Tag: lawsuits

The Absurdity Of The Hunter Biden Defamation Case

I have taught torts, including defamation for over 30 years, but I have never seen the like of the Hunter Biden defamation case.

The defendant made defamatory statements and then just refused to appear. That led to an equally bizarre $1.7 million award by U.S. District Judge Stephen Wilson of the Central District of California to Biden, consisting of just $1 in nominal damages and the rest in punitive damages.

Here is the most interesting line of the opinion: “the damage to Plaintiff’s reputation is difficult to calculate.”

It may be the single greatest understatement in the history of judicial opinions.

However, the court also noted “Plaintiff does not seek actual damages above a nominal amount.”

That means that Hunter Biden’s counsel, in a default case, elected not to argue for compensatory damages due to loss of reputation. Why would he do that?

It might be that he has little reputation to lose and that opening up that part of the case was fraught with perils.  However, it also created a potential major appellate issue. His counsel was making it clear that they were litigating purely for punitives.

For Hunter Biden, this is a much-needed windfall. His art sales notably collapsed with the value of currying favor to the Bidens. He is reportedly being pursued by creditors, including former counsel.

The question is whether the award will stand.

For many critics, Hunter Biden is virtually ‘libel proof” as an individual who has no reputation to lose. However, as we have previously discussed, that status is reserved for the most reviled personalities who cannot be defamed due to the lack of any positive reputation.

Judge Wilson, a Reagan appointee, admits in his opinion that determining reputational harm to someone like Biden is difficult to do and further recognizes the argument that “prior tarnishing of Plaintiff’s reputation may reduce the reprehensibility of Defendant’s conduct.”

The case involves a claim by former Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne that Biden took part in an $800 million bribery scheme involving Iran and failed to defend his claims in court.

Keep reading

New York Times Countersues Trump DOJ After EEOC Accuses Newspaper of Discriminating Against White Male Employee

The New York Times has filed a countersuit against the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) after the agency accused the newspaper of discriminating against a white male employee in a promotion decision.

The EEOC sued the Times in May, alleging the newspaper used Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) hiring practices that favored women and minority candidates in violation of federal civil rights law.

The agency is seeking to block the company from continuing these policies and is also seeking damages on the employee’s behalf.

According to the EEOC’s complaint, veteran editor Bryant Rousseau was denied a promotion to deputy real estate editor in favor of a multiracial woman who lacked his experience covering real estate.

The agency also alleges that none of the four finalists for the position were white men.

In a countersuit filed Friday in federal court in New York, the Times accused the EEOC of targeting the newspaper in retaliation for its reporting on the agency.

“The Commission markedly deviated from its ordinary practices in almost every respect to file the flimsiest of lawsuits against The Times, a frequent target of the administration, on the heels of investigative reporting that brought to light scathing bipartisan criticism of the EEOC, its leadership, and its priorities from both inside and outside the Commission,” the complaint states.

Keep reading

Communist Influencer Hasan Piker Gives Pete Hegseth Grounds for a Potentially SERIOUS Lawsuit

Communist influencer Hasan Piker went off on War Secretary Pete Hegseth and FOX News in one of his recent streams and said things about Hegseth that would probably give him grounds for a lawsuit.

Piker said that Hegseth has Nazi tattoos, which is so false that it’s absurd. But he also called Hegseth a rapist, which is libelous.

Piker clearly thinks he is untouchable. Hegseth may want to remind him that he isn’t.

Piker began his rant by going after FOX News.

Via Mediaite:

During the scathing attack on Fox News, Piker said, “Fox News is RapeTV, okay? It’s the pro-rape network. The candidates that it puts forward and defends — many of which are rapists. The hosts, some of the most prominent hosts on the network, were such prolific rapists that other women who were on the network had successfully sued them. Okay, the idea that this is — all of a sudden these fucking liberal blowhards are endlessly pontificating about the dangers of sexual violence and sexual assault. They’re one step removed from starting to talk about fucking rape culture.

Then he went after Hegseth:

One of their rapist hosts is now the fucking Secretary of War — Pete Hegseth — who also has a Nazi tattoo on his motherfucking chest. A Nazi tattoo that actually got him dinged by the National Guard, which stopped him from participating on the inauguration security detail — something he wrote about in a motherfucking book. And he was such a prolific rapist that his own mother sent him an email begging him to stop.

That guy with a drinking problem, who’s also now the Secretary of War — that guy used to be a host on this network for years — and they’re over here acting like, “Wow, I can’t believe it, the Democrats did this.”

Keep reading

The ABA Wants The White House’s Receipts On The Biglaw Executive Orders

In 2025, Steve Bannon said the quiet part out loud, on his own podcast, when it came to the Trump administration’s goals when issuing (unconstitutional) executive orders aimed at Biglaw firms. Bannon said of the targeted firms, “What we are trying to do is put you out of business and bankrupt you.” Now the ABA wants to know how much of that he was really involved with.

In a Tuesday filing in American Bar Association v. Executive Office of the President, the ABA asked U.S. District Judge Amir Ali to force the White House to hand over internal communications, including those involving Bannon and Boris Epshteyn, Trump’s personal senior counsel. According to reporting, Epshteyn connected two firms that struck deals with the administration, Kirkland & Ellis and Skadden, with the Commerce Department on matters related to U.S. trade negotiations.

The ABA sued the administration back in June 2025, arguing that the executive orders, plus the wave of “deals” that spooked firms into capitulating before an order ever came for them, amounted to a coordinated policy, not isolated grievances against a handful of firms. As noted when the suit was first filed, the ABA had reason to worry about standing before it ever got to the merits, given this particular Supreme Court’s track record on associational standing.

Those worries didn’t pan out, at least not yet. In April, Judge Ali rejected the DOJ’s motion to dismiss, finding the ABA had plausibly alleged a real threat of retaliation and a documented chilling effect on its members, including instances of firms declining pro bono work seen as adverse to the administration. That ruling is what put the case into the discovery fight now playing out over Bannon, Epshteyn, and the rest of the internal White House record.

The underlying grievance predates the ABA suit by months, of course. Four firms — Perkins Coie, Jenner & Block, WilmerHale, and Susman Godfrey — fought their individual executive orders in court and won, repeatedly, sweeping the district court level on First, Fifth, and Sixth Amendment grounds. Nine other firms didn’t fight, cutting deals worth roughly $940 million in pro bono commitments to Trump-approved causes instead. And DOJ’s posture toward the winning firms has been anything but consistent: in March, the department dropped its appeals of those district court losses, only to reverse course about two weeks later and go back to defending the orders, this time citing the nine capitulating firms as proof the policy worked exactly as designed.

The DOJ, as you’d expect, does not want to produce any of this. The government has argued the requests raise separation-of-powers concerns and are overbroad, and last week, it asked a federal court in New York to block the ABA from deposing Epshteyn altogether. Whether that gambit works is now Judge Ali’s problem; DOJ’s response to the ABA’s Tuesday brief is due July 17.

Keep reading

Radical Trump-Hating Clinton Judge Orders Trump to Pay E Jean Carroll $5 Million

Radical leftist Judge Lewis Kaplan on Wednesday ordered President Trump to pay E Jean Carroll $5 million – plus interest – after the Supreme Court rejected Trump’s bid to toss the sexual abuse case.

Judge Kaplan mentored E. Jean Carrol’s attorney Roberta Kaplan (no relation) when they worked together previously at a law firm.

A Manhattan jury previously reached a verdict in the E. Jean Carroll rape/defamation case and ordered Trump to pay her $5 million.

In 2019, E. Jean Carroll alleged Donald Trump raped her in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in the 1990’s.

Trump has denied the allegations and called E. Jean Carroll a “whack job” who’s “not my type.”

Carroll previously said ‘rape is sexy’ and a ‘fantasy’ – CNN’s Anderson Cooper was so disturbed he cut to a commercial break.

Keep reading

Prince Harry Loses Years-Long Privacy Lawsuit Against Daily Mail Publisher, as Controversial UK Trip Is Off to a Bad Start

A victory for free press, or a whitewashing?

We have been reporting here on how Prince Harry’s UK trip ended up mired in controversy and logistical chaos.

He was just told by Buckingham Palace that he would not be able to stay there anymore for confirming his presence too late.

And in his first public engagement, Harry was dealt a big setback, as the Duke of Sussex lost his years-long, £50 million privacy lawsuit against Associated Newspapers Limited, the publisher of the Daily Mail and the Mail on Sunday.

Fox News reported:

“Harry and six other claimants, including Elton John and Elizabeth Hurley, lost their privacy case against the publisher. The U.K.’s High Court dismissed their claims after finding the claimants had failed to prove their allegations of unlawful information gathering.”

Keep reading

Treasure Hunters Settle Lawsuit with FBI Over Mysterious Dig for Civil War Gold

A years-long legal battle between a pair of treasure hunters and the FBI over a mysterious dig for an apocryphal horde of Civil War gold has reportedly concluded, but the circumstances surrounding the event remain shrouded in mystery. The contentious dispute began way back in March of 2018 when dozens of federal agents descended upon a spot in a Pennsylvania state forest where Dennis Parada and his son Ken believed a bevy of gold bars had been buried over 150 years ago. When the FBI ended the excavation after a few days and asserted that nothing had been found, the treasure hunters grew suspicious and, after tangling with local authorities about the matter for months, ultimately sued the Justice Department in the hopes of finding some answers.

In the years that followed, the family achieved various legal victories that provided them with an array of compelling records from the 2018 dig that further convinced them that the legendary Civil War gold had been secretly recovered. “The information we’ve got from the FBI files is very damaging,” Dennis Parada explained, “it’s a massive cover-up. It’s sloppy work. I’m surprised they even put it in their files.” After besting the Bureau in court yet again this past April, the treasure hunters reportedly settled with the Department of Justice this week. The terms of the deal saw the treasure hunters receive $52,000 for legal expenses in exchange for them ending their pursuit for answers from the FBI.

While Parada expressed some measure of pride at having taken on and defeated the federal government, he conceded that what exactly unfolded in March of 2018 is still a maddening mystery. To that end, the treasure hunter indicated that their years-long quest will continue, albeit in a different form, as the family now plans to sue the Philadelphia branch of the U.S. Mint. “We’re going to have to drag the Mint into federal court and get pictures and videos of all the gold that would enter that building,” he said, “$1.1 billion in gold disappeared, and nobody’s asking any questions except us. This isn’t right.”

Keep reading

Carney is considering lawsuits over “misinformation” posts

The federal government’s latest attack on free expression is straight out of 1984.

An Access to Information memo obtained by Blacklock’s Reporter shows the Industry Department is weighing legal action against social media users accused of spreading “false and misleading information.” The heavily redacted 35-page memo offers no details on the proposed legal action.

This contrasts with the Liberal government’s past stance against internet control as a human rights threat.

Four years ago, they said, “the rights and freedoms that individuals have offline must also be protected online.”

Keep reading

The Last Nurse Standing

There are court cases that arrive dressed as employment disputes but carry the weight of an era. Adams et al. v. Mass General Brigham is one of them.

On paper, it is a federal discrimination case in Boston involving three remaining plaintiffs, Tyler Adams, Michelle Orfanos, and Jamie Steverman, against Mass General Brigham, the most powerful hospital system in Massachusetts. In reality, it is a post-pandemic reckoning over institutional power, religious liberty, scientific certainty, workplace coercion, and who gets to write the official history of the mandate years.

Mass General Brigham is not some minor regional employer. It is the largest private employer in Massachusetts, a Harvard-affiliated medical empire with tens of thousands of employees and annual revenue measured in the tens of billions. Its own public materials describe the system as having 82,000 employees and $23 billion in annual revenue, while its CEO profile states that Anne Klibanski leads an 85,000-employee system with $22 billion in revenue and $2.7 billion in annual research funding.

In June 2021, MGB announced that all 80,000 employees would be required to receive a COVID-19 vaccine once the FDA granted approval to one of the vaccines. “The evidence of COVID-19 vaccine safety and effectiveness is overwhelming,” Klibanski said in the announcement. Employees, MGB stated, would be able to request medical and religious exemptions.

That promise, that exemptions existed, is where the story begins.

More than 2,400 employees sought exemptions. MGB granted only 234. In a 2023 federal order, Judge F. Dennis Saylor wrote that MGB had “effectively made a determination that some level of risk, eventually involving 234 unvaccinated individuals out of approximately 93,600 employees… was tolerable.”

For the plaintiffs, that fact is not incidental. It is central. Their argument is not that MGB granted no exemptions. Their argument is that MGB granted some exemptions while allegedly denying others through a secretive, discriminatory, and uneven process that favored certain religions and disfavored others.

The most vivid remaining face of that fight is Michelle Orfanos, a registered nurse who had worked for MGB since 2012. According to her state-court complaint, Orfanos worked throughout the pandemic unvaccinated, including as a homecare nurse and as a volunteer in the Boston COVID field hospital. She says she had received religious exemptions to flu vaccines for years, only to have her COVID religious exemption denied in 2021, resulting in her termination.

Then came the second firing.

Keep reading

Man Who Sued Pepsi Over Fighter Jet Finally Gets His Reward 30 Years Later

Three decades after suing Pepsi for refusing to give him a fighter jet, John Leonard finally got a reward that may be even better, according to a post at Supercarblondie. 

Leonard became the center of one of advertising’s most famous legal battles after taking a 1996 Pepsi commercial at face value. The ad, promoting the company’s Pepsi Points loyalty program, jokingly claimed customers could redeem seven million Pepsi Points for a military Harrier jet.

Rather than laugh it off, the Seattle college student raised enough money to buy the required points and submitted a claim for the aircraft. Pepsi rejected it, insisting the jet was never a real prize.

The article says that the case went to court, where a judge ruled that no reasonable person would believe Pepsi was seriously offering a fighter jet in a soft drink promotion.

Although Leonard lost the lawsuit, the bizarre dispute became legendary and was later chronicled in the Netflix documentary Pepsi, Where’s My Jet?.

Now, nearly 30 years later, Frontier Airlines gave the story a happy ending. As part of a Super Bowl campaign called “The Big Redemption,” the airline converted Leonard’s original seven million Pepsi Points into seven million Frontier Miles, effectively giving him free flights for life.

The airline even featured Leonard in a tongue-in-cheek commercial, handing him the keys to an Airbus A320neo as a nod to the decades-old saga.

Now in his 50s with a wife and children, Leonard joked that unlimited airline miles are far more practical than owning and maintaining a military fighter jet. After waiting three decades, he never got the Harrier, but he may have received an even better prize.

Keep reading