ClassAction
Latest
Ex-Uber employee fights for workers’ right to pursue class-action
Susan Fowler, the ex-Uber engineer who called out the company's sexual harassment problem in a blog post earlier this year, has now focused her attention towards the Supreme Court. With her attorney, she has filed an amicus brief in support of workers involved in three consolidated cases that will be heard by the high court. The cases all center on whether companies like Uber should be able to stipulate that employees are barred from joining class-action lawsuits against the company and instead must pursue resolutions through private arbitration.
Sony owes Xperia owners a refund over faulty water resistance
When you buy a phone billed as water-resistant, you generally expect it to survive accidental dunks. Some Sony phone owners have a very different story, though -- their supposedly resistant phones took water damage that required an expensive fix. If you're one of them, we have good news. A preliminary settlement in a class action lawsuit will offer a 50 percent refund of the retail price to US customers who bought a water-resistant Sony Xperia device and had to file water damage claims. The list of affected hardware covers a whopping 24 phones and tablets sold in the US, ranging from the Xperia Z1 through to relatively recent devices like the Xperia Z5.
Ashley Madison will pay $11.2 million to data breach victims
Ashley Madison is still picking up the pieces two years after the massive data breach that exposed millions of users' information. The parent company of the cheat-on-your-spouse website continues to deny any wrongdoing, but it has agreed to settle the preliminary class-action lawsuit filed on behalf of 37 million users whose personal details were dumped onto the dark web. Ruby Corp is ready to pay $11.2 million for the settlement, though the amount still has to be approved by a federal judge in St. Louis.
Lyft driver's lawsuit accuses Uber of privacy violations
Uber is now facing its first Hell-related legal battle a couple of weeks after The Information revealed the project's existence. A former Lyft driver has filed a class action lawsuit against the ride-hailing firm for tracking and targeting people working for its pink mustachio'd rival while he was still driving for it. If you'll recall, the publication said some of Uber's execs and select personnel created a program called "Hell" by signing up for fake Lyft accounts and using software to monitor its competitors' cars.
Bose accused of secretly sharing your listening habits
The podcasts and music you listen to can reveal a lot about your personal and political leanings. That's the basis of a class-action lawsuit filed against Bose, whose wireless headphone and speaker companion app tracks the listening habits of its users. The complaint claims that Bose not only collects, but transmits and discloses its customers' private music and audio history to third parties and a data-mining company.
Owners of bricked G4 and V10 phones sue LG
It's been years since LG's G4 and V10 smartphones launched, but the people burned by a flaw that made those devices non-functional haven't forgotten. Four G4 and V10 owners filed a class-action lawsuit against LG earlier this week, alleging that the company "was aware, or reasonably should have been aware" of a hardware flaw that would force those two smartphones into a "boot loop" -- a state of endless rebooting that basically made the devices bricks. The filing (obtained by Ars Technica) goes on to say LG failed to make customers whole again by refusing to perform repairs or offering those customers refurbished units that were as prone to boot loop syndrome as the devices sent in for repair in the first place.
Your old PC's DVD drive might earn you $10
The PC you had a decade ago might be a clunker in comparison to what you have now, but it might just make you a little extra money. In the wake of a class action settlement with major optical disc drive makers over price fixing, Americans can now claim $10 in compensation for every PC-capable DVD drive they bought between April 1st, 2003 and December 31st, 2008. That's whether or not the drive was built into your system, we'd add. You'll have to live in one of 23 states or Washington, DC, but you could have a payment on the way with just a few minutes' work. You have until July 1st, 2017 to make a claim.
Samsung can't use in-box warranty to kill Galaxy S4 lawsuit
Oh Samsung. When the company isn't busy recalling cellphones and washing machines for being safety hazards, it's busy fighting its customers in court. In 2015, Daniel Norcia contended that he was misled by Samsung about the capabilities of his Galaxy S4. Specifically, its speed, performance and memory capacity, according to Consumerist.
Apple faces a price-fixing suit over App Store purchases
Apple is in court once again. This time, the company is part of an anti-trust lawsuit over the strict limitations over where users can buy iOS applications. Specifically, the requirement that all apps be purchased through the Cupertino company's App Store. The suit alleges that by not allowing customers to buy apps from third-party services, Apple was price fixing and that customers could sue as a result, according to Bloomberg.
Note 7 debacle forces Samsung to offer next-gen discounts in Korea
In an effort to retain Galaxy Note 7 customers in South Korea, Samsung is offering a big discount on the upcoming Galaxy S8 and Galaxy Note 8 models. The company will effectively offer 50 percent off the next-gen phone, provided that Note 7 customers upgrade to the current Galaxy S7 or Galaxy S7 Edge models. Samsung recently killed its Galaxy Note 7 smartphone because of fire and explosion problems. It initially misdiagnosed the problem as being battery-related, and issued replacement phones that were still defective.
Qualcomm settles gender discrimination suit for $19.5 million
Qualcomm will pay $19.5 million to settle a lawsuit filed by female employees who claim they were paid less and denied promotion opportunities that were given to men. The deal stipulates that the company must implement policies ensuring that women get more promotion opportunities in science and engineering positions. Lawyers for the group told the Associated Press the settlement was a "giant leap forward toward leveling the playing field and can serve as a model of best practices for other technology companies."
MakerBot didn't mislead customers about broken replicators
A Minnesota court has dismissed a class-action lawsuit brought against Makerbot that said the company had knowingly-produced dodgy 3D printers. The firm was accused of fraudulently misleading both investors and customers after talking-up the fifth-generation hardware. As we now know, devices were shipped with broken extruders that easily clogged, but Makerbot refused to acknowledge a problem or engage with complaints. Judges didn't shower the company with praise, but said that while there was some evidence that executives were behaving badly, evidence wasn't strong enough to suggest serious wrongdoing.
Snapchat faces class-action suit for sexually explicit content
Snapchat has been slapped with a class-action lawsuit accusing the service of showing sexually explicit content to minors without providing the proper warning. A 14-year-old John Doe and his mother filed the lawsuit in California after he came across several X-rated posts on the app's Discover section. The court documents specifically named a handful of articles, including "10 Things He Thinks When He Can't Make You Orgasm" and "I Got High, Blown, and Robbed When I Was A Pizza Delivery Guy," among others. But the lawsuit focused on one BuzzFeed post in particular entitled "23 Pictures That Are Too Real If You've Ever Had Sex With A Penis." That post used Disney movie stills with explicit captions.
Your iBooks price fixing credit is on its way
Don't fret about your piece of Apple's e-book price fixing settlement -- the check is in the mail, virtually speaking. The attorneys behind the class action lawsuit have revealed that digital credits from the case will start reaching book buyers from various online bookstores (including Apple's iBooks as well as Amazon and Barnes & Noble) as early as June 21st. What you'll get depends on what you bought, mind you, and it's not exactly a windfall.
Uber faces lawsuit over aggressive Austin voting ads
Uber is known for being aggressive when it wants changes to the law -- just ask anyone who has received email after email asking for support. However, its latest effort might have crossed the line. The app-hailed transportation service is facing a class-action lawsuit over a text messaging campaign that called on Austin residents to vote for Proposition 1, which would let ridesharing companies operate without running fingerprint background checks. The lawsuit claims that Uber not only spammed Austinites with "vote for Prop 1" messages without their consent, but made it difficult to avoid those promos. Text replies went unanswered, and calling the source number would only give you an automated error message. In other words, it sounds like the sort of robodialer that would violate the Telephone Consumer Protection Act.
Uber CEO faces class-action lawsuit over price fixing
After failing to get a class-action lawsuit dismissed, Uber CEO Travis Kalanick will go to court over price fixing claims. A US district court judge in New York ruled Kalanick has to face the class of passengers alleging that he conspired with drivers to set fares using an algorithm, including hiking rates during peak hours with so-called surge pricing. According to Reuters, district court judge Jed Rakoff ruled the plaintiffs "plausibly alleged a conspiracy" to fix pricing and that the class action could also pursue claims the set rates led to the demise other services, like Sidecar.
Lyft drivers would make more as employees, estimates show
Critics claim that ridesharing companies stiff drivers by labeling them as contractors rather than full employees, but how much are they losing out on, really? Quite a bit, if you ask those drivers' lawyers. In the wake of Lyft's proposed lawsuit settlement over worker statuses, the attorneys have produced a court-ordered estimate showing that the average driver would have made an additional $835 in expense reimbursements over the past 4 years if treated as full-fledged staff. That may not sound like much, but most of the drivers covered in the lawsuit worked just 60 hours over those years -- that's a lot of money for relatively little effort. Particularly busy drivers would have earned considerably more, according to the calculations.
AT&T avoids class action lawsuit over unlimited data throttling
Bad news if you were hoping to take AT&T to task for throttling your unlimited mobile data: you probably won't get much help beyond government regulators. A Northern California District Court judge has ruled that the carrier won't face a class action lawsuit for allegedly misleading customers by promising unlimited data that could slow down if you used 3GB or more in a given month. The judge claims that affected subscribers all signed contracts that let AT&T send disputes like this to individual arbitration. They can't sue, in other words.
Sony finally hands out free game codes for its 2011 hack
If you were one of the 70 million Sony customers affected by the 2011 Sony hack, and took the time to fill in a lengthy claim form following the intrusion, now is the time to check your inbox. Since March 2nd, Sony has been compensating PlayStation Network, Qriocity or Sony Online Entertainment account holders as a result of a class action settlement against it in 2014. On offer are free download codes for a number of PlayStation 3, PlayStation Vita and PSP games, as well as a handful of themes.
Uber wants to pay $28.5 million to settle lawsuits about your safety
Today, Uber is trying to kill two legal albatrosses with one stone. After contending with a pair of class action lawsuits over a questionable "safe ride fee," the company petitioned the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California to settle both of them in one shot with a $28.5 million payout. That's the most amount of money Uber has ever had to shell out over a lawsuit, but don't get your hopes up — payouts will be downright paltry.
