AllThingsD » class-action suit

Unpaid Huffington Post Bloggers Remain Unpaid

Peter Kafka — Fri, 30 Mar 2012 20:43:32 +0000

Turns out you can’t give away your work, then demand to get paid after the fact.

What? You already knew this? Then you were ahead of the U.S. judicial system, which had to spend the last year on a silly class-action suit brought by a former Huffington Post contributor.

Jonathan Tasini, who compared himself and other unpaid HuffPo writers to “modern-day slaves,” was demanding a third of the $315 million Arianna Huffington and her backers got when they sold the company to AOL last year. The logic: He helped build the site up, and, well …

Not really any more logic than that, really. Tasini and other contributors agreed to write for free from the get-go.

U.S. District Judge John Koeltl has a 24-page decision dismissing Tasini’s complaint with prejudice, and I’ve embedded it at the bottom of this post. But I’m not suggesting you read it. Here’s the common-sense essence:

No one forced the plaintiffs to give their work to The Huffington Post for publication and the plantiffs candidly admit that they did not expect compensation … Quite simply, the plaintiffs offered a service and the defendants offered exposure in return, and the transaction occurred exactly as advertised.

Any questions? Right. So here’s the Red Hot Chili Peppers:

huffington post blogging case

Palm Scratches Off First of HP Merger Suits

John Paczkowski — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 14:16:25 +0000

Palm has cleared from its decks at least one of the lawsuits filed by shareholders over its pending merger with Hewlett-Packard (HPQ). In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission Wednesday, the company said it reached a settlement with investor Steve Ubaney, who sued it in early May alleging breach of fiduciary duty.

“The proposed transaction is the product of a flawed sales process and is being consummated at an unfair price,” Ubaney said in his complaint, arguing that the deal–which will pay common shareholders $5.70 per share–did not maximize Palm’s value as well as it should have. An understandable point given that preferred shareholder Elevation Partners stands to recoup $8.50 a share on its initial $325 million investment, thanks to the liquidation preference it was able to negotiate.

Now Palm (PALM) has persuaded Ubaney to drop his claim, although just how isn’t clear. Terms of the settlement weren’t disclosed, and in its SEC filing, Palm says they “will not affect the amount of the merger consideration that Palm stockholders are entitled to receive in the merger.”

So one shareholder suit down. But still a few more to go. Says Palm: “A number of substantively similar putative stockholder class action suits also remain pending in the Superior Court of California in Santa Clara County.”

Google CEO: I Ain’t Afraid of No Feds…

John Paczkowski — Sat, 09 May 2009 00:02:27 +0000

[ See post to watch video ]

Vista Capable Suit Downgraded to "Home Basic" from "Class Action Ultimate"

John Paczkowski — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 21:30:58 +0000

In sum, Microsoft engaged in bait and switch–assuring consumers they were purchasing ‘Vista Capable’ machines when, in fact, they could obtain only a stripped-down operating system lacking the functionality and features that Microsoft advertised as ‘Vista.’”

– Excerpt from the Vista Capable lawsuit

Looks like the three-hour deposition Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer gave in the so-called “Vista Capable” class action suit was for naught. A judge Wednesday ruled that the lawsuit, which has troubled Microsoft for nearly two years now, cannot go forward as a class action. Instead, plaintiffs who claim Microsoft labeled PCs “Windows Vista Capable” even though the computers were capable of running only the stripped down “Home Basic” version of the OS, must pursue their cases individually. Seems the plaintiffs were unable to convincingly demonstrate that the “Windows Vista Capable” marketing program resulted in increased sales for Microsoft, an argument essential to supporting their class action claim.

A lucky turn of events for Microsoft (MSFT) and one that could potentially save the company millions of dollars in compensatory damages and, by some accounts, up to $8.52 billion-worth of memory and graphics cards if it should lose the case–assuming any of the plaintiffs have the courage to go up against Microsoft on their own.

Status Update: Mark Zuckerberg Is Reading a Class-Action Suit

John Paczkowski — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 17:04:49 +0000

It’s taken nearly a year, but the inevitable class-action fallout from Facebook’s ill-starred Beacon advertising system has finally begun. Filed in California, the suit claims Facebook and its ad partners violated online privacy and computer fraud laws by collecting and publicly disclosing information about users’ online activities without proper consent. Facebook’s “Beacon” advertisements, as you may recall, transformed member transactions on third-party partner sites into product/service endorsements and inserted them into their friends’ “news feeds.” Facebook members, or should I say “fansumers,” were automatically opted-in to the program. Worse, Beacon collected information about member actions on affiliate sites even if they’d opted out of the service and logged off from Facebook. As the suit notes, “By the time any user was notified that Facebook was (at a minimum) an observing party to the transaction, and that Facebook was asking for an approval to publicly broadcast identifying information regarding the event, personally identifying information had already been communicated to Facebook.”

Given that, it’s surprising this suit, which demands the deletion of any ill-gotten data and some form of restitution, wasn’t filed earlier. Certainly, it seems a sure thing after Facebook’s acknowledgment of these issues.

[Image credit: FSJ]