Category: Lawsuits

Disgraced Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes has avoided starting her more than 11-year prison sentence on Thursday by deploying the same legal maneuver that enabled her co-conspirator in a blood-testing hoax to remain free for an additional month.

Holmes’ lawyers on Wednesday informed U.S. District Judge Edward Davila that she won’t be reporting to prison as scheduled because she had filed an appeal of a decision that he issued earlier this month ordering her to begin her sentence on April 27.

The appeal, filed with the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals late Tuesday, automatically delays her reporting date because she has been free on bail since a jury convicted her on four counts of fraud and conspiracy in January 2022. The verdict followed a four-month trial revolving around her downfall from a rising Silicon Valley star to an alleged scam artist chasing fame and fortune while fleecing investors and endangering the health of patients relying on Theranos’ flawed blood tests.

The tactic deployed by Holmes mirrored a move made last month by her former lover and subordinate, Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, to avoid a prison reporting date of March 16. After the Ninth Circuit rejected his appeal three weeks later, Davila set a new reporting date of April 20.

It doesn’t look like Fox News is going to get away with badmouthing Dominion Voting Systems for weeks following Donald Trump’s unsurprising loss in the 2020 election. Evidence already handed over to Dominion in its libel lawsuit shows many Fox News executives — as well as anchors and commentators — were aware the claims were false but chose to give them airtime anyway.   That led to the recent decision in a Delaware state court where the judge made two…

Twitter chief Elon Musk fired three top executives when he took over the social media platform. The then company CEO Parag Agrawal, policy chief Vijaya Gadde along with CFO Nel Segal were removed from their positions a day after Musk took over. Turns out they have all filed lawsuits against Musk demanding reimbursement for litigation costs, investigations and inquiries related to their former jobs. Agrawal, along with the company’s former chief legal and financial officers, claim in the lawsuit that they are owed over $1 million, which Twitter is legally obligated to pay.

As per AFP report, The court filing listed various expenses associated with inquiries by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Department of Justice (DOJ), but did not disclose the nature of the investigations or if they are still ongoing. Agrawal and former chief financial officer Ned Segal testified to the SEC last year and continued to engage with federal authorities. The SEC is examining whether Musk complied with securities rules when he purchased Twitter shares.

SEOUL (Reuters) – South Korea’s antitrust regulator has fined Alphabet Inc’s Google 42.1 billion won ($31.88 million) for blocking the release of mobile video games on a competitor’s platform.

The Korea Fair Trade Commission (KFTC) said on Tuesday that Google bolstered its market dominance, and hurt local app market One Store’s revenue and value as a platform, by requiring video game makers to exclusively release their titles on Google Play in exchange for providing in-app exposure between June 2016 and April 2018.

The KFTC said the move against the U.S. technology giant is part of efforts by the government to ensure fair markets.

Game makers affected by Google’s action include Netmarble, Nexon and NCSOFT, as well as other smaller companies, the antitrust regulator added.

In 2021, Google was fined more than 200 billion won by the KFTC for blocking customised versions of its Android operating system.

One of the most closely watched US defamation cases in decades is set to begin this week as a Delaware court picks a jury to decide whether Fox News should pay Dominion Voting Systems $1.6bn (£1.3bn) for spreading falsehoods on election rigging.

A critical task for jurors over the five-week trial will be to decide who was responsible for the cable network’s decision to broadcast the claims, despite internal doubts about their veracity. Dominion asserts that Fox’s top brass approved of the coverage, but the network disputes this.

Last week, Delaware Superior Court Judge Eric Davis said he would not block Dominion from calling Rupert Murdoch, chairman of Fox News parent company Fox Corp, to testify in person about his involvement in the coverage, which Judge Davis has ruled was false and defamatory.

“The more complicit the whole organisation is in perpetuating these known falsehoods, the more likely a jury would be to return a big dollar figure,” said Mary-Rose Papandrea, a constitutional law professor.

+ Walmart is suing Capital One in an attempt to end its credit-card contract with the bank.
+ The retailer said the McLean, Virginia-based bank has repeatedly failed to meet a number of contractual obligations in its card partnership deal, according to a lawsuit filed Friday in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.
+ Capital One “was consistently unable to meet the customer-service standards” outlined in its contract, such as issuing replacement cards and promptly processing payments and posting transactions, Walmart alleged in the suit.

Binance, one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges, is facing a lawsuit filed by the United States Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) for allegedly violating US law by allowing US clients to trade on its platform without complying with Know Your Customer (KYC) standards. In the lawsuit, the CFTC identified three trading firms – Jane Street Group, Tower Research Capital, and Radix Trading – as Binance’s VIP clients, who allegedly received preferential treatment from the exchange.

According to Bloomberg, which cited “people familiar with the matter,” Radix Trading was identified as “Trading Firm A” in the CFTC’s suit, while Jane Street was “Trading Firm B” and Tower Research was “Trading Firm C.” The firms on the CFTC’s list were examples of US clients allegedly able to access Binance, despite not complying with KYC standards.

Privacy technology company OneTrust announced a series of changes to its board of directors and governance structure Wednesday, which it says positions the company for future growth. 

Under the revised governance arrangement, CEO Kabir Barday, CIPP/E, CIPP/US, CIPM, CIPT, FIP, will be joined by Coatue Management’s Thomas Laffont and Insight Partners’ Richard Wells. Current board members Alan Dabbiere, David Dabbiere and John Marshall will depart from the board, which now seeks “four new independent board members resulting in a majority-independent board of seven people,” according to the company’s press release. 

“Today, we have a clear path forward, strong investor demand, and the capital to support this last phase as a private company,” Barday said in comments provided to The Privacy Advisor. 

A US jury has ordered Bayer subsidiary Monsanto to pay $857 million (£676 million) to seven people – including former students and parent volunteers at a school in Washington state – who said they were sickened by exposure to polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) that the company sold. The PBCs were apparently used in fire safety fluid in the school that leaked from its light fixtures, and the plaintiffs reported neurological, endocrine and other health problems. Monsanto explains that the claims in…