Erasing debt

Plenty of people in debt receive, what may seem like harassing calls, on a daily basis from aggressive debt collectors.  When do these calls cross the line? What if you were receiving these calls and you knew you were not in debt? What if the collection company took it a step further by filing suit? This is what happened to a Maria Guadalupe Mejia, a woman from Missouri, who was mistakenly sued by PortfolioRecovery Associates LLC. Mejia was sued for a credit card debt of $1,000, which in turn belonged to a man with a similar sounding name. A jury decided that Portfolio Recovery Associates LLC ‘maliciously prosecuted’ Mejia to collect a debt that was not her own and awarded her $83 million. Read More

Marathon, not a sprint

With the ever growing popularity of Marathons and half marathons in recent times, the debate over the categorization of whether workers of these events are considered volunteers or employees has also hit the ground running.  In recent news, a federal judge in Missouri ruled against the “Competitor Group Inc” request to dismiss a lawsuit alleging that their use of volunteer workers violated federal labor laws.  A St. Louis University law professor named Yvette Joy Liebesman was a volunteer worker at one of their races, and has stated that she was deceived into believing her participation was to benefit non-profit charities rather than a for profit private equity firm.  In their attempt to have the lawsuit dismissed, “Competitor Group Inc” purported that their marathons represented recreational activities in conjunction with charities that would also benefit from these races being held.  Arguments made by “CGI” were not persuasive enough to dismiss these charges, as the federal judge rules there was sufficient cause to move forward with these claims.

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Sidewalk showdown

Los Angeles plans to redo its grounds with a hefty $1 billion dollar budget. This stems from an Americans Disabilities Act lawsuit filed 5 years ago by multiple unhappy residents. The plaintiffs expressed their dissatisfaction for the city’s old and crumbling sidewalks. They stated that the walkways were not accessible for the disabled. As stated in the lawsuit “despite its awareness for the past several years of the city’s broken system of sidewalks and consequential denial of meaningful access for persons with mobility disabilities, the city has failed to develop or implement a plan to effectively address the problem.”

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Texting trouble

A class action lawsuit has been brought against Facebook in a California federal court. Facebook allegedly sent automated text messages to cell phone users without their prior or expressed consent, which is in violation of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (“TCPA”). The plaintiff, Noah Duguid alleges Facebook started sending texts to his cell phone in January of 2014. He had never given his cell phone number to FB or had any business interactions with them. When he received the texts he logged in and opted out of the text messaging option several times. He received acknowledgement that it had been updated. Then he still kept receiving texts on his cell.

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