Tag: lawsuits

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.”

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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.”

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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.”

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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.

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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.

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Ex CIA Director John Brennan Sues Trump Administration Over Russiagate Probe – Lawsuit Assigned to Anti-Trump Judge Jia Cobb

Former CIA Director John Brennan filed a lawsuit against President Trump, the Justice Department, and senior administration officials on Wednesday over the Justice Department’s criminal investigation into him.

Brennan filed the lawsuit in the US District Court for the District of Columbia, claiming that he has been “vindictively singled out for investigation and prosecution.”

He is seeking a court order requiring the White House, Justice Department, ODNI, and the CIA to “preserve materials and communications potentially relevant to Director Brennan’s legal and constitutional challenges to any future criminal charges.”

The case has been assigned to far-left Biden-appointed Judge Jia Cobb. Cobb previously oversaw Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook’s lawsuit against the Trump Administration, blocked the Trump Administration from carrying out expedited deportations of illegal aliens under his “Protecting the American People Against Invasion” Executive Order, and blocked Trump’s National Guard deployment in Washington, DC.

“This Administration has adopted a policy of using criminal process and prosecution to punish the President’s perceived adversaries,” the 46-page filing begins. “It is against this backdrop that former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, John O. Brennan (“Plaintiff” or “Director Brennan”), is being vindictively singled out for investigation and prosecution.”

It further points to the investigation of former Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell and an ongoing investigation into Minnesota officials, arguing that, likewise, “the evidence of vindictiveness in this matter is overwhelming.”

“President Trump has been condemning and calling for Director Brennan’s prosecution for years,” it reads. “Given these strong indicia of vindictiveness, Director Brennan expects that he will forcefully challenge any eventual indictment as the product of an unconstitutionally vindictive and selective prosecution.”

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Erin Brockovich Launches Plan to Take on AI Data Centers Around the Country

Erin Brockovich, who secured a historic $333 million settlement against PG&E in 1993 and was immortalized by Julia Roberts on the silver screen, has launched a new battle against the proliferation of AI data centers across the United States and beyond.

The Guardian reports that the environmental activist who became a household name after her work on the Hinkley, California, groundwater contamination case has identified what she describes as a threat on par with that scandal, only larger in scope. After receiving thousands of emails from concerned citizens, Brockovich has turned her attention to the rapid construction of massive AI data centers happening with minimal public input or environmental oversight.

The campaign began when Brockovich noticed an unusual pattern in her inbox. She received 30 emails from people in the same town, all expressing concerns about data centers. In April, she issued a public call on her website asking anyone with concerns about data centers near them to contact her. Within a month, 3,862 people responded. Brockovich characterizes the situation as “Hinkley on steroids.”

Using the information gathered from these emails, Brockovich created an open-source map documenting AI data centers across the United States. As of June 24, the map shows 33 AI data centers that are operational, 68 under construction, and 41 proposed. More than 7,000 reports have been submitted through her online form, revealing a pattern of construction happening largely without public knowledge or consent.

AI data centers are enormous in scale. Some stretch over hundreds of acres, and in May, Utah approved a center twice the size of Manhattan. According to Brockovich, many communities learn about these facilities only after construction has already begun, or in some cases, months after they have been approved by local officials.

A major concern for Brockovich is the secrecy surrounding the approval process. Data center developers often enter into nondisclosure agreements with local officials, making it impossible for residents to understand why projects were approved without environmental impact assessments or public input. Brockovich reports receiving emails from people whose local leaders are changing zoning laws to accommodate these facilities. “If data centers are so great, why are they being built in secret?” reads one headline on her Substack blog.

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DOJ Sues States Over Alleged Failure To Turn Over Food Stamp Data

The Trump administration has sued four states, accusing them of withholding crucial data on food stamp applicants.

Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, and Pennsylvania refused to turn over information to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) that would let federal officials identify fraud, Trump administration lawyers said in lawsuits filed on June 26 against the states.

Officials are asking judges to enter injunctions that would force state authorities to hand over the last five years of applications for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, the food stamp program known as SNAP.

The USDA requested the SNAP data in 2025, citing an executive order from President Donald Trump that directed agencies to stop waste, fraud, and abuse, and many states complied with the request.

Data from those states showed that states had enrolled some 186,000 people in SNAP despite those people being deceased, among the discrepancies that added up to $3 billion in wasteful spending, the department said in a report.

The government spends nearly $100 billion a year on SNAP.

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Lawsuit demands USDA release records on glyphosate executive order

The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) is violating the law by failing to turn over records related to an executive order issued by President Donald Trump protecting production of the controversial pesticide glyphosate, according to a lawsuit filed Monday.

The lawsuit, filed by the Center for Biological Diversity, seeks to force the USDA to comply with a Freedom of Information Act request the center submitted on Feb. 26 requesting records related to how and why the order was developed. 

“The main thing we’re hoping to understand is who in particular pushed for this?” said Brett Hartl, government affairs director at The Center for Biological Diversity, a nonprofit organization that advocates for environment and health issues.

The order was widely questioned by public health and environmental groups who saw the move by the Trump administration as directly benefitting Germany’s Bayer, which manufactures glyphosate in the US and is a key supplier of glyphosate-based herbicides, such as Roundup. Glyphosate herbicides have been linked to health issues such as cancer, and Bayer is currently fending off tens of thousands of lawsuits brought by people suffering from cancer they blame on exposure to the company’s products.

Bayer has been lobbying for federal and state laws to protect it from further litigation, and has asked the US Supreme Court for a ruling that would preempt key claims in the lawsuits. 

The Supreme Court decision could be issued this week and will determine whether people can bring failure-to-warn legal claims against pesticide companies in the future.

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Alibaba Sues Pentagon to Remove ‘Chinese Military Company’ Label

Chinese tech titan Alibaba filed suit against the U.S. Department of War on Wednesday, arguing there was “no basis in fact or law” for the Pentagon to label it as a “Chinese military company” earlier this month.

The Department of War maintains a list of companies that perform services for the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) of China, known as the “1260H List” after the legislation that created it. Since 2021, the list has been updated and refined to paint a full picture of China’s fusion between “private” firms and its military-intelligence complex.

The Pentagon added several big corporate names to the list on June 8, including Alibaba. The listed companies, and the Chinese government, objected to the designations as unfair and arbitrary.

“The U.S. should stop its wrong practice and create a fair, just and non-discriminatory environment for Chinese companies,” the Chinese embassy in Washington said, as soon as the updated 1260H list was announced.

Alibaba was particularly aggressive in claiming that it was “not part of any military-civil fusion strategy,” and immediately declared its intention to “take all available legal action against attempts to misrepresent our company.”

Alibaba made good on that threat with a petition to the San Jose division of the U.S. District Court in the Northern District of California. Another Chinese firm, WuXi AppTec, filed its own challenge in the District of Columbia on June 11.

Both Chinese companies claimed they have suffered damages from what they viewed as an unfair designation. Alibaba said it was losing business partners in America, which could severely hinder its U.S. ventures.

A key issue in the lawsuit was Alibaba’s challenge to the Pentagon’s claim that the company is linked to China’s State-Owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC) and Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT).

SASAC is an agency controlled directly by the powerful State Council of China. It manages the “shares” owned by the Chinese Communist government in partly-independent companies, as well as assets that are fully owned by the state.

When Alibaba was added to the 1260H list, the Pentagon said it was “indirectly affiliated” with SASAC, while its ties with MIIT make it a “military-civil fusion contributor to the Chinese defense industrial base.”

Alibaba’s suit contents it is merely “regulated” by those agencies, not “affiliated” with them, and it has no choice about complying with their regulations.

“The relationship is no different from Alibaba’s dealings with United States government agencies. A regulator is not an affiliate,” the company contended.

The Chinese company further claimed its designation interferes with its First Amendment rights, because lobbyists that work for companies on the 1260H list can be restricted from doing business with the Department of War.

“The designation thus does not merely impose commercial costs – it strips Alibaba of its ability to speak, to petition the government through its chosen representatives,” the petition said.

On Monday, the Chinese government added ten American firms to its export control list, seemingly in retaliation for Alibaba and other firms being placed on the 1260H list.

Chinese state media said the move was “a response to Washington’s repeated weaponization of unilateral sanctions and entity lists to suppress Chinese enterprises, including its groundless addition of Chinese firms to its so-called military-industrial entity list.”

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