Thursday, May 9, 2024

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Thursday, May 9, 2024 | Back issues

Media

US News & World Report fails to block San Francisco subpoenas over hospital rankings

Edvard Pettersson / May 8, 2024

A federal judge threw out the media company's lawsuit, finding a California state court should decide if the subpoenas can be enforced.

Exploitation and theft

Brief / May 8, 2024

AUSTIN, Texas — A federal court in Texas dismissed the counterclaims brought by Louis Black, the co-founder of the Austin Chronicle and South by Southwest (SXSW), against a former employee who sued him for allegedly coercing her into sex and withholding her salary when she refused to marry him. His countersuit alleges that she stole “several valuable comic books and pulp magazines” from his garage, but the counterclaim is inappropriate because the legal questions in the suit and countersuit “contain no overlap.”

Redirecting traffic

Brief / May 7, 2024

HOUSTON — A federal court in Texas ruled that a law firm may proceed with its claims against a lawyer referral service, which has diverted the firm’s prospective clients away by purchasing the top search result position for Google searches related to the law firm’s business name and other marks. The firm may not sue a specific, individual employee of the service, however, because its evidence of that person’s involvement did not suffice.

Longtime Trump aide Hope Hicks recalls ‘Access Hollywood’ tape leak in hush-money trial testimony

Josh Russell / May 3, 2024

Hicks, a former top Trump White house official and trusted adviser, testified as to the Trump campaign’s handling of the “Access Hollywood” tape and denials of other rumored affairs around the time of the 2016 election.

San Diego health district

Brief / May 3, 2024

SAN DIEGO — A federal court in California dismissed the First Amendment lawsuit brought against the Palomar Health District, whose board member sued after she was reprimanded for criticizing the new website’s terms of use agreements, and for talking about it with a local reporter. The court says her speech was not chilled and that she did in fact speak out, in spite of her claims of self-censorship.

Russian state media is posting more on TikTok ahead of the US presidential election, study says

Associated Press / May 2, 2024

The study notes that most posts do not focus on U.S. politics but other issues, like the war in Ukraine and NATO.

Trump lawyer suggests Hollywood attorney who brokered hush money deals was trading in extortion

Josh Russell / May 2, 2024

Defense cross-examination of the lawyer who arranged hush money payments to bury two women's stories of affairs with Trump was peppered with references to tabloid celebrity gossip from the past two decades.

Georgian lawmakers move closer to passing ‘Russian law’ targeting the media. Protesters gather again

Associated Press / May 1, 2024

Russia-Georgia relations have been complicated and turbulent since the Soviet Union’s collapse in the early 1990s.

ADL on the hook

Brief / May 1, 2024

DALLAS — A federal court in Texas declined to dismiss John Sabal’s defamation lawsuit against the Anti-Defamation League. Sabal, who owns the conservative publication The Patriot Voice, argues the ADL falsely connected him with anti-Semitic statements and conspiracy theories. The statements rise above the level of inference or opinion because they could be interpreted as factual by readers.

Judge dismisses Meta shareholder lawsuit claiming that directors’ obligations extend beyond company

Associated Press / April 30, 2024

They argued, for example, that Meta has prioritized profits while downplaying the detrimental effects of its products on society and the global economy.

Group of daily newspapers hit Microsoft and OpenAI with copyright suit over AI

Josh Russell / April 30, 2024

The newspaper publishers say the artificial intelligence companies siphon off news organizations’ revenues while benefiting from “mass copyright infringement.”