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Imagine going into a store to buy something. A few months later, without having returned to the store, you find out the store bought one of their products on your behalf, without bothering to tell you about it or get your permission. That’s essentially what a class of consumers are alleging Wells Fargo did for more than a decade while its aggressive sales team were encouraged to do everything in their power to meet their quotas.

According to a recent class action consumer lawsuit, Wells Fargo allegedly created more than 2 million credit cards, lines of credit, checking accounts and savings accounts, without first getting approval from the customers for whom they were opening the accounts. Not only were the customers made to pay the fees to open these accounts they never wanted, but some of them suffered damage to their credit history as a result of credit cards and lines of credit that were opened for them and then never used.

After a class of consumers filed a class action lawsuit seeking claims against the bank for the sham accounts, Wells Fargo offered to settle the lawsuit for $110 million, but later raised their offer to $142 million after an investigation found that the practice of opening these sham accounts went back as far as 2002. That revelation prompted the plaintiffs’ attorneys to up their estimate of sham accounts from 2.1 million to 3.5 million, although they may not see a similar increase in the number of plaintiffs, as some plaintiffs allegedly had multiple sham accounts opened in their name.

The settlement amount is in addition to the $185 million Wells Fargo has already been made to pay to regulators after their practice of opening sham accounts on behalf of unsuspecting (and unwilling) customers was revealed. The resignation of the bank’s CEO at the time, John Stumpf, was another result of the scandal. Continue reading ›

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The Federal Arbitration Act was created in 1925 to provide a faster, more efficient method for businesses of equal bargaining power to settle disputes between themselves without crowding the courts. The part about the parties needing to be of equal bargaining power is vital, especially since arbitration is private and was not designed to handle class-action lawsuits.

Unfortunately for consumers, arbitration clauses have started appearing in the fine print of their contracts with almost every provider: banks, websites, merchants, car dealers, credit card companies, even their employers. This means that every dispute someone has with a company has to be settled by arbitration, which is private, offers no written opinion on the matter (i.e. no explanation for the ruling), and is often biased in favor of the large companies that bring in lots of business for the arbitrator (although there are a few arbitration companies that are known for their fairness).

The reality is that individuals very rarely, if ever, have the same bargaining power as giant corporations with a team of attorneys at their disposal. In particular, arbitration agreements cripple individuals by preventing them from combining their claims into class actions. Since most individuals have small claims against corporations, class actions are the only method they have for justifying the costs of the lawsuit. If your bank charged you $100 dollars in illegal fees and filing a lawsuit costs $2,000 to hire an attorney and pay for court costs, no reasonable person is going to pursue the matter. They’d rather let it drop, which lets the bank continue to illegally collect thousands of dollars from hundreds of customers who don’t have any way to redress the wrong. Continue reading ›

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If someone leaves their employer to start their own company (which then gets bought by a competitor of their former employer), can it be a coincidence when that person just happens to end up working for a competitor a few months later on the same material he had been helping his former employer develop?

What if it wasn’t a coincidence? What if it was all an elaborate plot for the competitor to poach the employee, as well as internal documents containing invaluable trade secrets from his former employer?

Alphabet, Google’s parent company, is seeking a court order for documents it thinks will prove that’s exactly what happened when Anthony Levandowski left his job at Google to start his own company, Otto, which was quickly bought by Uber.

Levandowski was working on lidar technology (the technology that allows self-driving cars to navigate their environments) for Waymo, Google’s own ride-share company, before leaving to start Otto in early 2016. Otto was a company that made self-driving trucks, and just a few months after its creation, it was bought by Uber for a few million dollars and Levandowski became the head of Uber’s self-driving department. Continue reading ›

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The internet contains so much content, and social media allows it all to be distributed so far and so fast, that the question of who owns exactly what content online, and the extent of that ownership, is constantly being debated.

Distractify and 22 Words are both sites that combine content from various sites and social media platforms and repurpose that content into articles that can be written up quickly and easily and disseminated throughout the internet. The result is what is commonly referred to as clickbait.

But now Distractify has sued 22 Words for allegedly violating its copyright at least 51 times. The examples provided in the complaint never involved a word-for-word copy of Distractify’s headlines or article content, but 22 Words did publish articles that contained the same ideas as previous Distractify articles, with similar headlines. Continue reading ›

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State and federal civil rights laws prohibit employment discrimination and discrimination in places of public accommodation for reasons of race, color, national origin/ancestry, sex/gender, religion/creed and disability (physical and mental). For such reasons, businesses have a responsibility to treat all customers equally under the law and are better served when they do so.

For instance, it was in a Nail Salon that a discrimination or miscommunication became a dispute which almost could have become a lawsuit had an apology not been issued.  A person with disability who uses a wheelchair felt as though she had been discriminated against. The Vietnamese-Americans who worked at the Nail Lounge say a language barrier contributed to the dispute.

When the disparate treatment was felt, the customer immediately proceeded to make a Facebook post indicating that a salon refused to provide a full pedicure service because she was in a wheelchair.  The customer told staff she would seek business elsewhere and voiced her opinion sensing that it was her wheelchair presence that was the problem and they did not want to deal with it.  The salon technician asserted that accommodation for wheelchairs had been made in the past and the Business was an ‘open space’ for such reasons.  The service was not intended to disrespect but arose out of a lack of proper communication.  Not having perfect English was part of the reason and is said to have contributed to the incident. No ill intention was in place, as such.  Nonetheless, the lady in the wheelchair said she was ignored by the technician and brought along a friend to help with lifting her out of her wheelchair.   The technician instead asked if the pedicure could be given while she sat in her wheelchair. In doing so, the business wanted to avoid any potential liability that could result from moving from her wheelchair into a pedicure chair and make the situation comfortable.  See this article. Better use of tact could have avoided this situation and not every business is perfect or prepared. Raising awareness such as this is what happened as a result,no ill was intended.  Continue reading ›

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If a new musical was a hit in places like Vienna, but can’t get the funding to start on Broadway, is it fair to assume it’s the fault of the producers or the publicist? Or is it just another case of bad luck in a notoriously difficult industry?

Producers Ben Sprecher and Louise Forlenza poured millions into getting their new musical, “Rebecca,” on the Broadway stage, but it looks now as if that will never happen.

The ill-fated musical, based on the gothic novel of the same name by Daphne du Maurier, first started experiencing problems when the producers put their faith in Mark C. Hutton, a stockbroker who promised Sprecher and Forlenza he would deliver investors. After Hutton claimed to have investors who would put $4.5 million into the project, the producers moved forward with their planning of the show without ever meeting any of the investors Hutton said he had lined up. Hutton then sent them a message saying one of the investors had died and all the money had been lost. It later came to light that none of the investors had ever actually existed and Hutton was arrested for committing fraud. Continue reading ›

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The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission just proved it is more interested in fostering real change than fining large corporations.

Sterling Jewelers just settled the lawsuit filed by the EEOC, alleging it discriminates against its female employees, without admitting to having done anything wrong or paying any money to the class of plaintiffs. Instead, Sterling Jewelers (which owns Kay Jewelers and Jared the Galleria of Jewelry, among others) has agreed to hire an independent employment expert who will review employment and promotion practices within the jewelry company.

But Sterling still has to deal with a separate class-action arbitration case in which female employees of the company are accusing Sterling of regularly paying women less than their male counterparts, overlooking women for promotions and other opportunities for advancement, and fostering a work culture in which sexual harassment was the norm.

Signet (which is Sterling’s parent company) is continuing to fight the arbitration claims and said it has already investigated the allegations of sexual harassment on its own without finding anything to back up the allegations. Continue reading ›

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In case you did not know, homemade slime is one the the biggest fads out there!  Even a Kardashian child, Penelope Disick has a homemade video upload on Instagram featuring a do-it-yourself tutorial.  In fact, there are “slime alternatives” for those parents that are sick of buying glue.  The buck, however, does not stop there.  Aspects of litigation now involve slime.

Only just recently there was a  trial to determine whether ABC defamed a South Dakota meat producer’s products that critics dubbed “pink slime” provided a boost to area business before it ended with a settlement.

Beef Products Inc. said in a report that an ABC News correspondent misled consumers about the safety of low-cost processed beef trimmings, which are officially known as “lean finely textured beef.”  Nowadays, It is more commonly known as “pink slime” due to its appearance. The company had sought $1.9 billion in damages, but the figure could have grown to as much as $5.7 billion under a South Dakota law. Such reports caused a backlash against the product that eventually cost the meat processor millions of dollars in sales, forcing it to close three of its four plants. ABC defended its stories as being factual and providing vital information to consumers. Continue reading ›

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As more and more of our personal information ends up online (either through our own actions or someone else’s) we must all be increasingly vigilant about taking the necessary steps to ensure our privacy from hackers. Businesses and website hosts need to be especially careful about protecting themselves from liability in the event of a data breach.

Class action lawsuits claiming damages against businesses that allegedly did not take the proper measures to protect against security breaches have been popping up with increasing frequency all over the country, but depending on the case, proving actual damages can be easier said than done.

Most, if not all, banks and credit card companies offer identity theft protection – for a fee. They’ll cover the costs of any unverified charges if your information gets stolen, but only if you pay them a monthly fee. The fee is usually around $5/month, but even that can be prohibitive for low-income consumers. As a result, most plaintiffs suing as a result of a data breach at least sue for the costs of purchasing identity theft protection. Continue reading ›

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The days of trading items for other items are all but gone. Individuals might still maintain this practice in private between one another, but when it comes to how companies can pay their workers, they usually only have two choices: cash or check.

The rise of technology has led to other options, such as direct deposit and debit cards, but not all of these new options are allowed under the relevant labor law. According to Pennsylvania’s Wage Payment and Collection Law (WPCL), employers are permitted to use only cash or checks to pay their workers.

But a recent class action wage and hour lawsuit filed against a Pennsylvania McDonald’s franchisee, alleges the franchisee’s use of debit cards to pay employees their wages is a violation of the WPCL.

The class action lawsuit was filed against Carol and Albert Mueller, who, together, operate 16 different McDonald’s franchise locations across Pennsylvania. They allegedly used debit cards to pay almost 2,400 employees their wages from late 2010 until the summer of 2013. Continue reading ›

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