Lawsuits

If you're a Black Keys fan and you've ever been enticed to order a Meat Lovers' Supreme at Pizza Hut or invest in a storage shed from Home Depot, there might have been a subliminal reason. Each company used songs in commercials that sounded an awful lot like tracks from the Black Keys' smash album "El Camino," namely "Lonely Boy" and "Gold on the Ceiling. " The Black Keys noticed this too, and have reportedly settled the resulting lawsuits around copyright infringement of the band's music.

Well-connected lobbyists, political pressure and a good turnout at committee hearings used to be the special interest recipe for protecting turf in the state budget. Now, a potent new ingredient is being increasingly thrown into the mix: top-shelf litigators. Lawyers are being drafted in droves to unravel spending plans passed by the Legislature and signed by the governor. The goal of these litigators is to get back money their clients lost in the budget process. They are having considerable success, winning one lawsuit after another, costing the state billions of dollars and throwing California's budget process into further tumult.

WASHINGTON - No one can sue the government over secret surveillance because, since it's secret, no one can prove his or her calls were intercepted, the Supreme Court ruled Tuesday, throwing out a constitutional challenge to the government's monitoring of international calls and emails. The 5-4 decision is the latest of many that have shielded the government's anti-terrorism programs from court challenge, and a striking example of what civil libertarians call the Catch-22 rule that blocks challengers from collecting the evidence they need to proceed.

More than 2,000 former NFL players and their families will file a “master complaint” in court Thursday, consolidating their nearly 100 concussion-related lawsuits against the NFL. The complaint will be filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, alleging that the NFL “deliberately and fraudulently concealed from its players the link between football-related head impacts and long-term neurological injuries.” ...

Additional lawsuits on behalf of seven more victims of the deadly July 20 theater shooting in Aurora, Colo., have been filed against Cinemark USA. Parents of three people killed in the tragedy filed separate federal lawsuits against the Plano, Texas-based Cinemark, alleging the nation's third largest theater circuit failed to ensure adequate safety to prevent the shooting at the Century Aurora 16. The rampage killed 12 people and injured 58. ...

SACRAMENTO -- Proponents of an auto insurance discount initiative -- backed financially by the chairman of Mercury General Corp. -- are accusing the state attorney general and their opponents of submitting incorrect statements for the official ballot pamphlet. The campaign to pass Proposition 33 in November filed a lawsuit on Friday contending that the legal "title and summary" that is to be put before voters contains "inaccurate language that is highly likely to prejudice voters against the measure.

There are a number of curious — and, in some ways, troubling — trends at work in the litigation record of the Los Angeles Police Department. This city's police officers appear to be abnormally litigious, suing their department at rates far higher than their counterparts in other big cities. Juries here seem inclined to dole out substantial awards, sometimes for relatively minor injuries: One motor officer whose demotion cost him $27,000 in lost income was awarded $1 million at trial.

For Apple in China, it's been one step forward and two steps back when it comes to lawsuits. It's an old cliche, but nothing describes Apple's situation more accurately now that the Cupertino, Calif., tech giant has been sued by two more Chinese companies after having just come to a settlement with another. Apple received lawsuits from Zhi Zhen Internet Technology on Thursday, claiming the company is infringing on its voice assistant service patents with Siri, and another lawsuit reported earlier in the week from Jiangsu Xeubao, which is going after Apple with claims that the company infringed on its trademark of Snow Leopard, the name of an OS Apple released in 2009.

Toyota Motor Corp. "deliberately withheld" evidence in lawsuits related to vehicle safety, exhibiting a "systematic disregard for the law," the chairman of a congressional committee said. The firm created "secret electronic 'Books of Knowledge' " that included information about design problems, yet never disclosed their existence in lawsuits, according to internal company documents released by the committee Friday. The allegations, made by Rep. Edolphus Towns (D-N.Y.), who heads the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, came two days after Toyota's chief executive appeared before Congress to apologize for the automaker's handling of the sudden acceleration issue.