Tag: lawsuits

Judge awards $6.6M to whistleblowers who were fired after reporting Texas AG Ken Paxton to FBI

A district court judge awarded $6.6 million combined to four whistleblowers who sued Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton on claims he fired them in retaliation for reporting him to the FBI.

Blake Brickman, David Maxwell, Mark Penley and Ryan Vassar notified Paxton and his office on Oct. 1, 2020, that they had reported him to the FBI for allegedly abusing his office. The four were all fired by mid-November.

Travis County Judge Catherine Mauzy ruled Friday that by a “preponderance of the evidence,” the whistleblowers proved liability, damages and attorney’s fees in their complaint against the attorney general’s office.

The judgment says the former aides made their reports to federal law enforcement “in good faith” and that Paxton’s office did not dispute any claims or damages in the lawsuit.

“Because the Office of the Attorney General violated the Texas Whistleblower Act by firing and otherwise retaliating against the plaintiff for in good faith reporting violations of law by Ken Paxton and OAG, the court hereby renders judgment for plaintiffs,” Mauzy wrote in her judgment.

The court found that the four former aides of the attorney general were fired in retaliation for reporting allegations that he was using his office to accept bribes from Austin real estate developer and political donor Nate Paul, who employed a woman with whom Paxton was having an extramarital affair.

Paxton has denied allegations that he accepted bribes or misused his office to help Paul.

“It should shock all Texans that their chief law enforcement officer, Ken Paxton, admitted to violating the law, but that is exactly what happened in this case,” Tom Nesbitt, an attorney representing Brickman, and TJ Turner, an attorney representing Maxwell, said in a joint statement.

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DNC along with Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries Sue Trump Over His Effort to Prevent Illegals from Voting – Three Days After Elon Musk Reveals Millions Illegals are Registering to Vote and Were Voting

Billionaire entrepreneur and Trump advisor Elon Musk dropped a bombshell this past weekend during a fiery 100-minute town hall in Green Bay, Wisconsin, where he campaigned for conservative judge Brad Schimel in the state’s upcoming Supreme Court election on Tuesday.

Joined by Antonio Gracias, a private equity titan and a key member of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) team tasked with rooting out waste in the federal government, Musk unveiled a shocking chart: a dramatic spike in Social Security Numbers issued to non-citizens, soaring from 270,000 in 2021 to a mind-blowing 2.1 million in 2024.

That’s almost 5 million non-citizens now embedded in the system—collecting benefits, draining taxpayer dollars, and, most alarmingly, infiltrating the voter rolls.

“This is a mind-blowing chart,” Musk declared, pointing to the data. “This wasn’t an accident. This was a massive, large-scale program under the Biden administration to import as many illegals as possible—ultimately to change the voting map of the United States, disenfranchise the American people, and lock in a permanent deep-blue, one-party state from which there’d be no escape.”

Gracias, founder of Valor Equity Partners and a self-described son of legal immigrants, echoed Musk’s outrage.

“We went to Social Security to find fraud, and we stumbled on this by accident,” he said.

“And this isn’t political, by the way. My parents are immigrants… My brother and sister all born in Spain. I’m pro-legal immigration. This is not political. This is about America and the future of America. And there are a lot of good people in the system that pointed this in this direction. I want to honor them right now. They’re working with the government today and took the risks to show us these numbers and tell us what’s going on.”

Gracias continued, “We found 1.3 million of them already on Medicaid as an example. On every benefit program we went through, we found groups from this particular group of people, 5.5 million people in those benefit programs. And then what was really, really disturbing us was why. We’re asking ourselves why. And so we actually just took a sample and looked at voter registration records, and we found people here registered to vote in this population.”

The evidence, according to Musk and Gracias, is undeniable. By sampling voter registration records, they uncovered non-citizens who not only registered but voted in American elections.

“We’ve referred them to prosecution at Homeland Security Investigations,” Gracias revealed. “That’s happening right now.”

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Judge Rejects Anti-Defamation League’s Third Attempt to Halt $25M Defamation Suit

The Gateway Pundit reported on disabled Navy veteran John Sabal’s defamation suit against the Anti-Defamation League (ADL).

Sabal, who organizes patriotic festivals and has never been arrested, alleges that the ADL defamed him when it published his name in the ADL Center on Extremism’s “Glossary of Extremism and Hate.”

The Glossary ONLY names 295 people, many of them notorious terrorists such as Osama bin Laden, Timothy McVeigh, Dylann Roof, and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, ‘an al Qaeda member and the mastermind of the 9/11 terror attack,’ the Glossary reminds us.”

On March 31, 2025, The Honorable Reed O’Connor, Judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas, Fort Worth Division, rejected the ADL’s latest efforts to stop Sabal’s suit.

Judge O’Connor quoted well-known case law in his ruling, stating that the mere fact that a disgruntled litigant intends to inevitably appeal does not create an exceptional case warranting a mid-suit appeal, and the law depended on by the ADL in its motion is “not a vehicle to question the correctness of a district court’s ruling or to obtain a second, more favorable opinion.”

“The ADL’s latest effort to delay John Sabal’s defamation suit has failed, as the court denied the ADL’s attempt for a mid-suit appeal and stay of proceedings based on a claim that Sabal is a public figure.  In keeping with fine federal court tradition, this case will still be heard as scheduled in July,” said Warren V. Norred, of NORRED LAW.

The ruling marks the third strike for the ADL’s defense team, which has now attempted and failed to stop the suit on three occasions.

In his four-page ruling, Judge O’Connor wrote, “For the foregoing reasons,  the court denies Defendant’s Motion to Certify an Immediate Appeal (ECF No. 66).  Because the Court does not certify an immediate appeal, the Court also denies Defendant’s Motion to Stay depending an appeal.”

This case has been ongoing for over a year, and discovery has concluded.  NORRED LAW was asked to step in after the ADL sought summary judgment and was unsuccessful.

Judge O’Connor’s order on that motion carefully evaluated Mr. Sabal’s complaint, dismissed his claims regarding injurious falsehood, upheld his claim that the ADL defamed him by including him in its “Glossary of Extremism and Hate,” and suggested that he is a “dangerous, extremist threat, and even a criminal.”

Judge O’Connor also preserved Sabal’s claim regarding the ADL’s report, “Hate in the Lone Star State.”

A trial date has been set for July 16, 2025.

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North Carolina family can sue over COVID-19 vaccine administered without consent, court rules

A North Carolina mother and her son can sue a public school system and a doctors’ group for allegedly giving the boy a COVID-19 vaccine without consent, the state Supreme Court ruled.

The ruling handed down Friday reverses a lower-court decision that a federal health emergency law prevented Emily Happel and her son Tanner Smith from filing a lawsuit.

Both a trial judge and the state Court of Appeals had ruled against the two, who sought litigation after Smith received an unwanted vaccine during the height of the coronavirus pandemic.

Smith was vaccinated in August 2021 at age 14 despite his opposition at a testing and vaccination clinic at a Guilford County high school, according to the family’s lawsuit.

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Family Of Dead Boeing Whistleblower Sues Over Suicide

The family of John Barnett, a former Boeing quality control manager who became a prominent whistleblower over aviation safety concerns, has filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the aerospace giant, accusing it of a campaign of harassment and intimidation that they allege led directly to his suicide.

Mr. Barnett, 62, was found dead in his truck in what was determined to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound on March 9, 2024, in Charleston, South Carolina, according to local police reports. At the time of his death, he resided in Louisiana. The tragic incident followed days of intense questioning by attorneys regarding allegations he made against Boeing related to aircraft safety defects, according to court documents.

The lawsuit, filed Thursday in federal court in South Carolina, claims that Boeing orchestrated a systematic “campaign of harassment, abuse, and intimidation intended to discourage, discredit, and humiliate him until he would either give up or be discredited.”

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Mayor Johnson takes campaign cash from lawyer whose firm has pending lawsuits against City Hall

Chicago lawyer Antonio Romanucci has become one of the better-known civil rights and personal injury attorneys, known for handling high-profile lawsuits, including one that led to a $27 million settlement for the family of George Floyd after his 2020 murder by a Minneapolis cop.

Locally, his Loop law firm Romanucci & Blandin, LLC, represents clients in nine pending lawsuits against City Hall, with one of those cases involving allegations that Chicago cops framed a South Side man for the 1988 murder of a little boy. Two other lawsuits involving the firm have been settled by City Hall since Mayor Brandon Johnson took office in May 2023.

Even though Johnson’s Law Department holds huge sway over such legal cases — often helping decide if and how to settle them, affecting bottom lines for clients and Chicago taxpayers — the mayor continues to accept campaign contributions from Romanucci and other employees of his law firm, records show.

While Johnson is not supposed to accept campaign donations from city contractors under municipal ethics rules, there’s no prohibition on taking campaign cash from lawyers doing battle with City Hall.

A founding partner of his firm, Romanucci gave $5,000 to Friends of Brandon Johnson in a contribution dated Feb. 18, according to Illinois State Board of Elections records.

Elizabeth Romanucci, who handles event planning for the firm, gave $1,000 in a contribution dated Feb. 24, records show.

Stefanie Stein, director of marketing for the firm, gave another $1,000 on the same date.

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Elon Musk threatens to sue after Democrat Jamaal Bowman calls him a ‘Nazi’ and ‘thief’ during TV appearance

Elon Musk said he intends to file a lawsuit against former “Squad” Rep. Jamaal Bowman for calling him a “Nazi” and a “thief”  this week on CNN. 

“I’ve had enough. Lawsuit inbound,” Musk, 53, wrote on X late Friday next to a clip of Bowman’s caustic remarks.

In his Thursday rant Bowman, 48 — who was ousted in a primary last summer by a pro-Israel Democrat — said the  Department of Government Efficiency boss  “doesn’t have” the necessary skills to spearhead the Trump administration’s cost-cutting crusade.

“How do we know? Because they fired tens of thousands of people, was challenged in court. The court said the people have to go back, and now the people are coming back,” Bowman contended during a Thursday night segment on CNN.

“He’s incompetent. He’s a thief. He’s a Nazi. And people don’t trust him.”

Leftists accused the billionaire of making a “Nazi salute” while he addressed a crowd on Trump’s Inauguration Day in January. Groups such as the Anti-Defamation League have determined it was simply an “awkward gesture,” and Musk denied intentionally making a Nazi salute.

Musk didn’t elaborate on any details of the planned lawsuit. However, he appears to be trying to pursue a defamation case against Bowman. Defamation cases have a legal high bar for public figures, because they are required to prove “actual malice” motivated a false statement against them.

An outcry of conservatives had urged Musk to file a lawsuit against Bowman, such as Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah).

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Is Greenpeace Finished? Jury Orders Far Left Group to Pay $660 Million in Damages for Protest Against Dakota Access Pipeline

A few years ago, Greenpeace and other far left activists protested the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline, causing all kinds of damage to construction equipment in the process.

Now a jury in North Dakota has ordered them to pay more than $600 million in damages over the protests.

Some people are suggesting the court’s decision could bankrupt the group.

CBS News reports:

Greenpeace ordered to pay more than $660 million to fossil fuel company over pipeline protests

In a win for the oil and gas pipeline company Energy Transfer, a nine-person North Dakota jury found the environmental group Greenpeace liable for more than $660 million in damages and defamation for the 2016 to 2017 Standing Rock protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline.

In their lawsuit, Dallas-based Energy Transfer claimed Greenpeace was responsible for defamation, disruption and property damage for the protests that captured national attention in 2016. Greenpeace claimed the lawsuit threatened its freedom of speech.

In a statement, Energy Transfer said, “This win is really for the people of Mandan and throughout North Dakota who had to live through the daily harassment and disruptions caused by the protesters who were funded and trained by Greenpeace. It is also a win for all law-abiding Americans who understand the difference between the right to free speech and breaking the law.”

Greenpeace plans to appeal the verdict. “This is the end of a chapter, but not the end of our fight. Energy Transfer knows we don’t have $660 million. They want our silence, not our money.” Sushma Raman, interim executive director of Greenpeace Inc., told CBS News.

So they’re planning to appeal? What if the appeal fails?

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Purdue Pharma Files New Bankruptcy Plan For $7.4 Billion Opioid Settlement

Drugmaker Purdue Pharma filed a new bankruptcy plan on Tuesday, marking a major step towards finalizing a proposed opioid settlement of $7.4 billion.

The maker of the powerful semi-synthetic opioid oxycodone—also marketed as OxyContin and by other names—filed a Chapter 11 reorganization plan and related disclosure statement with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York.

According to a statement announcing the proposal, a new public benefit company “100 percent devoted to improving the lives of Americans,” would be created after Purdue is dissolved, and its assets transferred to the new company.

The Sackler family, which previously owned Purdue Pharma, would “have no ownership interest or role with the new company,” according to the statement, which noted family members have had no involvement in Purdue since the end of 2018.

The new company would have a core mission to abate the opioid crisis and improve public health, including by developing and distributing lifesaving opioid use disorder and overdose rescue medicines for no profit, the statement said.

It would also be run by a board appointed by state governments, the statement added.

Assuming full creditor participation, the plan would see the Sacklers pay out approximately $6.5 billion in installments over the next 15 years—subject to certain reserves—to states, local governments, and individuals harmed by the crisis.

They would pay $1.5 billion on the day the reorganization plan becomes effective and Purdue would contribute 100 percent of its assets, “with an expected $900 million in cash available for distribution on the day of emergence,” according to the statement.

Purdue said it expects widespread creditor support for the deal.

According to the statement, the latest plan “is the only opioid settlement to date that meaningfully compensates individual victims” and, assuming full participation, “individual victims will receive more than $850 million, subject to certain reserves.”

A court hearing to approve the disclosure statement is currently expected to take place in May, according to the statement.

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Former Connecticut high school student sues teachers for letting her graduate while unable to read or write

A former Connecticut high school student is suing her teachers for letting her graduate while she was unable to read or write due to her learning disability. 

Aleysha Ortiz, 19, is seeking $3 million in damages from staff at Hartford Public Schools district for alleged bullying, harassment and/or negligence. 

Ortiz claims she requested educational resources and support for years – but her special education teacher instead chose to yell at and humiliate her in front of other students, often bringing her to tears. 

The teenager graduated unable to read or write. She struggled to even spell her own name during an emotional interview about her education with ABC affiliate WTNH.

‘My time in Hartford Public Schools was a time that I don’t wish upon anyone,’ Ortiz told the outlet. 

When Ortiz moved from Puerto Rico to Connecticut in first grade, she struggled with a language barrier compounded by a speech impediment, dyslexia, and ADHD. 

‘Every first day of school, I would tell the teacher I cannot read and write so please be patient for me, so everyone knew,’ she told WTNH. 

‘I would cry knowing the people who had big titles knew this was happening, and no one stepped up to do something about it.’ 

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