Tag: lawsuits

California Democrat Ex-Mayor Found Liable for Sexually Assaulting Seven Women — Jury Hits Him With $13 Million Bill After State AG Rob Bonta Refused to Charge Him

A Sonoma County jury on Friday delivered a unanimous civil verdict against former Windsor, California, Mayor Dominic Foppoli, finding him liable for sexually assaulting seven women and ordering him to pay more than $13 million in compensatory damages.

According to Fox News, the awards ranged from roughly $6,000 to $4.65 million per plaintiff. Jane Doe 7 received about $4.65 million. Jane Doe 1 received about $3.8 million.

The jury also found the Santa Rosa chapter of the all-male Active 20-30 Club liable in one of the cases and ordered an additional $2 million.

Punitive damages have not been decided. That phase was set to begin this week after jurors found clear and convincing evidence that Foppoli acted with oppression, fraud, or malice.

Foppoli, 44, has never been criminally charged. That is the part California’s political class would prefer you not dwell on.

The allegations first exploded in April 2021, when the San Francisco Chronicle published accounts from four women. By the end of that spring, 13 women had accused the Wine Country politician of sexual assault or misconduct spanning nearly two decades. Foppoli resigned as mayor in May 2021.

Seven of those women filed a joint civil lawsuit in 2022. The trial that just ended ran about eight weeks.

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Trump-Appointed D.C. Judge Blocks President Trump’s USPS Mail-In Ballot Safeguards After Democrat Lawsuit — Claims Postal Service “Lacked Authority”

A Trump-appointed federal judge in Washington, D.C. on Sunday blocked the U.S. Postal Service’s new mail-in ballot rule, the one designed to stop untracked, unverified absentee ballots from flooding the midterms, after Democrat committees, Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries, LULAC, and the NAACP sued to kill it.

As reported right here on The Gateway Pundit back in May, Judge Nichols originally smashed the Democrats’ desperate, multi-headed lawsuits, brought by Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries, and left-wing activist groups, ruling they had absolutely zero standing to challenge President Trump’s March 31 Executive Order.

We celebrated this as a massive win for basic ballot security. Now, with the election breathing down our necks, Nichols has completely reversed course and sided with the very same activists he previously dismissed.

U.S. District Judge Carl J. Nichols granted preliminary injunctions against the Postal Service’s Final Rule on “Ballot Mail for Federal Elections.”

He ruled that key parts of the rule were ultra vires: Congress never gave USPS the power to force states to enroll mail voters in a federal portal, build state-specific absentee lists, and refuse outbound ballots that don’t match the list.

According to the court’s memorandum opinion, the rule created a Federal Ballot Mail Portal, required state and local election officials to submit voter and ballot information to USPS, established state-specific participation lists, and allowed the Postal Service to reject outbound federal ballot mail that failed to meet the new requirements.

Judge Nichols wrote that the Postal Reorganization Act authorizes USPS to collect, handle, transport, and deliver mail.

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Several People Who Were Fired Over Charlie Kirk Comments Got Big Payouts or Were Given Their Jobs Back

Following Charlie Kirk’s death last year, various individuals were either fired, suspended, or disciplined for celebrating his assassination, but since then, several have been reinstated, and some have been paid huge sums of money.

A Reuters report from November revealed that over 600 people were fired or punished for posting about Kirk’s assassination, which occurred Sept. 10, 2025, at Utah Valley University during a TPUSA event.

They included members of law enforcement agencies, nurses, teachers, professors, journalists, entertainers, military members, and more.

The social media account “Libs of TikTok” led the charge, sharing screenshots of posts that either mocked or disparaged Kirk after he was violently shot in the neck.

The most recognizable person to face any consequences was ABC’s late-night host Jimmy Kimmel. He was initially taken off the air after falsely telling his audience that Kirk’s assassin was a MAGA conservative. However, he was only hit with a brief suspension and soon returned to action.

Some of the individuals who were punished have pushed back and were granted huge paydays because of it.

In June, National Public Radio reported on Maria Ruhtenberg, who had been fired from her job last September, after one of Ruhtenberg’s friends saw one of her Facebook posts about Kirk’s death and complained to her employer.

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Lock And [Re-]Loaded: Third Circuit Greenlights Major Challenge To New Jersey Gun Liability Law

Some of us have been closely following challenges to A1765, New Jersey’s gun industry liability law. In my view, the law is facially invalid and preempted under federal law, and we may now find out after the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit greenlit a challenge from the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) yesterday. The court found that the NSSF has standing to bring the lawsuit, which could reach the United States Supreme Court.

In 2022, New Jersey enacted A1765 to expose “gun industry members” – gun sellers, manufacturers, distributors, importers, and marketers – to lawsuits as a “public nuisance.” This is a common effort among blue states to circumvent Second Amendment cases that reinforce the right to bear arms.

These laws are designed to achieve indirectly what the Court denied directly to the states: to effectively suppress the availability of guns. Indeed, the law effectively requires manufacturers to self-regulate after the state was prevented from direct regulations, mandating that these companies “shall establish, implement, and enforce reasonable controls regarding its manufacture, sale, distribution, importing, and marketing of gun-related products.” Id. § 2C:58-35(a)(2).

The problem is the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (“PLCAA”) which was passed to “prohibit causes of action against manufacturers, distributors, dealers, and importers of firearms or ammunition products, and their trade associations, for the harm solely caused by the criminal or unlawful misuse of firearm products or ammunition products by others when the product functioned as designed and intended.” 15 U.S.C. § 7901(b)(1).

PLCAA does have exceptions, including negligence per se. Id. § 7903(5)(A)(ii). The predicate exception requires proof that the manufacturer or seller “knowingly violated a State or Federal statute applicable to the sale or marketing of the product,” and that “the violation was a proximate cause of the harm for which relief is sought.” Id. § 7903(5)(A)(iii).

However, in Smith & Wesson Brands, Inc. v. Estados Unidos Mexicanos, 605 U.S. 280, 299 (2025), the Supreme Court stressed that this exception applies only to those cases where the “plaintiff makes a plausible allegation that a gun manufacturer participated in a firearms violation as in something that it wished to bring about and sought to make succeed.” Smith & Wesson Brands, Inc. v. Estados Unidos Mexicanos, 605 U.S. 280, 299 (2025) (citation modified).

In the case, the Government of Mexico sued seven American gun manufacturers, alleging that the companies aided and abetted unlawful gun sales that routed firearms to Mexican drug cartels under the predicate exception. It argued that the companies failed to exercise “reasonable care” to prevent trafficking of their guns into Mexico, and so are responsible for the harms arising there from the weapons’ misuse as “willful accessories.” As some of us predicted, it failed spectacularly in a unanimous decision.

Nuisance is not negligence per se, and gun control advocates have tried to use product liability and nuisance laws to curtail gun sales for years as an alternative to legislative gun bans, which would be struck down. (There are a couple of gun ban cases going before the Court this term).

As previously discussed, public nuisance was originally addressed in England by criminal laws against such offenses as obstructing “the King’s highways.” It evolved into a common-law tort to address a broader range of “interests of the community at large – interests that were recognized as rights of the general public entitled to protection,” in the words of the American Law Institute’s Second Restatement of Torts (1965-79).

Those cases collapsed, and rightly so. In Chicago v. Beretta U.S.A. (2004), the Illinois Supreme Court rejected the claim while acknowledging that “the tragic personal consequences of gun violence are inestimable.” The court found no interference with a legal public right. It held that such theories “would permit nuisance liability to be imposed on an endless list of manufacturers, distributors, and retailers of manufactured products.” The opioid claims are similar. Neither product was defective; both worked – all too well in some cases. The claims were based on third parties’ illegal or harmful use.

The same result appeared in nuisance claims involving lead paint. In State v. Lead Industries Association (2008), the Rhode Island Supreme Court rejected an effort to use nuisance as a substitute for product liability. The court recognized the huge toll from the product while insisting that if it is defective, that should be addressed by product liability: “Our hearts go out to those children whose lives forever have been changed by the poisonous presence of lead. But, however grave the problem of lead poisoning is in Rhode Island, public nuisance law simply does not provide a remedy for this harm.”

Consideration of the merits of the challenge in this case, however, was stymied by that state challenging standing. First filed in February 2025, the lawsuit was dismissed because it was filed before the law was enforced against any industry member companies. The state, under New Jersey’s then-AG Matthew Platkin, sued several industry members, including GLOCK, Inc. NSSF promptly moved to reopen its lawsuit against New Jersey’s gun control law.

The Third Circuit held, “NSSF’s members’ intended actions are arguably precluded by A1765 and affected with constitutional interests. NSSF argues A1765 enforcement actions against its members for otherwise lawful commerce would be an attempt to ‘hold [its members] liable for the acts of third parties who use their legal products to commit heinous crimes.'”

Unless the standing decision is reversed, New Jersey will now face review (and a possible reckoning) over its latest effort to use civil liability as an alternative avenue for gun control.

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Mamdani Blindsided by Fresh Lawsuit — The NYC Mayor Now Has to Fight in Federal Court

New York City Zohran Mamdani will soon have to defend his socialist schemes in federal court.

That’s because of a fresh lawsuit that accuses his socialist supermarkets of “unfair competition” against local grocers.

The National Supermarket Association and two of its members – City Fresh Market in Harlem and C-Town Supermarket in the Bronx – are taking the mayor to court for violating antitrust laws. 

The litigants are filing their lawsuit in the Southern District of New York, which is not exactly renowned for its concern over civil rights.

The association’s president, Anthony Peña, told The Post that the millions of dollars going to the government-backed stores are a form of “unfair competition.”

“We are arguing that everyone has to be able to access these subsidies,” Peña said. “It’s not about us being afraid of competition. We are against unfair competition.”

The group represents 450 independent grocery stores in New York City. It is filing the complaint with the America First Policy Institute, which is chaired by Larry Kudlow, President Trump’s former top economic advisor.

“Independent supermarkets have invested in our neighborhoods, created jobs, paid taxes and served local families for generations,” Peña added. “They deserve a fair and level playing field – not competition against a government-subsidized program operating under different rules.”

The Mamdani grocery plan is now facing two major legal offensives — an August state-court challenge consisting of two separate MBC filings, and a new federal antitrust lawsuit from independent supermarket operators.

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University Of Washington Settles Case Against Professor Disciplined For Mocking Land Acknowledgment

Land acknowledgments have become standard at academic and political events, including the opening of the Obama Presidential Library and a recent Michigan Democratic event. While supporters insist it merely shows respect for original inhabitants, critics argue it is the ultimate virtue signaling and is increasingly being forced on both speakers and audiences. One critic is Professor Stuart Reges, who teaches at the computer science and engineering school of the University of Washington. He has now received a settlement from the University of Washington, which spent a significant amount of time and resources in response to his mocking of the school’s land acknowledgment.

We previously discussed the case of Professor Reges, who was disciplined because he refused to post the school’s “land acknowledgment” and instead posted an alternative statement. Professor Reges sued the university and various officials in 2022. Professor Reges has declared “Land acknowledgments are performative acts of conformity that should be resisted, even if it lands you in court.”

The defendants included Nancy Allbritton, the Dean of the College of Engineering at the University of Washington, Magdalena Balazinska, Director of the Allen School, UW President Ana Mari Cauce, and the Allen School’s Vice Director Dan Grossman.

After the university encouraged faculty to add a prewritten “Indigenous land acknowledgment” statement to their syllabi, Reges decided to write his own statement. He has now been told that, while the university statement is optional, his statement is unacceptable because it questions the indigenous land claim of the Coast Salish people.

The school provided a recommended statement for all faculty to post and/or read to their students at the first of every course:

“The University of Washington acknowledges the Coast Salish peoples of this land, the land which touches the shared waters of all tribes and bands within the Suquamish, Tulalip and Muckleshoot nations.”

Professor Reges disagreed with that statement and expressed his doubts to the faculty while also noting that “Magda” did not want the faculty to discuss such reservations on the email system. That may refer to the Director of the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering, Magdalena Balazinska.

Reges’ alternative statement read:

“I acknowledge that by the labor theory of property the Coast Salish people can claim historical ownership of almost none of the land currently occupied by the University of Washington.”

The labor theory (which I teach) generally refers to John Locke’s theory. In his Second Treatise, Locke laid the foundation for property as a divine gift of God that began in the state of nature, where all was created in common by God. Reges declared that these tribes, indigenous people, “can claim historical ownership of almost none of the land and that the claim of the university land was not sufficiently used or developed to bestow a claim upon the Coast Salish people. That acknowledged group is a broad collection of different groups with ethnic or linguistic associations.”

In his lawsuit, Professor Reges says that, after he stated his own views, the university moved against him.

“On January 4, 2022, the day after Professor Reges’s Computer Science and Engineering 143 class met for the first time, Defendant [Magdalena] Balazinska, Director of the Allen School, sent Professor Reges an email ordering him to remove the statement from his syllabus because it was ‘offensive’ and created a ‘toxic environment.’“

Reges noted that the university allowed other professors “to include modified statements in their syllabi that were more consistent with the University’s recommended statement.” The operative point is that “other faculty at the Allen School continue to include land acknowledgment statements in their syllabi that differ from the University’s own statement, so long as they express a viewpoint consistent with the University’s recommended version.”

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Mike Davis Urges Trump DOJ to Withdraw ‘Ill-Advised’ Support of OpenAI in Copyright Lawsuit

Prominent conservative lawyer Mike Davis is urging the DOJ to “withdraw its statement of interest in the OpenAI lawsuit.” The DOJ’s support of OpenAI in a copyright lawsuit filed by the New York Times seems to contradict the White House AI framework.

In an op-ed for Fox News, Davis maintained that the Trump DOJ should withdraw its recently filed “ill-advised” statement of interest in OpenAI’s lawsuit which argues that Big Tech’s training of large AI models on copyrighted text is “fair use.”

The lawyer and conservative political strategist also reminded the public that training large AI models on copyrighted material is “largely intended for limited free use of copyrighted materials for educational purposes in classrooms.”

Davis goes on to argue that this position would legalize unpaid scraping, asserting that the government’s stance would let Big Tech copy and commercialize “every creative work in America without permission or payment.”

The attorney also cited China and national security rationale as a “scare tactic designed to short-circuit property rights and the rule of law.”

“The government claims this unlimited access is essential for national security, warning any restriction risks losing the AI race to China. That argument is un-American and absurd,” he wrote.

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Third Circuit Allows Lawsuit Against NJ’s Gun Industry Liability Law to Continue

On Tuesday the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit ruled that the National Shooting Sports Foundation’s (NSSF) lawsuit against New Jersey’s gun industry liability law can continue.

The law is A1765, which NSSF contends is in violation of the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (2005).

The lawsuit, NSSF v. Platkin, was initially filed in February 2025 but dismissed on the grounds that NSSF lacked standing because the lawsuit was filed prematurely – filed before the law was enforced against any industry member companies. However, after the dismissal, New Jersey’s then-AG Matthew Platkin brought lawsuits against a number of industry members, including GLOCK, Inc.

NSSF noted that Platkin “[alleged that Glock] is responsible for the criminal misuse of firearms when criminals modify and alter well-designed and lawfully-sold GLOCK pistols by illegally obtaining, possessing and installing a ‘switch’ into the handgun.” NSSF responded by filing a motion to reopen their lawsuit against the New Jersey gun control.

New Jersey contended that NSSF still lacks the standing necessary to bring the lawsuit, but the Third Circuit noted, “NSSF’s members’ intended actions are arguably precluded by A1765 and affected with constitutional interests. NSSF argues A1765 enforcement actions against its members for otherwise lawful commerce would be an attempt to ‘hold [its members] liable for the acts of third parties who use their legal products to commit heinous crimes.’”

The Third Circuit ruled to grant NSSF’s motion, allowing the lawsuit to move forward.

NSSF general counsel Lawrence Keane observed, “The challenge to this law has been tortured and the previous frustrations to demonstrate that this state law attempts to circumvent federal law can now move forward. We are confident that New Jersey’s naked attempt to undermine the will of Congress and bankrupt firearm manufacturers and sellers through frivolous lawsuits will not stand legal review.”

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25 State AGs Urge Defunding Of National Academies Of Sciences, Allege Bias On Climate Lawsuits

A coalition of 25 state attorneys general called on federal agencies and Congress to defund the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM), charging that the organization had used taxpayer dollars to produce reports that supported plaintiffs in climate lawsuits against energy companies.

In an Aug. 27 letter, the state attorneys general urged the federal government to “end grants to an organization [NASEM] that uses taxpayer money to prop up litigation theories that have been rejected by courts from Maryland to Mississippi to California.”

Much of the conflict stems from a chapter on climate science in the Federal Judicial Center’s Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence for federal judges that was written by NASEM, together with the Federal Judicial Center (FJC).

This manual provides essential background and technical information for judges who are presiding over thousands of lawsuits in which states and cities across the United States are seeking billions of dollars in damages from energy companies as compensation for alleged harm from global warming.

Allegations of Bias

Critics allege that information NASEM produced for the manual supports the plaintiffs’ claims while ignoring contrary views that favor the defense.

President Donald Trump stated in a July 19 Truth Social post that NASEM had “published fraudulent, biased, and misleading Manuals on Climate Change” and that “taxpayers should not be funding Climate Fraud, and Judges should never have relied upon it.”

In January, Reps. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, and Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), chairman of the Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, and the Internet, told the FJC in a letter that the manual appeared to include “biased programming” with the “underlying goal of predisposing federal judges in favor of plaintiffs who allege injuries from the manufacturing, marketing, use, or sale of fossil-fuel products.”

In response, the FJC removed the chapter from its manual. Initially, NASEM kept the chapter on its website but removed it on Aug. 7, pending an internal review.

“That chapter has received considerable scrutiny,” NASEM stated. “[NASEM] has determined that questions about the processes used to develop the chapter warrant an independent review, and the chapter will not appear on our website while that review is underway.”

However, attorneys general from the group of 25 states, led by Montana, Nebraska, Tennessee, and West Virginia, say they have concerns regarding that review process.

“Now, over five months later, after presidential criticism and increasing public scrutiny, NASEM has temporarily removed the chapter from its website for an ‘independent review’ of the ‘processes used to develop the chapter,'” the attorneys general wrote in their letter. “This review appears to be a sham, as demonstrated by NASEM’s secrecy around all aspects of the review process.”

The attorneys general charged that the chapter in the reference manual that NASEM helped write “materially misquotes the [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change], directly contradicts the manual’s statistics chapter, was apparently substantially ghost-written by climate plaintiffs’ attorney Michael Burger, and had funders, authors, and reviewers that included climate funders, activists, and litigation participants.”

One of the co-authors of the Reference Manual’s climate chapter, Columbia Law School professor Jessica Wentz, defended the work in a Wall Street Journal op-ed, stating that it had undergone a rigorous review process, that Michael Burger had not contributed to it, and that it was “objective and rooted in settled science.”

In addition to the chapter in the reference manual for judges, NASEM produced a report in July titled “Attribution of Extreme Weather and Climate Events and Their Impacts 2026,” which critics say bolstered plaintiffs’ arguments that harm from extreme weather events could be attributed to energy companies’ production of fossil fuels.

That NASEM report supported “extreme event attribution” (EEA), the legal theory underpinning climate lawsuits, which claims that damage from extreme weather can be attributed to fossil fuel emissions, as plaintiffs assert. NASEM stated in a summary of the report that “the scientific tools, observational datasets, and methods developed and used for EEA have advanced considerably over the past decade and increased the confidence in EEA results for some types of weather events.”

“[NASEM says] that these attribution studies have more prominence in the press and in legal proceeding and they say attribution methodology is getting better, but saying something is getting better is nowhere near the same as saying it’s any good,” Steven Koonin, physicist at Stanford University and former undersecretary for science under President Barack Obama, told The Epoch Times. “You would expect to see graphs throughout the report comparing the results of attribution with what the actual data is, and there is virtually none of that in the report.”

The NASEM report also provides a methodology and causal link between greenhouse gas emissions, changes in climate, extreme weather, physical impacts on communities, and societal and economic harm.

Among the climate lawsuit cases currently moving through the courts is a pending Supreme Court case, Suncor Energy v. County Commissioners of Boulder County, which could set a precedent for many other similar cases.

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U.S. Supreme Court Rejects New York Healthcare Workers’ Bid to Revive COVID Vaccine Mandate Lawsuit

The U.S. Supreme Court today declined for a second time to take up a case brought by New York healthcare workers who lost their jobs after the state denied their requests for religious accommodations from its COVID-19 vaccine mandate, SCOTUSblog reported.

The justices rejected a petition asking them to reconsider their June decision not to hear Does 1-2 v. Hochul, the lawsuit healthcare workers brought against the state. The court denied the request without asking New York Gov. Kathy Hochul to respond.

“This ruling is definitely a sad day for the workers who stood up and said no,” said Michael Kane, Children’s Health Defense (CHD) director of advocacy and member of New York’s Teachers for Choice, which also challenged New York’s vaccine mandate in the courts.

Kane said he was “not surprised” by the decision.

The plaintiffs represented a handful of healthcare workers, he said. “But over 30,000 were fired in New York state because of this horrendous policy from Gov. Hochul. The policy didn’t allow for any religious exemption from vaccination. On its face, it is illegal. It is unconstitutional, but the politics of the thing seems to be playing out instead.”

The workers filed their lawsuit in 2021, challenging a now-repealed New York state law mandating that workers in some healthcare-related positions get the COVID-19 vaccine.

In 2022, a federal court dismissed the lawsuit, and in 2024, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the dismissal. In 2025, the workers appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

In an unusual move, the Supreme Court asked the U.S. Department of Justice solicitor general to weigh in. In May 2026, Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote an amicus brief recommending the court deny the appeal.

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