Suits and Litigation (Civil)

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      Law Firm Defending Trump Seeks to Withdraw From a Long-Running Case

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      The firm, LaRocca Hornik, has represented Donald Trump’s political operation in numerous suits dating to his first presidential run, including a pregnancy discrimination case in New York.A law firm that has long defended Donald J. Trump’s campaign and businesses from employment lawsuits has abruptly asked to withdraw from a yearslong case over what it calls an “irreparable breakdown in the attorney-client relationship.”The firm — LaRocca, Hornik, Greenberg, Rosen, Kittridge, Carlin and McPartland — has represented Mr. Trump’s political operation in numerous suits dating to his first presidential run, helping secure several settlements and dismissals and billing nearly $3 million in the process.But late on Friday, it asked a federal magistrate judge to allow it to withdraw from a suit filed by a former campaign surrogate, A.J. Delgado, who says she was sidelined by the campaign in 2016 after revealing she was pregnant. The timing of the motion was notable, just two days after the same federal court had ordered the campaign to turn over in discovery all complaints of sexual harassment and gender or pregnancy discrimination from the 2016 and 2020 campaigns — materials that the defendants have long resisted handing over.A.J. Delgado in 2016.via YouTubeIn the request, filed in federal court in Manhattan, the lead lawyer, Jared Blumetti, did not provide any details about the dispute, asking permission to “explain” the matter privately with the judge. Mr. Blumetti did not respond to a request for comment.The apparent rupture with a long-trusted firm comes at a busy time, legally speaking, for the former president.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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      How to Claim Your Part of a $5.6 Million Ring Settlement

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      The Federal Trade Commission is sending payments to customers who had certain Ring home security cameras and accounts during a particular time period, the agency said.The Federal Trade Commission said this week that some people who had bought certain home security cameras made by Ring, which is owned by Amazon, would be eligible for refunds for their purchase. The payments, totaling more than $5.6 million, are part of a settlement between Ring and the F.T.C. over claims that the company failed to protect customer accounts.Here’s what to know.What is the lawsuit about?The F.T.C. sued Ring last May, accusing the company of giving employees and contractors access to customers’ private video footage. The agency said in its complaint that Ring had used the videos to train computer algorithms without first getting customers’ consent. Ring also failed to have proper protections, which made customer accounts, videos and cameras more vulnerable to hacking, the F.T.C. said.The F.T.C. and Ring reached a settlement that month. As part of the agreement, Ring paid a settlement that would be used for customer refunds, deleted all private videos that it shouldn’t have access to, and established a privacy and security program. The F.T.C. is now using the money Ring paid to send 117,044 PayPal payments to affected customers.Ring did not immediately respond to a request for comment. But in a statement after the settlement, Ring said that it addressed issues about its security and privacy practices “well before” the F.T.C.’s lawsuit, and that the agency “mischaracterizes our security practices and ignores the many protections we have in place for our customers.”How do I find out if I am eligible for the refund?If you had a Ring account and certain types of Ring devices, such as the indoor camera models Stick Up Cam and Indoor Cam, before Feb. 1, 2018, you are eligible for a refund, according to a court order.The defendant — in this case, Ring — is typically required to provide a list of customers, their contact information and how much they paid. The F.T.C. will use the information to send payments.Eligible customers should have already received an email from the F.T.C.How much will I receive?Your payment depends on the type of Ring device you owned and the time you had your account.I got a PayPal payment from the F.T.C. How do I know if it is real?If you are eligible for a refund, you should have received an email from the agency (from the address subscribe@subscribe.ftc.gov) before Tuesday. Since payments were issued on Tuesday, you should have received another email from PayPal about the refund. You have to redeem the payment by May 22, or it will be returned to the F.T.C.If you would like the F.T.C. to send you a check instead, or have any other questions about the payment, you can speak with the refund administrator, Rust Consulting, by calling 1-833-637-4884. You can also email your request to info@ring.com. More

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      Judge Approves $418 Million Settlement That Will Change Real Estate Commissions

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      Home sellers will no longer be required to offer commission to a buyer’s agent when they sell their property, under an agreement with the National Association of Realtors.A settlement that will rewrite the way many real estate agents are paid in the United States has received preliminary approval from a federal judge.On Tuesday morning, Judge Stephen R. Bough, a United States district judge, signed off on an agreement between the National Association of Realtors and home sellers who sued the real estate trade group over its longstanding rules on commissions to agents that they say forced them to pay excessive fees. The agreement is still subject to a hearing for final court approval, which is expected to be held on Nov. 22. But that hearing is largely a formality, and Judge Bough’s action in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri now paves the way for N.A.R. to begin implementing the sweeping rule changes required by the deal. The changes will likely go into full effect among brokerages across the country by Sept. 16. N.A.R., in a statement from spokesman Mantill Williams, welcomed the settlement’s preliminary approval.“It has always been N.A.R.’s goal to resolve this litigation in a way that preserves consumer choice and protects our members to the greatest extent possible,” he said in an email. “There are strong grounds for the court to approve this settlement because it is in the best interests of all parties and class members.”N.A.R. reached the agreement in March to settle the lawsuit, and a series of similar claims, by making the changes and paying $418 million in damages. Months earlier, in October, a jury had reached a verdict that would have required the organization to pay at least $1.8 billion in damages, agreeing with homeowners who argued that N.A.R.’s rules on agent commissions forced them to pay excessive fees when they sold their property. 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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      Lawsuit Puts Fresh Focus on Eric Hovde’s Comments About Older Voters

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      Pressed on his claims of 2020 election irregularities, the Republican candidate for Senate in Wisconsin has questioned the mental capacity of nursing home residents to vote.Eric Hovde, the Republican banking executive challenging Senator Tammy Baldwin in Wisconsin, may be developing a problem with older voters.The bank he leads, Utah-based Sunwest, last month was named as a co-defendant in a California lawsuit that accuses a senior living facility partly owned by the bank of elder abuse, negligence and wrongful death.Mr. Hovde’s campaign called the suit meritless and said it was farcical to hold the chairman and chief executive of a bank responsible for the actions of a business that it seized in a foreclosure in 2021. Whatever its merits, the suit might have been largely irrelevant to Mr. Hovde’s political campaign had he himself not boasted recently of having gained expertise in the nursing home industry as a lender to such residences.In comments this month in which he suggested there had been irregularities in the 2020 election, Mr. Hovde drew on that experience to say that residents of nursing homes “have a five-, six-month life expectancy” and that “almost nobody in a nursing home is at a point to vote.” Those remarks were quickly condemned by Democrats in Wisconsin and by the former Milwaukee Bucks star Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.The recent pileup of problems is an inauspicious start to a campaign that Republicans hope will help wrest control of the Senate from Democrats. Mr. Hovde is one of four affluent Republicans who are running to unseat Democratic incumbents, in Ohio, Montana, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.Each of those states either leans heavily Republican in the upcoming presidential contest or is rated a tossup, and the loss of any one of those seats could cost Democrats control of the Senate. The deep pockets of candidates like Mr. Hovde will ease the G.O.P.’s heavy fund-raising burden as the party confronts Democrats’ early financial advantage.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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      Eric Adams’s Top Aide, Timothy Pearson, Is Hit With a Second Harassment Lawsuit

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      The aide, Timothy Pearson, was accused of harassing and retaliating against a second police sergeant under his watch.One of Mayor Eric Adams’s closest confidants was sued on Wednesday for the second time in a month over accusations that he harassed and retaliated against a New York Police Department sergeant he oversaw.The confidant, Timothy Pearson, was so prone to sexually harassing women that he was secretly placed under watch to try to prevent him from being alone with female colleagues, the suit says.The allegations, made by a retired sergeant, Michael Ferrari, in a complaint filed Wednesday in State Supreme Court in Manhattan, support similar accusations by one of Mr. Ferrari’s former colleagues in the unit, Roxanne Ludemann.Ms. Ludemann filed suit against Mr. Pearson last month, alleging that he often put his hands on female colleagues and retaliated against those who complained.Ms. Ludemann retired in January after she said she was subject to harassment and retaliation. Her departure came roughly seven months after Mr. Ferrari retired; he said in the lawsuit that Mr. Pearson’s harassment and retaliation had effectively ended his career.Mr. Ferrari also asserted that Mr. Pearson was privately given the nickname “Crumbs” when he expressed anger after a contractor had been paid.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 Dept. Nears $100 Million Settlement to Larry Nassar Victims Over FBI Failures

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      The deal, which could be announced in coming weeks, would bring an end to one of the last major cases stemming from a horrific sports scandal.The Justice Department is nearing a $100 million settlement over its initial failure to investigate Lawrence G. Nassar, the former U.S.A. Gymnastics team doctor convicted of sexually abusing girls under his care, according to people familiar with the situation.The deal, which could be announced in coming weeks, would bring an end to one of the last major cases stemming from a horrific sports scandal, with around 100 victims in line to receive compensation.The approach of a settlement comes two and a half years after senior F.B.I. officials publicly admitted that agents had failed to take quick action when U.S. national team athletes complained about Mr. Nassar to the bureau’s Indianapolis field office in 2015, when Mr. Nassar was a respected physician known for working with Olympians and college athletes. He has been accused of abusing more than 150 women and girls over the years.The broad outline of the deal is in place, but it has not yet been completed, according to several people with knowledge of the talks, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss continuing negotiations.The details of the settlement deal were reported earlier by The Wall Street Journal.It would be the latest in a series of big payouts that reflect the inability of institutions to protect hundreds of athletes — including the Olympic gold medalists Simone Biles, McKayla Maroney and Aly Raisman — from a doctor who justified his serial sexual abuse by claiming he was using unconventional treatments.In 2018, Michigan State University, which employed Mr. Nassar, paid more than $500 million into a victim compensation fund, believed to be the largest settlement by a university in a sexual abuse case. Three years later, U.S.A. Gymnastics and the United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee reached a $380 million settlement.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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      National Academy Asks Court to Strip Sackler Name From Endowment

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      Millions in Sackler donations sat dormant, rising in value as the opioid epidemic raged and as other institutions distanced themselves from the makers of a notorious painkiller.The National Academy of Sciences is asking a court to allow it to repurpose about $30 million in donations from the wealthy Sackler family, who controlled the company at the center of the opioid epidemic, and to remove the family name from the endowment funds.The petition filed by the Academy in Superior Court in Washington, D.C., Thursday aims to modify the terms of the donations so the institution can use them for scientific studies, projects and educational activities.The move follows a report in The New York Times last year that examined donations from several Sackler members, including an executive of Purdue Pharma, which produced the painkiller OxyContin that has long been blamed for fueling the opioid crisis that has claimed thousands of lives.“The notoriety of the Sackler name has made it impossible for the Academy to carry out the purposes for which it originally accepted the funds,” Marcia McNutt, president of the National Academy of Sciences, said in a statement released on Thursday.Daniel S. Connolly, a spokesman for the Raymond Sackler family, said it supported the National Academies in “using the funds as they see fit” and would have supported the change.“We would have said yes if we’d been asked, just as we will still say yes despite this unnecessary court filing and false assertions about us,” Mr. Connolly said in a statement.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