Contracts

A&P v. Workers in $1 M Veggie Video Suit

Two New Jersey brothers apparently meant to be funny when they filmed a gangsta rap parody, “Produce Paradise,” at the A&P supermarket at which they then worked. But management isn’t getting the joke. The Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co., which owns A&P, has not only fired the two shelf-stockers…

Aug 28, 2007 10:41 PM CDT

Subprime Crisis Spotlights #1 Lender

Borrowers with bank accounts obviously are better mortgage risks than those with no assets. Yet, until last year, the nation’s biggest lender reportedly set up its computers to exclude applicants’ cash reserves. This was intended to encourage Countrywide Financial Corp. representatives to pitch applicants on pricier mortgages that reaped a…

Aug 27, 2007 6:26 PM CDT

Did ‘Kid Nation’ Abuse Children?

It almost sounds like a law school exam question. Forty children, ages 8 to 15, are reportedly transported, without their parents, to a ranch in the New Mexico desert near Santa Fe. There they live and work together for 40 days, building a town and a society, supervised only by…

Aug 27, 2007 5:31 PM CDT

11th Circuit: Return Katrina Docs!

In a blunt opinion filed today, a federal appeals court says two sisters portrayed as whistle-blowers in ongoing litigation over Hurricane Katrina insurance claims must return some 15,000 internal documents concerning State Farm Insurance Co. The unpublished ruling by the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is potentially important not…

Aug 24, 2007 9:38 PM CDT

Promise to Pay for Law School is Enforceable

A Minnesota man who promised to pay for a neighbor to attend law school must ante up, a state appeals court has ruled. Walter Fields is required to honor his admitted promise and pay for Marjorie Conrad’s legal education, ruled the Minnesota Court of Appeals, upholding an $87,000 trial court…

Aug 23, 2007 10:36 PM CDT

Ex-Exec’s Wal-Mart Suit Tossed

A Michigan state judge says a former Wal-Mart executive’s lawsuit was filed in the wrong state. Julie Roehm should have filed her wrongful termination suit in Arkansas rather than Michigan, according to Judge Denise Langford Morris of Oakland County, who dismissed the suit. Roehm’s lawyer, B. Andrew Rifkin, told the…

Aug 23, 2007 3:06 PM CDT

Scruggs, Firm in Criminal Contempt Case

A well-known Mississippi plaintiffs attorney and his law firm have been charged with criminal contempt by special federal prosecutors after they defied a federal judge’s order to return internal claims documents to an insurance company. Appointed by U.S. District Judge William M. Acker Jr. after the local U.S. attorney in…

Aug 22, 2007 4:44 PM CDT

Relief for Lawyers in $20 M Lender Bounced-Checks Case

There is relief in sight for lawyers in Georgia and elsewhere who covered perhaps $20 million in bounced checks issued by a mortgage lender. After hearing from Edwin R. Neel, a veteran Atlanta real estate attorney who said he put up his own home to pay for HomeBanc Mortgage Corp.’s…

Aug 21, 2007 6:46 PM CDT

Sperm Donor Meets the Kids

For years, Thomas Anthony Donahoe, a 50-year-old Massachusetts family therapist, has wondered about his children. He has never married. But, when he was recovering from a leg injury and needed the money, he donated sperm about 30 or 40 times in the late 1980s. Now the phone is starting to…

Aug 21, 2007 5:48 PM CDT

Sex Offender Neighbor Violates Lease

A New York judge has ruled an upstate couple can terminate their lease without penalty because a sex offender moved in next door. Watertown City Court Judge James C. Harberson Jr. said the couple was entitled to break the lease, citing a New York law that bars conditions that are…

Aug 21, 2007 3:29 PM CDT

Florida Mermaids in Lease Battle

Things are hardly going swimmingly right now for a group of Florida mermaids. Their historic tourist attraction, Weeki Wachee Springs, is in a lawsuit battle with a state agency known as Swiftmud. At issue: the validity of the one-mile-square city’s 30-year lease of the land on which it is built,…

Aug 17, 2007 3:39 PM CDT

Violent Femmes Bassist Blisters Over Royalties

The ’80s American folk-punk band known widely for its song “Blister in the Sun” is now embroiled in litigation. Violent Femmes bassist Brian Ritchie has filed a federal suit in New York against the band’s lead singer Gordon Gano, accusing him of failing to pay a fair share of royalties,…

Aug 16, 2007 4:28 PM CDT

Cost of Biggest Data Breach: $256 Million

It will cost at least $256 million to correct a massive data breach involving the theft of computerized information about 45 million credit and debit cards. Reportedly the biggest such security breach ever to occur in the U.S., the yearlong theft of computer data from TJX Cos., based in Framingham,…

Aug 15, 2007 6:31 PM CDT

FL Fights for Internal State Farm Docs

A battle between Florida regulators and the state’s biggest property insurer is capturing the attention of lawyers there and elsewhere, because of what’s really at issue. Property insurance rate-setting is the official topic. But attorneys on both sides are waiting to see whether State Farm, a Bloomington, Ill.-based insurer, has…

Aug 15, 2007 5:26 PM CDT

First Legal Action in Bridge Collapse

The first litigation has reportedly been filed in the Minneapolis bridge collapse case, by a law firm seeking access in order to investigate before the site is cleaned up. It was filed Monday in federal court because the firm, Schwebel, Goetz & Sieben of Minneapolis, has been told that federal…

Aug 14, 2007 7:41 PM CDT