Lawsuit

A three-year-old lawsuit between Los Angeles City Atty. Carmen Trutanich and City Controller Wendy Greuel ended with a fizzle this week, with an appeals court declining to say whether elected officials can be audited at City Hall. The lawsuit, inherited by Greuel and Trutanich when they took office in 2009, originated with a dispute between City Atty. Rocky Delgadillo and City Controller Laura Chick. Delgadillo sued Chick in 2008, saying that she overstepped her authority when she attempted to audit his office's handling of workers' compensation programs.

MOBILE, Ala. -- The first lawsuit was filed Friday by one of thousands of passengers trapped aboard a Carnival cruise ship adrift in the Gulf of Mexico for the past five days. After disembarking in Mobile early Friday, Cassie Terry, 25, of Lake Jackson, Texas, hired attorneys Wayne Collins and Brent Allison in the Houston area, who filed the lawsuit in federal court in Miami. The suit charges Carnival with failing to provide a seaworthy ship and sanitary conditions, describing the ship as "a floating toilet, a floating petri dish, a floating hell.

USC and a lawsuit filed against the school and others by former defensive lineman Armond Armstead are part of a report on a painkilling drug and its use in college football that will air Thursday night on the ABC News program "Nightline. " In his lawsuit, filed last August, Armstead claims he received improperly administered painkilling injections of Toradol -- a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug also known as Ketorolac - that caused him to suffer a heart attack and hurt his chances for an NFL career.

Taco Bell diners (or would-be diners) -- and Taco Bell itself -- take taco filling seriously. News that a California woman was filing suit over the beef content of tacos was reported Tuesday by the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. Readers responded with a mixture of disgust, irritation with the lawsuit itself and societal perspective. Wrote keithbcr on the paper’s website : "I don't go to Taco Bell for nutrition, I stop there because it's open at 3 a.m. and a burrito is fairly easy to shovel down while driving home.

Global online ticketing service MovieTickets.com has joined a lawsuit filed against one of its founding shareholders, AMC Entertainment Inc., the nation's second-largest theater chain. MovieTickets.com, a Boca Raton, Fla., joint venture launched 12 years ago that serves 247 exhibitors, said Wednesday that it was adding its name to a suit recently filed in Florida by exhibitor National Amusements and Hollywood Media Corp. alleging that AMC breached its contract by not selling tickets exclusively through MovieTickets.com.

Citigroup Inc. will let customers challenge the suspension of home equity loans and provide $120 apiece to some ex-borrowers whose credit lines were cut, under the settlement of a lawsuit challenging its practices. The accord, disclosed Friday in documents filed in federal court in San Francisco, resolves a class-action lawsuit that accused the bank of improperly suspending or reducing home equity lines of credit for several hundred thousand customers. Citigroup's Citibank unit will improve its suspension notices and restore some customers' access to home equity accounts under the agreement, according to the filing.

Lance Armstrong filed a federal lawsuit Monday in an attempt to block charges by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency that he used performance-enhancing drugs during his record-setting cycling career. The seven-time Tour de France champion is asking the court to issue an injunction before his Saturday deadline for formally challenging the USADA's arbitration process or accepting sanctions that could include a lifetime ban from cycling and being stripped of his Tour victories. The lawsuit claims that the USADA rules violate the constitutional right to a fair trial, and that Chief Executive Travis Tygart, who was named a co-defendant in the lawsuit, is waging a personal vendetta against Armstrong, who has consistently claimed his innocence.

Wells Fargo has agreed to pay $100 million to Citigroup to settle all claims in a dispute related to its 2008 acquisition of Wachovia Corp. Wachovia nearly collapsed in October 2008, at the height of the financial crisis, under the weight of losses from real estate loans that went bad. The Charlotte, North Carolina-based bank initially agreed to be bought by Citigroup Inc. with help from the U.S. government. However, Wells Fargo & Co. came in with a higher offer days later and managed to grab Wachovia away from Citi.

Representatives for Martin Scorsese have dismissed a lawsuit filed against the director by Cecchi Gori Pictures as a "media stunt" whose claims are contradicted by an earlier agreement. In a complaint filed Wednesday in Los Angeles County Superior Court, Cecchi Gori said Scorsese reneged on an agreement to direct a film called "Silence" for the production company as his next project. Cecchi Gori Pictures is the troubled film venture founded by Italian media mogul Vittorio Cecchi Gori.