pictures, and United International Pictures in this 60-page federal lawsuit, with 120 pages of attachments.
The plaintiff says this is just "the latest in an ongoing pattern of behavior by the Universal Defendants ... and their predecessors, who on numerous occasions in the past utilized the Rear Window Story without securing rights and paying compensation. In multiple rounds of litigation during the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s extending all the way to the United States Supreme Court (See Stewart v. Abend, 495 U.S. 207, 110 S. Ct. 1750 (1990)), the predecessors of Universal Defendants have been required to acknowledge Plaintiff's rights in and to the Rear Window Story and the Rear Window Film resulting in, inter alia, the payment of compensation in order to obtain grants of rights in and to the Rear Window Story".
The lawsuit cites numerous newspaper reviews of "Disturbia" that criticize "Disturbia" as being "ripped off" from the Rear Window story and movie. One reviewer wrote that Spielberg and his associates merely changed the protagonists from old people to teen-agers.
Plaintiff demands restitution, disgorgement, damages and costs. Its lead counsel is Clay Townsend with Morgan & Morgan of Orlando, Fla. |
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Inspector Suspended For Not Shutting Black-Owned Business
Areas of Focus |
2008/09/08 17:15
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A 20-year veteran building inspector says Genesee County harassed, suspended and constructively fired him because he refused to shut down a black-owned business on a pretext. Michael O'Leary says his boss told him, "Shut them down, go into that business and find some reason to shut them down. We don't want gang bangers and north end problems coming into our Township."
O'Leary claims his boss, defendant Supervisor Douglas Carlton, gave him those racist instructions. He claims that when he and the fire chief could not find any code violations in the black-owned business, the Beach House, and allowed it to stay open, Carlton told him, "You did a real poor job on that assignment," and proceeded to harass, suspend and constructively fire him.
O'Leary says he "considered keeping businesses in Flint Township open for business to be part of his job duties."
He demands more than $75,000 in damages. He is represented by Tom Pabst. |
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Canadian mining company settles with Alaska Eskimos
Areas of Focus |
2008/09/05 15:39
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Canadian-based Teck Cominco Ltd. asked US District Court Judge John Sedwick Wednesday to approve a $120M settlement agreement with six Eskimo plaintiffs from the Alaskan village of Kivalino. The agreement stems from a 2002 lawsuit filed in the US District Court for the District of Alaska by residents living near the company's Red Dog Mine, claiming the company - the world's second largest zinc producer - dumped more than the Clean Water Act's legal limit of toxic discharge into Red Dog Creek. Kivalino residents fish and draw their drinking water from the creek. The parties had initially given notice of a settlement agreement in May, but the plaintiffs allegedly changed their minds before filing a proposed settlement with the court.
Other mining companies elsewhere around the world have in recent years faced legal challenges, complaints and protests from indigenous and aboriginal groups claiming that mining activity has infringed their rights or their enjoyment of property. In July, the Philippines Commission on Human Rights announced it would investigate Australian mining company Oceana Gold for possible human rights violations at the site of a planned gold and copper mine in Didipio, Philippines. Also in July, the Court of Appeal for Ontario in Canada ruled that sentences imposed on seven aboriginal protesters in March for opposing mining company operations on community land were too severe. |
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