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Google faces new antitrust trial after ruling declaring search engine a monopoly
Bankruptcy |
2024/09/06 08:27
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One month after a judge declared Google’s search engine an illegal monopoly, the tech giant faces another antitrust lawsuit that threatens to break up the company, this time over its advertising technology.
The Justice Department, joined by a coalition of states, and Google each made opening statements Monday to a federal judge who will decide whether Google holds a monopoly over online advertising technology.
The regulators contend that Google built, acquired and maintains a monopoly over the technology that matches online publishers to advertisers. Dominance over the software on both the buy side and the sell side of the transaction enables Google to keep as much as 36 cents on the dollar when it brokers sales between publishers and advertisers, the government contends in court papers.
They allege that Google also controls the ad exchange market, which matches the buy side to the sell side.
“It’s worth saying the quiet part out loud,” Justice Department lawyer Julia Tarver Wood said during her opening statement. “One monopoly is bad enough. But a trifecta of monopolies is what we have here.”
Google says the government’s case is based on an internet of yesteryear, when desktop computers ruled and internet users carefully typed precise World Wide Web addresses into URL fields. Advertisers now are more likely to turn to social media companies like TikTok or streaming TV services like Peacock to reach audiences.
In her opening statement, Google lawyer Karen Dunn likened the government’s case to a “time capsule with with a Blackberry, an iPod and a Blockbuster video card.”
Dunn said Supreme Court precedents warn judges about “the serious risk of error or unintended consequences” when dealing with rapidly emerging technology and considering whether antitrust law requires intervention. She also warned that any action taken against Google won’t benefit small businesses but will simply allow other tech behemoths like Amazon, Microsoft and TikTok to fill the void.
According to Google’s annual reports, revenue has actually declined in recent years for Google Networks, the division of the Mountain View, California-based tech giant that includes such services as AdSense and Google Ad Manager that are at the heart of the case, from $31.7 billion in 2021 to $31.3 billion in 2023,
The trial that began Monday in Alexandria, Virginia, over the alleged ad tech monopoly was initially going to be a jury trial, but Google maneuvered to force a bench trial, writing a check to the federal government for more than $2 million to moot the only claim brought by the government that required a jury.
The case will now be decided by U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema, who was appointed to the bench by former President Bill Clinton and is best known for high-profile terrorism trials including that of Sept. 11 defendant Zacarias Moussaoui. Brinkema, though, also has experience with highly technical civil trials, working in a courthouse that sees an outsize number of patent infringement cases.
The Virginia case comes on the heels of a major defeat for Google over its search engine, which generates the majority of the company’s $307 billion in annual revenue. A judge in the District of Columbia declared the search engine a monopoly, maintained in part by tens of billions of dollars Google pays each year to companies like Apple to lock in Google as the default search engine presented to consumers when they buy iPhones and other gadgets. |
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Trump in court as lawyers fight to overturn verdict in E. Jean Carroll sex abuse suit
Bankruptcy |
2024/09/03 08:29
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Veering from the campaign trail to a courtroom, Donald Trump quietly observed Friday as his lawyer fought to overturn a verdict finding the former president liable for sexual abuse and defamation.
The Republican nominee and his accuser, E. Jean Carroll, a writer, sat at tables about 15 feet (4.5 meters) apart, in a Manhattan federal appeals court. Trump didn’t acknowledge or look at Carroll as he passed directly in front of her on the way in and out, but he sometimes shook his head, including when Carroll’s attorney said he sexually attacked her.
Trump attorney D. John Sauer told three 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals judges that the civil trial in Carroll’s lawsuit was muddied by improper evidence.
“This case is a textbook example of implausible allegations being propped up by highly inflammatory, inadmissible” evidence, Sauer said, noting that jurors saw the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape in which Trump boasted in 2005 about grabbing women’s genitals because when someone is a star, “you can do anything.”
Carroll’s lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, told judges the evidence in question was proper, and that there was plenty of proof in the nearly two-week-long trial of Carroll’s claim that Trump attacked her in a luxury department store dressing room decades ago. She said the “Access Hollywood” tape, as the trial judge had noted, could be viewed as a confession.
“E. Jean Carroll brought this case because Donald Trump sexually assaulted her in 1996, in a dressing room at Bergdorf Goodman, and then defamed her in 2022 by claiming that she was crazy and made the whole thing up,” Kaplan said.
Carroll, standing with Kaplan outside the courthouse afterward, declined to comment.
Trump left court in a motorcade, then delivered a lengthy diatribe against the case at Trump Tower, where he said again that Carroll — and other women who had accused him of sexual assault — were making everything up.
“It’s so false. It’s a made up, fabricated story by somebody, I think, initially, just looking to promote a book,” Trump said. Carroll first spoke publicly about her encounter with Trump in a newly published memoir in 2019.
In remarks to reporters Friday, Trump repeated many claims about Carroll that a jury has already deemed defamatory, and added some new ones, like suggesting that a photograph of him and Carroll together in 1987 was produced by artificial intelligence. It was unclear whether his comments could lead to a new defamation lawsuit by Carroll.
“I’ve said before and I’ll say it again: all options are on the table,” Kaplan said after Trump’s news conference.
The three-judge panel, if it follows the pattern of other appeals, would be unlikely to rule for weeks, if not months.
A jury found in May 2023 that Trump sexually abused Carroll. He denies it. That jury awarded Carroll $5 million.
Trump did not attend the trial and has expressed regret that he was not there. The civil case has political and financial implications for Trump. |
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Supreme Court rebuffs plea to restore multibllliou-dollar student debt plan
Breaking Legal News |
2024/08/31 13:38
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The Supreme Court on Wednesday kept on hold the latest multibillion-dollar plan from the Biden administration that would have lowered payments for millions of borrowers, while lawsuits make their way through lower courts.
The justices rejected an administration request to put most of it back into effect. It was blocked by the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
In an unsigned order, the court said it expects the appeals court to issue a fuller decision on the plan “with appropriate dispatch.”
The Education Department is seeking to provide a faster path to loan cancellation, and reduce monthly income-based repayments from 10% to 5% of a borrower’s discretionary income. The plan also wouldn’t require borrowers to make payments if they earn less than 225% of the federal poverty line — $32,800 a year for a single person.
Last year, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority rejected an earlier plan that would have wiped away more than $400 billion in student loan debt.
Cost estimates of the new SAVE plan vary. The Republican-led states challenging the plan peg the cost at $475 billion over 10 years. The administration cites a Congressional Budget Office estimate of $276 billion.
Two separate legal challenges to the SAVE plan have been making their way through federal courts. In June, judges in Kansas and Missouri issued separate rulings that blocked much of the administration’s plan. Debt that already had been forgiven under the plan was unaffected.
The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a ruling that allowed the department to proceed with a provision allowing for lower monthly payments. Republican-led states had asked the high court to undo that ruling.
But after the 8th Circuit blocked the entire plan, the states had no need for the Supreme Court to intervene, the justices noted in a separate order issued Wednesday.
The Justice Department had suggested the Supreme Court could take up the legal fight over the new plan now, as it did with the earlier debt forgiveness plan. But the justices declined to do so.
“This is a recipe for chaos across the student loan system,” said Mike Pierce, executive director of the Student Borrower Protection Center, an advocacy group.
“No court has decided on the merits here, but despite all of that borrowers are left in this limbo state where their rights don’t exist for them,” Pierce said.
Eight million people were already enrolled in the SAVE program when it was paused by the lower court, and more than 10 million more people are looking for ways to afford monthly payments, he said.
Sheng Li, litigation counsel with the New Civil Liberties Alliance, a legal group funded by conservative donors, applauded the order. “There was no basis to lift the injunction because the Department of Education’s newest loan-cancellation program is just as unlawful as the one the Court struck down a year ago,” he said in a statement.
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Court revives Sarah Palin’s libel lawsuit against The New York Times
Breaking Legal News |
2024/08/27 13:38
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A federal appeals court revived Sarah Palin’s libel case against The New York Times on Wednesday, citing errors by a lower court judge, particularly his decision to dismiss the lawsuit while a jury was deliberating.
The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan wrote that Judge Jed S. Rakoff’s decision in February 2022 to dismiss the lawsuit mid-deliberations improperly intruded on the jury’s work.
It also found that the erroneous exclusion of evidence, an inaccurate jury instruction and an erroneous response to a question from the jury tainted the jury’s decision to rule against Palin. It declined, however, to grant Palin’s request to force Rakoff off the case on grounds he was biased against her. The 2nd Circuit said she had offered no proof.
The libel lawsuit by Palin, a onetime Republican vice presidential candidate and former governor of Alaska, centered on the newspaper’s 2017 editorial falsely linking her campaign rhetoric to a mass shooting, which Palin asserted damaged her reputation and career.
The Times acknowledged its editorial was inaccurate but said it quickly corrected errors it called an “honest mistake” that were never meant to harm Palin.
Shane Vogt, a lawyer for Palin, said in an email that Palin was “very happy with today’s decision, which is a significant step forward in the process of holding publishers accountable for content that misleads readers and the public in general.”
“The truth deserves a level playing field, and Governor Palin looks forward to presenting her case to a jury that is ‘provided with relevant proffered evidence and properly instructed on the law,’” Vogt added, quoting in part from the 2nd Circuit ruling.
Charlie Stadtlander, a spokesperson for the Times, said the decision was disappointing. “We’re confident we will prevail in a retrial,” he said in an email.
The 2nd Circuit, in a ruling written by Judge John M. Walker Jr., reversed the jury verdict, along with Rakoff’s decision to dismiss the lawsuit while jurors were deliberating.
Despite his ruling, Rakoff let jurors finish deliberating and render their verdict, which went against Palin.
The appeals court noted that Rakoff’s ruling made credibility determinations, weighed evidence, and ignored facts or inferences that a reasonable juror could plausibly find supported Palin’s case.
It also described how “push notifications” that reached the cellphones of jurors “came as an unfortunate surprise to the district judge.” The 2nd Circuit said it was not enough that the judge’s law clerk was assured by jurors that Rakoff’s ruling had not affected their deliberations.
“Given a judge’s special position of influence with a jury, we think a jury’s verdict reached with the knowledge of the judge’s already-announced disposition of the case will rarely be untainted, no matter what the jurors say upon subsequent inquiry,” the appeals court said.
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Venezuela’s Supreme Court certifies Maduro’s claims that he won presidential election
Breaking Legal News |
2024/08/25 09:22
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Venezuela’s Supreme Court has backed President Nicolás Maduro’s claims that he won last month’s presidential election and said voting tallies published online showing he lost by a landslide were forged.
The ruling is the latest attempt by Maduro to blunt protests and international criticism that erupted after the contested July 28 vote in which the self-proclaimed socialist leader was seeking a third, six-year term.
The high court is packed with Maduro loyalists and has almost never ruled against the government.
Its decision, read Thursday in an event attended by senior officials and foreign diplomats, came in response to a request by Maduro to review vote totals showing he had won by more than 1 million votes.
The main opposition coalition has accused Maduro of trying to steal the vote.
Thanks to a superb ground game on election day, opposition volunteers managed to collect copies of voting tallies from 80% of the 30,000 polling booths nationwide and which show opposition candidate Edmundo González won by a more than 2-to-1 margin.
The official tally sheets printed by each voting machine carry a QR code that makes it easy for anyone to verify the results and are almost impossible to replicate.
“An attempt to judicialize the results doesn’t change the truth: we won overwhelmingly and we have the voting records to prove it,” González, standing before a Venezuelan flag, said in a video posted on social media.
The high court’s ruling certifying the results contradicts the findings of experts from the United Nations and the Carter Center who were invited to observe the election and which both determined the results announced by authorities lacked credibility. Specifically, the outside experts noted that authorities didn’t release a breakdown of results by each of the 30,000 voting booths nationwide, as they have in almost every previous election.
The government has claimed — without evidence — that a foreign cyberattack staged by hackers from North Macedonia delayed the vote counting on election night and publication of the disaggregated results.
González was the only one of 10 candidates who did not participate in the Supreme Court’s audit, a fact noted by the justices, who in their ruling accused him of trying to spread panic.
The former diplomat and his chief backer, opposition powerhouse Maria Corina Machado, went into hiding after the election as security forces arrested more than 2,000 people and cracked down on demonstrations that erupted spontaneously throughout the country protesting the results.
Numerous foreign governments, including the U.S. as well as several allies of Maduro, have called on authorities to release the full breakdown of results.
Gabriel Boric, the leftist president of Chile and one of the main critics of Maduro’s election gambit, lambasted the high court’s certification. |
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Arkansas Supreme Court upholds rejection of abortion ballot measure
Biotech |
2024/08/22 09:23
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The Arkansas Supreme Court upheld the state’s rejection of signature petitions for an abortion rights ballot initiative on Thursday, keeping the proposal from going before voters in November.
READ MORE: Arkansas election officials reject petitions submitted to put abortion rights on 2024 ballot
The ruling dashed the hopes of organizers, who submitted the petitions, of getting the constitutional amendment measure on the ballot in the predominantly Republican state, where many top leaders tout their opposition to abortion.
Election officials said Arkansans for Limited Government, the group behind the measure, did not properly submit documentation regarding the signature gatherers it hired. The group disputed that assertion and argued it should have been given more time to provide any additional documents needed.
“We find that the Secretary correctly refused to count the signatures collected by paid canvassers because the sponsor failed to file the paid canvasser training certification,” the court said in a 4-3 ruling.
Following the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 decision removing the nationwide right to abortion, there has been a push to have voters decide the matter state by state.
Arkansas currently bans abortion at any time during a pregnancy, unless the woman’s life is endangered due to a medical emergency.
The proposed amendment would have prohibited laws banning abortion in the first 20 weeks of gestation and allowed the procedure later on in cases of rape, incest, threats to the woman’s health or life, or if the fetus would be unlikely to survive birth. It would not have created a constitutional right to abortion.
The ballot proposal lacked support from national abortion rights groups such as Planned Parenthood because it would still have allowed abortion to be banned after 20 weeks, which is earlier than other states where it remains legal.
Had they all been verified, the more than 101,000 signatures, submitted on the state’s July 5 deadline, would have been enough to qualify for the ballot. The threshold was 90,704 signatures from registered voters, and from a minimum of 50 counties.
In a earlier filing with the court, election officials said that 87,675 of the signatures submitted were collected by volunteers with the campaign. Election officials said it could not determine whether 912 of the signatures came from volunteer or paid canvassers.
Arkansans for Limited Government and election officials disagreed over whether the petitions complied with a 2013 state law requiring campaigns to submit statements identifying each paid canvasser by name and confirming that rules for gathering signatures were explained to them.
Supporters of the measure said they followed the law with their documentation, including affidavits identifying each paid gatherer. They have also argued the abortion petitions are being handled differently than other initiative campaigns this year, pointing to similar filings by two other groups.
State records show that the abortion campaign did submit, on June 27, a signed affidavit including a list of paid canvassers and a statement saying the petition rules had been explained to them. Moreover, the July 5 submission included affidavits from each paid worker acknowledging that the group provided them with all the rules and regulations required by law.
The state argued in court that this documentation did not comply because it was not signed by someone with the canvassing company rather than the initiative campaign itself. The state said the statement also needed to be submitted alongside the petitions.
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Former Rep. George Santos pleads guilty in federal fraud case
Corporate Governance |
2024/08/20 09:23
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George Santos, the former New York congressman who spun lies into a brief political career, pleaded guilty Monday to wire fraud and aggravated identity theft, acknowledging that he allowed his ambitions to cloud his judgment.
Santos, 36, is likely to spend at least six years in prison and owes hundreds of thousands of dollars in restitution. His federal fraud case, which led to his expulsion from Congress, was just weeks away from going to trial.
“I betrayed the trust of my constituents and supporters. I deeply regret my conduct,” the New York Republican said, his voice trembling as he entered the plea in a Long Island courtroom.
Santos, 36, said he accepted responsibility for his crimes and intends to make amends. He faces more than six years in prison under federal sentencing guidelines and owes at least $370,000 in restitution.
Senior Federal Judge Joanna Seybert scheduled sentencing for Feb. 7.
Santos was indicted on felony charges that he stole from political donors, used campaign contributions to pay for personal expenses, lied to Congress about his wealth and collected unemployment benefits while actually working.
Santos was expelled from the U.S. House after an ethics investigation found “overwhelming evidence” that he had broken the law and exploited his public position for his own profit.
The case has been set to go to trial in early September. If that had happened, federal prosecutors said Monday that they were prepared to call some 40 witnesses, including members of Santos’ campaign, employers and family members.
Santos was once touted as a rising political star after he flipped the suburban district that covers the affluent North Shore of Long Island and a slice of the New York City borough of Queens in 2022.
But his life story began unraveling even before he was sworn into office. At the time, reports emerged that he had lied about having a career at top Wall Street firms and a college degree along with other questions swirling about his biography.
New questions then emerged about his campaign funds.
He was first indicted on federal charges in May 2023, but refused to resign from office.
Santos had previously maintained his innocence, though he said in an interview in December that a plea deal with prosecutors was “not off the table.”
Asked if he was afraid of going to prison, he told CBS 2 at the time: “I think everybody should be afraid of going to jail, it’s not a pretty place and uh, I definitely want to work very hard to avoid that as best as possible.”
Separately Monday, in Manhattan federal court, Judge Denise Cote tossed out a lawsuit in which Santos claimed that late-night host Jimmy Kimmel, ABC and Disney committed copyright infringement and unjustly enriched themselves at his expense by using videos he made on the Cameo app for a “Jimmy Kimmel Live” segment. The judge said it was clear that Kimmel used the clips, which were also posted to YouTube, for the purposes of criticism and commentary, which is fair use.
Santos had begun selling personalized videos on Cameo in December shortly after his ouster from Congress. He subsequently launched, then quickly abandoned, a longshot bid to return to Congress as an independent earlier this year. |
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Class action or a representative action is a form of lawsuit in which a large group of people collectively bring a claim to court and/or in which a class of defendants is being sued. This form of collective lawsuit originated in the United States and is still predominantly a U.S. phenomenon, at least the U.S. variant of it. In the United States federal courts, class actions are governed by Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Rule. Since 1938, many states have adopted rules similar to the FRCP. However, some states like California have civil procedure systems which deviate significantly from the federal rules; the California Codes provide for four separate types of class actions. As a result, there are two separate treatises devoted solely to the complex topic of California class actions. Some states, such as Virginia, do not provide for any class actions, while others, such as New York, limit the types of claims that may be brought as class actions. They can construct your law firm a brand new website, lawyer website templates and help you redesign your existing law firm site to secure your place in the internet. |
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