#Third-Party Litigation

[walks-the-ages]

[ID: a link preview of a stock image coffee table with a laptop with the facebook logo on the screen with text on top that says 'anyone who used facebook in the last 16 years can now get settlement money. here's how." end ID]

-USA Residents Only-

Time Sensitive- Apply before August 25th, 2023 (8/25/23)!

Filing a claim takes less than ten minutes, and can be done HERE

Excerpt from article:

Anyone in the U.S. who used Facebook in the last 16 years can now collect a piece of a $725 million settlement by parent company Meta tied to privacy violations — as long as they fill out a claim on a website set up to pay out money to the social network's users. 

The settlement stems from multiple lawsuits that were brought against Facebook by users who claimed that the company improperly shared their data with third-party sources such as advertisers and data brokers. The litigation began after Facebook was embroiled in a privacy scandal in 2018 with Cambridge Analytica, which scraped user data from the site as part of an effort to profile voters.

Meta denied any liability or wrongdoing under the settlement, according to the recently created class-action website. However, the agreement means that U.S. residents who used Facebook between May 24, 2007, and December 22, 2022, can file a monetary claim as long as they do so before August 25, 2023. 

Please reblog to signal boost this! As many people as possible should know about this to make their claim, if you don't do anything you don't get anything. It takes less than ten minutes to file and pick your payment option including pay/pal and ven/mo .

-USA Residents Only-

This ended August 25th, 2023!

[axiafunder145]

Litigation funding is the financing of legal funding cases by third party in return for a defined share of the proceeds.Third party litigation funding Litigation funding  Litigation financing.

[eretzyisrael]

by Dion J. Pierre

Granting a request for injunctive relief filed by Jewish students who sued the university, US Judge Mark Scarsi of the District Court for the Central District of California grated UCLA’s defense of its role in supporting the encampment — which argued, in his words, that it “has no responsibility to protect the religious freedom of its Jewish students because the exclusion was engineered by third-party protesters” — and described what took place there as “so unimaginable and so abhorrent to our constitutional guarantee of religious freedom.”

He continued, “The injunction does not mandate any specific policies and procedures UCLA must put in place, nor does it dictate any specific acts UCLA must take in response to campus protests. Rather, the injunction requires only that, if any part of UCLA’s ordinarily available programs, activities, and campus areas become unavailable to certain Jewish students, UCLA must stop providing those ordinarily available programs, activities, and campus areas to any students.”

Scarsi, who formally assumed office in 2020 after being nominated in 2018 by former President Donald Trump, also affirmed the plaintiffs’ contention that Zionism is an integral part of their Jewish faith. The ruling is the first to address directly how university administrators handled pro-Hamas encampments on their campuses, which, across the country, descended into proclaiming support for terrorism, threatening a genocide of Jews, and unobstructed vandalizing of school property and assault.

“Shame on UCLA for letting antisemitic thugs terrorize Jews on campus,” Mark Rienzi — president of the public interest law firm Becket, which represented the plaintiffs — said on Tuesday, praising the decision’s defense of religious liberty. “Today’s ruling says that UCLA’s policy of helping antisemitic activists target Jews is not just morally wrong but a gross constitutional violation. UCLA should stop fighting the Constitution and start protecting Jews on campus.”

A slew of lawsuits filed by Jewish students and against their universities over their handling of antisemitism after Oct. 7, when Hamas invaded Israel and launched the ongoing war in Gaza, have been decided this summer or remain in the courts.

Earlier this month, a Massachusetts federal judge “in part” denied Harvard University a motion to dismiss a suit which accuses it of failing to respond to numerous antisemitic incidents during the 2023-2024 academic year, clearing the case to proceed to trial. Throughout the summer, Columbia University and New York University (NYU) settled two lawsuits, with NYU paying an undisclosed sum of money to avoid further discovery and litigation.

[levynite]

Excerpt:

In late May, Disney's lawyers filed a motion asking the circuit court to order Piccolo to arbitrate the case — with them and a neutral third party in private, as opposed to publicly in court — and to pause the legal proceedings in the meantime. Arbitration is generally considered a more efficient and cost-effective method of resolving disputes than litigation, and Disney said explicitly in court documents that the "main benefit of arbitration is avoiding heavy litigation costs." The reason it says Piccolo must be compelled to arbitrate? A clause in the terms and conditions he signed off on when he created a Disney+ account for a monthlong trial in 2019. Those terms of use — which users must acknowledge to create an account — state that "any dispute between You and Us, Except for Small Claims, is subject to a class action waiver and must be resolved by individual binding arbitration." Disney says Piccolo agreed to similar language again when purchasing park tickets online in September 2023. Whether he actually read the fine print at any point, it adds, is "immaterial." "Piccolo ignores that he previously created a Disney account and agreed to arbitrate 'all disputes' against 'The Walt Disney Company or its affiliates' arising 'in contract, tort, warranty, statute, regulation, or other legal or equitable basis,'" the motion reads, arguing the language is broad enough to cover Piccolo's claims.

You kidding me??? What piddling, facetious, grasping bullshit!

In early August, Piccolo's lawyers filed a response slamming Disney's rationale as "preposterous," bordering "on the surreal" and "fatally flawed for numerous independent reasons." "There is simply no reading of the Disney+ Subscriber Agreement which would support the notion that Mr. Piccolo agreed to arbitrate claims arising from injuries sustained by his wife at a restaurant located on premises owned by a Disney theme park or resort which ultimately led to her death," they wrote in the 123-page filing. They confirmed that he did create a Disney+ account on his PlayStation in 2019, but he believes he canceled the subscription during the trial because he hasn't found any charges associated with it after that point. Piccolo's lawyers accused the company of trying to deprive Tangsuan's estate of its right to a jury trial. "The notion that terms agreed to by a consumer when creating a Disney+ free trial account would forever bar that consumer's right to a jury trial in any dispute with any Disney affiliate or subsidiary, is so outrageously unreasonable and unfair as to shock the judicial conscience, and this Court should not enforce such an agreement," they wrote. Piccolo's lawyers also took issue with the process itself, saying Disney didn't raise its alleged right to arbitration early enough in the proceedings. They further note that Piccolo didn't bring the lawsuit as an individual, but on behalf of Tangsuan's estate, which did not sign off on any such terms. There was no such estate at the time, since Tangsuan was still alive.

[robsheridan]

No film defined the late-70s “McSplatter” wave of grindhouse horror like DRIVE-THRU OF DEATH (1977). Writer/director Ron Sharleton's (Cannibal Quarterback, Garfield: First Blood, CoacHELLa) unapologetically manic debut gore-fest wrote the blueprint for the fast-food sub-genre that would be followed by many more films such as Wiener of Blood (1978), Ice Scream Truck (1978), and Sharleton’s own pizza-themed follow-up Slice of Hell (1979).

Drive-Thru of Death opens with old-fashioned circus clowns in a shadowy ritual with a cult of evil cows (the film does not explain why the cows can speak, nor are they seen again after the opening scene). The groups are angry at the giant fast food chain “McDungles” (an obvious reference to McDonald’s leading to extensive litigation) for their aggressive factory-farming and their clown-themed branding that “cheapens the sacred art of clowning.” The cow priest puts an ancient black magic curse on the blood of all cattle in the region destined for McDungles beef plants.

As the cursed beef makes its way into McDungles’ restaurants, burger patties begin coming alive as ferocious man-eating beef demons. Meanwhile, the curse has a special effect on the restaurant’s birthday clowns, who become gradually more psychotic as they mutate into grotesque homicidal monstrosities whose flesh drips like melted cheese. The clowns kill the staff and turn McDungles into madhouses of relentless zany violence. The clown working the drive-through window asks unsuspecting patrons the film’s much-quoted catchphrase, “would you like TO DIE with that??” 

The infamous third-act birthday party scene is an off-the-rails escalation of horror where the demon clowns infect children with the curse, which their turns their flesh into french fries before possessing them to become demonic murderous clown children.

Eventually, townspeople are able to kill the beef demons and the clowns by burning them alive with deep-frier grease. But the damage is done, and the McDungles chain has to shut down permanently.

The film’s final shot of a child who survived the birthday party massacre warns ominously, “the children were never the same.”

-----------

NOTE: This alternate reality horror story is part of my NightmAIres narrative art series (visit that link for a lot more). NightmAIres are windows into other worlds and alternate histories, conceived/written by me and visualized with synthography and Photoshop.

If you enjoy my work, consider supporting me on Patreon for frequent exclusive hi-res wallpaper packs, behind-the-scenes features, downloads, events, contests, and an awesome fan community. Direct fan support is what keeps me going as an independent creator, and it means the world to me.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Lisa Needham at Public Notice:

It finally happened. Judge Aileen Cannon, who has been telegraphing for months that she was committed to finding a way to get Trump off the hook in his classified documents case, came through for her guy. In a sprawling 93-page opinion, Cannon threw out the charges against the former president, agreeing with Trump that Special Counsel Jack Smith’s appointment was unconstitutional.  Since Trump stuffed the federal judiciary full of Federalist Society true believers, those courts are nothing but Calvinball. There are no longer any fixed rules and precedent doesn’t matter. What does matter to judges like Cannon is ensuring that a hard-right evangelical worldview becomes the rule of law in America and that Donald Trump is preserved at all costs. 

Cannon’s opinion is a joke

There’s little to no legal support for Cannon’s decision. In short, her ruling turns on the assertion that a special counsel is a “principal,” not an “inferior” officer. The former are appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate — basically the same as cabinet appointments. Inferior officers generally have the same confirmation requirements unless Congress has authorized a head of a cabinet department to make the appointment. In that instance, Senate confirmation isn’t necessary.  The notion that the head of the Department of Justice can appoint special counsels as needed has been settled since the Watergate era. Indeed, if Senate confirmation were always required, special counsel appointments would become nearly impossible, as the Senate is basically non-functional thanks to the filibuster. Additionally, under Cannon’s view, if the Senate is held by the party in opposition to the current occupant of the White House, they essentially get a veto over every special counsel nomination.

The argument that special counsel appointments are unconstitutional if it makes Republicans sad has been pushed by conservative litigants who wanted to block Robert Mueller from investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election. As Quinta Jurecic noted at Lawfare, when the DC Circuit issued its appellate opinion in 2019, four other federal courts had already considered the matter, agreeing that the special counsel’s appointment was proper.  The architect of this anti-special counsel argument is Stephen Calebresi, one of the founders of the Federalist Society. Calebresi has shopped it around quite a bit, with major law review articles in 2018 and 2019 arguing Mueller’s appointment was improper and an amicus brief to the Supreme Court in Trump’s presidential immunity case.  Recall that Cannon’s decision to entertain the Trump appointments clause argument led to an extremely odd hearing where Cannon allowed amici — outside third parties like Calebresi — to present arguments in favor of Trump’s position. That’s a highly unusual step and telegraphed either that Cannon didn’t know what she was doing, was deliberately to bolster her inevitable decision in favor of Trump, or both. 

[...] Not content to deal with the case at hand, Cannon also decided she should go back to the 1980s and retroactively declare that the appointment of Lawrence Walsh, who investigated the Reagan Administration’s role in the Iran-Contra affair, was invalid. So, too, with Robert Mueller’s appointment as special counsel examining Russian interference in the 2016 election. The constitutionality of Mueller’s appointment had already been addressed by a federal appellate court five years ago when the DC Circuit Court of Appeals upheld Mueller’s appointment. However, yesterday’s opinion is very clearly Cannon’s job interview with Trump, and she’s writing this for an audience of precisely on person, so why not throw Trump some red meat about Mueller as well? Having disposed of decades of special counsel law, Cannon wasn’t left with much in the way of precedent. Perhaps that’s why she had to lean hard on Justice Clarence Thomas’s concurrence in the presidential immunity case to reach her preferred conclusion. 

[...] Special counsel Jack Smith has already indicated that the DOJ will be appealing the dismissal to the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Recall that the Eleventh Circuit overturned Cannon's previous ruling in this matter. Cannon granted Trump’s request that a special master review all the classified material Trump absconded with, which dragged the case to a halt. The Eleventh Circuit was not happy with this, saying, “We cannot write a rule that allows any subject of a search warrant to block government investigations after the execution of the warrant. Nor can we write a rule that allows only former presidents to do so.” And this is the core of the problem: People like Aileen Cannon are perfectly happy with a rule that only applies to Donald Trump. Indeed, Cannon’s order already states that “the effect of this Order is confined to this proceeding.” Those of us who lived through the 2000 Bush-Gore recount case will recall that the Supreme Court tried to create a similar firewall between their bad and self-serving ruling and the possibility it might ever be used against Republicans instead of just Democrats. In Bush v. Gore, when handing the presidency to George W. Bush, the Court wrote that “our consideration is limited to the present circumstances, for the problem of equal protection in election processes generally presents many complexities.” See? Calvinball. The giveaway of the presidency to George W. Bush only applies to George W. Bush. The destruction of the special counsel process only applies to Donald Trump. If Republicans need either of these issues to go the other way in a court of law, they just have to point to Cannon’s language limiting it to this instance only.  Cannon’s timing, whether a product of her overall incompetence or a deliberate choice, is exceedingly favorable for Trump. Even if Smith prevails in the Eleventh Circuit, Trump could petition his pet Supreme Court justices to review the case. No matter what, the case is DOA before the election. The process of an appeal, the result of which would ultimately only be to send the case back down for trial, will drag long past the election.

Trump-appointed judicial activist Aileen Cannon plays Calvinball to justify Donald Trump’s document theft in her United States v. Trump ruling.

[lawbyrhys]

Trump LAWSUIT Over Use of Iconic Isaac Hayes Track: Why Copyright is A MUST For Litigation

Let's break down the latest in Trump legal news.

Throughout his campaign, former President and 34-time convicted felon Donald J. Trump has been known to use copyrighted music at his various rallies and events without permission of the copyright holders. Among the A-List artists under unlicensed use by Trump are Beyoncé, Adele, and The Beatles—the former having given Kamala Harris permission to use her single "Freedom" back in July. Trump, though, doesn't fare well with mainstream Hollywood. Typically, he's just sent a standard cease and desist, with a minimal amount of litigation to follow, if any. The legal route taken by Isaac Hayes' family and estate, who have sought to bar Trump for using the iconic Hayes track, "Hold On, I'm Coming Home." The estate has filed a lawsuit in federal court over the blatantly unauthorized use of the song, and a federal judge has now ordered Trump's campaign to cease use of the music immediately. Effective legal action like this isn't easy, though, and it requires a number of factors to be successful. For one, the artist or estate has to own their work—they have to maintain the copyright, not any third-party publishing conglomerate. In this case, Hayes' estate has fought for sixty years in order to secure the rights to the artist's musical catalog, and it is clear the estate isn't taking any property abuse, misuse, or otherwise. For works like music and film, it's up to the copyright holder of the work to file legal action, which is why many artists seek little to no legal action in similar cases. For artists like Beyoncé and Hayes—who either themselves or by way of an estate own their work—legal action is easily pursued. I'd say I hope this sets a precedent for the Trump campaign to cut their shit out, but if the prior infringements are any indication, I'm sure they'll try their luck again. That being said, though, it's a smart move by the Hayes estate in preserving the rights and legacy of an iconic act.

What do you think of this case? Let me know!

[sabakos]

I think the only message not voting really sends is "I'm not interested in politics" like I think protest non-votes are always vastly outnumbered by apathetic non-votes. And whenever people try to coordinate a "protest" vote by all voting third party, it's clear that the people who do this make up a laughably small percentage of the electorate, to the point where they rarely have a visible effect! So most people realize that you could spend your money far more effectively getting moderates who just don't really feel like voting excited about your candidate rather than wasting time catering to anyone who votes for the Party of Sexual Litigation.

[beardedmrbean]

The Supreme Court unanimously handed the National Rifle Association a win Thursday in the gun rights group's effort to revive a 2018 First Amendment lawsuit accusing a New York official of causing damage to the NRA's relationships with banks and insurers.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote a unanimous opinion that found the NRA "plausibly alleged" that Maria Vullo, a former superintendent of New York's Department of Financial Services, illegally retaliated against the pro-Second Amendment group after the Parkland, Florida, high school mass shooting that left 17 people dead.

The question before the justices was whether Vullo used her regulatory power to force state financial institutions to cut off ties with the NRA in violation of constitutional First Amendment protections.

Vullo, who worked in former Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo's administration, said her regulations targeted an insurance product that is illegal in New York, which is dubbed by critics as "murder insurance." In essence, such insurances are third-party policies sold via the NRA that cover personal injury and criminal defense costs after the use of a firearm.

"Here, the NRA plausibly alleged that Vullo violated the First Amendment by coercing DFS-regulated entities into disassociating with the NRA in order to punish or suppress gun-promotion advocacy," Sotomayor, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, wrote in her decision.

Although the gun rights group is typically involved in litigation surrounding the Second Amendment, the case marked an unusual departure to a First Amendment claim that even had backing from the American Civil Liberties Union, which has historically targeted the gun rights group in other cases before the high court.

The result of the case means the NRA can continue its lawsuit against Vullo.

Justices Neil Gorsuch and Ketanji Brown Jackson penned separate concurrences.

[heartbreakprincewille]

This is so random, but for the longest time I thought that the whole process they went through in the beginning of S3 was Arbitration. But no, what they did was actually Compounding of Offences.

I mean, both Arbitration and Compounding are based on avoiding tenuous litigation, but Arbitration involves an impartial third party who hears both sides and a conclusion is reached. But Compounding is involved when the accused party compensates the accusing party for the offence to avoid litigation. And compounding happens for offences which affects individuals only, an offence which affects the public at large is not compoundable.

I mean, it makes sense because it is based on a concept that the less litigations there are the better, and it is legal apparently, but Compounding is still based on the fact that money or any non-monetary consideration can apparently also compensate the feeling of violation and wrongdoing that the victim faces. I mean, it also depends on the receiver of such compensation- whether they feel validated by such consideration or not. But something about the values of justice getting compromised and the perpetrator getting away with their acts is something that sits wrong with me. August should have been punished imo but it was a still a realistic way the plot moved forward, if not the most satisfactory.

[gothicprep]

so, you might have seen this tweet or some parody version of it. it went insanely viral last week.

i'm not all that interested in litigating the substance of it. i just want to talk about the poster, because he has an interesting backstory.

so, his name is johnathan perkins. he went to uva law. in his third year, which would have been in 2011, he wrote a letter to the virginia law weekly claiming that he had been harassed by campus police while walking home from a party. he's black and he claims he was racially profiled. from it:

The race problem in America persists. In most aspects of society (education, housing, employment, etc.), black people and white people live in two different worlds. As a result, most Americans are raised in racially sterilized environments. Oftentimes when race is brought up, white people are accused of being prejudiced, insensitive, and out of touch, while black people are accused of having chips on their shoulders, playing the victim, and race-baiting [...] I am writing this column not to complain, but to share a story. It is a story that is all too familiar to black Americans but it remains foreign to many of my white classmates.

he then goes into immense detail about this encounter, including dialogue. he writes:

It was clear at that point that the officers were toying with me for their own entertainment. When the officers discovered my UVA I.D., and informed them that I was a law student, they looked at one another and sarcastically said, “Oh, he’s a law student.” The fact that I informed them that I was in law school made the situation even more tense. [...] At that point, one of the officers spun me around, pushed me toward their car, and placed my hands on the rear of the vehicle. Imprinted on my mind was the police treatment of Oscar Grant Jr., Amadou Diallo, and Abner Louima, so naturally I did not resist. Standing there, I saw dozens of people staring at me as they returned home from last call.

then there's more detail, and he ends with, "I am writing this column because it is important for my classmates to hear a real-life anecdote illustrating the myth of equal protection under the law."

so as you can imagine, this letter caused a big ole stir at uva. the university conducted an investigation. here's the press release, which is available through the atlantic's reporting on this:

On May 5, after a thorough investigation into allegations that University of Virginia police officers had mistreated an African-American law student, the individual acknowledged that his story had been a fabrication. “I wrote the article to bring attention to the topic of police misconduct,” he said in a written statement. “The events in the article did not occur.”

wait, though. it gets even weirder.

uva decided not to press charges on him for false reporting. here's the police chief's response, also reported in the same atlantic piece:

I recognize that police misconduct does occur. Pressing charges in this case might inhibit another individual who experiences real police misconduct from coming forward with a complaint. I want to send the message just how seriously we take such charges and that we will always investigate them with care and diligence.

he had an honor trial, and was acquitted. he went on to practice law, then he got a job at harvard, now he does full time DEI.

HOWEVER, the story doesn't end there. six years later, in 2017, he wrote an article for the marshall project called "A ‘Routine’ Stop Almost Ended My Career Before It Started" where he claims that after he wrote that letter and the university announced their investigation, he was contacted by the FBI.

I expressed surprise that the FBI had become involved. The agent responded that he had been sent by the head of the FBI’s Richmond Division and that the bureau planned to open a civil rights investigation. But instead of asking me to recount my story as one might expect, the agent laid out a set of consequences if I continued to press my complaint. He said that a swarm of FBI agents would descend upon Charlottesville to question my friends, family, and classmates. He said that agents would visit the office of the Philadelphia law firm where I had a post-graduation job lined up. He explained in no uncertain terms that these consequences and others were inevitable so long as I maintained my allegations.

he goes on to say that he signed the letter recanting his statement under pressure from the FBI. he writes, "I yielded and agreed to sign a statement, dictated by the agent, that recanted the facts set forth in my letter to the editor. Doing so has been my life’s chief regret."

basically, over this complaint about campus police harassment, the federal gov't got involved and threatened to destroy his life unless he dropped it and that they were working with the local police to do this.

so, it sounds shady as shit to me. i'm assuming it does to you as well. but the cavalier daily, which is the uva student paper, did a pretty thorough investigation into this, and it's not conclusive. there's no public records that turned up any corroborating evidence. they don't have any FOIA request that proved his story beyond a shadow of a doubt. the local police and the FBI didn't respond to requests for comments. but perkins named the FBI agent and he provided the paper with what he claimed to be a voicemail that the FBI agent left for him.

Perkins said he returned Hilland’s call, during which Hilland notified Perkins he was waiting for him at his car in the Law School parking lot and wanted to speak with him. Perkins said Hilland was accompanied by two UPD officers tasked with investigating Perkins’ claim of harassment against the UPD — Capt. Melissa Fielding and Lt. Michael Blakey.  According to Perkins, the three of them went into a meeting room in the office suite of Martha Ballenger, then Law School Assistant Dean for Students Affairs, for an interrogation.

so, it's not dispositive, but the story he's telling is so spectacular that i'd need way more evidence than that. he does name the names of the people involved, which does lend a lot more credence to this. and if this hadn't happened, i feel like the FBI would deny it.

like, i just feel like there's something missing here, man. crazy law enforcement shit has happened in the past, but the initial event is such small potatoes. think of the risk the FBI would be putting themselves at by bringing the hammer down on something like that. it's such a weird story, but now i want to get to the bottom of it. there's something going on here, i'm just not totally sure what it is.

[mariacallous]

Back in 2022 at the annual Code Conference, where tech luminaries submit to onstage interviews, an audience member asked Apple CEO Tim Cook for some tech support. “I can’t send my mom certain videos,” he said; she used an Android device, which means she can't access Apple’s iMessage. Cook’s now-infamous response: “Buy your mom an iPhone.”

Cook’s remark and Apple’s recent decision to block the third-party app Beeper from bridging the Android-to-iMessage interoperability chasm are two of the many examples of allegedly monopolistic behavior cited in the US government’s antitrust suit against Apple. Central to the case is Apple’s practice of “locking in” iPhone customers by undermining competing apps, using its proprietary messaging protocol as glue, and generally making it challenging for people to switch to other phones.

Those accusations are backed up by lawyerly references to the Sherman Act. But the complaint also shows the Department of Justice crafting a cultural narrative, trying to tell a technology tale with a clear message—like an episode of the crime drama Dragnet, says antitrust expert William Kovacic, who teaches at George Washington University and King’s College, London.

The Apple antitrust lawsuit, filed Thursday by the DOJ and more than a dozen state attorneys general, claims that in addition to degrading the quality of third-party apps, Apple “affirmatively undermines the quality of rival smartphones.” Because messages sent between iPhones via Apple’s proprietary network appear in blue bubbles, but those from Android phones appear in green and are excluded from many iMessage features, Apple has signaled to consumers that rival phones are of less quality, the suit alleges.

The suit includes references to the negative cultural and emotional impact of the restrictiveness of some Apple products. It ranges beyond the typical antitrust case, in which investigators might focus on supracompetitive pricing or the conditions of corporate deals that restrict competition. The core of US antitrust cases has long been proving consumers paid higher prices as a result of anticompetitive practices. But a few key paragraphs within the 88-page filing mention the exclusion and social shaming of non-iPhone users confined inside green chat bubbles, distinguishing this case from some of the more recondite explanations of tech market competition in recent years.

“Many non-iPhone users also experience social stigma, exclusion, and blame for ‘breaking’ chats where other participants use iPhones,” the suit reads. It goes on to note that this is particularly powerful for certain demographics, like teenagers, who The Wall Street Journal reported two years ago “dread the ostracism” that comes with having an Android phone.

The DOJ argues that all of this reinforces the switching costs that Apple has baked into its phones. Apple is so dominant in the smartphone market not because its phones are necessarily better, the suit alleges, but because it has made communicating on other smartphones worse, thereby making it harder for consumers to give up their iPhones.

Legal experts say this social stigma argument will need much stronger support to hold up in court, because it doesn’t fit with traditional definitions of antitrust. “What is Apple actually precluding here? It’s almost like a coolness factor when a company successfully creates a network effect for itself, and I’ve never seen that integrated into an antitrust claim before,” says Paul Swanson, a litigation partner at Holland & Hart LLP in Denver, Colorado, who focuses on technology and antitrust. “This is going to be an interesting case for antitrust law.”

Regardless, the DOJ’s complaint builds a powerful message from the cacophony of consumer voices that have vented frustrations with iMessage’s lack of interoperability in recent years. And it’s part of a broader, democratizing theme introduced by Jonathan Kanter, the assistant attorney general for the DOJ’s Antitrust Division, says Kovacic, who previously served as chair of the Federal Trade Commission. “Kanter basically said, ‘We’re trying to make this body of law accessible to ordinary human beings and take it away from the technicians,’” Kovacic says. “Storytelling is overstated in some ways, but my sense is that a lot of work went into this filing.”

Apple has rejected the DOJ’s allegations. In an earlier statement to WIRED, Apple spokesperson Fred Sainz said that the lawsuit “threatens who we are and the principles that set Apple products apart in fiercely competitive markets” and added that its products work “seamlessly” together and “protect people’s privacy and security.”

Cultural arguments about the harms of the iPhone’s stickiness will resonate with a lot of consumers, even if they end up being legally indefensible. Blue bubble vs. green bubble messaging has become a much more mainstream debate that transcends the wonky, technical underpinnings of iMessage’s protocol. Apple has also consistently boasted of iPhone and iMessage’s tight security, while seemingly denying third-party apps—such as Beeper—the ability to offer a similar level of security between iPhones and Android phones.

Apple has suggested that the design of iMessage is not anticompetitive, because iPhone users can install and use any third-party messaging app they please, as long as it’s available in the App Store. Apps like Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and Signal can all be installed on iPhones and give messages sent from users on Android or iPhone equal treatment.

The DOJ takes aim at that, too, saying that these other apps first require opt-in from consumers on both sides of a conversation because they form closed systems of their own. And the case points out that Apple hasn’t given app developers any technical means of accessing the iPhone messaging APIs that would allow SMS-like, cross-platform, “text to anyone” functions from those apps.

Swanson says he still believes Apple has been careful to take the necessary steps to legally preserve consumer choice, which is one of the fundamental principles in US antitrust law. “You probably can’t do sophisticated messaging on a T9 phone these days,” he says, referencing the predictive text system that dominated before the iPhone popularized touchscreens. “But there are plenty of other options in the market that won’t deprive you of a network effect.”

Kovacic believes that as the case continues, the DOJ will have to bring forward new evidence and arguments to stand up the cultural aspects of its suit. That could involve tapping theories of economics and the psychology of human behavior to attempt to explain why some technology consumers may unconsciously favor certain products they are emotionally attached to. More likely, he says, the DOJ will have to present contemporaneous business notes that show Apple’s anxiety about competitive apps or emerging technologies, and how the company responded in apparently dubious ways.

One way the DOJ tries to stand up its allegations is by comparing Apple to an earlier antitrust target: Microsoft. In a historic antitrust case filed in 1998, the DOJ presented evidence that Bill Gates’ company was fearful that software like the Netscape browser could weaken the market power of Windows, Kovacic says.

Steven Sinofsky, a former longtime Microsoft executive, wrote in a highly charged blog post on Saturday that he suspects many of the suit’s arguments about Apple’s products will prove to be irrelevant. “Almost all of the [DOJ-Apple] battles will end up being about the terms and conditions of contracts which is the stuff lawyers and courts are good at, and not on product design,” he wrote. “The vast majority of the settlement in the Microsoft case ended up being terms and conditions licensing Windows.”

In other words, the DOJ has shown some of its cards in this initial complaint—and told a story that will resonate with many frustrated smartphone users. But to keep the case alive the agency will have to present additional, concrete, evidence that Apple’s anxieties about its products being devalued led it to act in ways that caused actual harm. If the DOJ wants to make the case against Apple as historic as the one against Microsoft it will have to prove, as Kovacic puts it, “that the anecdotes aren’t just storytelling.”

[notwiselybuttoowell]

[...] The decision could take on new significance in the wake of last week's ruling that overturned the 1984 Chevron decision that had made it easier to uphold regulations across a wide swath of American life. The court also stripped the Securities and Exchange Commission of a major tool to fight securities fraud.

In a dissent joined by her liberal colleagues, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote, "The tsunami of lawsuits against agencies that the Court’s holdings in this case and Loper Bright have authorized has the potential to devastate the functioning of the Federal Government." Loper Bright is the case that overturned Chevron.

Dan Jarcho, a former Justice Department lawyer who has been following the case, predicted that parties like Corner Post would win their cases more often following this term's rulings. "Combined with last week’s decision eliminating Chevron deference, the Corner Post decision will unquestionably lead to more successful litigation challenges to federal regulations, no matter which agency issued them,” Jarcho said.

[generalluxun]

Show and Tell, MLB style.

There's an interesting dichotomy in two MLB storylines that highlights, within the same show, these two approaches and the relative values of each. I am not here to litigate the value of the characters or the outcomes, only the presentation of specific elements within the show.

These characters are Chloé Bourgeois and Felix Fathom. The subject? Abuse

Okay, now that most have left...

Chloé brings us 'show' specifically season 2. The execution of Style Queen was exemplary. We had a pattern for Chloé by now, we knew her(we thought) and what made her tick. Then boom, Audrey drops. In two episodes it redefines everything. There's no moment anyone looks into the camera and says 'abuse' and yet in the animation, the voices, the storyboarding it is all laid out. From cringing, to wheedling, to the interactions between her father and her mother, to the fact that even at the end the very worst she could lay at her mother's feet was 'Why don't you love me?'

It's a victim portrait painted in vivid detail. It expands petty bullying into the larger cycle of abused becoming abuser and the cycle of violence. Whatever else you think on either side of this story it is in isolation, magnificent.

Contrast this then with Felix's presentation. From minor antagonist, to straight up villain(seemingly) to third party villainy, to misunderstood antihero perhaps?(time will tell) there is a lot to unpack with Felix, definitely. Yet the abuse segment of his story is: a line. One line. 'my father was a thousand times worse.' and that is all. We don't know how, or why, or what effects it has on Felix. Maybe will will in time but for now it is simply a check box. 'and also, abuse.' It provides us no insight, no context. Even a single line, with more thought, could put so much more into the moment.

'My mother protected me, and now I want to protect you.'

This instantly paints a more detailed picture. It helps align why Felix is so bold, and why Amilie is so timid in regards to him. It gives that super deep connection they have (despite his other antisocial tendencies) a little more context.

So that's my ramble. Something they did well, and something they did poorly.

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

May 24th, 2022 was awards day at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. Fourth grader Mayah Zamora won three of them – in math, robotics, and for making the honor roll. Not long after the ceremony, an 18 year-old walked into the school with an AR-15 style Daniel Defense rifle and started shooting.

Nineteen children and two teachers were killed. Zamora was airlifted to the hospital and has had more than sixty surgeries in the year since. Zamora's mom, Christina, says her daughter had been a fearless child before the shooting.

"Mayah shows a fear of this world that she had never shown before," she says. "Someone unexpectedly knocking on the door is a scary trigger for her."

Last year, the Zamoras became the second family to file a lawsuit against law enforcement, the school district, the gun store, and the maker of the weapon, Georgia-based Daniel Defense.

Federal law protects the firearms industry from lawsuits if their products are misused. But the law has exceptions, and the lawsuits allege that Daniel Defense can be held liable for what happened because of how they market their products.

"We need to speak up, for our daughter, for our family, for children in the future, maybe this will make a change," Christina Zamora says. "Nineteen children died. They were massacred. By an 18-year old boy. There's something wrong there."

In 2005, Congress granted broad immunity to gun manufacturers. But some legal experts believe exceptions allow gunmakers to be held partially responsible for these mass shootings if they deceptively marketed their products in violation of the law.

Georgia State University Law Professor Timothy Lytton, an expert on health and safety regulation, says Daniel Defense is notorious for its provocative marketing.

The lawsuits argue that the company violated federal trade law by unfairly marketing its products to civilians as tools for offensive, military-style operations.

"And they also allege that the placement of this AR-15 style weapon in video games allowed young men in particular to fantasize about use of this weapon in a way that would simulate the kind of violence that we saw in Uvalde," Lytton says.

After the Sandy Hook school shooting, some families of the victims made a similar argument in the Connecticut courts against the gunmaker Remington, which was in bankruptcy. And while the families won a seventy-three million dollar payment, it didn't create a sea change.

"It's not like a manufacturer came to the table and said, 'We admit liability here for the carelessness of our marketing practices.' This was a bankruptcy in which bankruptcy creditors paid out in order to get the company back into business," Lytton says.

The U.S. Supreme Court declined to take up the case on appeal. So while gun control supporters cheered the settlement, the litigation left many legal questions unresolved. One big question is whether violations of the Federal Trade Commission Act even apply to the exceptions allowed under that sweeping immunity law. As a result, the Uvalde lawsuits against Daniel Defense could be the biggest test yet of the extent of the firearms industry's liability protections.

The cases have been filed in federal court in Texas, with the help of Everytown Law, an arm of the group Everytown for Gun Safety.

Daniel Defense didn't respond to an interview request, but has called the lawsuit politically-motivated and legally unfounded.

Mark Oliva is managing director of public affairs for the National Shooting Sports Foundation, a trade association for the firearms industry.

"Trying to sue a firearm manufacturer for the crimes committed by a remote third party would be the same thing as trying to sue Ford and Annhauser Bush for the deaths caused by drunk driving," Oliva says.

Even if the Uvalde cases clears the stringent immunity law and are allowed a trial, the courts would still have to consider another set of thorny questions, like whether the company's marketing is protected by the first amendment.

But Lytton says whatever happens, these liability cases put more focus on gunmakers.

"You only need one or two lawsuits to win to transform the whole industry," Lytton says. "If it got planted in Connecticut, and it flowers in Uvalde, that might be enough. And if it never takes root there, it's likely to pop up in Chicago. Or California."

Some states are passing laws that would make it easier to file these suits against gunmakers, but Oliva says the industry is pushing back.

"Are we going to bend to the idea that we're going to suffer death by a thousand cuts? I think your answer to that is we're challenging the law in New York. We're challenging the law in New Jersey. We're challenging the law in Delaware," Oliva says.

Back in Texas, the Zamoras want to make Wednesday's anniversary as normal a day as they can. Right now, they're focused on their daughter's recovery.

But they hope accountability will come, too.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Alanna Vagianos at HuffPost:

Some people may believe that the end of Roe v. Wade was simply a matter of luck: Following the then-black swan event of Donald Trump winning the 2016 election, Trump got to appoint two Supreme Court Justices in his first two years and a third after an octogenarian passed away weeks before the 2020 election.

The court then had a 6-3 conservative supermajority, and that was that. But the project to overturn the federal right to abortion was much more calculated, involving an alliance of Republican groups aiming to reshape Congress, the courts and American life. And while conservatives may have won a huge battle, it’s not the end of their unholy war. That’s the story New York Times reporters Elizabeth Dias and Lisa Lerer tell in their new book, “The Fall of Roe,” a deeply reported accounting of the machinations of anti-abortion activists and lawmakers to reverse the 1973 ruling that reshaped both society and women’s lives. The book recounts the conservative network’s past victories, yes, but is also a window into the future, highlighting just how crucial November’s elections are for our rights and freedoms. That’s because if Trump wins a second term, this conservative coalition will bring even more litigation to strip away people’s rights — and would likely face a Supreme Court that’s even more untouchable than it is now.

The group most connected to Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the case that overturned Roe, is Alliance Defending Freedom, a far-right Christian advocacy group. But ADF certainly didn’t do it alone, per Dias and Lerer — correspondents on religion and politics, respectively. In many ways, two other organizations laid the groundwork for this victory: The Federalist Society, a judicial group that drafted a list of Trump’s Supreme Court nominees, judges Trump said were all opposed to Roe; and Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, an anti-abortion political group with an affiliated PAC.

And they’re all funded with massive amounts of dark money, including from billionaires like the Koch brothers. The 30,000-foot view is that these groups worked together to draft and pass unpopular state laws and have conservative lawyers defend them in front of friendly judges who had been confirmed to lifetime appointments by Republican senators. The network could use this playbook on any number of issues in the future. ADF wrote Mississippi’s 15-week abortion ban at issue in the Dobbs litigation. Dias and Lerer report that a conservative Wisconsin lawyer suggested crafting a ban at exactly 15 weeks basically as a dare for abortion rights proponents to challenge it, believing the Supreme Court would find the ban reasonable and gut Roe without fully overturning it.

The lawyer, Misha Tseytlin, allegedly floated the idea at a Trump victory party hosted by Federalist Society Chair Leonard Leo, and then someone connected to ADF heard it, and the organization had Tseytlin present his theory at a July 2017 ADF summit. (This story shows that conservatives picked 15 weeks not because of emerging medical research, but because abortion rights advocates had chosen not to sue over previous 20-week bans designed to challenge Roe.) ADF drafted a model bill, identified states that might pass it and that had anti-abortion attorneys general who would defend it, and started talking to lobbyists. Then-Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant (R) signed the 15-week ban into law in 2018, and litigation began. By the time the Supreme Court was considering taking the case, it was early September 2020. Then Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died, and Trump nominated Amy Coney Barrett, giving a 5-4 court a 6-3 conservative supermajority, with three Justices appointed by Trump — a president who lost the popular vote. The court agreed to hear the case in May 2021, and the rest is history.

That playbook worked for striking down Roe, but the coalition is not done. Dias and Lerer write that ADF, in particular, will “work to restore an understanding of marriage, the family and sexuality that reflects God’s creative order.” First, abortion opponents think Dobbs is not enough; they want a nationwide ban starting at egg fertilization.

[...] ADF also has its sights set on reversing the 2015 ruling establishing marriage equality, but Waggoner also seems to resent when journalists ask her about Obergefell v. Hodges. (That ruling was 5-4, and two of the Justices in the majority are no longer on the court — you only need four votes out of nine to take a case.) “I’m worried you’re gonna just use a choice little quote, and anybody that reads the article is going to think I’m abandoning Obergefell, and I am not,” she told The New Yorker. “I think it is wrong and it should be reversed, but I don’t wake up in the morning thinking about how to do that.” The group wants to roll back transgender rights in employment (Bostock v. Clayton County, 2020) and expand parental rights (Troxel v. Granville, 2000) so that parents can override the medical needs of their children with gender dysphoria, The New Yorker reports. ADF is also behind the rash of state laws banning gender-affirming care for minors and trans kids’ participation in sports — the group wrote model legislation. We’re watching a redux of the anti-abortion battle plan in real time. “It’s not that the Court is going to say, ‘Gender ideology is bad,’” Waggoner told The New Yorker. “But I do think the Court could say, ‘Parental rights are fundamental rights.’”

The Fall of Roe book by Elizabeth Dias and Lisa Lerer, a pair of New York Times reporters, takes a vital look at how anti-abortion activists delivered a win for their cause by overturning Roe in Dobbs and that they want more.