General Law and Lawsuits

[RTH10260]

Internet Archive Responds to Recording Industry Lawsuit Targeting Obsolete Media

Posted on August 14, 2023
by Chris Freeland

Late Friday, some of the world’s largest record labels, including Sony and Universal Music Group, filed a lawsuit against the Internet Archive and others for the Great 78 Project, a community effort for the preservation, research and discovery of 78 rpm records that are 70 to 120 years old. As a non-profit library, we take this matter seriously and are currently reviewing the lawsuit with our legal counsel.

Of note, the Great 78 Project has been in operation since 2006 to bring free public access to a largely forgotten but culturally important medium. Through the efforts of dedicated librarians, archivists and sound engineers, we have preserved hundreds of thousands of recordings that are stored on shellac resin, an obsolete and brittle medium. The resulting preserved recordings retain the scratch and pop sounds that are present in the analog artifacts; noise that modern remastering techniques remove.

Statement from Brewster Kahle, digital librarian of the Internet Archive:
“When people want to listen to music they go to Spotify. When people want to study 78rpm sound recordings as they were originally created, they go to libraries like the Internet Archive. Both are needed. There shouldn’t be conflict here.”

These preservation recordings are used in teaching and research, including by university professors like Jason Luther of Rowan University, whose students use the Great 78 collection as the basis for researching and writing podcasts for use in class assignments (University Professor Leverages 78rpm Record Collection From the Internet Archive for Student Podcasts, June 9, 2021). While this mode of access is important, usage is tiny—on average, each recording in the collection is only accessed by one researcher per month.





https://blog.archive.org/2023/08/14/int ... ete-media/

[RTH10260]

‘A self-inflicted injury’: judge dismisses lawsuit claiming Yesterday trailer tricked Ana de Armas fans
Plaintiffs claimed that keeping the actor in the trailer for the Danny Boyle film but cutting her from the final product amounted to false advertising

Sian Cain
Wed 30 Aug 2023 06.50 BST

A US district judge has thrown out a $5m lawsuit from two movie fans who accused Universal Studios of tricking people into watching Yesterday by featuring actor Ana de Armas – who had been cut from the final movie – in the film’s trailer.

In a class action suit filed last year, Peter Michael Rosza of San Diego and Conor Woulfe of Maryland said they paid $3.99 each to watch the Danny Boyle romantic comedy on Amazon Prime, only to discover that De Armas was not in the film.

Accordingly, “such consumers were not provided with any value for their rental or purchase”, the suit read, with the two men suing for $5m over false advertisement, unjust enrichment and violation of unfair competition.

District judge Stephen Wilson previously ruled that Woulfe and Rosza’s suit could proceed, saying trailers were commercial speech and subject to laws around honest advertising.

But in an order dated 28 August, Wilson tossed the suit out, agreeing with Universal that the case was a “self-­inflicted injury” after Woulfe revealed in an amendment he had rented Yesterday a second time in 2023, this time on Google Play. The plaintiff explained he did so to claim new “misrepresentations on Google”, as De Armas was listed as a cast member in Yesterday in Google searches.

As he had already watched Yesterday on Prime, it was “not plausible” that Woulfe could claim the film had been misrepresented to him, the judge ruled, adding that the plaintiff’s own case had “expressly stated that De Armas ‘is not and was never in the publicly released version’ of Yesterday”.

“Plaintiff Woulfe has offered no explanation as to why he believed that version of Yesterday they accessed on Google Play would be a different version of the movie they accessed on Amazon,” Wilson noted in the order.





https://www.theguardian.com/film/2023/a ... armas-fans

[busterbunker]

Thanks for keeping me up with the news.

While I am also a copyright holder (aka a copyright nazi, from the days of an old industry forum, The Velvet Rope), both halves of this statement are untrue.

"The lawsuit said the recordings are all available on authorized streaming services and "face no danger of being lost, forgotten, or destroyed."

Many of these old 78 recordings are now longer available on "authorized streaming services" and let's talk about this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Univ ... udios_fire

[RTH10260]

Is the bun too big or the patty too small

Burger King must face lawsuit over size of Whopper

Reuters Videos
Tue, August 29, 2023 at 8:36 PM GMT+2

A U.S. district judge in Miami rejected the burger chain’s bid to dismiss a class action lawsuit brought by customers who say Burger King's in-store menu boards show a much bigger Whopper than what is actually served.

Specifically, Burger King is accused of portraying its signature sandwich as having ingredients that, quote, “overflow over the bun" - making it appear 35% larger overall and with more than double the meat of an actual Whopper.

Burger King, a unit of Restaurant Brands International, countered that it wasn’t required to deliver burgers that look “exactly like the picture.”

But the judge said it’s up to a jury to decide what “reasonable people” would think – and whether Burger King’s alleged actions amount to a breach of contract with its customers.

Burger King and its lawyers did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The plaintiffs' lawyer was not immediately available for comment.

Burger King is not the only fast-food chain accused of beefing up its images. McDonald’s and Wendy’s are defending against a similar lawsuit in Brooklyn, New York.

And Taco Bell, a unit of Yum Brands, was sued last month in Brooklyn for selling Crunchwraps and Mexican pizzas that allegedly contain only half as much filling as advertised.




https://www.yahoo.com/news/burger-king- ... 41115.html

[pipistrelle]

I notice in burger ads the burger is loaded with fresh green lettuce and juicy red tomato slices, both of which looked like they just came out of a prize-winning garden.

The real thing? Yeah, no.

[neonzx]

I notice in burger ads the burger is loaded with fresh green lettuce and juicy red tomato slices, both of which looked like they just came out of a prize-winning garden.

The real thing? Yeah, no.

I think there is whole special course on doing food photo shoots. (apparently it is inedible because of how they dress the stuff for the photos). The BK lawsuit is silly and plaintiffs are not going to get their $5MIL.

Although it might be fun to take one of the adverts in and ask for a Whooper that looks like this. ""Have it your way" after all was their old slogan. But that would be mean towards the min wage workers behind the counter.

[pipistrelle]

I notice in burger ads the burger is loaded with fresh green lettuce and juicy red tomato slices, both of which looked like they just came out of a prize-winning garden.

The real thing? Yeah, no.

I think there is whole special course on doing food photo shoots. (apparently it is inedible because of how they dress the stuff for the photos).

Yep, food photography is a specialty that takes a lot of prepping. I've seen a food shoot done. But that doesn't explain the disparity between piles of fresh lettuce depicted and what you get.

[realist]

More class-action lawsuits where plaintiffs get little, if anything, attorneys make a fortune.

[Kriselda Gray]

I think there is whole special course on doing food photo shoots. (apparently it is inedible because of how they dress the stuff for the photos). The BK lawsuit is silly and plaintiffs are not going to get their $5MIL.

Although it might be fun to take one of the adverts in and ask for a Whooper that looks like this. ""Have it your way" after all was their old slogan. But that would be mean towards the min wage workers behind the counter.

They're running current ads using "Have it your way" as part of the ad itself, though the slogan is apparently "You rule!"

[Suranis]

Off Topic

How to get cooked Turkey looking good for photo shoots? Half cook it, and then apply Shoe Polish.

How to stop Ice Cream melting in studio lighting? Use Mashed Potato instead.

[neonzx]

Off Topic

How to stop Ice Cream melting in studio lighting? Use Mashed Potato instead.

Was it young version of Ron Howard who mentioned that? He was eating mashed potatoes because they could not use ice cream on set because of the studio lighting heat.

[RTH10260]

More than a dozen people charged by US unit for threatening election workers
Justice department taskforce seeks to protect government employees, many of whom are deciding it’s ‘not worth it to stay’

Associated Press
Fri 1 Sep 2023 02.13 BST

More than a dozen people nationally have been charged with threatening election workers by a justice department unit trying to stem the tide of violent and graphic threats against people who count and secure the vote.

Government employees are being bombarded with threats even in normally quiet periods between elections, secretaries of state and experts warn. Some point to Donald Trump and his allies repeatedly and falsely claiming the 2020 election was stolen and spreading conspiracy theories about election workers. Experts fear the 2024 election could be worse and want the justice department to do more to protect election workers.

The justice department had created the taskforce in 2021 led by its public integrity section, which investigates election crimes. John Keller, the unit’s second in command, said in an interview with the Associated Press the department hoped its prosecutions would deter others from threatening election workers.

“This isn’t going to be taken lightly. It’s not going to be trivialized,” he said. “Federal judges, the courts are taking misconduct seriously and the punishments are going to be commensurate with the seriousness of the conduct.”

More people are expected to plead guilty on Thursday to threatening election workers in Arizona and Georgia.

The unit has filed 14 cases and two have resulted in years-long prison sentences, including a two-and-a-half-year sentence for an Iowa man charged with leaving a message threatening to “lynch” and “hang” an Arizona election official.

A Texas man was given three and a half years in prison this month after suggesting a “mass shooting of poll workers and election officials” last year, charges stated. In one message, the justice department said, the man wrote: “Someone needs to get these people AND their children. The children are the most important message to send.”



https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202 ... -taskforce

[MsDaisy 2]

Thu August 10, 2023

Georgia mother who alleges baby was decapitated during delivery files lawsuit

A mother who alleges her baby was decapitated during delivery at a Georgia hospital last month filed a lawsuit Wednesday against the hospital and others involved in the delivery, according to legal filings.

The complaint filed in Georgia’s Clayton County alleges the Southern Regional Medical Center attempted to conceal the manner of death of the baby from the family including the mother, 20-year-old Jessica Ross, and her boyfriend, Treveon Isaiah Taylor Sr.

The medical center is in Riverdale, some 13 miles south of downtown Atlanta. The baby, who was named after his father, was delivered at full term, according to the family attorney.

The county medical examiner’s office has not released the cause of the baby’s death. The office still is working to complete the baby’s autopsy, the office’s director, Brian Byars, told CNN.

According to the lawsuit, Ross went into labor on July 9, and her doctor, “attempted to deliver the baby vaginally using different methods including applying traction to the baby’s head.”

During the attempted delivery, “the baby did not properly descend due to shoulder dystocia,” a condition when a baby’s shoulders become stuck in the vaginal canal, the lawsuit says.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/09/us/georg ... peditorial

[pipistrelle]

I’d guess this means internal decapitation, not the French Revolution kind.

[sugar magnolia]

I’d guess this means internal decapitation, not the French Revolution kind.

Nope.
https://www.atlantanewsfirst.com/2023/0 ... ated-baby/

In a conversation with the baby’s grandmother, Watkins said he immediately knew that the family did not know the baby’s head was detached from his body.

[RTH10260]

[RTH10260]

[raison de arizona]

How a Yale Student’s Rape Accusation Exposed Her to a Defamation Lawsuit
The woman’s allegation led to the expulsion of Saifullah Khan, who was acquitted in a criminal trial. His lawsuit is now challenging these disciplinary hearings.

By Vimal Patel
Sept. 17, 2023
In a 2018 disciplinary hearing at Yale University, Saifullah Khan listened as a woman accused him of raping her after a Halloween party.

The woman, who had graduated, gave a statement by teleconference to a university panel, but Mr. Khan and his lawyer were not allowed in the room with the panel. Nor could his lawyer, under the rules of the hearing, cross-examine her.

Instead, they were cloistered in a separate room, as her testimony piped in by speakerphone. He felt, he said, “there is absolutely nothing I can do to change my situation.” As he feared, Yale expelled him.

Mr. Khan’s criminal trial, months earlier, was markedly different. His lawyer cross-examined the woman in ways that horrified women’s rights advocates: How were you dressed? How much did you drink? Did you send flirty texts? And unlike the Yale hearing, the prosecutors had to prove his guilt “beyond a reasonable doubt.”

After barely three hours of deliberations, Mr. Khan was acquitted.

The difference between those two hearings — in process and outcome — led Mr. Khan to make an unusual move: He sued his accuser for defamation for statements she had made during the Yale hearing. That lawsuit, filed in 2019, is challenging the way universities across the country have adjudicated such sexual assault hearings.

Normally, such a lawsuit would not have much of a chance. In Connecticut and other states, witnesses in such “quasi-judicial” hearings carry absolute immunity against defamation lawsuits.

But the Connecticut Supreme Court in June gave Mr. Khan’s suit the greenlight to proceed. It ruled that the Yale hearing was not quasi-judicial because it lacked due process, including the ability to cross-examine witnesses.

“For absolute immunity to apply under Connecticut law,” the justices wrote, “fundamental fairness requires meaningful cross-examination in proceedings like the one at issue.”

Mr. Khan’s lawyer, the court said, was effectively reduced to the role of a “potted plant.”

The decision applies only to cases within the state, but it is reverberating at universities across the country. College officials consulted their own state laws, checking whether their disciplinary hearings could leave witnesses vulnerable to defamation lawsuits.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/17/us/y ... =url-share

[RTH10260]

share holder lawsuits in followup to the Dominion v. Fox News

Get ready for a brawl over leadership of the case against Fox’s board

By Alison Frankel
September 19, 202311:18 PM GMT+2Updated a day ago

Sept 19 (Reuters) - I don’t envy Delaware Chancery Court judge Travis Laster the task he’s soon to face: picking shareholder lawyers to lead the case accusing Fox Corp officers and directors of breaching their duties by allowing the company to become mired in defamation claims.

Two competing complaints against Fox (FOXA.O) directors, including controlling shareholders Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch were unsealed last Friday in Chancery Court. One was brought by pension funds for public employees of Oregon and New York City. The other is on behalf of eight public pension and union welfare funds.

Both complaints are long – the multifund complaint is 172 pages; the New York and Oregon filing is a relatively svelte 120 pages. They’re also notably detailed, featuring not just evidence from the Dominion Voting Systems election fraud defamation lawsuit that Fox settled in April for $787.5 billion but also information the funds obtained directly from Fox under a Delaware law that permits shareholders to access corporate books and records.

Both sets of shareholders are represented by eminent plaintiffs' lawyers. New York and Oregon have Friedlander & Gorris; Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein; and Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll. The other funds have lawyers from five shareholder firms, including Bernstein Litowitz Berger & Grossmann; Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd; and Labaton Sucharow.

And to add to the fun, two previously filed breach-of-duty suits against Fox directors have also been consolidated before Laster, including a 209-page complaint filed by a group of plaintiffs' firms led by Prickett, Jones & Elliott.



https://www.reuters.com/legal/governmen ... 023-09-19/

[MN-Skeptic]

Both complaints are long – the multifund complaint is 172 pages; the New York and Oregon filing is a relatively svelte 120 pages. They’re also notably detailed, featuring not just evidence from the Dominion Voting Systems election fraud defamation lawsuit that Fox settled in April for $787.5 billion but also information the funds obtained directly from Fox under a Delaware law that permits shareholders to access corporate books and records.

That’s quite a typo on the part of Reuter’s.

[RTH10260]

Just keeping in line with Faux News exaggerations

[busterbunker]

Oy vey. That's a lotta lawyers. I couldn't even afford their their lox and beigels.

[W. Kevin Vicklund]

And in totally unrelated, in no way connected, ya sure ya betcha, news: Rupert Murdoch steps down as Fox and News Corp. chairman, sending shockwaves through media and politics (no link because this is also on the Fox News thread)

[RTH10260]

Appeal court

Court dismisses $224 million verdict against Johnson & Johnson in talcum power lawsuit

BY KHRISTOPHER J. BROOKS
OCTOBER 4, 2023 / 2:39 PM / MONEYWATCH

A New Jersey court has tossed a nearly $224 million verdict against Johnson & Johnson that was awarded to four people who alleged in a lawsuit that they got cancer after using the company's talcum-powder products.

The three-judge appeals court ordered a new trial after ruling that expert testimony presented in a lower court on behalf of the plaintiffs was faulty. J&J was ordered in 2019 to pay New Jersey residents Douglas Barden, David Etheridge, D'Angela McNeill-George and William Ronning $37.3 million, along with $186.5 million in punitive damages.

The company appealed that decision the following year, arguing that three experts selected to testify during the trial — William Longo, Jacqueline Moline and James Webber — presented flawed or incomplete information. Moline is an occupational medicine doctor at North Shore University Hospital on Long Island in New York. Longo is a materials scientist in Georgia, CEO of Micro Analytical Laboratories and a former member of the National Asbestos Council. Webber is an independent environmental health scientist and consultant from Oregon who has done research on asbestos contamination in air and water.

Moline never concluded that using J&J's talc led to cancer prior to the J&J trial, while Longo did not precisely determine how many times the plaintiffs had used the powder, J&J attorneys argued. Webber also testified that certain minerals found in the baby powder, known as cleavage fragments, can cause cancer, but he based that conclusion on an outdated study from 1980 that needed further research, J&J further alleged.

The appeals court agreed with the company's argument that the lower court should not have allowed the three experts' testimony.

"In sum, the trial court erred when it admitted Webber's and Moline's testimony about cleavage fragments, and Longo's extrapolation testimony," the judges wrote in their opinion. "These errors, taken singularly or collectively, were harmful and require the reversal of the jury verdict."





https://www.cbsnews.com/news/johnson-an ... r-lawsuit/

[RTH10260]

McDonald's, Wendy's win false advertising suit

CBS News Miami
OCTOBER 4, 2023 / 10:15 AM / CNN

Wendy's and McDonald's have emerged victorious from a lawsuit that accused the fast food chains of false advertising.

A federal judge dismissed a lawsuit brought against the two companies accusing them of selling smaller hamburgers than advertised and alleging the food didn't look as appetizing in person as pictured on their websites.

The plaintiff's complaint in the 2022 lawsuit accused Wendy's and McDonald's of using undercooked patties in ads because "fully cooked burgers tend to shrink and look less appetizing" and that the companies' ads harm customers because "they are receiving food that is much lower in value than what is being promised."

US District Judge Hector Gonzalez ruled that Wendy's and McDonald's food images "are no different than other companies' use of visually appealing images to foster positive associations with their products." He also said that disclaimers listed on the chains' websites were "prominent" and gave "objective information about the weight and caloric content of those meals."



https://www.cbsnews.com/miami/news/mcdo ... NR-01-0623