Suits and Litigation (Civil)

Subterms

    More stories

    • 75 Shares169 Views

      in Elections

      Read the lawsuit against Live Nation

      by

      Case 1:24-cv-03973 Document 1 Filed 05/23/24 Page 32 of 128
      64.
      Ticketmaster restructured how ticketing companies get paid for their services.
      Venues used to pay ticketing service companies to ticket events. But in the early 1980s,
      Ticketmaster started passing more ticketing costs onto consumers (who effectively have no
      choice in selecting the ticketer) in the form of fees, and then sharing some of the additional
      revenue with venues. Second, Ticketmaster began paying venues large upfront advances in
      exchange for the exclusive, multi-year right to sell and distribute their tickets.
      65. On February 10, 2009, Live Nation (then known as Live Nation, Inc.) and
      Ticketmaster (then known as Ticketmaster Entertainment, Inc.), agreed to merge. At the time,
      Live Nation was an emerging direct competitor to Ticketmaster in primary ticketing services:
      after spending nearly two years evaluating, licensing, and developing its own ticketing platform,
      Live Nation had rapidly become America’s second-largest primary ticketer at major concert
      venues.² Alleging the merger would likely substantially lessen competition in the provision and
      sale of primary ticketing services for major concert venues, the United States and nineteen states³
      filed a case challenging the merger under Section 7 of the Clayton Act, 15 U.S.C. § 18.4 The
      parties agreed to a consent decree, entered as a final judgment in the Section 7 case on July 30,
      2010, allowing the merger to proceed subject to certain conditions.
      2 Amended Complaint at 5 ¶ 3, 13–14 ¶¶ 34–37, United States et al. v. Ticketmaster Ent., Inc., et al., No. 1:10-cv-
      00139, Dkt. No. (D.D.C. Jan. 29, 2010), ECF No. 5.
      3 Specifically, the States of Arizona, Arkansas, California, Florida, Illinois, Iowa, Louisiana, Nebraska, Nevada,
      Ohio, Oregon, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Texas, Wisconsin, New Jersey, and Washington and the Commonwealths
      of Massachusetts and Pennsylvania. Id. at 1.
      4 Id. at 1746.
      5 Final Judgment, United States et al. v. Ticketmaster Ent., Inc., et al., No. 1:10-cv-00139 (D.D.C. July 30, 2010),
      ECF No. 15.
      28
      28 More

    • 125 Shares119 Views

      in Elections

      Judge Blocks Attempt to Sell Graceland, at Least for Now

      by

      Elvis’s granddaughter, the actress Riley Keough, had filed a lawsuit seeking to stop what her lawyers said was a fraudulent auction off her family home.Graceland will not be sold at auction, at least for now.On Wednesday, a Tennessee judge deferred ruling on an apparent attempt to sell Graceland, Elvis Presley’s former home in Memphis, but kept a temporary injunction in place that would prevent the property from going to auction imminently.The bizarre case came into wide public view this week when a lawsuit surfaced that had been filed by Mr. Presley’s granddaughter, the actress Riley Keough. In it, Ms. Keough sued to prevent what her lawyers described as a fraudulent effort to auction the home by a company claiming that Lisa Marie Presley — Ms. Keough’s mother and Mr. Presley’s daughter — had borrowed $3.8 million and put Graceland up as collateral before she died in 2023.At Wednesday’s hearing at Chancery Court in Shelby County, Tenn., the judge, Chancellor JoeDae L. Jenkins, said he needed to continue the case, in part because no one showed up in person to represent the defendants and in part because he said lawyers for Ms. Keough needed to present additional evidence.The defendants included a company, Naussany Investments & Private Lending LLC, which had scheduled a sale of Graceland for Thursday, according to court papers. The court said it had received a filing on Wednesday morning from a man named Gregory Naussany who had asked the court to continue the case.It was not clear when the next hearing would take place.Lawyers for Ms. Keough had argued that the company appeared to be a “false entity.” They also claimed that the company had presented fake documents purporting to show that Ms. Presley had borrowed the money and put Graceland up as collateral.Several attempts to reach Naussany Investments through the email addresses and phone numbers listed for the company in the court documents have not been successful.Graceland, a popular tourist attraction, is a major source of income for Elvis Presley Enterprises and the family trust, which Ms. Keough controls. More

    • 125 Shares179 Views

      in Elections

      Riley Keough Sues to Block Sale of Graceland, Charging Fraud

      by

      His granddaughter, the actress Riley Keough, claims that a company is fraudulently planning to auction off Elvis’s home in Memphis.Lawyers for the actress Riley Keough, the granddaughter of Elvis Presley, have sued to stop what they say is a fraudulent scheme to sell Graceland, the family’s cherished former home in Memphis.Court papers that Ms. Keough’s lawyers filed this month claim that a company planning to auction off Graceland is fraudulently claiming that her mother — Elvis’s daughter, Lisa Marie Presley, who died in 2023 — had borrowed money and put Graceland up as collateral. The papers say that the company, Naussany Investments & Private Lending LLC, “appears to be a false entity” and that the documents it presented about the loan were also fake.“There is no foreclosure sale,” Elvis Presley Enterprises, which operates Graceland, said in a statement, in which it also said that the lawsuit had been filed to “stop the fraud.”Graceland, a popular tourist attraction, is a major source of income for Elvis Presley Enterprises and the family trust.A representative for Ms. Keough, who controls her family’s trust, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday. A lawyer representing Keough in the case also did not respond.Months after Lisa Marie Presley died, Naussany Investments presented documents claiming that she had borrowed $3.8 million from the company and “gave a deed of trust encumbering Graceland as security,” according to court papers filed in Shelby County, Tenn. Copies of the documents were provided to The New York Times by Elvis Presley Enterprises.Naussany Investments had scheduled a sale of Graceland for Thursday, the court papers say. But after Ms. Keough’s lawyers argued that the deed was fraudulent, the court issued a restraining order barring any sale, according to the documents. The documents say a hearing has been scheduled for Wednesday.Attempts to reach Naussany Investments through the email addresses and phone numbers listed for the company in the court documents were not immediately successful. One listed phone number was said to be no longer in service.Last year, Ms. Keough and her grandmother Priscilla Presley engaged in a monthslong legal battle that eventually left Ms. Keough as the sole trustee of the financial instrument established by her mother, the Promenade Trust.Even as bills have sometimes mounted, the family has held on to the main house at Graceland — an eight-bedroom, eight-bath Colonial revival home in Memphis that served as Elvis Presley’s personal home from 1957 until his death, in 1977, at the age of 42. The house was appraised at $5.6 million in 2021.But Graceland has become worth far more as a tourist attraction. In 2022, operations at Graceland generated at least $80 million, most of which supports Elvis Presley Enterprises. The family trust retains 15 percent of Elvis Presley Enterprises. More

    • 138 Shares169 Views

      in Elections

      Trump Calls ‘Apprentice’ Biopic at Cannes ‘Garbage’ and Plans to Sue

      by

      The director of “The Apprentice” was unfazed by the threat to the film, which covers the ex-president’s relationships with his first wife and the fixer Roy Cohn.The day after the Cannes Film Festival premiered “The Apprentice,” a biopic of Donald J. Trump, the former president hit back at the movie, calling it “malicious defamation” and threatening legal action.“This garbage is pure fiction which sensationalizes lies that have been long debunked,” said Steven Cheung, a spokesman for the Trump campaign.Directed by Ali Abbasi and written by the author Gabriel Sherman, “The Apprentice” follows Trump (Sebastian Stan) as an ambitious young man seeking to establish himself as a real estate magnate. He finds a mentor in the wily lawyer Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong) and a first wife in the fashion model Ivana Zelnickova (Maria Bakalova), though Trump is willing to discard both once they’re no longer of use to him.The film is hardly a flattering portrait of the former president, and includes scenes where the business mogul goes under the knife for liposuction and a scalp procedure to fix his bald spot. In its most controversial sequence, the Trump character sexually assaults his wife after she criticizes his looks. (Ivana, who died in 2022, accused Trump of rape in her divorce deposition, though she disavowed the claim later.)Cheung said the Trump team plans to file a lawsuit “to address the blatantly false assertions from these pretend filmmakers.”Though the threat could affect the release of “The Apprentice,” which currently has no distributor, Abbasi sounded unfazed at the film’s news conference on Tuesday.“Everybody talks about him suing a lot of people,” the director said. “They don’t talk about his success rate, though.” More

    • 163 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      A Black Teenager Was Wrongfully Executed in 1931. Now His Family Is Suing.

      by

      Alexander McClay Williams was 16 when he was executed in Pennsylvania for the murder of a 34-year-old white woman. His conviction was overturned in 2022.On June 8, 1931, Alexander McClay Williams, a 16-year-old Black student, was executed by electric chair, the youngest person to be put to death in Pennsylvania history.Months earlier, Alexander had been convicted of murdering a 34-year-old white woman, Vida Robare, a matron at the reform school outside Philadelphia that Williams attended.There were no witnesses to the murder, and evidence that might have cleared Alexander was kept from the jury by prosecutors. For almost four decades, Sam Lemon, a great-grandson of William Ridley, Alexander’s lawyer, worked to reveal that Williams had not committed the crime, and was the victim of gross prosecutorial misconduct by Delaware County, Pa.A judge overturned the conviction in 2022 and granted a motion for a retrial. Jack Stollsteimer, the Delaware County district attorney, moved to dismiss the charges posthumously, acknowledging yet another example of a Black person being wrongfully convicted of a crime they hadn’t committed.On Friday, Alexander’s family filed a federal lawsuit in the District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania against Delaware County, as well as the estates of the detectives and prosecutors on the case, calling their conduct “outrageous, malicious, wanton, willful, reckless and intentionally designed to inflict harm.”“They murdered my brother. That’s what they did,” Susie Carter, Alexander’s 94-year-old sister, said in an interview on Monday. Ms. Carter, along with two of Alexander’s nieces, Osceola Carter and Osceola Perdue, are listed as plaintiffs in the lawsuit.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

    • 113 Shares149 Views

      in Elections

      NYPD Responded Aggressively to Protests After Promises to Change

      by

      Violent responses to pro-Palestinian activists follow a sweeping agreement aimed at striking an equilibrium between preserving public safety and the rights of protesters.Last September, the New York Police Department signed a sweeping agreement in federal court that was meant to end overwhelming responses to protests that often led to violent clashes, large-scale arrests and expensive civil rights lawsuits.The sight of hundreds of officers in tactical gear moving in on pro-Palestinian demonstrators in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, on Saturday suggested to civil libertarians that the department might not abide by the agreement when it is fully implemented. At least two officers wearing the white shirts of commanders were filmed punching three protesters who were prone in the middle of a crosswalk.And film clips of recent campus protests showed some officers pushing and dragging students, a handful of whom later said they had been injured by the police, though many officers appeared to show restraint during the arrests.“I think members of the public are very concerned that the police will be unwilling or unable to meet their end of the bargain,” said Jennvine Wong, a staff attorney with Legal Aid, which, along with the New York Civil Liberties Union, filed a lawsuit against the city over the department’s response to protests in 2020 after the killing of George Floyd.That lawsuit was later combined with a complaint filed by Letitia James, the state attorney general, over what she called widespread abuses during the Black Lives Matter protests. Last fall, police officials and Ms. James reached the agreement in federal court, intended to strike a new equilibrium between the department’s need to preserve public safety and the rights of protesters.The city, along with two major police unions, agreed to develop policies and training that would teach the department to respond gradually to demonstrations, rather than sending in large numbers of officers immediately, and to emphasize de-escalation over an immediate show of force. The implementation was expected to take three years.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

    • 150 Shares169 Views

      in Elections

      Riverside County Jail Death Lawsuit Is Settled for $7.5 Million Amid Inquiry

      by

      A violent encounter captured on video was part of a surge in jail deaths that spurred an inquiry into the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department.Video from inside a Southern California jail shows a violent confrontation in October 2020 in which 10 sheriff’s deputies burst into the cell of a man who was having delusions and resisting medical care, restrained him and repeatedly shocked him, leading to his death days later.Officials in Riverside County did not bring charges against any of the deputies involved in the encounter with the man, Christopher Zumwalt, 39, but quietly agreed in December 2023 to pay $7.5 million to settle a lawsuit filed by his family.Depositions from the case and video footage obtained by The New York Times show the frantic and violent minutes when deputies tried to force Mr. Zumwalt out of his cell as he paced and talked incoherently. In the video, deputies wearing helmets and shields toss canisters of pepper spray into the small concrete room, struggle with Mr. Zumwalt, and strap him to an emergency restraint chair. They cover his head with a spit mask and move him to another cell, where he sat unmonitored and appeared to stop breathing for at least five minutes. He died on Oct. 25, 2020, after experiencing cardiac arrest.Mr. Zumwalt, who was arrested near his home on Oct. 22, 2020, on suspicion of public intoxication, was never charged with a crime, and the arrest report indicates that he was to be released with a citation after he sobered up from the methamphetamine he admitted to taking the night before. On the day of his arrest, he was issued a citation for bringing drugs into a jail.In a statement Friday, Sheriff Chad Bianco said his deputies did nothing wrong and characterized the settlement as a business decision by lawyers that does not imply wrongdoing.“The facts of this case clearly show the actions of our deputies were appropriate and lawful,” Sheriff Bianco said, adding that actions taken by Mr. Zumwalt in a “methamphetamine-induced psychosis caused his death.” More

    • 150 Shares119 Views

      in Elections

      Gov. Jim Justice Faces Heavy Business Debts as He Seeks Senate Seat

      by

      The Justice companies have long had a reputation for not paying their debts. But that may be catching up to them.Jim Justice, the businessman-turned-politician governor of West Virginia, has been pursued in court for years by banks, governments, business partners and former employees for millions of dollars in unmet obligations.And for a long time, Mr. Justice and his family’s companies have managed to stave off one threat after another with wily legal tactics notably at odds with the aw-shucks persona that has endeared him to so many West Virginians. On Tuesday, he is heavily favored to win the Republican Senate primary and cruise to victory in the general election, especially after the departure of the Democratic incumbent, Joe Manchin III.But now, as he wraps up his second term as governor and campaigns for a seat in the U.S. Senate, things are looking dicier. Much like Donald J. Trump, with whom he is often compared — with whom he often compares himself — Mr. Justice has faced a barrage of costly judgments and legal setbacks.And this time, there may be too many, some suspect, for Mr. Justice, 73, and his family to fend them all off. “It’s a simple matter of math,” said Steven New, a lawyer in Mr. Justice’s childhood hometown, Beckley, W.Va., who, like many lawyers in coal country, has tangled with Justice companies. Mr. Justice and his scores of businesses would be able to handle some of these potential multimillion-dollar judgments in isolation, Mr. New said. But “when you add it all up, and put the judgments together close in time, it would appear he doesn’t have enough,” he said.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