Suits and Litigation (Civil)

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      Ferguson, Mo., Agrees to Pay $4.5 Million to Settle ‘Debtors’ Prison’ Suit

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      A federal judge gave the settlement preliminarily approval nearly a decade after a class-action lawsuit accused the city of wrongfully jailing plaintiffs for traffic tickets and other minor offenses.The City of Ferguson, Mo., has agreed to pay $4.5 million to settle a federal lawsuit that accused it of violating the constitutional rights of thousands of people who said they were jailed without due process because they could not pay fines.The lawsuit was filed in 2015 amid protests over the killing of Michael Brown, an unarmed Black teenager, by a white Ferguson police officer. It accused the city of jailing the plaintiffs in “deplorable” conditions simply because they could not pay debts owed for traffic tickets or other minor offenses.“They were threatened, abused, and left to languish in confinement,” lawyers for the plaintiffs argued in the suit, noting that these conditions lasted until families could produce enough cash for bail, or until jail officials decided to let them out.On Tuesday, ArchCity Defenders, the nonprofit group in St. Louis that filed the suit, said in a statement that checks would be sent to more than 15,000 people who were jailed by the city between Feb. 8, 2010, and Dec. 30, 2022, and that the amount would depend on the number of hours each of them had spent in jail.David Musgrave, Ferguson’s assistant city manager, said in an email on Thursday that the city would not comment “while the settlement agreement is pending final approval by the Court.”Mr. Musgrave directed further questions to the city’s lawyers, one of whom, Apollo Carey, declined to comment. Another lawyer did not immediately respond to an email and call. Neither the mayor nor the Ferguson Police Department could be reached for comment on Thursday evening.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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      Instagram and Facebook Subscriptions Are a New Focus of Child Safety Suit

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      New Mexico’s attorney general has accused Meta of not protecting children from sexual predators on its platforms. He now wants to know how it polices subscribers to accounts featuring children.The New Mexico attorney general, who last year sued Meta alleging that it did not protect children from sexual predators and had made false claims about its platforms’ safety, announced Monday that his office would examine how the company’s paid-subscription services attract predators.Attorney General Raúl Torrez said he had formally requested documentation from the social media company about subscriptions on Facebook and Instagram, which are frequently available on children’s accounts run by parents.Instagram does not allow users under 13, but accounts that focus entirely on children are permitted as long as they are managed by an adult. The New York Times published an investigation on Thursday into girl influencers on the platform, reporting that the so-called mom-run accounts charge followers up to $19.99 a month for additional photos as well as chat sessions and other extras.The Times found that adult men subscribe to the accounts, including some who actively participate in forums where people discuss the girls in sexual terms.“This deeply disturbing pattern of conduct puts children at risk — and persists despite a wave of lawsuits and congressional investigations,” Mr. Torrez said in a statement.Mr. Torrez filed a complaint in December that accused Meta of enabling harmful activity between adults and minors on Facebook and Instagram and failing to detect and remove such activity when it was reported. The allegations were based, in part, on findings from accounts Mr. Torrez’s office created, including one for a fictitious 14-year-old girl that received an offer of $180,000 to appear in a pornographic video.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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      Sean Combs Accused of Sexual Misconduct by Music Producer

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      Rodney Jones Jr. filed a federal lawsuit on Monday that says the hip-hop mogul made unwanted sexual contact while they worked on an album. A lawyer for Mr. Combs denied the allegations.Sean Combs was sued on Monday by a music producer who accused the hip-hop mogul of making unwanted sexual contact and of forcing him to hire prostitutes and participate in sex acts with them.The latest misconduct allegation against Mr. Combs was filed in Federal District Court in Manhattan by Rodney Jones Jr., also known as Lil Rod. In 2022 and 2023, Mr. Jones says in his suit, he worked on what became “The Love Album: Off the Grid,” the latest album by Mr. Combs, the hip-hop and R&B impresario who has variously been known as Puff Daddy and P. Diddy. Mr. Jones says he served as a producer on nine of the album’s tracks and lived with Mr. Combs for months at a time.While working on “The Love Album,” Mr. Jones says in his complaint that Mr. Combs grabbed his genitals without consent, and that he also tried to “groom” Mr. Jones into having sex with another man, telling him it was “a normal practice in the music industry.”In a statement, Shawn Holley, a lawyer for Mr. Combs, said: “Lil Rod is nothing more than a liar who filed a $30 million lawsuit shamelessly looking for an undeserved payday. His reckless name-dropping about events that are pure fiction and simply did not happen is nothing more than a transparent attempt to garner headlines. We have overwhelming, indisputable proof that his claims are complete lies.”When the suit was filed, the court’s system originally said that Mr. Jones’s demand was for $30 billion. His lawyer, Tyrone A. Blackburn, said that was an error, and that it would be corrected to reflect a demand of $30 million. Ms. Holley’s statement originally reflected a response to $30 billion.According to Mr. Jones’s complaint, at a listening party in July 2023 at Mr. Combs’s home in California, he was forced to drink shots of tequila laced with drugs, though the legal papers do not specify who offered him the shots or how he was forced. In the suit, Mr. Jones says that after he had the drink, he passed out and awoke “at 4 a.m. the following morning naked with a sex worker sleeping next to him.”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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      Supreme Court to Decide How the First Amendment Applies to Social Media

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      Challenges to laws in Florida and Texas meant to protect conservative viewpoints are likely to yield a major constitutional ruling on tech platforms’ free speech rights.The most important First Amendment cases of the internet era, to be heard by the Supreme Court on Monday, may turn on a single question: Do platforms like Facebook, YouTube, TikTok and X most closely resemble newspapers or shopping centers or phone companies?The two cases arrive at the court garbed in politics, as they concern laws in Florida and Texas aimed at protecting conservative speech by forbidding leading social media sites from removing posts based on the views they express.But the outsize question the cases present transcends ideology. It is whether tech platforms have free speech rights to make editorial judgments. Picking the apt analogy from the court’s precedents could decide the matter, but none of the available ones is a perfect fit.If the platforms are like newspapers, they may publish what they want without government interference. If they are like private shopping centers open to the public, they may be required to let visitors say what they like. And if they are like phone companies, they must transmit everyone’s speech.“It is not at all obvious how our existing precedents, which predate the age of the internet, should apply to large social media companies,” Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. wrote in a 2022 dissent when one of the cases briefly reached the Supreme Court.Supporters of the state laws say they foster free speech, giving the public access to all points of view. Opponents say the laws trample on the platforms’ own First Amendment rights and would turn them into cesspools of filth, hate and lies. One contrarian brief, from liberal professors, urged the justices to uphold the key provision of the Texas law despite the harm they said it would cause.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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      New York Is Failing to Meet Wheelchair-Access Goal for Cabs, Suit Says

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      Officials had committed to making sure that 50 percent of the city’s taxi fleet could accommodate wheelchair users by 2023. A lawsuit says they have fallen short.Advocates for New Yorkers with disabilities have sued taxi regulators for falling short of complying with a legal settlement that required half of the city’s licensed taxis to be wheelchair-accessible.The suit argues that taxi regulators have shown that they have “no intention of even attempting” to meet the goal.On Wednesday, the group of advocates, which includes four nonprofits, filed a motion in U.S. District Court in Manhattan urging a judge to order the city to meet the requirement. Only 42 percent of active taxis can accommodate wheelchair users.“It is so disheartening that the city doesn’t want to be more than 50 percent accessible,” said Dan Brown, an attorney representing the plaintiffs. “The fact that they haven’t met the goal is really beyond disappointing and sad.”Jason Kersten, a spokesman for the city’s Taxi and Limousine Commission, said in a statement that the commission is “committed to accessibility.”“When you factor in our entire fleet, we now have almost three times the number of accessible vehicles than we did five years ago,” Mr. Kersten said. “We will keep working to make our fleet even more accessible.”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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      Child Welfare Agency Routinely Violates Families’ Rights, Suit Charges

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      Lawyers for a group of New York City parents argue that the Administration for Children’s Services uses “coercive tactics” that traumatize the families it is charged with protecting.A sweeping class-action lawsuit filed against New York City on Tuesday argues that the agency that investigates child abuse and neglect routinely engages in unconstitutional practices that traumatize the families it is charged with protecting.The lawsuit says that investigators for the Administration for Children’s Services deceive and bully their way into people’s homes, where they rifle through families’ most private spaces, strip-search children and humiliate parents.The agency’s “coercive tactics” include threatening to take children away or call the police, telling parents they have no choice but to let them in and making public scenes in hallways, according to the suit, filed in federal court in Brooklyn.Marisa Kaufman, a spokeswoman for the agency, said in a statement on Monday that A.C.S. would review the lawsuit. “A.C.S. is committed to keeping children safe and respecting parents’ rights,” she said.She added, “We will continue to advance our efforts to achieve safety, equity, and justice by enhancing parents’ awareness of their rights, connecting families to critical services, providing families with alternatives to child protection investigations, and working with key systems to reduce the number of families experiencing an unnecessary child protective investigation.”Eastern District Lawsuit Against New York CityRead Document 49 pagesWe 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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      At Rally in Michigan, Trump Lashes Out at Judge Who Fined Him $355 Million

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      Former President Donald J. Trump vented about his latest legal defeat to freezing supporters at a Michigan rally on Saturday night, a day after a New York judge fined him nearly $355 million plus interest in his civil fraud case.The Republican front-runner for his party’s presidential nomination, Mr. Trump denied that he had conspired to manipulate his net worth, which he was found liable of by Justice Arthur F. Engoron in a ruling that could wipe out Mr. Trump’s entire cash stockpile.“This judge is a lunatic,” he said in his opening salvo at his rally, held inside an airport hangar in Oakland County about 30 miles from Detroit.Mr. Trump used a similar line of attack against Letitia James, New York’s attorney general, who had accused him of exaggerating his wealth in the lengthy case. Barred by the judge for three years from serving in top roles at any New York company, including portions of his own Trump Organization, Mr. Trump cast aspersions on the justice system and said he had been persecuted.Mr. Trump’s visit to Michigan overlapped with the first day of early, in-person voting in the state, which is using both a primary and a caucus-style convention to award delegates for the first time in Republican Party contests.At the rally, the Trump campaign placed large signs urging supporters to take advantage of early voting.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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      Who Created Butter Chicken? India’s Great Curry Clash.

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      A court has been asked to solve a bitter dispute between two families who have very different accounts of the origins of a dish beloved around the world.In 1947, two men, both named Kundan, fled Peshawar during the bloody partition that carved Pakistan out of British India. They landed in Delhi and soon became partners in a restaurant called Moti Mahal serving food from the Punjab region.On this much their descendants agree. Where they diverge is on the question of which of the men should go down in culinary history.The two families both say that it was their own Kundan who invented butter chicken — the creamy, heavenly marriage of tandoori chicken and tomato gravy beloved everywhere north Indian food is served. And one of them has gone to court to try to prove it.A picture of Kundan Lal Gujral at Moti Mahal.Before we dig in: Yes, it’s hard to prove that any single person came up with dishes that have become ubiquitous. Also, does it even matter after all these years? Being first doesn’t necessarily mean being best.But in the case of butter chicken, much is riding on the verdict — money, mostly, but also the legacy of the storied restaurant that the two men began building nearly eight decades ago, a span that covers almost all of India’s modern history as an independent nation.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