A legal battle is in the forecast for two local television stations. Gray Media Group, the parent company of KMOV, filed suit last week against competitor Tegna’s KSDK, arguing it had violated a trademark by debuting a new weather brand featuring the phrase “Weather First Alert” just two months after KMOV began using “First Alert Weather” in its coverage of severe weather.
The Federal Trade Commission and a bipartisan coalition of 17 state attorneys general sued Amazon over violations of anticompetitive behavior on Tuesday, building on the government’s crackdown on the market power of powerful tech companies. The lawsuit targeting Amazon is twofold — alleging the e-commerce giant’s practices are anticompetitive in how it serves shoppers as well as third-party sellers on the site, according to an FTC announcement.
John Grisham (left), Jodi Picoult and George R.R. Martin (right) are among 17 authors suing OpenAI for “systematic theft on a mass scale,” the latest in a wave of legal action by writers concerned that artificial intelligence programs are using their copyrighted works without permission. (AP photo)
Dominion Voting Systems’ $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Newsmax over the right-wing cable network’s airing of 2020 election lies is scheduled to go to trial in late September 2024, a Delaware judge decided.
The funds accuse the Fox Corp. board of neglecting its responsibility to shareholders by leaving the company open to defamation lawsuits.
Exclusives
Artificial intelligence companies are being bombarded by court challenges that will decide the legality of the way large language models are trained.
The suit takes aim at former CEO Bob Chapek’s lofty subscriber growth and profitability targets for Disney+. The entertainment giant faces a host of litigation dealing with efforts to boost subscriptions for its streaming service.
The network is seeking to dismiss the claim from Ray Epps, who accused Fox and ex-host Tucker Carlson of “spreading falsehoods” about him being a federal agent.
A Delaware judge on Wednesday rejected Newsmax’s attempt to throw out part of a defamation case brought by the election technology company Smartmatic against the right-wing network. Smartmatic sued Newsmax after the network repeatedly aired false claims about the 2020 election — specifically the lie that the company’s software was involved in an international plot to rig the presidential election against Donald Trump. The company later updated its lawsuit to add 26 additional examples of alleged defamation, claiming it found the new material during the discovery process, when Newsmax turned over “hundreds of hours” of broadcasts.
In a complicated case that has received little notice, Comcast is suing chipmaker MaxLinear for breach of contract for attempting to terminate two agreements that provide ongoing support for millions of broadband gateways and set-tops that use MaxLinear technology. The Comcast-MaxLinear legal entanglement sends ripples across a handful of top U.S. cable and satellite service operators. Comcast’s lawsuit, filed with a New York court on May 26, has linkages to a wave of separate lawsuits filed in February in a California court by a separate entity called Entropic Communications targeting Comcast, Charter Communications, Cox Communications, Dish Network and DirecTV, claiming they are infringing on 20 patents.
Alphabet’s Google has been hit with a lawsuit in U.S. federal court seeking information about its multibillion-dollar deal with the National Football League to exclusively hold the broadcast rights for the Sunday Ticket package of televised professional games. Lawyers representing classes of residential and commercial business subscribers of Sunday Ticket filed the lawsuit on Monday in San Jose, Calif., federal court.
Murdoch, the C.E.O. of Fox Corporation, abandoned his lawsuit against the news outlet Crikey in April. The payment covers the publication’s legal costs.
Trump had been seeking punitive damages of $475 million in the federal lawsuit filed last October in South Florida, claiming the references hurt his reputation and political career. U.S. District Judge Raag Singhal, who was appointed by Trump, said Friday in his ruling that the former president’s defamation claims failed because the references were opinions and not factual statements.
A purported class action claims the search giant misled advertisers about its “TrueView” ad program by making the ads muted, autoplaying videos and serving them on unlisted sites in violation of its promised standards.
The actor claimed that the companies exploited the series in a way to avoid paying him his 23% share of all profits.
Diamond’s largely stiffed secondary creditors are asking the bankruptcy court why they’ve been left holding the bag while JP Morgan was made whole.
Houston court OKs Diamond Sports Group’s latest motion to tear up its regional sports networks contract with yet another MLB team on Tuesday.
Tell you one thing — DirecTV and Nexstar have beef. And plenty of it. But some of that discord got closer to resolution over the weekend, when the New York Supreme Court issued a summary judgment in favor of DirecTV, ruling that Nexstar Media Group breached a 2015 broadcast retransmission contract by not telling the satellite pay TV company that its Washington, D.C. station, then known as WHAG, was about to lose its NBC affiliation and become The CW station WDVM. The court ruled that Nexstar lured DirecTV into the 2015 deal “based on a misleading or materially incomplete representation that WHAG would continue its affiliation.”
Twitter on Wednesday was hit with a lawsuit accusing it of refusing to pay at least $500 million in promised severance to thousands of employees who were laid off after Elon Musk acquired the company. Courtney McMillian, who oversaw Twitter’s employee benefits programs as its “head of total rewards” before she was laid off in January, filed the proposed class action in San Francisco federal court.
Fox News is facing a new defamation lawsuit from a man who claims that its former host Tucker Carlson falsely identified him as an undercover FBI agent who triggered the January 6th attack on the Capitol. The lawsuit was filed in Delaware Superior Court, the same venue where the network recently faced a lengthy trial over Dominion Voting Systems defamation claims that its hosts and guests amplified a false narrative that the company rigged the 2020 presidential election. Fox News settled the case for $787.5 million.
A former CNN reporter is suing the news channel for unfair dismissal and racial discrimination after she was severely injured while on assignment in Israel. Saima Mohsin was left disabled after an accident while reporting from Jerusalem on the Israel-Palestine conflict. Her cameraman ran over her foot in a car, causing severe tissue damage that has left the British-Pakistani journalist struggling to sit, stand and walk or return to work full-time.
Tucker Carlson, before he was sidelined by Fox, repeatedly endorsed a conspiracy theory about an Arizona man, who may sue for defamation. Legal experts say it would be a viable case.
The order came in a lawsuit filed by the attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana, who claim the administration is trying to silence its critics.
Attorneys for Gov. Ron DeSantis have asked that a trial involving Disney be postponed until the middle of 2025, well after the GOP presidential nomination race wraps up and voters have picked a winner in the November 2024 general election.
Attorneys for Florida Governor Ron DeSantis claim that he is immune from The Walt Disney Co.’s lawsuit over his effort to strip to the company of control over a special district covering its theme parks and resort in the state. In a motion to dismiss filed on Monday, attorneys for the state also argued that the federal district court lacks jurisdiction.
Dominion Voting Systems’ defamation lawsuit against Fox News laid bare how the network communicated behind the scenes about broadcasting 2020 election misinformation, ultimately leading the network to fork over a massive settlement. Newsmax could be next, as voting technology company Smartmatic has subpoenaed several of the right-wing cable network’s current and former employees for work and personal correspondence.
In a complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington, the agency accused Amazon of using deceptive designs, known as “dark patterns,” to deceive consumers into enrolling in Prime, which provides subscribers with perks such as faster shipping for an fee of $139 annually, or $14.99 a month.
The country’s largest newspaper chain said that Google’s power over ad technology has contributed to the decline of local news.
Fox News is on the verge of settling another major lawsuit. Abby Grossberg, the former network producer who filed an explosive complaint against the company earlier this year, is in the final stages of ironing out a settlement with the company, according to people familiar with the matter.
Fox News Wednesday notified Tucker Carlson’s lawyers that the former prime-time anchor violated his contract with the network when he launched his own Twitter show on Tuesday, according to a copy of a letter obtained by Axios. A breach of contract claim sets Fox News up to explore potential legal action against Carlson, a move that would intensify the already thorny public battle between the two parties. Carlson’s lawyers told Axios that any legal action by Fox would violate his First Amendment rights.
Oregon’s attorney general announced that she is investigating Fox Corp.’s board of directors for “breach of fiduciary duty” after Fox News repeatedly broadcast election lies in the wake of the 2020 election. That resulted in a historic $787 million defamation settlement with Dominion Voting Systems. “Treasurer Read and I believe that Fox’s board of directors breached its fiduciary duties by allowing Fox News to broadcast false claims that Dominion and Smartmatic rigged the 2020 presidential election,” said Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum in a statement. “We hope to hold the board accountable and protect the long-term value of Oregon’s investment in Fox Corp.
A federal judge on Thursday disqualified himself from hearing Walt Disney Co.’s civil suit against Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and other state officials, citing a small financial interest in the company by a relative.
In her lawsuit, Victoria Valentino, 80, a former Playboy model who alleges Bill Cosby drugged and sexually assaulted her and another woman at his home in 1969 sued him Thursday under a new California law that suspends the statute of limitations on sex abuse claims.
The network is trying to protect a source who disclosed details of an FBI probe into a Chinese American scientist. That scientist, Yanping Chen, is suing the FBI for damages, claiming that the leaked information was part of a campaign to damage her after federal prosecutors ended their six-year investigation of her without bringing charges. Chen also subpoenaed Fox and Catherine Herridge (pictured), now of CBS — to force her to disclose the source of several 2017 stories.
The conflict echoes the media giant’s First Amendment fight against Ron DeSantis over the “Don’t Say Gay” bill.
CBS, Cox and Fox have agreed to pay a total of $48 million to end claims in Illinois federal court that they participated in a scheme among major U.S. broadcasters to artificially inflate television advertising prices.
