PayPal has filed a lawsuit against Google over Google's new mobile
payment system. In the lawsuit, PayPal alleges that one of its former
executives who now works for Google violated PayPal's trade secrets by
leading the development of the new payment system. PayPal also claims
that the executive violated his duty to the PayPal by interviewing for
the position at Google while simultaneously negotiating a Google-PayPal
contract.
Facebook and its founder, Mark Zuckerberg, have responded to a lawsuit
filed by Paul Ceglia alleging that a contract with Zuckerberg gives
Ceglia a 50 percent stake in the social networking giant. In their
answer to Ceglia's complaint, Zuckerberg and Facebook call the suit "a
brazen and outrageous fraud on the Court" by an "inveterate scam
artist."
A circuit court judge in Wisconsin has struck down the state's
controversial labor law after finding that the legislature violated
Wisconsin's Open Meetings Law when it approved the legislation since it
met on only two hours notice in a location that was not accessible to
the public. The law, which sparked days of protest across the state, removed collective bargaining rights from most public employees, except in the negotiation of salaries.
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission has filed a lawsuit against
several oil speculators and their agents and employees alleging that the
speculators manipulated, and attempted to manipulate, the contract
prices for crude oil derivatives. The suit, filed under the Commodity
Exchange Act, accuses the defendants of keeping prices of certain crude
oil supplies artificially high while they short-sold a series of
derivatives based on those inflated crude prices.
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has filed a lawsuit against
Starbucks alleging that the company failed to provide reasonable
accommodation for one of its baristas and ultimately fired her because
of her disability, dwarfism.
A panel of the 8th Circuit has reinstated the NFL player lockout after
finding that the NFL would suffer an irreparable harm without a stay of
the lower court's order enjoining the lockout. The court also
determined that the NFL's case was likely to succeed on the merits since
the district court probably did not have jurisdiction to issue the
injunction in the first place.
After his conviction on 14 counts of conspiracy and securities fraud,
Raj Rajaratnam received a court order to submit to home detention and
electronic monitoring while awaiting sentencing.
A federal judge in Utah has imposed a temporary restraining order
against the implementation of Utah's controversial H.B. 497 immigration
law. Judge Clark Waddoups gave the order upon finding that the
plaintiffs, a coalition of rights organizations, had presented
sufficient evidence to support their claim that H.B. 497 would violate
their constitutional rights.
The head of the Department of Justice's Antitrust Division, Christine
Varney, has sent a letter to the president of the NCAA, Mark Emmert,
with questions concerning the possible anti-competitive nature of the
BCS and the NCAA's future plans to create a playoff system for college
football.
The ACLU and several other civil rights groups have filed a lawsuit to
block enforcement of Utah's new comprehensive immigration law on the
grounds that the new law is unconstitutional. The Utah law, among other
things, requires law enforcement officers to verify the citizenship of
individuals they interact with. The plaintiffs claim that the new law
will subject minority groups in the state to racial profiling.
The United States has filed a civil lawsuit against Deutsche Bank and
MortgageIT alleging that the entities lied to enter into a government
insurance program for mortgages. The suit also claims that the
companies recklessly selected mortgages without considering whether the
borrowers could make the mortgage payments.
