Tag: lawsuits

Government Announcement on Autism Should Revive Lawsuits Over Tylenol: Attorneys

The federal government’s new warning that taking Tylenol during pregnancy may lead to autism should prompt the revival of lawsuits from mothers who allege Tylenol caused their children’s autism or attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), attorneys for the families said in a new filing.

Federal officials on Sept. 22 moved to update labeling for Tylenol and other drugs containing acetaminophen, which are used for pain and fever relief. Regulators said that “the use of acetaminophen by pregnant women may be associated with an increased risk of … autism and ADHD in children.”

During a press conference announcing the moves, Food and Drug Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary quoted Dr. Andrea Baccarelli, a dean at the Harvard School of Public Health, who said in his expert opinion in the legal case that “there is a causal relationship” between in utero exposure to acetaminophen and neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism.

“Expert opinion that is sound enough to persuade every Senate-confirmed federal scientist easily clears Rule 702(d)’s bar,” the attorneys said in the filing on Wednesday, referring to a rule governing the use of expert witnesses in litigation.

“Reasonable scientists can continue to debate Dr. Baccarelli’s conclusions. But affirming a decision characterizing his approach as ‘junk science’ would pose grave separation of powers concerns,” the attorneys said. “The executive branch safeguards public health from dangerous pharmaceutical interventions. A decision holding that a jury may not hear the same expert evidence that the executive branch credited will badly damage the public trust required for the executive to take care that the public-health laws are faithfully executed.”

The lawsuits in question alleged that retailers and Kenvue, which makes Tylenol, failed to warn people that drugs containing acetaminophen could cause autism or ADHD. U.S. District Judge Denise Cote ruled in 2023 that Baccarelli and other experts offered by plaintiffs cherry-picked and misrepresented the results of studies. She later dismissed the cases.

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Maine mass shooting survivors refile lawsuit after Pentagon watchdog report cites Army negligence

The survivors and family members of victims of the deadliest mass shooting in Maine history have refiled their lawsuit against the U.S. government following a new U.S. Department of Defense watchdog report that faults the U.S. Army for a high rate of failure to report violent threats by service members.

Eighteen people were killed in Lewiston in October 2023 when Robert Card opened fire at a bowling alley and a bar and grill. Dozens of survivors and relatives sued the federal government earlier this month on grounds that the U.S. Army could have stopped Card, a reservist, from carrying out the shootings.

Lawyers for the group filed their amended lawsuit on Tuesday. It cites a report issued by the inspector general for the Defense Department this month that concludes the Army failed to make mandatory reports of violent threats almost half the time.

Military law enforcement is required to report violent threats to the service’s military criminal investigative organization. The review found the Army did not consistently follow that policy in 32 of 67 violent threat investigations in 2023.

The report specifically mentions Card, who died by suicide two days after the shootings. It says failure to consistently report violent threats “could increase the risk of additional violent incidents by service members, such as what occurred with SFC (Sgt. 1st Class) Card.”

The longstanding pattern of unaddressed threats gives the Lewiston victims a stronger case, said Travis Brennan, an attorney for the group.

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German Federal Police Sued Over Facial Recognition Database Use

Germany’s top criminal police authority is facing legal action over the handling of biometric data.

On September 19, 2025, IT-security expert Janik Besendorf, with the support of the Chaos Computer Club (CCC), brought a case before the Administrative Court in Wiesbaden.

He argues that photographs taken of him during a 2018 police matter, which was later dismissed, were unlawfully fed into facial recognition testing programs instead of being deleted.

According to Netzpolitik, images from Besendorf and millions of others stored in the police database INPOL-Z were repurposed without consent or statutory approval.

The legal complaint points in particular to the BKA’s “EGES” initiative, a 2019 project aimed at improving its facial recognition capabilities.

In this program, Fraunhofer IGD ran trials of four commercial recognition systems using roughly five million frontal photos of around three million individuals, in addition to volunteer contributions.

Freedom of information records show that officials had already raised doubts about whether the project had any legal footing.

The BKA maintains that the testing was conducted safely, emphasizing that all work was carried out on isolated internal systems, with no direct handover of personal data to outside partners.

It also insists that the program is qualified as research under the BKA Act. Regulators have taken a different view, arguing that benchmarking market-ready tools cannot be described as scientific research and pointing out the absence of a clear legal mandate.

A judgment against the BKA would set limits on how police photo archives can be repurposed for experimentation and product vetting.

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U.S. Justice Department official ordered to drop inquiry into Sandy Hook lawsuit against Alex Jones

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche has ordered a senior U.S. Justice Department official to drop an inquiry into a retired FBI agent’s involvement in a defamation lawsuit involving Alex Jones’ conspiracy theories about the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, a person familiar with the matter said Wednesday.

Ed Martin Jr., who leads the Justice Department’s “weaponization working group,” sent a letter dated Sept. 15 to the Sandy Hook families’ lawyer asking for information about former FBI agent William Aldenberg, who responded to the 2012 school shooting and was a plaintiff in the lawsuit, along with victims’ relatives, that led to a $1.4 billion judgment against Jones for calling the massacre a hoax.

Martin’s letter suggested that he was looking into whether Aldenberg broke a federal law by receiving financial benefits for helping to organize the lawsuit. Jones, who said he met with Martin last week in Washington, has accused Democrats and Justice Department officials of orchestrating the lawsuit to silence him.

But Martin’s correspondence to Christopher Mattei, a lawyer for the Sandy Hook families, and Aldenberg, “caused frustrations” within the Justice Department, and Blanche directed Martin to withdraw the letter, said the person familiar with the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal agency matters.

Mattei said he received a new letter from Martin on Wednesday that said there was no investigation of Aldenberg and “I hereby withdraw my request for information.”

“Less than 18 hours after calling out Alex Jones and Ed Martin for their corrupt use of the Department of Justice to harass Sandy Hook families and the heroic FBI agent who ran into that school to save any children he could, I am happy to learn that this so-called inquiry has now been withdrawn, if it ever existed at all,” Mattei said in a statement.

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Lawsuit: Children of LGTBQ+ Advocate Sen. Ron Wyden Allegedly Drove Assistant to Suicide with Homophobic Taunts

A lawsuit alleges that the children of U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) harassed their mother’s personal assistant with homophobic taunts and “sexually explicit” comments, driving him to suicide.

Details of the lawsuit, reported by the New York Post, present a stark contrast to the record of Sen. Wyden, who has been a longtime advocate in Congress in support of gay, lesbian, and transgender issues.

For two years, ending in 2024, thirty-five-year-old Brandon O’Brien worked for Nancy Bass Wyden, the senator’s wife and owner of Strand Bookstore in Manhattan.

O’Brien’s tasks included driving the couple’s young children to school in New York City and watching them at Disney World, according to the Post.

The lawsuit was filed by O’Brien’s husband, Thomas Maltezos, against Bass Wyden and her company, Bass Real Estate LLC, in Manhattan’s Superior Court.

It alleges the disturbing behavior by the couple’s kids began about three months after O’Brien took the job in 2022, when the couple’s ten-year-old daughter “exposed herself” to the assistant and made explicit comments as she asked him about his “intimate” life.

Maltezos alleges in the suit that the mom did nothing about the incident.

Additionally, Wydens’ teenage son berated O’Brien with homophobic slurs such as “faggot” and “zest kitten,” the suit claims. The boy also allegedly threatened that his football team would “rape” the assistant.

The son’s behavior was so out of control that his mom once had to “mace” her son, but inadvertently maced O’Brien in the process, according to court papers.

Calling the lawsuit “baseless and deeply misguided,” lawyers for Bass Wyden have sought to have Maltezos’ lawsuit dismissed, court records show. They contend it is a cover for O’Brien’s own “serious misconduct,” allegedly a “pattern of theft” from the household.

When O’Brien finally quit in frustration a year ago, Bass Wyden, 64, filed a report with the NYPD the next day, “accusing him of stealing $650,000 in credit card and other thefts, authorities said.”

That began a pattern of harassment by the prominent businesswoman who allegedly spread “false rumors” about him, the suit alleges.

O’Brien committed suicide in late May, seven months after he left the job. Authorities dropped the theft case after the suicide. Lawyers for Maltezos argued the accusation was false.

“The allegations against the senator’s wife are shocking, disturbing, and cruel — no person should ever be subject to this level of harassment, much less in the workplace,” Maltezos’ attorneys said in a statement.

Sen. Ron Wyden, 76, was elected to Congress in 1981, and he married Bass Wyden in 2005. “The couple has three kids in addition to Ron Wyden’s two adult children from his first marriage,” according to the Post.

The Post reported that “the senator and his wife have a home in Portland,” but Bass Wyden’s social media shows she visits New York to attend to the business her family founded 98 years ago.

Sen. Wyden, a progressive Democrat, has been a frequent critic of President Donald Trump over immigration, the Epstein case, and DOGE staffing cuts.

Ironically, considering the lawsuit and his children’s alleged homophobic statements, in late 1995, Wyden became the first U.S. Senate candidate to publicly support same sex marriage.

He also introduced a bill in June calling for sanctions on foreign countries that violate “human rights of LGBTQI+ communities” around the world.

He most recently garnered widespread television coverage battling with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. at an oversight hearing this month.

During the hearing Wyden claimed that “every day” Kennedy has been in office, he has taken action that “endangers the health and welfare of American families.”

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Sen. Chuck Schumer Says Jimmy Kimmel Must Stay on Air to Save Democracy — Then Urges Him to Sue Disney

Senator Chuck Schumer has warned that Jimmy Kimmel must remain on air to protect American democracy.

Disney confirmed on Wednesday night that Kimmel’s show will be suspended indefinitely after comments he made about last week’s assassination of Charlie Kirk at the hands of a disturbed left-wing student.

“We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them — and doing everything they can to score political points from it,” Kimmel remarked during Monday night’s show.

“Mr. Kimmel’s comments about the death of Mr. Kirk are offensive and insensitive at a critical time in our national political discourse, and we do not believe they reflect the spectrum of opinions, views, or values of the local communities in which we are located,” said Andrew Alford, President of Nexstar’s broadcasting division, in a statement on Wednesday.

Schumer, who is currently America’s most powerful elected Democrat, is urging Kimmel to take the matter to court.

“America is meant to be a bastion of free speech,” Schumer wrote on the X platform. “Everybody across the political spectrum should be speaking out to stop what’s happening to Jimmy Kimmel.”

“This is about protecting democracy,” he continued. “This must go to court.”

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Parents Sue Character.AI for Allegedly Leading Kids to Sexual Abuse, Suicidal Behavior

Parents filed three separate lawsuits on Sept. 16, alleging that Character.AI, which features characters or chatbots for users to interact with, sexually abused their children and led them into suicidal behavior.

At least one of the children, 13-year-old Juliana Peralta, ended her life in 2023 after alleged harmful interactions with an AI character named Hero. Another attempted suicide but survived after a severe overdose, according to a filing.

Each of the lawsuits, which were filed in New York and Colorado, came from the Social Media Victims Law Center. The group has represented the mother of Sewell Setzer, who ended his life in 2024 after interacting with a romantic AI companion.

According to the center, the chatbots are allegedly programmed to be deceptive, isolate children from families, and expose them to sexually abusive content.

“Each of these stories demonstrates a horrifying truth … that Character.AI and its developers knowingly designed chatbots to mimic human relationships, manipulate vulnerable children, and inflict psychological harm,” Matthew Bergman, who founded the law center, said in a press release.

According to the lawsuit over Peralta’s suicide, both she and Setzer reiterated the concept of “shift[ing],” which authorities identified as a reference to shifting consciousness from one reality to another. Handwritten journal entries within the filing show both Peralta and Setzer writing “I will shift” more than a dozen consecutive times on a sheet of paper—something the lawsuit described as “eerily similar.”

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President Trump Files $15 Billion Defamation and Libel Lawsuit Against The New York Times

President Trump late Monday evening announced he filed a $15 billion libel lawsuit against the New York Times and several reporters, including Michael Schmidt.

The lawsuit was filed in a Tampa, Florida, federal court.

President Trump accused the newspaper of being a virtual “mouthpiece” for the Radical Left Democrat Party and said they gave Kamala Harris the single largest illegal campaign contribution ever.

“Today, I have the Great Honor of bringing a $15 Billion Dollar Defamation and Libel Lawsuit against The New York Times, one of the worst and most degenerate newspapers in the History of our Country, becoming a virtual “mouthpiece” for the Radical Left Democrat Party. I view it as the single largest illegal Campaign contribution, EVER. Their Endorsement of Kamala Harris was actually put dead center on the front page of The New York Times, something heretofore UNHEARD OF! The “Times” has engaged in a decades long method of lying about your Favorite President (ME!), my family, business, the America First Movement, MAGA, and our Nation as a whole. I am PROUD to hold this once respected “rag” responsible, as we are doing with the Fake News Networks such as our successful litigation against George Slopadopoulos/ABC/Disney, and 60 Minutes/CBS/Paramount, who knew that they were falsely “smearing” me through a highly sophisticated system of document and visual alteration, which was, in effect, a malicious form of defamation, and thus, settled for record amounts. They practiced this longterm INTENT and pattern of abuse, which is both unacceptable and illegal. The New York Times has been allowed to freely lie, smear, and defame me for far too long, and that stops, NOW! The suit is being brought in the Great State of Florida. Thank you for your attention to this matter. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!” Trump said on Truth Social.

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Environmental Groups Are Suing To Silence Scientists Who Wrote a Report Questioning Climate Change Alarmism

In July, the Energy Department released a report challenging many of the mainstream narratives surrounding climate change. The report, which was authored by the Climate Working Group (CWG)—a team of five climate scientists and economists—was drafted to “encourage a more thoughtful and science-based conversation about climate change and energy,” according to Energy Secretary Chris Wright. 

“To correct course, we need open, respectful, and informed debate. That’s why I’m inviting public comment on this report,” the energy secretary wrote in the report’s foreword. The publication has indeed opened up debate, garnering nearly 60,000 comments in the Federal Register. But it has also introduced a series of legal challenges against the agency and the CWG. 

On Thursday, the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts heard arguments in a lawsuit filed by two environmental groups—the Environmental Defense Fund and Union of Concerned Scientists—against the Energy Department, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the CWG. 

The lawsuit argues that when forming the CWG, Wright and the Energy Department violated the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA), which requires federal advisory groups to provide meeting notices and meeting notes to the public, create an approved charter of the group’s mission, and “have a balanced membership in terms of ‘the points of view represented and the functions to be performed by the advisory committee,'” according to the the Congressional Research Service. 

Much of the lawsuit focuses on the viewpoint balance of the CWG, with the plaintiffs arguing that “all five authors are well known for holding ‘contrarian views on climate science that are out of step with the mainstream'” and “none of the members represents the consensus view among climate scientists that human activities…have unequivocally caused global warming.” To remedy the lawsuit, the environmental groups are demanding that the working group be disbanded, the report be vacated, and CWG members be prohibited from advising federal agencies until the defendants “comply with all requirements for the group to operate legally as an advisory committee.”

The Energy Department has refuted claims that it violated the FACA, arguing that the CWG is not an advisory group under the law because it was created to “exchange facts or information” with the Energy Department, not to “make recommendations on an identified governmental policy for which specified advice was being sought.” Additionally, the CWG was disbanded on September 3, in a letter sent from Wright to the group’s members, rendering “most of Plaintiffs’ claims…moot due to the CWG’s dissolution.” Even with the CWG officially being shut down, its members will continue to collaborate (outside of the federal government’s scope) and update the report, according to Bloomberg.

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NMSU Alumnus and Former Professor Files Legal Action Over Unlawful Vaccine Mandate

Today, David K. Clements, a former Assistant Professor of consumer protection and business law, announced the filing of a lawsuit against New Mexico State University (NMSU) and its Board of Regents, alleging breach of contract and violation of the New Mexico Unfair Practices Act.

The action stems from his wrongful termination on October 15, 2021, for refusing to comply with NMSU’s COVID-19 experimental vaccine and mask mandate, which he contends violated federal law by lacking informed consent and refusal rights.

“It is difficult to announce this lawsuit in the wake of the Charlie Kirk assassination. He fought for free speech on campuses just like NMSU. Before his life was tragically taken, lives and reputations were destroyed on campuses across America for exercising our First Amendment right to combat forced injections, masking, and invasive testing. For those who held the line against forced injection, many had to endure a six-inch nasal swab shoved up their nose, scraping the back of their throats every week, or else face the loss of their job. It was dehumanizing. I will fight these monsters with everything I have,” Clements stated.

Clements, who taught at NMSU until his dismissal, argues that the mandate disrupted educational services to both students and faculty—services generating $2.6 billion in economic output—and exploited his position as a tenure-track professor to pressure students to get an injection with virtually no scientific data advising them of their risks. The Complaint can be read here.

“The university effectively took bribe money tied to the Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund (HEERF), the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, among others. They chose to rake in millions of dollars rather than look out for the health and safety of faculty and students. The statute of limitations for breach of contract is six years. I hope this lawsuit will alert former colleagues and students that were harmed by the jab or denied accommodations, that a university’s greed should not outweigh their rights to receive an education free of coercion. There is still time on the clock for thousands of lawsuits to be filed,” Clements stated.

NMSU is no stranger to controversy. Over the past five years, it has been sued for allegations of hazing, sexual assault, discrimination, retaliation, and wrongful termination. These include an $8 million settlement in June 2023 with former basketball players Deuce Benjamin, Shak Odunewu, and William Benjamin for hazing and sexual assault claims; a $495,000 settlement in March 2024 with former provost Carol Parker for discrimination and retaliation; a $60,000 settlement in February 2024 with former Title IX coordinator Laura Castille for retaliation; a $1 million settlement in July 2025 with a female student alleging mishandling of a sexual assault case; and an undisclosed settlement in August 2025 with former basketball coach Greg Heiar for wrongful termination. These resolutions, totaling over $9.5 million in disclosed amounts, reflect a troubling track record.

Clements’ objection to the mandate’s illegality has been vindicated by recent developments, including the CDC’s 2025 withdrawal of vaccine recommendations for children and pregnant women and Moderna’s requirement for placebo-controlled trials. “As an alumnus and educator, I sought to protect my students and colleagues from potential harm, only to face retaliation,” Clements stated.

The lawsuit seeks reinstatement to a tenured position, compensatory and treble (triple) damages under the UPA for what Clements describes as a willful and unconscionable trade practice. He has requested preservation of all related records to ensure transparency.

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