McDonald’s Corp has been sued by a woman who said her two-year-old son ate a used condom he found in the play area of one of its restaurants in Chicago.
Anishi Spencer filed the complaint against the fast-food restaurant chain on Wednesday in Cook County Circuit Court on behalf of herself and her sons, Jonathan Hines and Jacquel Hines.
According to the complaint, Spencer and her sons were at a McDonald’s restaurant in Chicago’s South Side on February 4, 2012 when Jacquel picked up the used condom from the floor, and shortly thereafter coughed up a piece of it.
Both boys required medical care, and have suffered lasting injuries, pain and discomfort, the complaint said.
The United States filed a civil mortgage fraud lawsuit against Bank of America Corp, accusing it of selling thousands of toxic home loans that later defaulted to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, leading to more than $1 billion of losses.
U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara in Manhattan said the scheme, known as the “Hustle” — a modification of “HSSL,” which stood for “High-Speed Swim Lane” — was invented in 2007 by Countrywide Financial Corp, which Bank of America bought the following year, and lasted through 2009.
He said the scheme was deliberately designed to process loans at high speed without checks on their quality, and resulted in “countless” foreclosures.
Bank of America did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
READ ON: U.S. sues Bank of America over “Hustle” mortgage fraud
The city of Oakland has sued to block U.S. authorities from closing down a prominent medical marijuana dispensary that is featured on a reality television show, escalating a long-running conflict with the federal government over pot.
The lawsuit by Oakland’s city attorney asks a federal judge to declare as unlawful federal government attempts to close down Harborside Health Center (here), which is featured in the Discovery Channel reality show “Weed Wars.”
The action, filed on Wednesday in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, follows a forfeiture action against the property where the dispensary is situated that was filed in July by the U.S. Attorney’s office, officials said.
READ ON: Oakland sues government to defend pot dispensary in city
Twitter is appealing a judge’s decision requiring the social media company to turn over an Occupy Wall Street protester’s tweets and account information to Manhattan prosecutors.
In June, Criminal Court Judge Matthew Sciarrino ruled that releasing Malcolm Harris’s tweets would not violate his privacy, since he had posted them on a public website.
Harris, a Brooklyn-based writer, was arrested with hundreds of other Occupy members during a mass march across the Brooklyn Bridge last fall.
The case has focused attention on a number of murky legal questions surrounding the use of social media, including whether users own the content they post publicly and whether companies like Twitter can prevent authorities from using that information to prosecute social media users.
READ ON: Twitter appeals ruling to hand over Occupy protester’s tweets
JPMorgan Chase & Co has been hit with a lawsuit brought on behalf of employees whose retirement holdings fell in value after the largest U.S. bank revealed a surprise $2 billion trading loss earlier this month.
The complaint, filed late Monday in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, also names individual defendants, including Chief Executive Jamie Dimon and Ina Drew, who stepped down last week as head of JPMorgan’s chief investment office, where the loss occurred.
The defendants were accused of violating their duties to 401(k) and other retirement plan participants by including company stock as an investment option, hiding the stock’s risk, and failing to move participants to safer choices.
READ MORE: JPMorgan sued over retirements after $2bn trading loss
BP Plc (BP.L) said on Wednesday it reached definitive agreements with well over 100,000 private plaintiffs to resolve claims for economic, property and medical damages resulting from the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill.
The London-based oil company said it still believes the cost of the settlement will be $7.8 billion, to be paid from a $20 billion trust it had previously set aside.
This coming Friday is the two-year anniversary of the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig, which killed 11 workers and triggered the largest offshore oil spill, after BP’s Macondo well ruptured.
“BP made a commitment to help economic and environmental restoration efforts in the Gulf Coast,” Chief Executive Bob Dudley said in a statement. “This settlement provides the framework for us to continue delivering on that promise, offering those affected full and fair compensation, without waiting for the outcome of a lengthy trial process.”
According to settlement papers, about 109,000 condominium owners, hotel and resort operators, restaurateurs, shrimpers and others may be eligible to recover on economic and property claims. About 16,000 plaintiffs may recover for medical claims.
Lawyers for the plaintiffs may be awarded as much as $600 million to cover fees and costs. This sum is separate from any amounts paid to spill victims, settlement papers show.
READ MORE: BP, private plaintiffs settle over Gulf oil spill
Apple Inc and several major publishers were accused by the U.S. government of conspiring to fix prices of e-books and limit retail price competition, according to a lawsuit filed on Wednesday.
“Apple facilitated the publisher defendants’ collective effort to end retail price competition by coordinating their transition to an agency model across all retailers,” according to the complaint, filed in Manhattan federal court by the anti-trust division of the U.S. Department of Justice.
The publishers include Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins, MacMillan, Penguin Group, Pearson Plc and Simon & Schuster, a unit of CBS Corp.
READ MORE: U.S. accuses Apple, publishers of e-book price fixing
A federal appeals court has revived Viacom Inc’s lawsuit accusing Google Inc of allowing copyrighted videos on its YouTube service without permission.
The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said a reasonable jury could have found that YouTube knew of specific infringing activity on its website. As a result, it said a lower court made a mistake in dismissing Viacom’s $1 billion lawsuit.
READ MORE: Viacom video lawsuit against Google revived
Yahoo Inc sued Facebook Inc on Monday over 10 patents that include methods and systems for advertising on the Web, according to a copy of the lawsuit.
The lawsuit, filed in a San Jose, California federal court, marks the first major legal battle among technology giants in social media and a major escalation of patent litigation that has already swept up the smartphone and tablet sectors and high-tech stalwarts such as Apple Inc, Microsoft Corp and Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc.
Yahoo’s patent lawsuit follows Facebook’s announcement of plans for an initial public offering that could value the company at about $100 billion. A Facebook spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Monday.
Read more: Yahoo files patent lawsuit against Facebook
The trial to decide who should pay for the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill has been delayed by a week, to allow BP Plc to try to cut a deal with tens of thousands of businesses and individuals affected by the disaster.
Less than 24 hours before the case was set to start in a New Orleans federal court, U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier pushed back the date to March 5 from February 27.
The delay allows further talks between BP and the Plaintiffs’ Steering Committee (PSC), which represents condominium owners, fishermen, hoteliers, restaurateurs and others who say their livelihoods were damaged by the April 20, 2010, explosion of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig and subsequent oil spill.
Eleven people were killed, and 4.9 million barrels of oil spewed from the mile-deep Macondo oil well, in by far the worst offshore U.S. oil spill.
