Articles Posted in Business and Corporate Law

On Thursday, April 25, 2019, Facebook, Inc.  and Instagram, LLC filed a lawsuit in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California against Social Media Series Limited, a New Zealand company, and three other individual defendants for selling fake engagement services to Instagram users. The complaint alleges that the defendants sold fake likes, views, and followers to Instagram users as a service. Facebook and Instagram suspended the defendants' accounts and then warned them formally, in writing, to notify defendants that they were violating Instagram's Terms of Use and Community Guidelines. The defendants continued to violate Instagram's Terms of Use and Community Guidelines, which resulted in the lawsuit.

A family whose daughter was killed in the Ethiopian Airlines 737 MAX crash filed a lawsuit against Boeing Co and Rosemount Aerospace Inc, which makes a part of the aircraft under investigation. The parents of Samya Stumo, who was on a work trip when the crash occurred on March 10 shortly after takeoff from Addis Ababa, filed the complaint in U.S. federal court in Chicago. The crash killed all 157 people on board.

New Jersey has become just the second state in the U.S. to prohibit retail stores and restaurants from refusing to accept cash. The law targets stores that accept payments only by credit cards or through an app.

The lawsuit seeks to prevent the Tesla CEO from using social media to make misleading statements about the company.

A judge in New York has ruled that state Attorney General Barbara Underwood's case against the Trump Foundation can go forward. The case alleges that the charitable foundation engaged in a consistent pattern of illegal acts for over a decade, being used to settle business disputes and support the 2016 Trump presidential campaign. The judge ruled that U.S. Supreme Court precedent in the Paula Jones sexual harassment lawsuit against then-President Clinton clearly states that the president is not immune from civil liability while in office.

Apple will tell the Supreme Court today that it cannot be sued by the iPhone owners who claim that the App Store has an unlawful monopoly.

In response to the recent worldwide protests, Google CEO Sundar Pichai announced that the company would agree to the first demand made by the organizers.

Last week, Match Group and its parent company IAC were sued by current and former employees of Tinder, among whom are co-founders Sean Rad and Justin Mateen. The lawsuit includes allegations that the parent company withheld information about Tinder's potential growth to avoid paying billions of dollars to the start-up team.

On Wednesday, a federal judge ruled against President Trump’s latest attempt to hinder a lawsuit that discusses Trump’s alleged violation of the U.S. Constitution through his continued business transactions with foreign governments. The ruling was made by U.S. District Judge Peter J. Messitte and will enable the plaintiffs, the attorneys general of Maryland and the District of Columbia — to move forward with their lawsuit, which argues that Trump has violated anti-corruption clauses, known as emoluments clauses, in the U.S. Constitution.

On Thursday, New York Attorney General Barbara Underwood filed a civil lawsuit against Donald Trump and his three eldest children for allegedly misusing funds associated with his personal foundation. The complaint, filed in New York state court, asks the judge to dissolve the Donald J. Trump Foundation and distribute its remaining $1 million in assets to other charities. Moreover, the lawsuit asks that Trump be forced to pay at least $2.8 million in restitution and penalties and takes the unusual step of requesting that Trump be banned from leading any other New York nonprofit organization for 10 years and that each of his three children be banned from serving as a director of a New York nonprofit organization for one year.