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    Activists Sent to Prison for Pouring Powder Over Case Holding U.S. Constitution

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    One climate activist was sentenced to 18 months in prison, the other to two years. They said that they had meant to draw attention to climate change.Two climate activists who dumped red powder over the display case that holds the U.S. Constitution at the National Archives Museum in February were each sentenced this week to more than a year in prison.Judge Amy Berman Jackson of U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on Tuesday sentenced one activist, Jackson Green, 27, of Utah, to 18 months in prison to be followed by two years of supervised release.On Friday, Judge Jackson sentenced the other activist, Donald Zepeda, 35, of Maryland, to two years in prison with two years of supervised release.They must pay $58,607.59 in restitution to the National Archives, according to court records.In an episode that was captured on video, Mr. Green and Mr. Zepeda poured powder over the display case in the rotunda of the National Archives Museum on Feb. 14 in what prosecutors described as a “stunt” that was meant to draw attention to climate change.The two men also poured powder over themselves and stood in the rotunda, calling for solutions to climate change.The Constitution was not damaged, according to the National Archives Museum, which said that the powder was made of pigment and cornstarch.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Lahaina Fire Settlement is Caught up in Legal Fight With Insurers

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      Insurers that paid claims in Maui say a deal unfairly keeps them from recouping their own losses.The ashes of last summer’s devastating fire in Lahaina on Maui, which killed 102 people and destroyed the town, were still smoldering when talk turned to how fraught the rebuilding process would be.Fire victims would need help fast, and Hawaii officials pushed hard for a quick resolution to the avalanche of lawsuits filed against the entities that had caused the fire: the state’s electric utility, a school system and Maui County, among others.Just days shy of the fire’s one-year anniversary in August, a settlement was announced: Together, those responsible would pay $4 billion to settle more than 600 lawsuits; compensate over 10,000 homeowners, businesses and others; and — critically — keep key institutions, like the utility, solvent.But getting a deal done that quickly meant adopting an unorthodox approach to the insurance industry’s role in the settlement — one that the industry is challenging. Now, hopes for a timely payout are at the mercy of the courts.Typically, insurers pay claims and then sue whomever they blame for the damage — like the driver who might have caused a car accident — to recover some of what they paid. In the Lahaina settlement, the insurers are instead expected to seek repayment from the people and businesses they insured. A person who received a share of the $4 billion deal from a pain-and-suffering claim, for example, could have to pay a portion of that to the insurance company.The industry is balking at this idea, saying it upends a core piece of its business model. Insurers have turned to state and federal courts to try to block the deal, slowing it down and frustrating fire victims and Hawaii leaders.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Zantac’s Developer Settles Lawsuits Claiming Cancer Link

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      GSK, which developed and sold versions of the now-discontinued blockbuster heartburn drug, agreed to pay up to $2.2 billion.The British drug maker GSK said on Wednesday that it would pay up to $2.2 billion to settle most of the lawsuits filed against it by people who claim that they developed cancer after taking a now-discontinued blockbuster heartburn drug commonly known by the brand name Zantac.GSK, which developed the drug decades ago and sold a version of it until 2017, did not admit liability in settling the cases. The evidence is mixed on whether the drug elevates the risk of cancer, but the concern that the drug might was sufficient to get it removed from the market.An over-the-counter medication sold today as Zantac 360 by Sanofi has a different active ingredient from the withdrawn versions of Zantac and has not raised questions about a cancer link.In 2019, the Food and Drug Administration said it had detected low levels of a cancer-causing contaminant known as NDMA in samples of Zantac, which at that time was widely sold by prescription and over the counter. Manufacturers soon voluntarily withdrew their versions of the drug, and pharmacies pulled the products from their shelves.The next year, the F.D.A. recommended that the drug no longer be sold or used, saying that when stored for long periods its active ingredient can degrade and cause a buildup of NDMA, creating a danger of cancer.Other research has found that Zantac users were no more likely to develop cancer than people who took other drugs that suppress the production of stomach acid.Tens of thousands of Zantac users have filed product liability lawsuits against GSK and other makers of versions of Zantac. This year, juries in Illinois that heard the first few such cases sided with the manufacturers or failed to reach a verdict.Several other pharmaceutical companies that previously sold versions of the drug, including Sanofi and Pfizer, reached similar settlements this year. Boehringer Ingelheim, a former manufacturer that has not settled, is in court in California this week defending itself in a jury trial brought by a man who claims that over-the-counter Zantac caused his bladder cancer.GSK’s settlement on Wednesday will resolve claims by about 80,000 plaintiffs in the United States. The company said it had also agreed to pay $70 million to settle a whistle-blower complaint by an independent laboratory, Valisure, whose testing first raised the alarm about a link between Zantac and cancer. In that lawsuit, Valisure accused GSK of knowing that the drug elevates cancer risk and of keeping quiet about it.The suit was unsealed this year after the Justice Department declined to either join the suit or recommend that it be dismissed. The company denies Valisure’s allegations. More

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      Victims of Stanford Financial’s Fraud Scheme May Soon Be Paid. Some Already Sold Their Claim.

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      Not having much insight into what may happen next in the case of a fraud orchestrated by Robert Allen Stanford, many of the victims sold the rights to any future payout.It’s been 15 years since Thomas Swingle first learned that about $1 million of his family’s savings had gone up in smoke, after the financier Robert Allen Stanford was exposed for having sold billions in fraudulent certificates of deposit to investors around the world.The memory of those days is still painful.“It was literally a life-changing event,” Mr. Swingle, 72, said of the $7 billion scheme that unraveled in early 2009. “It is like someone hit you in the chest with a sledgehammer.”Now, victims of Mr. Stanford’s company, Stanford Financial, are on the verge of recouping some of their losses, but Mr. Swingle and his wife, Cindy Finch, have to contend with another decision they made: In 2021, they agreed to sell their claim to any future settlement to an investment fund for around $60,000.That means they won’t get a penny of the funds that are about to be disbursed. Instead, it’ll all go to the claim buyer.It’s a decision fraud victims have to agonize over in the wake of a big financial scam: Large investors offer them cash in exchange for the rights to any future payment. Many small investors who don’t have much insight into what might happen next may feel they don’t have a choice but to settle for a quick lump sum, rather than wait for a future payment that may never come.When Mr. Swingle and Ms. Finch sold their claim, he said, it appeared Stanford’s defrauded customers were unlikely to get anything back at all. Had the couple held on to the rights, they might be able to claim as much as $350,000.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Alex Jones’s Infowars Will Be Auctioned Off to Pay Sandy Hook Families

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      A sale of the Infowars website and other property is set for November, and could determine the conspiracy theorist’s fate as a broadcaster.A Houston bankruptcy judge ruled on Tuesday that assets from the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’s Infowars empire can be auctioned off to help pay families of the Sandy Hook mass shooting victims the defamation awards he owes them.The auction, set for mid-November, will include Infowars’ website, social media accounts, broadcasting equipment, product trademarks and inventory owned by Free Speech Systems, Infowars’ parent company.Mr. Jones’s fate as a broadcaster most likely depends on who buys his business. Though the Infowars name and assets are potentially of interest to a range of entities on the far right, under the terms of the sale anyone can bid.Mr. Jones spent years spreading lies that the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., that killed 20 first graders and six educators was a hoax aimed at confiscating Americans’ firearms, and that the victims’ families were actors complicit in the plot. The families suffered online abuse, personal confrontations and death threats from people who believed the conspiracy theory.Relatives of 10 victims sued Mr. Jones in 2018 for defamation and were awarded more than $1.4 billion in damages in trials in Texas and Connecticut. But the most the families are likely to ever see is a small fraction of that, and they have been divided over how to equitably distribute the money.As the cases headed to court in 2022, Mr. Jones’s company declared bankruptcy. Mr. Jones declared personal bankruptcy soon afterward.Since then, the families have been wrangling in bankruptcy court over assets and revenue that are far less than they originally envisioned. Mr. Jones’s personal and business assets combined are worth less than $10 million, according to independent valuations presented in court. His lawyers and other bankruptcy professionals will be paid first, leaving even less for the families.The Connecticut and Texas sides divided sharply over how to go after Free Speech Systems. Lawyers for the families who sued Mr. Jones in Connecticut — the relatives of eight victims — favored shutting down the company and liquidating its assets, with the money distributed among the family members.Lawyers for families who sued Mr. Jones in Texas favored a settlement in which he would pay them a percentage of his income over the next decade, most likely netting more money for each relative. As a condition of the latter deal, Mr. Jones would have had to agree never to mention the shooting again.The asset sale is probably the least lucrative option for the family members, though its potential for shutting down Infowars appealed to some. Juries in the two lawsuits awarded individual relatives widely varying amounts, and lawyers from the Connecticut and Texas sides have been dueling over how to fairly allocate the money.The situation is further complicated by the fact that a jury has yet to decide how much in damages Mr. Jones must pay Lenny Pozner and Veronique De La Rosa, whose son Noah Pozner died in the shooting. More

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      Jury Awards $116 Million to Family of Man Who Died in Helicopter Crash

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      When an open-door tourist helicopter crashed into the East River, Trevor Cadigan, 26, and four other passengers were unable to escape from cumbersome safety harnesses.The helicopter flight began with celebration. “All right — let’s do it!” the pilot shouted just before liftoff from the heliport in New Jersey.“Party,” said one passenger. “Hooo!” said another.After flybys of the Statue of Liberty, the World Trade Center and the Brooklyn Bridge, during which passengers leaned out the open door to shoot photos, the flight ended suddenly 14 minutes after takeoff when the red helicopter plunged into the East River. It tipped on its side, and as cold water flooded the cockpit, the passengers realized they could not escape.“How do I cut this?” a passenger said, struggling to free himself from the harness that anchored him to the aircraft, according to the transcript of an onboard video from the flight released by the National Transportation Safety Board.All five passengers died in the March 11, 2018, flight. Only the pilot escaped. The accident was caused by a loose, improvised safety harness that caught on the helicopter’s fuel shut-off lever, mounted on the floor. That activated the lever, killed the engine and caused the crash, the safety board found.The safety harnesses, meant to prevent passengers from falling out the open door of the helicopter, instead locked the passengers in place, exposing them to “great difficulty extricating themselves” quickly in an emergency, the safety board found.Six jurors in State Supreme Court in Manhattan agreed on Thursday, awarding $116 million in compensatory and punitive damages to family members of one of the passengers, Trevor Cadigan, 26.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Justice Department Files $100 Million Suit in Fatal Baltimore Bridge Collapse

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      The crash of the Dali into the Francis Scott Key Bridge killed six people. The federal government says the owner and the operator were “grossly negligent” and “reckless.”The U.S. Justice Department filed a legal claim on Wednesday against the owner and operator of the container ship that collapsed the Francis Scott Key Bridge last March, killing six workers and paralyzing the Port of Baltimore for weeks.The lawsuit asserts that the companies’ actions leading up to the catastrophe were “outrageous, grossly negligent, willful, wanton, and reckless.”The government is seeking more than $100 million in damages to cover the costs of the sprawling emergency response to the disaster and the federal aid to port employees who were put out of work. “Those costs should be borne by the shipowner and operator, not the American taxpayer,” said Benjamin Mizer, a deputy associate attorney general who is in charge of the Justice Department’s civil division. He added that the department would be seeking punitive damages as well, “to try to keep this type of conduct from ever happening again.” The action on Wednesday did not name an amount for the punitive damages the department was seeking.Filed in federal court in Maryland, the Justice Department’s action lays out in detail what investigators have learned about the ship’s short and catastrophic journey that night, describing a cascade of failures onboard and multiple points when the disaster could have been prevented.Because of poor maintenance or “jury-rigged” fixes to serious problems aboard the ship, known as the Dali, “none of the four means available to help control the Dali — her propeller, rudder, anchor, or bow thruster — worked when they were needed to avert or even mitigate this disaster,” the suit asserts.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Judge Rejects Key Part of N.C.A.A. Settlement of Antitrust Suit With Athletes

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      The concern over restrictions on some payments raises uncertainty on whether a landmark agreement on compensating athletes can be reached and approved.A federal judge on Thursday rejected a key element of a proposed $2.8 billion settlement of an antitrust lawsuit against the N.C.A.A. and the major athletic conferences, throwing into uncertainty an agreement that had been largely seen as ushering in a new era in college sports.The judge, Claudia A. Wilken, said in a hearing that she was troubled by a provision that would restrict payments to athletes from booster-run collectives, groups of donors that funnel millions of dollars to athletes at schools they support. Although the proposed agreement would allow schools to pay their athletes up to about $20 million per year, she thought some athletes would make less money under the new deal.“Some people getting large amounts will no longer be able to get them,” she told lawyers for the N.C.A.A. and the plaintiffs, essentially a group of thousands of athletes, who had come to an agreement in the lawsuit House v. N.C.A.A. “That’s my concern.”But Rakesh Kilaru, the N.C.A.A. lawyer, said there would be no deal without a provision that allowed the N.C.A.A. to prohibit third-party payments that they saw as pay-for-play compensation under the guise of fair-market endorsement deals.“For us, it’s an essential part of the deal,” he said.Judge Wilken also expressed reservations about another key component of the deal: capping the amount that schools could pay athletes. She also told Mr. Kilaru and the plaintiffs’ lawyers, Jeffrey Kessler and Steve Berman, to report back to her in three weeks with a revised agreement. If they could not, she would be prepared to set a trial date in the case, which charges that the N.C.A.A. and the five major conferences withheld name, image and license revenue.This is a developing story. Check back for updates. More

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      Family of Titan Crew Member Sues OceanGate

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      Paul-Henri Nargeolet, a French explorer, died along with four other crew members when OceanGate’s Titan craft imploded on its journey to the Titanic.The family of a French explorer who was aboard the Titan submersible, the vessel that imploded last year during its failed mission to explore the Titanic wreckage, killing all five people aboard, has filed a wrongful-death lawsuit against the craft’s manufacturer, OceanGate Expeditions.Paul-Henri Nargeolet, a French explorer whose deep knowledge of the sunken ship earned him the nickname “Mr. Titanic,” was hired to assist OceanGate, a Washington State-based ocean exploration company, during the Titan’s journey to the Titanic.But the company and its founder, Richard Stockton Rush III, who also died aboard the vessel, misled Mr. Nargeolet about how the submersible was built, according to the lawsuit filed in King County, Wash.“Mr. Rush confessed to a ‘mission specialist’ on one Titanic voyage that he had ‘gotten the carbon fiber used to make the Titan at a big discount from Boeing because it was past its shelf life for use in airplanes,’” according to the lawsuit, which the Houston-based law firms Buzbee Law Firm and Schecter, Shaffer & Harris said was filed on Tuesday.The French deep sea explorer and Titanic expert Paul-Henri Nargeolet with a miniature version of the sunken ship.Joel Saget/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe lawsuit also accuses Mr. Rush of negligence for a variety of reasons, including falsely advertising a “crackling noise” that was said to be an advanced “safety” feature to alert crew members when to abort a mission. In reality, the lawsuit says that sound “is nothing more than the detection of a possibly imminent failure of the carbon fiber hull.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More