Remember that faked “60 Minutes” piece? Dan Rather does. Years after the blogosphere proved that his Bush National Guard information was suspect (a great story for typophiles, by the way), he’s been fighting a $70 million lawsuit ever since. An appeals court threw it out, saying that they could find no evidence that the network screwed up his future job prospects or reneged on his contract. All this stuff happened so long ago, we forgot Bush was president! source
Some guy named Dalton Chiscolm with a lot of pent-up anger against Bank of America sued the financial giants for this amount of money. We wonder what size bills he would like that in.source
And really, they should. Those guys were jerks. ACORN has been battered, beaten, and shamed in the press and politically. And it was all for some out-to-shame videotapes. Now, they’re fighting back. The organization has filed a lawsuit against filmmakers James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles along with Breitbart.com LLC, the Andrew Breitbart-led company that owns BigGovernment.com. ACORN says the duo never obtained consent from the now-fired employees they showed helping with their faux-prostitution scheme in Baltimore. It’ll be interesting to see where the suit goes. source
And thank God. That injunction was cramping our style. Last month, a Texas court known for its little-guy-leaning decisions in patent cases ruled that Microsoft had to stop selling word over its use of an XML format patented by another company, i4i. MS was also fined $290m for the violation. Lest you think Word stop getting sold, an appeals court granted a stay of the Word ban. Microsoft is doing a happy dance for now. source
We’re going to be staying right here in San Antonio in the same house, and my wife tells me when we go to the movies we’re still getting one tub of popcorn – the large tub.
Former Pfizer pharmaceutical rep John Kopchinski • On the massive payday he won as whistleblower in the legal battle against his former employer. Dude made a cool $51.5 million, which is about as good as winning the lottery, even though it took longer – six years, in Kopchinski’s case. • source
We believe citizens, consumers, and employees should be able to exercise their free-speech rights online – and journalists should be able to report on those efforts – without fear of intimidation.
Ben Popken and Meg Marco • In a long expose on Cash4Gold, which they wrote to expose the practices of a company which sued them and other sites in response to their posting of anonymous whistleblower statements from former employees. The whistleblower noted that the company – which until the Super Bowl this year, largely advertised on el cheapo late night advertising – gives significantly less money for traded in gold than pawn shops do. “No matter how nice the person is who gives it to you, a bad deal is still a bad deal,” they write. A bold article; good for them. • source
