Author Archives: Lawyer Team

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This blog scans breaking news to find significant and interesting legal settlements. Lawyer.com is a directory website for lawyers. Featuring the best search in its field, lawyer.com connects people who need legal advice to the most qualified professionals who can provide it.

Groupon Settles Coupon Expiration Date Suit for $8.5 Million

Discount!

Groupon, the world’s largest purveyor of coupons, found itself in a bit of trouble recently regarding their products’ expiration dates.  A lawsuit brought by Eli R. Johnson alleged illegal expiration date policies on Groupon’s coupons, putting the company’s very lifeblood in jeopardy.  Johnson bought a coupon that expired after a few months.  He brought suit after learning that Illinois law requires a minimum expiration date of five years for all gift certificates, including coupons.  Apparently, the online giant, which operates across the entire country and Europe, didn’t bother to learn the nuances of consumer protection laws from state to state, leaving them vulnerable to lawsuits.  Not even in Illinois, which is the jurisdiction of this lawsuit and, embarrassingly, Groupon’s own base of operations.  Today’s legal settlement allows customers in certain states to redeem some coupons past their expiration date or, failing that, receive a full refund.  Groupon has $8.5 million in a fund set aside for the latter option.

It’s tough to imagine that a company that deals in, say, cold medicine wouldn’t know about the laws affecting cold medicine across all of the states that it does business in.  So too is it hard to believe that a company solely devoted to coupons wouldn’t know about coupon regulations.  However, this is the same company that has been in the news for having trouble with their refund policy on their SEC filings.  Add that to the current class action lawsuit about employee overtime pay and Groupon appears to be in some hot water as of late.  The Wall Street Cheat Sheet has even described their current financial standing as an “implosion”.  Harsh.

 

DirecTV Subscribers Miss Out on American Idol Due to Slow Settlement Negotiation

Coming soon to a Fox affiliate near you

In a move sure to disappoint millions, DirecTV was forced to stop the broadcast of Tribune Media’s signal, which includes some local Fox affiliates.  The two companies are in the middle of settlement negotiations regarding a contract dispute and, due to federal law, the broadcasting company was forced to drop the signal until a contract was in place.  DirecTV has said that it had hoped Tribune Media would allow the broadcast to continue during the negotiations, but Tribune refused, which DirecTV has described as “the true definition of `bad faith’ in every sense of the term”.  Wow.  Bitter much?

The contract affects nineteen markets, including New York, Chicago, New Orleans and Philadelphia.  In those markets, depending on which local affiliates Tribune owns, viewers will miss out on such shows as American Idol, The Vampire Diaries, and the broadcast of america’s pastime, Major League Baseball.  Oh, the humanity!

I see this as two huge companies arguing over millions of dollars that can’t remember what they’re arguing about, sort of like a Bleak House situation.  At some point, in their relentless pursuit of money, one of them will forget that their whole purpose is to provide access to television programming for their loyal paying customers.  Hopefully the two companies will work it out soon.  If I miss Gossip Girl because of this, someone’s going to pay.

 

Astor Estate Finally Settled

Estate settlement

The estate of socialite Brooke Astor has finally been settled, AP News reports.  Her will has been hotly disputed since 2007, when she died at age 105.  In 2009, her son, Anthony Marshall, was convicted of manipulating Astor’s fragile dementia to make changes to the will in his favor.  In the final settlement, Marshall will receive $14.5 million, nearly half of his fraudulent earnings.  Much of that will have to be paid back, on account of his conviction and being a general scumbag.  $100 million will go to charities, as were Astor’s original wishes.  Astor was a generous philanthropist since the death of her husband, real estate magnate Vincent Astor, donating millions to the poor and to artistic pursuits.  True to form, among the charities to benefit from today’s settlement is the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which will receive about $20 million.  All that money has been held up for nearly five years when it could have been doing something productive, which means that, overall, this is some very good news for charity.

 

Videotaping Police: Dangerous, Lucrative, and Constitutionally Protected

Caught on camera

Two court settlements have come down this week that shine light on the increasingly-common practice of videotaping police officers.  In Las Vegas, Mitchell Crooks was beaten  up by a police officer while videotaping a burglary investigation across the street from his house.  In Boston, attorney Simon Glik was arrested and prosecuted under wiretapping laws for using his cell phone to record an arrest of another man.  All charges were dropped in both cases, but both men also sued for violations to their civil rights.  In both cases, they reached a settlement before going to court for a judgement, with Crooks receiving $100,000 and Glik receiving $170,000.  Nearly 6 months ago, Glik’s case even went to the 1st Circuit Appeals Court, where they upheld the rights of citizens to record public police action in a landmark, often-cited decision.

Click to read more after the jump

200 Electric Car Quick Charging Stations to Be Built in California

the future?

It’s always interesting to see what an entity does with its settlement money, whether required to or not.  The recent $25 billion federal mortgage settlement, although recommended to be used for debt relief and foreclosure fraud investigation, has been earmarked by states for a variety of purposes.  Most notably, the state of Georgia is using their slice of the pie to boost local infrastructure projects, arguing that the settlement includes no legally binding provisions for the money’s use and paving the way for other states to do the same.  Companies also pop up in the news sometimes for funneling settlement money into investment funds or, more commonly and in the interest of good press, towards charity, as is the case when Gordon Ramsay donated $66,000 USD after skipping out on a charity function. Continue reading →