Tag: lawsuits

Taxpayers let off the hook as Newfoundland and Labrador drops equalization lawsuit

The province made the announcement that it was dropping the lawsuit last week after previously seeking additional funding from the federal government through the court challenge.

Terrazzano commented on the implications of the province rescinding its lawsuit, noting the benefit for Canadian taxpayers. “The Newfoundland and Labrador government was suing the federal government, essentially launching this court challenge trying to get the courts to force the federal government to increase the equalization handouts to the province,” he said.

“Newfoundland and Labrador eventually dropped that court case, so it’s a big win for taxpayers … we were intervening in this, because we were arguing like hold on a second right, the constitution was never designed to let provinces sue Ottawa to get bigger handouts from taxpayers,” Terrazzano continued.

“It’s good that Newfoundland and Labrador came to its senses and dropped this court case, because if they were successful, the bill for equalization could have ballooned by billions of dollars and really taxpayers, especially in Alberta, British Columbia, and Saskatchewan, would be on the hook for all this,” he added.

Newfoundland and Labrador’s decision to drop its equalization lawsuit spares Canadian taxpayers from a potential multi-billion-dollar increase in federal transfers. The province’s premier, Tony Wakeham, stated that although he believes the equalization system is flawed, the lawsuit will not be moving forward.

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Secret Trial of Pfizer RSV Vaccine Killed Two Infants in the 1960s — Their Families Just Sued the U.S. Government

The families of two Black infants who died during a 1960s experimental RSV vaccine trial have filed a federal lawsuit against the U.S., alleging government researchers enrolled the babies in a dangerous medical experiment without their parents’ knowledge or consent, The New York Times reported.

The lawsuit, filed May 22 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, alleges the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and other researchers, in 1965 and 1966, subjected dozens of infants — most or all of them from low-income Black families — to testing of Pfizer’s Lot 100 experimental vaccine for respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV.

Two infants, Victor Marcellus King and Ross Otto Hambrick, later died after developing vaccine-associated enhanced respiratory disease (VAERD), a severe respiratory illness caused by the vaccine.

VAERD occurs when a vaccinated child who never had RSV is exposed to the virus and develops a more severe case of RSV than they would have if they hadn’t received the vaccine.

The suit was filed by Sharlette Hambrick and Darius King, acting as representatives of the estates of their deceased brothers. They allege federal researchers failed to obtain informed consent from the children’s parents, withheld critical information about prior vaccine failures, and continued the study despite mounting evidence that the vaccine was causing severe reactions in participants.

The complaint also alleges that the tissue samples from the babies who died were later used to develop the RSV vaccines and monoclonal antibody shots that have been approved in the last several years — providing a financial boon for drugmakers.

“Medical research in the United States has a long, troubled racial history,” the complaint states, comparing the alleged conduct to other notorious examples of unethical experimentation involving Black Americans, including the Tuskegee Syphilis Study and the exploitation of Henrietta Lacks.

The infants’ families were unaware the babies had been subjected to the experiment until a reporter from Undark magazine contacted them while investigating the story in 2023.

The reporter found the babies’ names in a doctor’s government-issued laboratory notebook and other paperwork from the clinical trial, the Times reported.

Parents not told infants were being enrolled in trial for experimental vaccine

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Obama Judge Launches Investigation Into Trump Settlement with IRS

A federal judge on Friday launched an investigation into the Trump Administration’s settlement with the IRS that led to the $1.77 billion anti-weaponization fund.

Earlier this month, President Trump dropped his $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS over the leak of his tax returns in exchange for a deal.

Trump dropped his blockbuster lawsuit against the agency in exchange for a $1.7 billion taxpayer-funded fund to pay people who were unfairly targeted by the Biden Regime.

In January, President Trump, Eric Trump, Don Jr., and the Trump Org filed a lawsuit against the IRS for leaking their tax returns.

They sought $10 billion in damages.

After Trump agreed to drop his lawsuit in exchange for the anti-weaponization fund, a group of former judges asked a federal judge to launch an inquiry to determine whether the Trump Administration defrauded the court.

On Friday, Miami-based US District Judge Kathleen Williams, an Obama appointee, launched the inquiry.

Politico reported:

A federal judge is demanding answers to allegations that President Donald Trump defrauded her court by filing a lawsuit against the IRS as a pretext to reach a settlement that resulted in a $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund to make payouts to his political allies.

U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams launched the inquiry Friday, after closing the lawsuit on her docket last week. The Miami-based Obama appointee cited a request by 35 former federal judges who urged her to reopen the case to determine whether Trump’s effort amounted to “serious misconduct” and an abuse of the court system.

In September 2023, federal prosecutors charged a former IRS contractor who worked for the agency from 2018 to 2020 with unlawfully obtaining and disseminating the tax details of a high-ranking public official and numerous affluent Americans to media outlets.

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Everything About E. Jean Carroll’s Half-Baked Hit Job Against Trump Was A Mess

he Department of Justice purportedly launched a criminal investigation into E. Jean Carroll, according to a CNN exclusive published Wednesday, and corporate media rushed to decry the supposed “weaponization” of justice against the writer who accused President Donald Trump of sexual assault. Though the exact nature of the investigation remains uncertain, it’s well worth revisiting the facts that undermine Carroll’s half-baked anti-Trump hit job.

CNN reported that the investigation is centered on whether Carroll committed perjury. Prosecutors, CNN said, are focusing on a deposition Carroll provided in 2022 in which she said she received no outside funding for her lawsuit. Despite her testimony, it turns out billionaire Democrat donor Reid Hoffman paid some of her legal fees and expenses.

U.S. Attorney Andrew Boutros said in a statement that the Northern District of Illinois “has not opened — and has never opened — a criminal investigation into E. Jean Carroll,” though CNN said its “sources reaffirmed the investigation to CNN.” A source told Axios that the DOJ is actually investigating the Hoffman nonprofit organization that paid some of Carroll’s legal fees, and that Carroll “is not the subject of the investigation.”

Whether this reported investigation goes anywhere remains to be seen. But it does remind Americans just how deeply flawed and politically charged the entire case was from the very beginning.

Carroll accused Trump of raping her in a Bergdorf Goodman and then sued him for defamation when he denied it in 2019. Carroll notably declined to press criminal charges against Trump because, according to her, she “would find it disrespectful to the women who are down on the border who are being raped around the clock.” Carroll then filed a second lawsuit in 2022 after the state of New York temporarily changed a statute of limitations law.

That was only one of many suspect aspects of the crusade against Trump.

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Maryland Sheriffs Sue State to Stop Amnesty State Law

Seventeen Maryland county sheriffs have joined together to sue the state over a new law that gives sanctuary to illegals that the law officers say will make Maryland a more dangerous place to live.

Sheriff Jeffrey R. Gahler, of Harford County, Maryland, and sixteen other Maryland sheriffs, have joined with the  in a lawsuit filed in a federal court to block the state’s newly passed “Community Trust Act” (SB0791).

“It is an intentional state-mandated obstruction of public safety,” Sheriff Gahler said about the new law. “This law deliberately ties the hands of our dedicated local deputies, police officers and correctional officers. It forbids us from sharing information with federal authorities.”

“This issue, ladies and gentlemen, is not about politics. It’s about public safety. And, we believe this law directly hampers our ability to effectively safeguard the boundaries of our respective counties,” Worcester County Sheriff Matt Crisafulli added.

The new law passed in the House of Delegates 92-37 and in the state Senate 32-15 this week and became law without Democrat Gov. Wes Moore’s signature.

The Community Trust Act bans local cooperation with federal immigration officials and maintains that a felony conviction or a judicial warrant must be presented by immigration officers before local law enforcement can communicate with ICE about a suspect’s immigration status.

The lawsuit filed by the group of county sheriffs says that the state’s new law violates federal authority to implement legal immigration policy and is a violation of the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution. It also forces state law enforcement to break federal law by harboring illegal migrants.

In its press release on the lawsuit, FAIR says that “Maryland’s sanctuary law thereby makes it impossible to obey both federal law and state law, it presents a textbook case of conflict preemption.”

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Corporations Can Vote in Some Delaware Elections, Judge Says

Corporations, partnerships, trusts, limited liability companies, and other “artificial entities” have the right to vote in Delaware elections under some circumstances, a judge said in a novel ruling Tuesday.

Judge Craig A. Karsnitz rejected an ACLU challenge to a charter permitting voting in local elections by the entities that own most of the property in the Town of Fenwick Island, one of several municipalities in the state with similar provisions. Karsnitz dismissed the lawsuit from Delaware’s Superior Court, citing “the principle of one person/entity/one vote.”

“Visions of faceless large corporations or even HAL controlling a small town are frightening and the stuff of science fiction,” but “trusts, partnerships, limited liability companies, and corporations are expressly recognized as ‘persons’ in the Delaware Code,” the judge said.

The dispute over municipal voting in a tiny coastal community represents an unusual flashpoint in the decades-long fight over the free speech rights of corporations and the dark money flooding the American electoral system. The US Supreme Court held in 2010’s Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission that political spending counts as constitutionally protected speech.

Ever since that ruling effectively ended corporate campaign finance regulation, the prospect of outright voting by business entities has served as fodder for both critics and comedians.

Delaware, home to more corporations than people, is a fitting place for reality to outpace satire. The state constitutional provisions expressly enshrining corporate personhood reflect Delaware’s budgetary reliance on the billions in fees it raises annually from the more than 2 million business entities chartered there.

Karsnitz, writing in a 19-page opinion Tuesday, rejected an array of constitutional arguments advanced by the ACLU, including the claim that entity voting dilutes the political power of living people.

The lawsuit “does not allege discrimination based on race or political partisanship,” show “that entity property owners vote sufficiently as a bloc to usually defeat the preferred candidates of natural persons,” or assert “that Fenwick’s charter distinguishes between natural persons and entity property owners with the discriminatory intent to fence out natural persons,” the judge said.

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Federal Court Strikes Down Landmark Fluoride Ruling on Technicality — ‘Not the Science’

 A federal appeals court has vacated a landmark decision that found fluoridated drinking water poses an “unreasonable risk” to children’s health under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA).

The decision by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals did not challenge the substance of the lower court’s findings — that fluoride is toxic to children and ought to be regulated. Instead, the court based its decision on procedural issues related to the lower court’s handling of the litigation.

The case will now go back to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, where District Judge Edward Chen will be required to exclude all scientific evidence that became available after 2020.

Michael Connett, attorney for the plaintiffs, told The Defender the court “instructed Judge Chen to travel back in time to 2020 and make this ruling based on a stale factual record.”

Connett said the directive to ignore years’ worth of evidence on fluoride’s dangers runs counter to the intent of the TSCA — which is to protect hundreds of millions of Americans from substances that are harmful to human health.

The federal appeals court ruling, handed down late Thursday, stemmed from a lawsuit against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) brought by consumer advocacy groups including Food & Water Watch, the Fluoride Action Network (FAN), and Moms Against Fluoridation.

The groups sued after the EPA refused to consider their 2016 citizens’ petition asking the agency to regulate fluoride.

After two bench trials, Chen ruled that fluoride at the federally recommended concentration of 0.7 milligrams/liter (mg/L) posed an “unreasonable risk” to children’s health and ordered the EPA to regulate it accordingly.

However, the 9th Circuit panel said the lower court violated the “party presentation principle” — a legal doctrine requiring courts to act as neutral arbiters rather than taking control of a case’s factual development.

Connett said the decision was “a very expansive and unprecedented application of the party presentation principle.” He said that to date, “this principle has really only been applied to situations where judges raise new legal issues, not where judges use procedural mechanisms to resolve the issues presented.”

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Supreme Court rejects Meta’s appeal in Vermont social media addiction case

The Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected a push to avoid a lawsuit alleging that Facebook and Instagram harmed young users, a decision that comes as social media companies increasingly face legal scrutiny.

Parent company Meta Platforms Inc. appealed after Vermont’s highest court allowed a suit filed by its attorney general in 2023 to move forward. The company is facing similar lawsuits from states across the country, accusing it of knowingly designing addictive features.

Meta had argued that it can’t be sued in Vermont court because neither the company nor the app design has specific ties to the state. Vermont countered that the sites’ large number of teen users gives its courts jurisdiction.

The Supreme Court declined to hear the appeal in a brief, unexplained order, as is typical. The procedural decision comes after court losses for Meta and YouTube in social media addiction lawsuits in California and New Mexico.

Vermont’s lawsuit was filed after an investigation by a bipartisan coalition of attorneys general in several states. Newspaper reports based on Meta’s own research also found that the company knew about the harms Instagram can cause teenagers — especially teen girls — when it comes to mental health and body image issues. One internal study cited 13.5% of teen girls saying Instagram makes thoughts of suicide worse and 17% of teen girls saying it makes eating disorders worse.

Almost all teens ages 13 to 17 in the U.S. report using a social media platform, with about a third saying they use social media “almost constantly,” according to the Pew Research Center.

Meta, for its part, has said that it has already introduced dozens of tools to support teens and their families and suggested it would have worked with the states on standards for youth social media use.

Vermont Attorney General Charity Clark applauded the decision, saying it affirms “that companies that choose to do business in Vermont, like Meta, can be held accountable when they harm kids.”

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Justice Department investigating whether Trump accuser E. Jean Carroll committed perjury, sources say

The Justice Department is conducting a criminal investigation into whether author E. Jean Carroll committed perjury in connection with her civil lawsuits against President Trump, sources familiar with the matter said.

The investigation is being led out of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Illinois, one of the sources added. 

Carroll sued Mr. Trump in two civil lawsuits accusing him of sexual assault and defamation. In 2023, a jury found Mr. Trump liable for sexual assault and defamation for comments he made in 2022. Carroll was awarded $5 million in damages.

A second jury in 2024 found him liable for defamation in connection with comments he had made about Carroll in 2019, awarding her $83.3 million in damages. Both judgments were upheld on appeal.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, who represented Mr. Trump on some of the litigation, is recused from the case, one source added.

The investigation was reported earlier by CNN. The theory of the case hinges on whether Carroll lied when she said in a 2022 deposition that she received no outside funding for her lawsuit, a source told CBS News.

It was later revealed that billionaire Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn, helped pay for some of her legal expenses.

CBS News has reached out to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Illinois for comment on the investigation, as well as to Roberta Kaplan, the attorney who represented Carroll for the two lawsuits.

Carroll accused Mr. Trump of sexually assaulting her in a New York City department store dressing room during an encounter in the mid-1990s, an account which she published in a 2019 story for New York Magazine. In 2019, Carroll sued Mr. Trump for defamation, but the case stalled in court.

She then filed a second defamation lawsuit in 2022, adding a claim of rape under New York’s Adult Survivors Act.

Mr. Trump has repeatedly denied the sexual assault allegations.

Hoffman’s financial backing for Carroll’s lawsuit was first revealed in legal papers filed by Mr. Trump’s attorneys in April 2023, just ahead of the trial in the first defamation lawsuit, according to the New York Times.

When Mr. Trump’s attorneys brought the issue up on appeal, the appeals court found that Carroll had “plausibly represented” in her deposition “that she had forgotten about the limited outside funding counsel obtained.” 

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Texas Sues Discord, Seeks Mandatory Age Verification

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued Discord on Friday. The lawsuit alleges the platform enabled child predators, deceived parents, and violated the state’s Deceptive Trade Practices Act.

But the remedy Texas is asking the court to impose goes far beyond fixing Discord’s broken safety systems. Paxton wants a judge to order mandatory age verification for every user on the platform under the Securing Children Online through Parental Empowerment Act, Texas’ SCOPE law.

That means before you can type a message, join a server, or talk to anyone on Discord, you would need to prove your identity to the state’s satisfaction. Government ID uploads. Biometric face scans. Third-party verification services that cross-reference your private records.

The SCOPE Act doesn’t specify which method, just that the platform must use a “commercially reasonable” one. All of that requires surrendering personal data that goes well beyond confirming you’re over 18.

This is the pattern now. Age verification laws are the vehicle through which governments are dismantling anonymous access to the internet and they’re doing it one platform at a time, one state at a time, always framed as protecting children.

More than 25 US states now require age checks to access some form of online content. The Supreme Court upheld Texas’s age verification law for adult websites last year.

The EU is rolling out its Digital Identity Wallet by the end of 2026. Australia banned under-16s from social media entirely. Discord is just the latest target.

“Discord has allowed and invited all kinds of nihilistic violence and evil,” Paxton said. “We live in a time where the dangers children face online have never been greater, and every parent in Texas deserves to know their child is protected.”

Paxton filed the lawsuit in Collin County state district court, part of a burst of tech company litigation from his office ahead of his US Senate GOP runoff against John Cornyn, which he won yesterday.

We obtained a copy of the lawsuit for you here.

Earlier this year and last, his office has gone after Snapchat, TikTok, and Roblox on similar grounds. Texas joins Nevada, Indiana, and New Jersey in suing Discord specifically, with Florida investigating separately.

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