Class Action Finder » Civil Rights

Facebook faces class action over Beacon

yuming — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 06:15:54 +0000

Social network company Facebook has been slapped with a class action suit because of its controversial Beacon advertising system.

The suit claims that Facebook aggregated users’ online activity and then shared it with friends without requesting for permission first.

Facebook has dealt with previous privacy law disputes, prior to this lawsuit launched by its own users.

Blockbuster, who was also involved in the Beacon debacle, was similarly sued in a class action regarding user privacy issues earlier this year.

Beacon was designed to grab data on users from external affiliate websites, such as Blockbuster or Overstock, and then share that information with people’s social circle through their profile page.

When privacy advocates protested at this system, Facebook changed its policies to make Beacon opt-in and also the option to turn off the function completely.

Despite Facebook’s back-peddling, 32 plaintiffs who were affected before the changes were made are now looking to further restrictions on the Beacon system, deletion of data already collected and unspecified damages.

Junk fax class action settlement

yuming — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 11:27:54 +0000

You might want to think again before you start spamming many fax machines in the name of marketing strategy.

A Massachusetts telemarketing case reached settlement of $1.8 million. This is by far the largest for its category.

The class action suit sought to enforce the federal Telephone Consumer Protection Act on unsolicited fax advertisements, which turned into a complex legal battle that lasted six years.

The culprit in these junk faxes was a New Jersey estate auction company, Metropolitan Antiques, that sent out 360,000 unsolicited faxes between 2001 and 2003. The faxes were targeted at doctors, accountants and lawyers in Massachusetts. Among those who received the unwanted faxes was Boston attorney Evan Fray-Witzer.

Filed by Framingham-based attorney Matthew P. McCue and fellow Boston legal eagle Edward A. Broderick in December 2002, lead plaintiff Fray-Witzer claimed that Metropolitan Antiques had violated the TCPA, which forbids telemarketing via unsolicited faxes and allows for penalties of $500 to $1,500 per violation.

As the case panned out, it spawned another a dispute over how Metropolitan Antiques would pay for those violations.

The plaintiffs are now searching for potentially thousands people who received these junk faxes and are entitled to receive compensation of $1500 per person.

Seattle woman sues restaurant over diet menus

yuming — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 10:22:26 +0000

Washington state resident Anne Paskett is filing a class action lawsuit against major F&B chain Brinker International, that owns Chili’s, Macaroni Grill and On The Border.

The complaint says that the restaurants’ diet menus understated the amount of calories and fat content in some of the food they served.

The lawsuit seeks full refunds and interest for the plaintiff and other who ordered from the low-calorie menus.

Most of the Chili’s locations in Western Washington have been shut down. Brinker International has not issued a formal statement to respond to the class action suit.

For three years, Paskett was on a strict calorie-counting diet under the Weight Watchers program, but met with frustrating results, and believed her failure to lose weight was due to companies that falsely stated how much calories were in their low-fat selection.

Seattle attorney David Breskin is representing Paskett in this class action lawsuit that alleges misrepresentation and consumer deception.

He says, “It’s difficult to put prices on that, but I think what we’re looking for is that it’s not going to happen in the future.”

This case garnered plenty of media attention and even had a campaign to investigate just how much more calories the food at Chili’s and Macaroni Grill had than was claimed in their menus.

Following this suit, a woman in California launched a similar class action lawsuit against Applebee’s, also under the Brinker International umbrella of companies.

Canadian couple files class action over gambling

yuming — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 06:29:14 +0000

A Markham couple, Peter Dennis, 49, and his wife, Zubin Noble, 61, has filed a $3.5 billion class-action lawsuit against Ontario’s gaming agency on behalf of gamblers who complained they requested to be refused entrance from casinos but were still let in.

The suit charges that the class members are compulsive gamblers and their addiction “disrupts, compromises and ultimately destroys the lives of individual problem gamblers by causing a range of harms for them and their family members including emotional, social, financial, legal, employment, educational and health-related harms”. None of these claims have been proven in court as yet.

In the accusations, the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation did not implement proper controls to make sure that its voluntary self-exclusion policy was carried out effectively.

The couple’s lawyer, Jerome Morse of Adair Morse LLP in Toronto, said the class action suit is meant to help addicted gamblers who have lost huge amounts of money and affected family members. There is hope that the suit would bring landmark revisions to casinos across Canada.

In the self-exclusion policy, gamblers are photographed and their personal information is registered and stored in binders at casinos. If they are nabbed trying to steal into a casino, they can be arrested for trespassing.

Apparently, only this memory-based enforcement was used and therefore failed terribly as a system.

Although the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation has expressed that it is up to individuals to enter casino premises on their own accord, but it has also said it might consider using face recognition technology to make their system more foolhardy.

Ontario has been hit with nine individual lawsuits related to gambling self-exclusion but it is the first time it has a class action lawsuit filed against it.

N.Y. Real estate firm Brown Harris Stevens sued for discrimination against children

yuming — Mon, 05 May 2008 09:52:34 +0000

Brown Harris Stevens, a New York real estate company, is being sued by a couple, Jamie Katz and Lisa Nocera, for housing discrimination in a class action.

When Nocera was pregnant, the couple was refused to be shown an apartment because the owners did not want to rent to a family. A year later in 2007, with their new born in tow, they were shown another apartment by a Brown Harris Stevens Brooklyn broker.

However, even after passing the credit check, their application was rejected because there was a problem with lead paint and so the owner would not rent to families with children. The couple was suspicious and hired a law firm to file their suit.

The lawsuit charges that a Brown Harris agent palmed off an undercover tester from non-profit group, the Fair Housing Justice Center, who claimed to have a child when he viewed at a Brooklyn Heights apartment. In the following week, another tester claimed to be childless was shown the same apartment.

The federal Fair Housing Act outlaws doing anything to discourage someone from renting an apartment based on family status, whether by steering the potential tenant away or by outright rejection. State and city human-rights laws also stipulate such a rule.

This class action seeks to a ruling that will order Brown Harris Stevens to train their agents to follow the Fair Housing Act, plus unspecified damages to Katz and Nocera.

Aileen Truesdale, the Brown Harris broker who rejected Nocera and Katz on the two Brooklyn Heights apartments, claimed she did not say that the landlords would not rent to families with kids and denied any wrong doing.

Although it is the broker’s responsibility to inform potential tenants of hazards in the apartment, the lead plaintiffs asserted that they were not indifferent to their child’s safety. They offered to repaint the properties at their own expense although city law requires landlords of multifamily houses to remove any lead contamination when it becomes vacant.

Brown Harris Stevens refused to comment on the suit and the owners of the buildings are not named in the suit.

Blockbuster sued for violating privacy rights

yuming — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 14:13:03 +0000

In Dallas, Texas, Facebook user Cathryn Elaine Harris filed a class action suit against video rental chain Blockbuster Inc. on April 9, 2008, in the Marshall Division of the Eastern District of Texas.

The suit charges that Blockbuster Inc. violated the Video Privacy Protection Act by transmitting personal information, which includes video rental history, to Facebook.

The popular social network implemented advertising program, Beacon, which connects businesses with Facebook users by letting partner business websites to place tags on their pages.

When a user goes to these websites and executes a transaction, for example renting a video, the tag transfers the information to Facebook, which then creates a pop-up that shows the user’s actions in their profile. Facebook allegedly flashes this information on profile news feeds, regardless if the user has chosen the option to display that information or not.

Before the class action suit was in motion, Facebook users already made complaints, so Facebook apologized for making the mistake of an opt-out, rather than an opt-in, system, to the distress of those for forgot to decline this action. Facebook then included the option of turning off Beacon in the privacy control section. But the plaintiff argued that this still allowed video rental information to be exposed until the user turns off Beacon.

As compensation, the class is seeking $2,500 that is an amount stated by the Video Privacy Protection Act, plus lawyer’s fees, punitive damages, and a court order for Blockbuster to destroy any personal information that is illegally distributed.

Dallas law firm Otstott and Jamison PC is representing the plaintiff and potential class members.

MacDonald’s settles sexual harassment lawsuit

yuming — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 07:52:26 +0000

In 2005, a class of young women and teens filed a sexual harassment class action lawsuit against a MacDonald’s franchise in Durango, Colorado. Last week on April 7, 2008, it was announced that the franchise will pay out $505,000 in compensation — $450,000 will go to the two main plaintiffs and their attorney; $55,000 will be divided between two other class members represented by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).

Lead plaintiff Tiawna Shenefield, now known as Tiawna Jacobson, Brandi Michal and a class of females, who were mostly 15 to 17 years old at the time, were sexually harassed in the workplace by a male supervisor in early 2003.

The charges were made against JOBEC, Inc., a management company, and the interrelated corporations Colorado Hamburger Company, Inc. and Farmington Hamburger Company, Inc., who operate McDonald’s franchises in Durango and Cortez, Colorado, and Farmington and Aztec, New Mexico.

The charges made against the male supervisor included groping buttocks, biting breasts, making frequent sexual comments, and offers of favors in exchange for sex.

The decree also includes apology letters to the class member, giving training on sex discrimination in the Colorado and New Mexico franchises, posting notices in said locations to bring more awareness on the important of non-discriminating attitudes, and an injunction to prevent future discrimination and retaliation.

Nutraloaf so bad, prison inmates sue in a class action

yuming — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 02:52:10 +0000

A Vermont prison uses Nutraloaf — a combination of cubed whole wheat bread, nondairy cheese, raw carrots, spinach, seedless raisins, beans, vegetable oil, tomato paste, powdered milk and dehydrated potato flakes — as a means of punishment. It tastes so bad that it deters their inmates from misbehaving during mealtimes.

Inmates claim Nutraloaf is so foul, they would rather go hungry. So angered by this style of punishment, they have banded together in a class action suit. They want to bring change to the system, whereby anyone subjected to Nutraloaf should go through a formal disciplinary process first.

Nutraloaf and its equals have been traditionally used as punishment or a tool for behavior modification for many years in prisons around the US. Prison officials believe it prevents inmates from getting violent with their meals and throwing cutlery and plates at staff. In 1978, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a mixture used in Arkansas known as “‘grue’ might be tolerable for a few days and intolerably cruel for weeks or months.” Also, a federal judge ruled that the use of nutraloaf by the Michigan Department of Corrections was indeed punishment in 1988.

A Vermont prison officer said, “Once the offender relents, we stop with the nutraloaf. That’s our goal, to protect our staff and not have them subjected to behavior that the average Vermonter would find incomprehensible.”

An attorney with Vermont’s Prisoner’s Rights office, Seth Lipschutz, recognized that the state has a legitimate interest in changing the behavior of inmates who have disciplinary problems, but declared Nutraloaf is still punishment.