Google-owned Motorola Mobility has withdrawn a patent-infringement lawsuit against Apple Inc., which it brought to the U.S. International Commission Trade, in order to block the importation of some Apple products: iPhones, iPads and iPods. Google’s Motorola Mobility business filed the complaint on August 18 and asked the commission to outlaw the importation of Apple products, claiming Apple had infringed seven patents for functions, including email notifications, voice controls, media players and other features.

In the withdrawal, dated Monday, Motorola Mobility said  it had not settled the dispute with Apple, and it asked to withdraw the complaint “without prejudice.” The company reserved the right to renew its case again later. No explanation was given by Motorola Mobility for dropping the complaint. A notice of dismissal was also filled in a companion civil lawsuit filed in a a federal court in Wilmington, Delaware.

According to Reuters, Apple did not return phone calls seeking comments about the withdrawal. A spokesman for Google said the Mountain View, California company would “continue to vigorously defend its partners,” a reference to the companies whose mobile devices run on Google’s open operating system, called Android. The U.S International Commission Trade indicated it planned to investigate the Motorola allegation.

Acquired by Google in May, Motorola Mobility filed a separate patent claim against Apple with ITC, which it is continuing. The $1.25 billion deal between Google and Motorola made the latter the key manufacturer of smartphones and holder of patents for the California internet titan’s legal arsenal.

Florian Mueller was the first one to report Google’s withdrawal on his blog, saying that Google withdrew the complaint in order to prevent it from being consolidated with an earlier case, thus slowing the case down. The simplest explanation would be a global settlement deal being reached between the two companies. Mueller stated that “this could be a unilateral goodwill gesture on Google’s part toward Apple if high-level settlement talks are processing well.”

“But it could also be a tactical decision involving a plan to reassert the same claims in federal court,” Mueller continued. According to him, it is more likely that parent company Google didn’t believe that the complaint would succeed in the International Commission Trade.

Motorola was seen as having one of the best legal shots against Apple, with its huge intellectual property collection, and that is what makes this withdrawal so odd. Rumor has it that the company was having trouble getting its evidence in order for the legal proceedings. High-levels talks between the parent company and Apple could also be going on.

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New York , U.S.A. —  This week, victims of the doomed Costa Concordia Cruise Ship that capsized off the Italian coast in January filed a new Complaint against Miami headquartered Carnival Corp., the builder of the Costa Concordia, for product liability, against Carnival’s Miami-based architect for defective ship design and against Carnival for a pattern and practice of concealing and/or delaying notification of life threatening situations to passengers on board their cruise ships, amongst other causes of action. Another claim, alleging wrongful death on behalf of several other parties, is to be filed shortly.

The suit alleges that Carnival was aware that the ship’s hull design and power systems were defective. In February 2010 the hull of Carnival’s Costa Europa was punctured against a dock in Egypt creating a small hole, roughly 1/30th (6 feet) the size of the hole in the Costa Concordia’s hull, yet that ship flooded and listed severely at the cost of multiple lives. To date, the company refuses to publicly release the incident report that relates to the Europa accident.

In November 2010, Concordia’s sister ship the Carnival Splendor caught fire and was stranded off the coast of Mexico due to a catastrophic failure of a generator in one of the engine rooms. Splendor’s second generator, located in another engine room, should have kicked in but failed to work. At the time, Carnival Cruise Lines’ CEO Gerry Cahill was quoted in Travel Weekly: “Having two engine rooms like we do is pretty much the norm in the cruise industry”.

Cahill added that Carnival had determined that “there are certain things that we can do to increase the effectiveness of that redundancy.” Cahill also said that these lessons would likely be applied to Carnival’s sister brands in the Carnival Corp. group, but the Concordia was plagued by multiple electrical failures after the crash, causing tremendous loss of life and property, personal injury and terror for those on board.

Indeed, as Marc Jay Bern of Napoli Bern Ripka Shkolnik, LLP, co-lead attorney along with Mitchell Proner of Proner & Proner, representing Costa Concordia victims recently noted, “No one got off the Concordia unscathed. Even those who survived and avoided serious physical injuries will never be the same after the horror they lived through. These people trusted a well-known cruise industry brand and had every reason to believe they were in responsible and experienced hands but unfortunately that proved to be anything but the truth.”

Law firms Napoli Bern Ripka Shkolnik & Associates, LLP (with offices in New York and Florida) and New York-based Proner & Proner, along with the Italian firm CODACONS, are representing the plaintiffs in their litigation against the Carnival Group and the other responsible parties. At least $2 million dollars in compensation per passenger is sought and attorneys plan to request $590 million dollars in punitive damages.

The action, filed in State Court before the Florida Circuit Court (11th Judicial Circuit) in Miami-Dade County, Florida is against Carnival Corporation, Carnival Corporation & PLC, Costa Cruise Lines, Inc. and Costa Crociere SPA, are all registered in the State of Florida and face state law claims for Maritime Negligence, Gross Negligence, Negligence – Product Defect as to Carnival Corp., Professional Negligence of the Ship’s Architect, Intentional Failure to Warn, Intentional Failure to Abandon Ship, Intentional Failure to Notify Authorities, Corporate Pattern and Practice of failure to warn, Intentional Infliction of Emotional Distress, Negligent Retention (by the Cruise Line of Captain Schettino), Fraudulent Misrepresentation and Fraudulent Inducement.

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With the Obama administration, U.S. Congress and the world’s governments now united in their opposition to the application of the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS) to international aviation, Airlines for America (A4A), the industry trade organization for the leading U.S. airlines, appropriately ended its private lawsuit against the EU ETS and urged the administration to accelerate its work to reverse this unilateral tax.

“Our legal action was critical in bringing to light that the EU ETS violates international law and is an exorbitant money grab, which are now key points in the governments’ unified opposition to the scheme,” said A4A President and CEO Nicholas E. Calio. “There is a clear path for the United States to force the EU to halt the scheme and protect U.S. sovereignty, American consumers, jobs and international law.”

A4A and its members remain steadfastly opposed to the application of this cap-and-trade tax scheme to U.S. airlines and aircraft operators, and are committed to seeing it overturned. A4A has long maintained that world governments, as signatories to the Chicago Convention, are best situated to enforce international laws and obligations and drive to a global solution within the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO).

ICAO has authority to address violations of the Chicago Convention under Article 84 of that treaty, and also is working to complete the global framework for aviation greenhouse gas emissions provisionally agreed at its 2010 Assembly.

A4A and its member airlines are committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions from aviation and, with fuel-efficiency improvements saving over 3.1 billion tons of carbon dioxide since 1978, have a strong record of improvement.

A4A maintains that the unilateral and extraterritorial approach taken under the EU ETS not only violates international law, but imposes costly policies that siphon away funds the airlines need to continue to invest in technology, operations and infrastructure improvements that bring real environmental benefit.

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The Council on American-Islamic Relations and United Firm of Carolina Law announced the filing of a lawsuit against Delta Air Lines and Atlantic Southeast Airlines for removing two Islamic religious leaders, or imams, from a flight to a conference on Islamophobia in Charlotte, North Carolina, earlier this year after the pilot refused to fly with them on board.

CAIR and UFC Law attorneys announced the lawsuit at a news conference earlier today at Memphis International Airport in Tennessee. Interfaith leaders also took part in the news conference.

The lawsuit states in part:

“Despite having been cleared twice by TSA agents, Defendants’ pilot took the matter into his own hands when he chose to eject Plaintiffs from the flight based on arbitrary and capricious reasons, including his personal preconceived notions of race, religion, and national origin.”

According to the lawsuit, the defendants violated both a federal law preventing an air carrier from subjecting a passenger to “discrimination on the basis of race, color, national origin, religion, sex, or ancestry” and a Tennessee law that prohibits denying an individual the “full and equal enjoyment of the… advantages and accommodations of a place of public accommodation… on the grounds of race, creed, color, religion, sex, age, or national origin.”

The lawsuit seeks a permanent injunction that would prohibit the defendants from “singling out passengers for mistreatment based on their perceived race, color, ethnicity, religion, alienage, ancestry, and/or national origin” and order them to “take all affirmative steps necessary to remedy the effects of the illegal, discriminatory conduct described herein and to prevent similar occurrences in the future.” It also seeks attorneys’ fees and compensatory and punitive damages against Delta and Atlantic Southeast Airlines “in an amount to be determined at trial.”

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A series of civil lawsuits have been filed by various family members of those killed or injured in an accident two years ago on the Taconic Parkway in New York State. The suits were filed in an attempt to place responsibility on those involved in the incident.

On July 26, 2009, while driving the wrong way on the Taconic Parkway, Diane Schuler crashed her van into an SUV, killing all but one of the passengers in her vehicle, and all three passengers in the SUV.

All told, the incident claimed the lives of Diane Schuler, her three nieces, ages 5, 7 and 8, her two year old daughter, Guy Bastardi, 49, Michael Bastardi Sr., 81, and Daniel Longo, 74. The only survivors were Diane Schuler’s five year old son, and both members of a third vehicle that was struck.

Initially Guy Bastardi’s sister filed a lawsuit against Diane Schuler’s estate for her negligent driving, and against the owner of the van, Diane’s brother, Warren Hance. Now two years later, Shuler’s husband Daniel Schuler has followed suit and right before the two-year statute of limitations expires, filed several lawsuits in a final attempt to place the blame for this accident on someone other than his wife.

He has sued the state of New York for not placing clear enough signs on the exit ramp to the Taconic Parkway, as well as his wife’s brother, Hance, because he was the owner of the van that Diane drove that fateful day and there may have been some mechanical failure with the vehicle that ultimately resulted in the tragedy.

Additionally, Hance and his wife, Jackie, have sued Schuler’s estate for the dangerous driving and fear that driving induced, which resulted in the deaths of their three young children. Longo’s brother, Joseph, has also filed a claim against Schuler’s estate for the wrongful death of his brother.

Initial toxicology reports from the autopsy indicated that Schuler had a blood alcohol content of .19, which is more than twice the legal limit in the state of New York, as well as high levels of marijuana. Daniel Schuler and Schuler’s sister, Jay, contended that she was not a drinker and she would never knowingly place her family at risk.

They spent thousands of dollars on lawyer Dominic Barbara and private investigator Thomas Ruskin to try to help clear her name of responsibility. A wide variety of theories were proposed including low blood sugar due to diabetes, an embolism, a stroke, a brain virus, an abscessed tooth or a migraine.

Eventually, as it came out in the recent documentary There’s Something Wrong with Aunt Diane, an independent lab retested Schuler’s blood to determine if the first toxicology report was accurate. In addition, the lab matched Schuler’s DNA to the toxicology report and determined once and for all that she really had alcohol and marijuana in her system at the time of the accident.

This was a difficult blow for Daniel, who felt sure that she must have had an abscessed tooth, and she wouldn’t have intentionally drank, especially with children in the vehicle. Daniel handled this new information by supposing that perhaps she self-medicated because she was in immense pain and accidentally drank too much vodka, or that she became delirious and thought the vodka was water.

In any case, there are several facts that cannot be denied. Diane Schuler, for reasons that may never be known, on the day of July 26, 2009 made the decision to ingest a large volume of vodka, later smoked several joints of marijuana, and, with five small children in the car, drove the wrong way on the Taconic Parkway for 1.7 miles before crashing into Guy Bastardi’s SUV, resulting in the deaths of eight individuals.

Perhaps with these new lawsuits, and the possibility of new information that it can uncover, the families of those involved can find some peace of mind and come to terms with their losses.

Margo Harrison / Shutterstock.com

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After years of litigation, a class-action discrimination lawsuit against Wal-Mart Stores Inc. has been rejected by the Supreme Court. Over the last several years, Wal-Mart has been pushed into the spotlight by a series of lawsuits by disgruntled employees. This most recent discrimination case grew from a few disgruntled employees to one of the largest class-action lawsuits in recent memory. Three Wal-Mart associates have come together to try to sue Wal-Mart in a class-action lawsuit concerning discrimination against women in management positions.

The case reached all the way to the Supreme Court before all nine supreme justices sided with Wal-Mart’s contention that each discrimination case is unique to the store in which is allegedly  occurred and should be sought by the individual for any damages due.

This ruling is a big break for Wal-Mart, as they could have ended up paying billions of dollars to the 1.5 million female employees that have worked at the 4,300 Wal-Mart stores across the country since 1998. Theodore J. Boutrous Jr. and Theane Evangelis Kapur, the two main defense lawyers for Wal-Mart, have pointed out that there are numerous success stories of women who started out in entry-level positions and were promoted to various levels of management. Their hiring and promotion policy also specifically prohibits discrimination when determining a candidate for any position, including management.

Betty Dukes, one of the three women who began this lawsuit, argues that during her employment at Wal-Mart she witnessed male associates get promoted, while female associates with similar qualifications were passed up. In her own case, she spoke with upper management numerous times concerning her desire to be promoted, but to this day, she has still not been promoted. She was even demoted after she got change from a register while on the clock.

Dukes felt singled out by this demotion because other associates had done this before, and had never gotten in trouble. She felt that this discrimination was based on her gender, and that other women who work at Wal-Mart had experienced this discrimination as well. Now that the Supreme Court has ruled these discrimination cases must be taken up individually, if Dukes chooses to continue her case, she will have to start all over again and bring action against the specific Wal-Mart where she was employed.

Despite their strong equal opportunity policy, Wal-Mart’s hiring and promotion process is based on the discretion of the management in that particular store. Those with the responsibility of assessing candidates for different positions in their store are instructed to “not tolerate discrimination in employment, employment-related decisions, or in business dealings on the basis of race, color, ancestry, age, sex, sexual orientation, religion, disability, ethnicity, national origin, veteran status, marital status, pregnancy, or any other legally protected status”

(http://ethics.walmartstores.com/IntegrityIntheWorkplace/Nondiscrimination.aspx).

In the case of the defendants, they may or may not have been discriminated against.

Although management is supposed to remain unbiased, that does not stop some individuals from breaking from policy and hiring someone based on personal preference instead of for that person’s individual qualifications. Boutrous and Evangelis Kapur have stated that Wal-Mart is not opposed to the three defendants taking their complaints against the particular stores in which the discrimination supposedly occurred. If this discrimination did happen, then the members of management responsible should be reprimanded for not following company policy and they are perfectly justified in seeking compensation.

This chapter of the case is closed, but Wal-Mart may have only opened itself to a large number of small claims by all of the individuals working at Wal-Mart that sided with Betty Dukes. In any case, this ruling will have an important impact on what constitutes a class-action lawsuit, and whether or not big businesses really can be held accountable for their actions.

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In a relatively non-shocking decision, the United States Supreme Court has sided with corporate giant Wal-Mart in a sex discrimination suit. The plaintiffs in the case were seeking to make the sexual discrimination lawsuit into a class-action, involving up to 1.6 million women. The decision has far-reaching implications for employee rights and big corporations.

The justices voted along party lines by a vote to 5-4,reversing an earlier decision by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. The High Court said there were too many women in too many jobs at Wal-Mart to form into a class action suit. Wal-Mart could have faced billions of dollars in damages. The few women who brought the case are prepared to bring claims against the retail giant on their own. Of course, individual lawsuits will place much less pressure on Wal-Mart and involve less money. Two of the named plaintiffs, Christine Kwapnoski and Betty Dukes, attended the argument. Kwapnoski is an assistant manager at a Sam’s Club in Concord, Calif. Dukes is a greeter at the Wal-Mart in Pittsburg, Calif.

In a statement, Wal-Mart said, “The court today unanimously rejected class certification and, as the majority made clear, the plaintiffs’ claims were worlds away from showing a companywide discriminatory pay and promotion policy.”

Dukes and Kwapnoski said they were disappointed in the ruling, but vowed to push ahead with their claims. Both women spoke on a conference call with reporters. “We still are determined to go forward to present our case in court. We believe we will prevail there,” Dukes said. “All I have to say is when I go back to work tomorrow, I’m going to let them know we are still fighting,” Kwapnoski.

Other advocates were also disappointed with the Supreme Court decision. Marcia D. Greenberger, co-president of the National Women’s Law Center, said “the court has told employers that they can rest easy, knowing that the bigger and more powerful they are, the less likely their employees will be able to join together to secure their rights.”

The Supreme Court agreed with Wal-Mart’s argument that being forced to defend the treatment of female employees regardless of the jobs they hold or where they work is unfair. Justice Antonin Scalia’s opinion for the court’s conservative majority said there need to be common elements tying together “literally millions of employment decisions at once,” which he felt was absent in this case.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, writing for the court’s four liberal justices, said there was more than enough uniting the claims. “Wal-Mart’s delegation of discretion over pay and promotions is a policy uniform throughout all stores,” Ginsburg said.

Both sides have argued that the ruling could have severe consequences. The business community, who supported Wal-Mart, has said that a ruling for the women would lead to a flood of class-action lawsuits based on vague evidence. Supporters of the women, including civil rights groups, feared that a decision in favor of Wal-Mart could remove a valuable weapon for fighting all sorts of discrimination.

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An enormous lawsuit against Wal-Mart for charges of sex discrimination was heard by the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday.  At stake is whether the suit can go forward as a class action that could involve 500,000 to 1.6 million women, according to varying estimates, and potentially could cost the world’s largest retailer billions of dollars.

Women employees at the retail giant claim that men make more money and get promoted faster than their female counterparts.  One plaintiff in the suit said she was told to “doll up” and “blow the cobwebs off her make-up.”  The suit was originally filed 10 years ago and Wal-Mart has been fighting the litigation every step of the way.  It is the biggest litigation threat that the company has ever faced.

The lawsuit, however, has much further implications beyond the original claim of discrimination.  Discrimination suits are much more powerful when they are presented together as a class action suit and can often force change.  Columbia University law professor John Coffee said that the high court could bring a virtual end to employment discrimination class actions filed under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, depending on how it decides the Wal-Mart case.  “Litigation brought by individuals under Title VII is just too costly,” Coffee said. “It’s either class action or nothing.”

Wal-Mart wants the Supreme Court to stop the lawsuit, even though a trial judge and the federal appeals court in San Francisco has allowed the suit to go forward.  Wal-Mart argues it includes too many women with too many different positions.  The company claims that its policies prohibit discrimination and that most management decisions are made at store and regional levels.   Theodore J. Boutrous, Wal-Mart’s California-based lawyer, said there is no evidence that women are poorly treated at Wal-Mart. “The evidence is the contrary of that,” Boutrous said.

Wal-Mart is not saying that no women face discrimination but feels that these incidents would be isolated.  “People will make errors,” said Gisel Ruiz, Wal-Mart’s executive vice president for people, as the company calls its human resources unit. “People are people.”

The suit, citing what are now dated figures from 2001, contends that women are poorly represented among managers, holding just 14 percent of store manager positions compared with more than 80 percent of lower-ranking supervisory jobs that are paid by the hour. Wal-Mart responds that women in its retail stores made up two-thirds of all employees and two-thirds of all managers in 2001.

A ruling is expected by late June in the hearing.

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