Free Republic

SAN FRANCISCO — Embattled biotech startup Theranos Inc. has promoted senior litigation counsel David Taylor to acting general counsel. Taylor's already got a full plate. "He's got a mess on his hands," said Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro partner Robert Carey in Phoenix, one of many lawyers suing the blood diagnostics company for alleged consumer fraud. Carey's suit is one of six similar, separate suits consolidated in the Northern District of California. Aside from that litigation surplus, Theranos is being investigated for investor and consumer fraud by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the U.S. Department of Justice, respectively. The...

Every dog has his day. And the Web's most celebrated canine is getting more than one. The Pets.com sock puppet -- perhaps the best-known icon of the dot-com boom and bust -- is coming back from the Internet graveyard to market auto loans to people with bad credit. The puppet's message: Everyone deserves a second chance. "He's a lot like our customers -- they are good people who have had a bad time," said Jim Crouse, chief executive of 1-800-Bar None, a Pleasanton company that provides car financing and is adopting the puppet as its mascot. The sock puppet has...