Posts Tagged ‘lawsuits’

And I Would Have Gotten Away With It, Too, If It Weren’t For That Rascally Ecuadorean Judge…

Thursday, February 24th, 2011

“CARACAS, Venezuela — A judge in a tiny courtroom in the Ecuadorean Amazon ruled Monday that the oil giant Chevron was responsible for polluting remote tracts of Ecuadorean jungle and ordered the company to pay more than $9 billion in damages, one of the largest environmental awards ever.”

What do you think?

Is $9 billion enough to cover large-scale destruction of the environment and irreparable damage to human health? Is it too much?

And would knowing that BP has already pledged $20 billion to pay for damages related to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill change your mind?

Madoff Clients Sue Owners of the Mets – “They Should Have Known”

Tuesday, February 1st, 2011

“The trustee representing the victims of Bernard L. Madoff’s multibillion dollar Ponzi scheme is seeking hundreds of millions of dollars from the owners of the Mets, alleging that they, as longtime and successful investors, knew or should have known Madoff was operating a fraud, according to two lawyers involved in the case.”

What do you think?

Should the Madoff clients that made money be forced to pay the clients that lost money?

Your New Apple Gadget Might Be Selling You Out

Tuesday, December 28th, 2010

evil-marketing-rays.jpg
credit: Unhindered by Talent

On the night before the night before Christmas, a disgruntled fellow named Jonathan Lalo decided to drag Apple Inc. to court. Why? He says that the UDI (Unique Device Identifier) built in to iPhones and iPads allows apps to collect data on their users without their permission. (He called out some of these apps right in his complaint: Pandora, Paper Toss, the Weather Channel, Dictionary.com.)

Why is that a big deal? Well, appmakers can do pretty much anything they want with the information they collect about you. They can make their products better, customize offerings, or, you know. Sell your most intimate details to the highest bidder.

The suit says: “Some apps are also selling additional information to ad networks, including users’ location, age, gender, income, ethnicity, sexual orientation and political views.”

JLa wants to make his legal challenge into a class action suit – which means that he wants to sue Apple on behalf of everyone who has downloaded an app from the Apple Store in the past two years. If he wins, or if Apple agrees to some kind of settlement, everyone in that “class” (or category of people) would share in the settlement benefit.

How A Bunch Of Really Smart Kids Ruined Everything (Volume 1)

Wednesday, December 22nd, 2010

“Repo 105″ – like Four Loko, but more dangerous to the health of your company.

Ever wonder how enormous old financial firms suddenly bite the dust? Well, the answer (according to the man suing Ernst & Young for civil fraud)  is that they do stupid things with the help of accountants.

According to New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, giant accounting firm Ernst & Young helped their client Lehman Brothers hide billions of dollars in debt so that it would look like a healthier company than it really was. For seven years. Until (surprise!) Lehman went bankrupt in 2008.

Lehman owed a lot of people a lot of money (like, billions of dollars). But they didn’t want to go around telling people about it.

mathemagician-by-kf6gpe.jpg

credit: kf6gpe

So (according to the lawsuit) Ernst & Young helped them hide their little debt problem with a ninja accounting tactic called “Repo 105.” Basically, Lehman would sell off a bunch of their assets and use the money to pay off some debt. That day was a good day, because when they had to show their financial reports to the world, it looked like they didn’t owe billions of dollars.

But – here’s the genius part – the next day, they would buy back the assets they sold at an even higher price, taking on more debt than they had before.

In exchange for its creative accounting services, Ernst & Young received $150 million in fees from Lehman between 2001 and 2008. Ernst says it was just using “generally accepted accounting principles,” which makes you wonder what other firms have been drinking. Cuomo says it will be paying those fees back to the State of New York by the time he’s done with them.

Hotel Owners Not Sure About Online Review Sites

Monday, October 25th, 2010

Well, that’s not entirely true. Hoteliers with happy customers are reaping the benefits of increasingly visible recommendations. But not every hotel has happy customers…

  • The popular hotel review resource TripAdvisor.com is facing lawsuits from hotels claiming the site is bad for their businesses.
  • Anyone can post an anonymous review of a hotel on the site. TripAdvisor argues that this makes for the most honest reviews, but opponents say it creates a protected space for libel and defamation. Sites like TripAdvisor are usually exempt from these accusations because they just publish reviews – they don’t write or edit them.
  • TripAdvisor typically doesn’t remove old or inflammatory reviews, but it does allow hotel owners to post responses to negative reviews. In response to the popularity and influence of these review sites, consulting firms have sprung up promising to monitor and control online customer feedback.

Facts & Figures

  • There are 35 million hotel reviews on TripAdvisor.com.
  • TripAdvisor was sued in 2009 over a review that claimed the owner of a hotel restaurant was seen buying drinks for a prostitute.
  • Revinate, a San Francisco image protection firm, charges hotels hundreds of dollars a month to track online reviews.

Best Quote

“We have pretty happy customers, so something like TripAdvisor works in our favor.” – Niki Leondakis, President and CEO of Klimpton Hotels