Free Republic

"Apple Inc. was ordered by a jury to pay damages to Mirror Worlds LLC for infringing patents related to how documents are displayed on a computer screen," Susan Decker reports for Bloomberg. "The federal jury in Tyler, Texas, awarded $208.5 million in damages for each of the patents infringed. The verdict form was unclear as to whether the amount applies to the three patents collectively or would be charged individually. Lawyers for closely held Mirror Worlds declined to discuss the verdict," Decker reports. MacDailyNews Take: Tyler, Texas. Rocket Docket. Decker reports, "Mirror Worlds, a software business started by a Yale...

Lawyers representing a stroke victim who claims the stroke was caused by Walt Disney World’s Twilight Zone Tower of Terror have asked for a new trial, a week after an Orange County jury decided there was nothing unsafe about the attraction. Lawyers for Marvin Cohen, a now-80-year-old man who said he was injured after riding the Disney-MGM Studios (now Disney’s Hollywood Studios) attraction in 1998, argue that jury members were given inadequate instructions before they began deliberations. Cohen’s team says Orange County Circuit Judge Jose Rodriguez should have permitted the jury to consider a general negligence claim – rather than...

Over the course of his well promoted career – twenty years as Connecticut’s attorney general, and now but a heart-throb away from occupying U.S. Sen. Chris Dodd’s seat – Richard Blumenthal has sued, in the past 8 years alone, more than a thousand companies. A PFD link to companies that have had court appearances with Blumenthal as a party to the suits can be accessed through a link on the following blog: Blumenthal’s Suits. A recent Republican American editorial notes that Attorney General Richard Blumenthal has bitten off far more than he can chew: His most recent annual report shows...

U.S. District Court Judge Clay Land, in Columbus, has come down hard on birther attorney Orly Taitz, fining her $20,000 for willfully abusing her right to practice law. I suspect Taitz won’t have that right much longer. “The Court finds that counsel’s conduct was willful and not merely negligent. It demonstrates bad faith on her part. As an attorney, she is deemed to have known better. She owed a duty to follow the rules and to respect the Court. Counsel’s pattern of conduct conclusively establishes that she did not mistakenly violate a provision of law. She knowingly violated Rule 11....

ACORN filed suit today in Maryland against conservative filmmakers James O’Keefe, Hannah Giles and conservative Web site Breitbart.com for secretly taping the organization’s employees at its Baltimore office. In the complaint, ACORN alleges that the filmmakers entered into the organization’s offices in July with a “hidden camera and microphone” and taped employees Tonja Thompson and Shera Williams. Both employees are listed as plaintiffs on the complaint, filed in the Circuit Court for Baltimore City. ACORN is seeking $500,000 for each employee and $1 million for the organization in damages.

Ratcheting up her offensive against the news media, Gov. Sarah Palin’s attorney threatened Saturday to sue mainstream news organizations if they publish “defamatory” stories relating to whether Palin is under federal investigation. In an extraordinary four-page letter, Alaska-based attorney Thomas Van Flein warns of severe consequences should speculation that until now has largely been confined to blogs about whether Palin embezzled funds in the construction of a Wasilla, Alaska, sports arena find its way into print. “This is to provide notice to Ms. Moore, and those who re-publish the defamation, such as Huffington Post, MSNBC, the New York Times and...

In 1992, after he stopped wearing clothes to his UC Berkeley classes, Andrew Martinez was something of a walking only-in-Berserkeley joke as the campus' own Naked Guy. But his life was no laughing matter. Around 1997, he was diagnosed with schizophrenia. In 2003, he was arrested for assaulting a staff member at a halfway house where he was a resident. He spent the next 21/2 years in Santa Clara County jail, its acute psychiatric unit, Napa and Atascadero state hospitals - until at age 33, he killed himself by suffocating himself with a plastic bag in a jail cell on...

A judge said Friday that she's referring a Los Angeles lawyer to federal prosecutors and the State Bar over his involvement in lawsuits that she found were part of a massive fraud by purported Nicaraguan banana workers against U.S. food giant Dole. Superior Court Judge Victoria Chaney said that attorney Juan Dominguez, an attorney for the plaintiffs in the lawsuits against Dole, would be subject to charges of perjury, obstruction of justice, defrauding a court, conspiring to extort a United States company and possibly federal racketeering violations. She also ordered Dominguez to appear in her courtroom on June 15 for...

A Texas man has reportedly settled a class action lawsuit against Hooters for refusing to hire men as food servers. Nikolai Grushevski filed a complaint against Hooters of America in January alleging its Corpus Christi franchisee would not hire him as a waiter because the position was being limited to females by an employer "who merely wishes to exploit female sexuality as a marketing tool to attract customers and insure profitability." Hooters argued a “bona-fide occupational qualification” defense, which applies when the “essence of the business operation would be undermined if the business eliminated its discriminatory policy,” according to Onpointnews.com....

Here's where it's going . . . March 19, 2009 Last summer the Philadelphia police forced a Kmart to allow a man to use the women's changing rooms, because he presented a drivers license listing his sex as "female." However, he was clearly a man and the Kmart manager would not allow into the changing rooms. But the policeman ordered to store to do it. After the incident, a complaint was filed against Kmart with the city's Human Relations Commission. The store manager was apparently forced to apologize and told a homosexual newspaper "I guarantee you this won't happen again."

Color the brake lights red as the column of cars backs up from the Caldecott Tunnel, the often bottled-up gateway between Contra Costa and Alameda counties. Color drivers' moods red as the congestion worsens over a span of 45 years. Many drivers are looking forward to relief from a long-planned $420 million fourth bore of the Caldecott Tunnel, but a lawsuit by Alameda County neighborhood groups and a bicycling advocacy organization could delay the project scheduled to begin in the summer and finish in 2014. A ruling on the lawsuit is expected soon from Alameda County Superior Court judge Frank...

KANSAS CITY - Missouri voter Mary Kay Green has had enough. The supporter of Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama filed a lawsuit this week over what she claims is dangerous “hate speech” coming from the rival campaign of Republican presidential nominee John McCain. Green, a 66-year-old grandmother and “semi-retired” civil rights attorney, filed the lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Kansas City this week accusing McCain, his running mate Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and their campaign manager Rick Davis of “intentionally, recklessly and irresponsibly” portraying Obama “as un-American, a terrorist by association, and ‘not like us,’ a non-white individual.” Palin,...

The multi-million-dollar legal battle over a pair of missing pants that put a D.C. dry cleaner out of business is headed back to court, shocking many in the dry-cleaning and legal communities. A three-judge appellate court panel has agreed to hear an appeal of the case next month, more than a year after a judge ruled against the plaintiff, former D.C. Administrative Law Judge Roy Pearson. Pearson sued the owners of Custom Cleaners for $67 million in 2005 after it misplaced a pair of his pants. Pearson demanded the family pay $1,000, the cost of the entire suit, according to...

Imagine if you had to get permission before you linked to the Web site of companies, people or organizations. If “permission-based” linking was a requirement - blogging and much other Internet activity as we know it (even mainstream media news sites) would cease to exist. Well, if the lawsuit of one major law firm against an Internet news publication succeeds, that “permission-based” linking may become the law…and effectively kill the Internet.

San Francisco (AP) -- A federal judge said Friday that she was leaning toward tossing out conservative radio talk show host Michael Savage's copyright theft lawsuit against an Islamic lobbying group who used portions of the popular program to solicit donations and call for an advertising boycott of "The Savage Nation." U.S. District Judge Susan Illston said she would likely let Savage's attorney submit a revised lawsuit in attempt to keep the case alive, but she found the other side's arguments "persuasive." Savage sued the Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR, after it posted on its Web site a 4-minute...

“There’s got to be a line drawn in the sand and we’ve got to start doing something about this, because it’s just gone way too far.” Those are the words of Randy Baumgarten, a second-generation small business owner, speaking of the impact frivolous lawsuits have on small businesses like his own. Randy is one of several people featured on the IAmLawsuitAbuse.org Web site which ILR launched this week. All of their stories bring home the sad reality that lawsuit abuse hurts families and small businesses.

The trial bar, on the defensive when Republicans ran Congress, is moving to make up lost ground on a variety of fronts now that Democrats are in charge, including through a bill-by-bill campaign to keep federal agencies from overriding tougher state consumer protection laws. The bar’s main lobbying group, the American Association of Justice, formerly known as the Association of Trial Lawyers of America, has already had some successes this year in its effort to block what’s referred to as federal regulatory preemption. The ascension of Democrats in Congress, who receive more than 90 percent of AAJ’s political donations, could...

The barons of the tort bar must have thought 2007 would be a very good year: Some of their biggest cases (Katrina, Enron) were set to pay out, and a Democratic Congress meant no more worries about legal reform. Talk about reversal of fortune: As the year ends, we are witnessing nothing short of the dismantling of what are alleged to be major tort criminal enterprises. Bill Lerach, the king of class actions, stands disgraced as an admitted felon. His former partners at Milberg Weiss face trial for being part of the same kickback scheme as Lerach. Federal prosecutors continue...

A packet for educators issued by the Public Broadcasting System (PBS) in conjunction with the NOVA program "Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial" encourages teaching practices that are probably unconstitutional, a conservative organization stated on Tuesday. "The NOVA/PBS teaching guide encourages the injection of religion into classroom teaching about evolution in a way that likely would violate current Supreme Court precedents about the First Amendment's Establishment Clause," said John West, vice president for public policy and legal affairs at the Discovery Institute, in a news release. The 22-page document is a companion piece to the two-hour NOVA docudrama, "Judgment Day,"...

OCEAN GROVE, New Jersey (LifeSiteNews.com) - A New Jersey lesbian couple has filed a civil rights complaint against a Christian seaside retreat association that refused to facilitate their "civil union."Harriet Bernstein and Luisa Paster filed the complaint June 19 with the state attorney general's office on the grounds of discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation after the Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association declined the use of their Boardwalk Pavilion for their civil union ceremony, planned for September. Bernstein and Paster demanded "whatever relief is provided by law" including unspecified "compensatory damages for economic loss, humiliation, [and] mental pain." New...