Tag Archives: lawsuit

This Woman Accused Trump of Sexual Assault. She Finally Broke Her Silence.

by ElanaLortqpatk Posted on July 20, 2016

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Just a day after Donald Trump officially became the Republican presidential nominee, a woman broke her silence on allegations that he sexually assaulted her. In an interview with the Guardian published today, Jill Harth detailed how Trump made numerous sexual advances toward her in 1993, culminating when she says he cornered and groped her in a bedroom. Harth attempted to press charges in 1997 but withdrew her lawsuit and has since remained quiet about the case. She says that since her allegations resurfaced in a May New York Times article about Trump’s treatment of women, the Trump campaign has continuously pressured her to recant her account.

Harth says she first met Trump in 1992 during a business presentation, when she was working with the American Dream beauty pageant festival. Harth was with her romantic partner, George Houraney, at the time, but Harth says that did not deter Trump from sexually pursuing her. Trump “stared at her” throughout her meeting, according to Harth, and then asked Houraney: “Are you sleeping with her or what?” When Houraney said yes, Trump asked if it was “for the weekend or what?”

In Harth’s 1997 lawsuit, she describes several instances in which Trump allegedly harassed her. In one instance, Harth says Trump groped her under the table during a dinner with beauty pageant contestants. Then in 1993, Harth says, Trump cornered her in a bedroom in his Florida mansion during a business visit, an incident described in the lawsuit as an “attempted ‘rape’.” Harth tells the Guardian:

“He pushed me up against the wall, and had his hands all over me and tried to get up my dress again,” Harth recalled, “and I had to physically say: ‘What are you doing? Stop it.’ It was a shocking thing to have him do this because he knew I was with George, he knew they were in the next room. And how could he be doing this when I’m there for business?”

Jill Harth’s 1997 lawsuit via the Guardian

Though Harth did not use the word “rape” in her interview with the Guardian, she says, “If I hadn’t pushed him away, I’m sure he would have just went for it. He was aggressive.”

In a response to the Guardian, Michael Cohen, executive vice president of the Trump Organization and special counsel to Trump, said in a statement, “It is disheartening that one has to dignify a response to the below absurd query. Mr Trump denies each and every statement made by Ms Harth as these 24-year-old allegations lack any merit or veracity.”

Harth says she had resolved to not discuss the claims for years, but that after attempts by the Trump campaign to discredit her following the New York Times story, she is opening up now to demand an apology.

“His office—and I have it on my voicemails that he called, that they called—they asked me to recant everything when the New York Times article came out,” Harth tells the Guardian. “They were trying to get me to say it never happened and I made it up. And I said I’m not doing that.”

“Nobody was defending me, that’s why I’m talking,” Harth said. “You can believe it or not, but I went through hell and I still have to relive this again. And I just, I’m horrified that I have to think about this again.”

Taken from:  

This Woman Accused Trump of Sexual Assault. She Finally Broke Her Silence.

Posted in FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, PUR, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on This Woman Accused Trump of Sexual Assault. She Finally Broke Her Silence.

Baton Rogue Police Sued Over Rough Protest Response

by TereseLittler2 Posted on July 13, 2016

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

The ACLU of Louisiana, along with the state chapter of the National Lawyers Guild and several Baton Rouge community groups that have been protesting last week’s police shooting death of Alton Sterling, have sued the Baton Rouge Police Department over its militarized response to the protesters.

The lawsuit alleges that officers used excessive force, verbally abused demonstrators, and wrongfully arrested law-abiding protesters, legal observers, and journalists. The filing also claims the officers’ actions were an unconstitutional impediment to marchers’ First Amendment rights, and violated their constitutional right to protection from unreasonable searches and seizures.

Dozens were arrested in Baton Rogue over the weekend, including prominent Black Lives Matter activist Deray McKesson. Videos posted to social media showed Baton Rogue officers in full riot gear, armed with assault weapons. In one incident, officers stormed the front yard of a homeowner and arrested protesters assembled there, even though the homeowner had given them permission to take refuge on her property. Protests also erupted in St. Paul, Minnesota, and numerous big cities coast to coast, in response to last week’s highly publicized police shooting of Philando Castile in a Minnesota suburb. Read the full lawsuit below.

DV.load(“https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2993323-Aclubatonroguelawsuit.js”,
width: 630,
height: 500,
container: “#DV-viewer-2993323-Aclubatonroguelawsuit”
);

Aclubatonroguelawsuit (PDF)

Aclubatonroguelawsuit (Text)

Read this article: 

Baton Rogue Police Sued Over Rough Protest Response

Posted in alo, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, ProPublica, Radius, Sterling, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Baton Rogue Police Sued Over Rough Protest Response

Trump to the Media: Stop Scrutinizing Me!

by AngelPQKQbialro Posted on May 31, 2016

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

A press conference called by Donald Trump to discuss his donations to veterans’ groups devolved into a lengthy bout of bickering between the presumptive Republican presidential nominee and members of the press over media treatment of his campaign.

While Trump has fought with the press throughout the campaign, repeatedly impugning individual reporters and banning many outlets, including Mother Jones, from his rallies, the press conference at Trump Tower on Tuesday was one of the sharpest clashes yet, as Trump insulted reporters to their faces and several journalists attempted to fight back. He again called the press corps “dishonest” and potentially libelous before singling out ABC’s Tom Llamas as a “sleaze” and mocking the looks of CNN reporter Jim Acosta. Reporters at the event returned fire, arguing with Trump that he seemed to be trying to dodge scrutiny of his donations and mistook questions for criticism. “Is this what it is going to be like covering you if you are president?” one exasperated reporter asked.

In January, Trump pledged to donate $1 million to unnamed veterans’ organizations. But that donation appeared not to have been made until after the Washington Post started asking questions about the money last week, prompting Trump to give $1 million to the Marine Corps-Law Enforcement Foundation. (Trump responded to that story by calling the reporter “a nasty guy.”) At Tuesday’s press conference, Trump came prepared with a long list of organizations he said received a total of $5.6 million thanks to a fundraising event he held in January.

Trump also continued his attacks on Judge Gonzalo Curiel, a federal judge in California who has ordered documents unsealed in a lawsuit against Trump University, a school that charged students as much as $35,000 for real estate courses that promised Trump-like success and wealth. The lawsuit alleges that the school defrauded its students. Trump called Curiel an “unfair judge” on Tuesday after having attacked him on Friday as a “Trump hater” and bringing up his Latino heritage as a reason for his alleged anti-Trump bias. The documents are due to be released today.

Source: 

Trump to the Media: Stop Scrutinizing Me!

Posted in alo, Casio, FF, GE, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Trump to the Media: Stop Scrutinizing Me!

A New Lawsuit Claims a Secretive, Bush-Era Program Is Delaying Muslims’ Citizenship Cases

by JoesphTierney8 Posted on May 19, 2016

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Thirteen Muslim Missouri residents are suing the US Citizenship and Immigration Services along with the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, alleging the agencies have unlawfully delayed their applications for citizenship.

The complaint alleges that the immigrants’ applications were funneled into a secretive Bush-era program called the Controlled Application Review and Resolution Program (CARRP) that requires immigration officials to flag applicants as national security threats based on a broad range of criteria.

The American Civil Liberties Union, which uncovered the program in 2013, and the Council on American-Islamic Relations say it illegally discriminates against applicants from Muslim-majority countries. Last year, Buzzfeed reported that this heightened review process was being used to screen incoming Syrian refugees.

The federal lawsuit was filed today by the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Missouri and a local immigration litigation law firm that’s representing the Missouri Muslims who applied for citizenship.

“The CARRP definition illegally brands innocent, law-abiding residents, like the plaintiffs—none of whom pose a security threat—as ‘national security concerns’ on account of innocuous activity and associations, innuendo, suppositions and characteristics such as national origin,” the lawsuit says.

USCIS does not comment on pending litigation and a spokesman declined to comment specifically about the case. The agency would not say if the plaintiffs were subject to the heightened vetting program, citing privacy concerns.

By law, USCIS is expected to process applications for naturalization within six months of receiving them, and it must make a decision on a case within four months of interviewing the applicant. However, if an immigrant is flagged for national security concerns, USCIS places the case on the CARRP track, without notifying the applicant, according to the lawsuit. Such cases are often subject to lengthy delays and cannot be approved, “except in limited circumstances,” the lawsuit says, citing the testimony of a USCIS witness in a previous case.

One of the plaintiffs in the Missouri lawsuit, a 49-year-old woman from Iraq named Wafaa Alwan, applied for citizenship in December 2014. She waited eight months for an interview, which finally took place Aug. 31, 2015. She has been waiting for a decision ever since. Syed Asghar Ali, a 47-year-old man from Pakistan, named filed his application in March 2014 and has been in limbo for more than two years, the lawsuit says.

An immigrant who is subject to the heightened vetting program can be flagged for, among other things, donating to a charitable organization that was later designated a financier of terrorism, traveling through or living in an area with terrorist activity as well as making or receiving a large money transfer.

Immigrants may also be flagged if their names appear on the FBI’s Terrorist Screening Database, also known as the Terrorist Watch List, which is estimated to include over a million names. More than 40 percent of those on the watch list have been described by the government as having “no recognized terrorist group affiliation,” according to The Intercept.

The lawsuit alleges that this process places an unnecessary burden on law-abiding applicants from Muslim-majority countries in violation of the Immigration and Nationality Act. It also argues that the program violates the Constitution because was enacted in secret, without the approval of Congress.

Although USCIS declined to respond directly to these allegations, a spokesman told Mother Jones that the agency often needs additional time to thoroughly vet each immigrant who applies for citizenship. The program is meant to ensure that immigration benefits and services are not given to people who may pose a threat to public safety, the spokesman emphasized.

The last time a major civil rights organization filed this kind of lawsuit was in 2014, when the ACLU sued USCIS on behalf on five California residents. However, shortly after it was filed, the government quickly wrapped up the pending citizenship applications, granting three of the plaintiffs citizenship and denying the applications of the other two. After that, the ACLU and their clients dropped the legal case.

This happens frequently, said Jim Hacking, the lead attorney on the Missouri case that was filed today. That includes a 2008 lawsuit he filed on behalf of three dozen immigrants whose applications were pulled into the Controlled Application Review and Resolution Program.

“When I filed for the 36 clients, cases that had been delayed for three, four, five years all of a sudden became a priority,” he said. “This is because the government tries to root out the case. They don’t want a federal judge ruling on whether CARRP is legal or illegal. So they try to get rid of all the plaintiffs by either approving or denying their case.”

Hacking expects the new Missouri case may end the same way.

USCIS also declined to comment on the decision to resolve the applications of immigrants in the 2014 case.

Even if the new case doesn’t end in a court ruling, Hacking hopes it will put the program back in the spotlight. If society is going to hold Muslims to a higher standard when it comes to immigration and assume that they’re terrorists then we should do it out in the open and debate it, Hacking said.

“Let’s not just let an agency decide on its own that this is the way things are going to be,” he said “That’s not how America is supposed to work.”

Read this article:  

A New Lawsuit Claims a Secretive, Bush-Era Program Is Delaying Muslims’ Citizenship Cases

Posted in alo, Citizen, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on A New Lawsuit Claims a Secretive, Bush-Era Program Is Delaying Muslims’ Citizenship Cases

New Documents Will Be Released on Former Trump Associate With Mob Ties

by IreneG2298 Posted on May 11, 2016

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

On Tuesday, the Associated Press prevailed in its legal fight to persuade a New York federal judge to unseal hundreds of documents allegedly pertaining to the criminal past of a business associate of Republican presidential contender Donald Trump. The documents, which could be made public as soon as Thursday, may shed light on one of the more colorful—and allegedly mobbed-up—individuals Trump has done business with during his long career in real estate.

The case involves a man named Felix Sater, a Russian immigrant who worked for a real estate development firm in New York called Bayrock Group, which had an office in the Trump Tower in Midtown. Bayrock was involved in helping develop some of Trump’s properties in New York, Florida, and elsewhere, including Trump SoHo in New York City. In 2011, Trump settled a lawsuit by investors in Trump SoHo after they discovered, thanks to the New York Times, that Sater had a long criminal past. In 1993, Sater was sent to prison after slicing open a man’s face with a glass during a bar fight. More significant, he was later implicated in a $40 million “pump and dump” stock swindle that involved alleged Russian criminals and American mobsters. In 1998, he pleaded guilty to one count of racketeering, apparently in exchange for his assistance as a government informant in a mob prosecution.

As part of the deal, Sater’s own criminal record was kept under wraps for years—until another group of investors sued Bayrock, alleging they had been defrauded. Among the acts of chicanery, they claimed, was the fact that the firm was hiding Sater’s criminal past. The investors and their lawyer put many of the documents regarding Sater’s criminal history into the public realm in the lawsuit. That disclosure prompted a flurry of other litigation and court action against the investors’ lawyers and caused the documents to be sealed on the grounds that their disclosure could put Sater, and future potential informants, at risk or compromise ongoing criminal investigations. Those are the documents the AP has been trying to dislodge from the court.

Some of the documents, many of which have already been leaked, appear pretty innocuous, including a 2000 press release from the Justice Department touting Sater’s racketeering plea deal. It’s unlikely that many of the records soon to be released directly involve Trump, as most were sealed in attempt to protect Sater from retribution for his informant work.

The likely GOP presidential nominee distanced himself from Sater in 2007, after the New York Times reported the details of his criminal history. However, three years later, Trump gave the man an office and business cards, describing him as a “senior advisor” to Trump’s organization, according to the Times. Sater worked for Trump for about six months, the paper reported, drumming up deals for his organization.

Even if the documents don’t reveal more about Trump’s relationship with Sater, they should illuminate plenty about one of the “best people” Trump says he likes to surround himself with in the course of his business dealings—and highlight one of the more unsavory episodes of Trump’s business career.

From – 

New Documents Will Be Released on Former Trump Associate With Mob Ties

Posted in Anchor, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, PUR, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on New Documents Will Be Released on Former Trump Associate With Mob Ties

Justice Department Is Investigating Treatment of Gay and Trans Prisoners

by MaisieFurst Posted on April 15, 2016

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

The Justice Department and the US Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Georgia have launched a joint investigation into the treatment of gay and transgender inmates in Georgia prisons. The DOJ confirmed to the Georgia Voice that this is the first time it has opened an investigation focused on LGBT prisoners.

The probe follows the high-profile case of Ashley Diamond, a transgender woman who, as Mother Jones reported last year, sued employees in Georgia’s correctional department for allegedly denying her medical treatment and failing to protect her from sexual assault while she was detained. She was released from prison last August, and the lawsuit was settled in February.

“All prisoners in Georgia institutions are entitled to serve their time safely, especially if physical harm or abuse occurs because of a prisoner’s sexual orientation or gender identity,” John Horn, US attorney for the Northern District of Georgia, told the Georgia Voice.

The DOJ recently released new national guidelines to help protect transgender inmates, who face high rates of sexual assault.

Read the article: 

Justice Department Is Investigating Treatment of Gay and Trans Prisoners

Posted in Anchor, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Justice Department Is Investigating Treatment of Gay and Trans Prisoners

"Gay Conversion Therapy" Group in New Jersey to Permanently Shut Down

by StevieRendon65 Posted on December 18, 2015

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

A so-called “gay conversion therapy” group in New Jersey has agreed to permanently close its doors after losing a landmark court battle this summer.

As Mother Jones reported, a jury determined in June that Jews Offering New Alternatives for Healing, or JONAH, had violated state consumer fraud law by claiming it could help change clients’ sexual orientations from gay to straight. It was the first case in the nation to challenge conversion therapy as consumer fraud.

The plaintiffs—including three of the organization’s former clients—said therapists recommended by JONAH had subjected them to humiliating treatments, including stripping in front of a therapist and reenacting scenes of past sexual abuse during group therapy sessions.

On Friday, Judge Peter F. Bariso Jr. granted a permanent injunction after both sides reached a settlement requiring JONAH to cease operations, permanently dissolve as a corporate entity, and liquidate all its assets.

“The end of JONAH signals that conversion therapy, however packaged, is fraudulent—plain and simple,” David Dinielli, deputy legal director for the Southern Poverty Law Center, said in a statement. The center filed the lawsuit on behalf of the plaintiffs.

Michael Ferguson, one of the plaintiffs, added, “Gay conversion therapy stole years from my life, and nearly stole my life. My hope is that others can be spared the unneeded harm that comes from the lies the defendants and those like them spread.”

Conversion therapy has been rejected by major health organizations, including the American Psychiatric Association, which in 1973 removed homosexuality from the list of disorders in its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Last year, a transgender teen committed suicide in Ohio after participating in conversion therapy, inspiring a campaign for a federal ban on the practice. New Jersey, California, and Washington, DC, have laws banning licensed conversion therapists from working with minors.

In a pretrial decision in February, Judge Bariso wrote, “The theory that homosexuality is a disorder is not novel—but like the notion that the earth is flat and the sun revolves around it—instead is outdated and refuted.”

Visit site:

"Gay Conversion Therapy" Group in New Jersey to Permanently Shut Down

Posted in Anchor, FF, GE, LAI, Landmark, LG, ONA, Radius, The Atlantic, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on "Gay Conversion Therapy" Group in New Jersey to Permanently Shut Down

Sanders Threatens to Sue Democratic Party in Data Breach Dustup

by NicholaHertz Posted on December 18, 2015

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

At a press conference Friday afternoon, Jeff Weaver, Bernie Sanders’ campaign manager, threatened legal action against the Democratic National Committee for cutting off the Sanders’ presidential campaign from critical voter data, such as addresses and phone numbers of potential supporters. The DNC took this step after a Sanders campaign staffer on Thursday accessed private voter data belonging to the Hillary Clinton campaign in a breach that the Sanders campaign has denounced.

“We will be in federal court this afternoon seeking immediate relief,” Weaver said. Our data “has been stolen by the DNC.”

Weaver’s threat was the latest move in a serious—and complicated—digital dustup involving the Sanders and Clinton campaigns, the DNC, and a contractor hired by the Democratic Party to maintain voter data for various campaigns. This contractor, NGP VAN, is supposed to keep data for different campaigns separate. But on Thursday, news broke that at least one member of the Sanders campaign accessed Clinton campaign data when a firewall temporarily went down. Evidence surfaced Friday that more than one staffer of the Sanders campaign had access to the Clinton campaign voter data, and that some of the information had been downloaded.

The Sanders campaign immediately fired a staffer responsible and is undertaking an internal review into what happened and who else was involved. But the Sanders campaign insists that fault also belongs to the DNC and NGP VAN for the firewall failure. “Given that it is the DNC’s responsibility to secure the voter data file, the DNC failed in this regard,” the campaign said in a statement released Friday.

In response to the breach, the DNC revoked access for the Sanders campaign to this database—which includes crucial voter data collected by the campaign itself—until the campaign can prove it has destroyed any Clinton campaign data that it downloaded. The Sanders campaign needs this information in order to maintain contact with voters and reach out to supporters, especially as the initial voting and caucusing approaches. The lawsuit threat is an indication of how serious the situation is for the Sanders campaign.

The incident has given the Sanders campaign an opportunity to bolster its long-running claim that the DNC favors Clinton, though the party insists that is not true. “This is taking our campaign hostage,” Weaver said of the DNC’s action.

As of Friday afternoon, the Clinton campaign had said nothing about the breach or the threatened lawsuit. Saturday is the third Democratic debate, and it may well be that Sanders and Clinton address this issue there.

Update: The Clinton campaign commented on the situation.

Excerpt from: 

Sanders Threatens to Sue Democratic Party in Data Breach Dustup

Posted in Anchor, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Sanders Threatens to Sue Democratic Party in Data Breach Dustup

Here’s How Uber Is Trying to Get Out of a Huge Lawsuit

by RaymondPeningto Posted on December 13, 2015

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

For the past two years, car-hailing app Uber has tried several legal maneuvers to quash an ongoing class action lawsuit filed by a number of its drivers in California. They contend that they’ve been wrongly classified as contractors, instead of full employees, and that Uber has withheld some of their tips. On Friday, the $50 billion company deployed its latest tactic: An updated driver agreement began popping up on Uber apps nationwide that drivers were required to sign before being able to accept any new rides over the weekend, reports the San Francisco Chronicle. But many see this agreement as the company’s most recent attempt to knee-cap the class action lawsuit.

In 2014, Uber rewrote its driver agreements to include an arbitration clause that stripped drivers of their right to sue the company in regular court. On Wednesday, a federal judge in San Francisco threw out that agreement, making it possible for the ongoing class action to include all of the 160,000 drivers who have worked for Uber in California since 2009.

Two days later, Uber added language about arbitration to its driver agreements that could skirt that ruling, preventing new drivers from signing on to the class action lawsuit. Binding arbitration clauses require workers to resolve disputes in private, confidential sessions with paid arbitrators rather than in court. They also usually prohibit workers both from appealing the initial arbitration decision and, as is the case in Uber’s new driver agreement, participating in class actions.

“We believe this is an illegal attempt by Uber to usurp the court’s role now in overseeing the process of who is included in the class,” Shannon Liss-Riordan, the Boston-based attorney who is leading the lawsuit against Uber, told the San Francisco Chronicle. Liss-Riordan is filing an emergency motion that will be heard by Judge Chen on Thursday, asking the court to prevent Uber from enforcing this new agreement.

If drivers manage to get to the final paragraphs of the complex 21-page agreement, they’ll discover that they don’t have to sign off on the new arbitration clause at all. By emailing Uber directly with their decision to opt out of being forced to resolve their disputes with binding arbitration, they would be able to continue to drive. The new agreement also won’t affect those drivers who are already participating in the lawsuit.

The ongoing lawsuit challenges two aspects of how the $50 billion company treats workers: first, it claims that Uber has misclassified its workers as contractors, depriving them of crucial employee benefits such as vehicle maintenance expenses. It also alleges that the company has been manipulating ride prices by incorrectly assuring riders that a full tip is included in the fare when, in fact, Uber has kept a portion of those tips rather than remitting them fully to drivers. The suit asks Uber to reimburse drivers for lost tips and expenses, plus interest. If the group of plaintiffs grows by 160,000 drivers, the civil penalties requested in this suit could get very expensive for Uber.

Liss-Riordan explains that Uber is trying to thwart the class action because the alternative—lots of individual lawsuits—would be much simpler and cheaper for the company to handle. The time and money involved in hiring a lawyer would deter many drivers from ever pursuing an individual lawsuit. “And of course, Uber does not want to be sued 160,000 times,” Liss-Riordan told Mother Jones in October. “What it wants is for most of these drivers just to go away.”

Source article – 

Here’s How Uber Is Trying to Get Out of a Huge Lawsuit

Posted in Anchor, Citizen, FF, GE, LAI, LG, Mop, ONA, PUR, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Here’s How Uber Is Trying to Get Out of a Huge Lawsuit

Judges Give NSA More Time to Suck Up Your Data

by AEDUlrikewv Posted on August 28, 2015

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

A federal appeals court in Washington, DC, on Friday tossed out an injunction over the National Security Agency’s bulk collection of millions of American’s phone records, but left open the question of whether the program itself is legal.

From Politico:

The three appeals court judges assigned to the case splintered, with each writing a separate opinion. But they overturned a key ruling from December 2013 that critics of the NSA program had used to advance their claims that the collection of information on billions of calls made and received by Americans was illegal.

That ruling, issued by Judge Richard Leon in Washington, sent shockwaves across the legal landscape because it was the first in which a federal court judge sided with critics who questioned the legality of sweeping up data on vast numbers of phone calls–nearly all of them completely unrelated to terrorism.

The new decision Friday from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit did not kill the lawsuit brought by conservative gadfly Larry Klayman. The appeals court voted, 2-1, to allow the lawsuit to proceed in the district court, but the judges left doubts about whether the case will ever succeed.

In June, Congress phased out the NSA’s controversial program with the passing of the USA Freedom Act. The new law forced the NSA to obtain private phone records for counterterrorism investigations on a case-by-case basis through a court order. After the law mandated a six-month transition program for the new program, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court ruled that the NSA could continue its existing bulk collection program through November.

The American Civil Liberties Union has also filed an injunction to block the program, arguing that the surveillance court should not have reinstated the program after a federal appeals court in New York found it to be illegal.

View original: 

Judges Give NSA More Time to Suck Up Your Data

Posted in Anchor, Citizen, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Judges Give NSA More Time to Suck Up Your Data