Lawyer News
Today's Date: U.S. Attorney News Feed
Class Action Suit Filed Against Worldspace, Inc.
Class Action News | 2007/03/26 16:28

NEW YORK, NY -- The Rosen Law Firm recently announced that it has filed a class action lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York on behalf of a class consisting of all purchasers of the common stock of Worldspace, Inc. (the "Company" or "Worldspace") (NASDAQ: WRSP) pursuant and/or traceable to the Company's August 4, 2005 Initial Public Offering (the "Class"). Purchasers of WorldSpace shares on the open market are also eligible to join the class action.

The complaint charges that Worldspace and certain of its present officers and directors violated Sections 11, 12 and 15 of the Securities Act of 1933 by issuing materially false and misleading statements about the Company's subscriber count. The Complaint alleges that the Company included in its subscriber count accounts that had either expired or been "churned." The Complaint alleges that the Company included these expired or "churned" accounts for at least 90 days after the accounts had expired or were otherwise non-paying. As a result of these adverse disclosures the Company's stock fell and members of the Class were damaged.

A class action lawsuit has already been filed on behalf of Worldspace shareholders. If you wish to serve as lead plaintiff, you must move the Court no later than May 15, 2007. If you wish to join the litigation or to discuss your rights or interests regarding this class action, please contact plaintiff's counsel, Laurence Rosen, Esq. or Phillip Kim of The Rosen Law Firm toll free at 866-767-3653 or via e-mail at lrosen@rosenlegal.com or pkim@rosenlegal.com.

The Rosen Law Firm has expertise in prosecuting investor securities litigation and extensive experience in actions involving financial fraud. The Rosen Law Firm represents investors throughout the nation, concentrating its practice in securities class actions.

To view the complaint or to join the Worldspace class action, go to the website at http://www.rosenlegal.com or call Laurence Rosen, Esq. or Phillip Kim, Esq. toll-free at 866-767-3653 or email lrosen@rosenlegal.com or pkim@rosenlegal.com for information on the class action.



Class Action Against Con Agra is Nationwide
Class Action News | 2007/03/26 16:18

Plaintiffs counsel Kathryn E. Barnett announced today that 32 consumers, including the parents of nine children that became seriously ill after eating Peter Pan or Great Value peanut butter, spanning 16 states filed an amended class action complaint today against the international food conglomerate ConAgra Foods, Inc. The proposed class consists of all persons nationwide that contracted Salmonella Tennessee from eating ConAgras contaminated peanut butter, which was all manufactured and packaged in a single location ConAgras plant in Sylvester, Georgia.

"This case shows that the number of 425 persons made ill from eating Salmonella tainted peanut butter as reported by the Center for Diseases Control constitutes a gross underestimate," stated Kathryn Barnett of the national plaintiffs law firm Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein, LLP. "We believe thousands of consumers have been made sick over the past two years. Since the recall was announced in February, our law firm alone has been contacted by over a thousand persons that have reported symptoms of Salmonella poisoning, including fever, stomach cramps and severe diarrhea which in many cases required hospitalization."

The plaintiffs in the nationwide class action lawsuit reside in Albertville and Flomaton, Alabama; Cabot and Romance, Arkansas; Oakley, California; Manalapan, Palm City and Winter Garden, Florida; Chatsworth and Dalton, Georgia; Hymera, Indiana; Paducah, Kentucky; Lake Charles and Slidell, Louisiana; Holly Springs, Mississippi; Jackson, Ohio; Camden, Friendship and Nashville, Tennessee; Richmond, Texas; Manning and Newberry, South Carolina; Jackson, Ohio; Grandview, Washington; and Lenore, West Virginia. The case, entitled Ware v. ConAgra Foods, Inc., is before the Federal court in Rome, Georgia.

"My husband and I were terrified when our son became so sick. We called our pediatrician and raced to the Emergency Room with him, stated plaintiff Kelli Hamman of Flomaton, Alabama. I never dreamed it could have been caused by peanut butter. I don't understand why my son and other children had to suffer like this, and I hope ConAgra will take responsibility and answer to every family that has suffered."

Ms. Barnett advised consumers: "If you have suffered symptoms of contaminated peanut butter, do not discard the evidence; instead mark the peanut butter with 'Do Not Eat' or 'Contaminated' and make certain the jar is stored in a safe place that is beyond the reach of children. The peanut butter can be tested for the presence of Salmonella."

Representing the plaintiffs are Kathryn E. Barnett of the Nashville, Tennessee office of Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein, LLP; Clay Jenkins of Jenkins & Jenkins, PC, of Waxahachie, Texas; and Robert H. Smalley, III, of the Dalton, Georgia law firm of McCamy, Phillips, Tuggle & Fordham, LLP.

Consumers stricken by Salmonella poisoning who wish to learn more about the lawsuit and report their experiences to plaintiffs' counsel should visit http://www.personalinjurylawyeramerica.com or contact injury attorney Kathryn E. Barnett toll-free at 1-866-313-1973.

Members of the media who wish to receive a copy of the complaint should contact Brandan De Coteau at bdecoteau@lchb.com



High court takes up price-fixing case
Court Feed News | 2007/03/25 17:04

When a family-owned retailer in Texas lowered prices on women's fashion accessories, the manufacturer cut off the store's supply. Phil and Kay Smith sued and won in a case now before the Supreme Court that asks whether price-fixing always is illegal. Arguments before the justices were scheduled for Monday. The manufacturer, Leegin Creative Leather Products Inc. in City of Industry, Calif., is challenging a 1911 Supreme Court ruling that automatically classifies agreements to set minimum prices as anticompetitive.

Leegin says that by maintaining price consistency among niche retailers it sells to, stores can offer improved customer service. That, says the manufacturer, enables smaller stores to compete against rival brands sold by bigger cut-rate competitors.

At issue is whether price floors such as Leegin's always should be treated as illegal or evaluated case by case to see if they are pro-competitive.

The Smiths say they lowered prices by up to 20 percent because several other retailers selling Leegin's Brighton brand also were lowering prices. The Smiths say they and the competing stores were threatened by Leegin with being cut off unless they raised their prices again. Alone among the threatened stores, the Smiths refused to cave in.

"When Leegin stopped shipping to us, my wife and I lost half our business," Phil Smith said in an interview. "Kay and I are back to the same size store we started with 21 years ago."

Discounters and consumer groups say consumers will suffer if the Smiths lose.

"In the Internet age, this is a dagger at the heart of the most consumer-friendly environment we've seen in generations," said Mark Cooper, a spokesman for the Consumer Federation of America.

"Would there ever have been a Sears & Roebuck, an A&P, a Walgreens, a Kmart or a Wal-Mart" absent a ban on minimum pricing agreements? the federation asked in court papers filed in support of Kay's Kloset.

In Leegin v. Kay's Kloset, the Bush administration says it is inappropriate to automatically prohibit price floor agreements when they are not necessarily anticompetitive.

Thirty-seven state attorneys general oppose the administration.



Oracle's SAP suit raises users' ethics concerns
Attorney Blogs | 2007/03/25 16:44

Oracle filed a lawsuit in U.S. Federal District Court on Thursday against SAP, its SAP America division, its TomorrowNow subsidiary and 50 unnamed individuals Oracle claims were SAP employees. The complaint charges that SAP committed "corporate theft on a grand scale," with one or more staff at

TomorrowNow allegedly pretending to be Oracle customers and illegally hacking into its secure support Web site for users of Oracle's PeopleSoft and JD Edwards applications. SAP then allegedly copied content from the site and used it to offer Oracle customers cut-rate support services in the hopes of eventually migrating them over to SAP's rival applications.

So far, SAP has yet to respond publicly to the accusations, perhaps suggesting that a countersuit could be in the offing. As for Oracle, the vendor hasn't made any additional comment beyond the lawsuit itself.

"If we decide to trust a company, we'd hope it to be justified," said an IT manager at a French company that uses JD Edwards applications and sources its support for that software from TomorrowNow. "When we choose a supplier, we don't necessarily investigate them first," he added. The manager agreed to speak on the condition of anonymity for himself and his company.

While products, services and price are primary factors in procurement decisions, a vendor's ethics and business practices are also extremely important, according to John Matelski, chief security officer and deputy chief information officer for the city of Orlando and a JD Edwards user. He's also the former president of the Quest International Users Group, which focuses on the needs of PeopleSoft and JD Edwards applications customers that Oracle acquired through the January 2005 purchase of PeopleSoft.

"As a public-sector entity, which is directly accountable to its citizens and constituents, I would be concerned about our relationship with any vendor that is proven to conduct business in an unethical manner," Matelski wrote in an e-mail response for comment. He would prefer to do business with companies that can be trusted, and do not have a track record of inappropriate business practices.

"Due to the nature of the relationships that we develop, software vendors and consultants would be held to a higher standard, because they would typically have a greater level of access to our systems and data during implementation and support engagements," Matelski wrote. "The security and privacy of our data is key, and if an organization is known to have illegally obtained data before, I would need to be much more careful when evaluating whether to establish or continue a relationship with them."

David Mitchell, software practice leader at analyst Ovum drew a comparison between the potential damage of the lawsuit with fallout of the corporate spy scandal that hit Hewlett-Packard Co. last year. Despite leading to the resignations of several executives including its chairman, HP weathered the storm well and customers stayed loyal to the company.


"With HP, Hurd responded positively, he apologized," Mitchell said. "It was about the approach they took when something inappropriate had happened. If HP had not responded so positively I think they would have seen more negative consequences."

Should Oracle's charges against SAP be proven, "they need to embrace it and reassure people how it's come about," he added. If there was some wrongdoing, Mitchell, the former senior director for market development at Oracle UK, believes it'll turn out to be the work of one bad apple. "SAP ethically and culturally is a very correct organization, this isn't rotten DNA," he said. "If this turns out to be true, then it will be an individual, I think, who has acted inappropriately."

As for Oracle, the vendor needs to act to avoid any negative publicity from the suit given that it named many customers whose identities were allegedly purloined by SAP and suggested that SAP customers unknowingly might be using services that contain Oracle's intellectual property. "It could be good for Oracle to say, 'We have no beef with the customer, our beef is with SAP,'" Mitchell said. "Or it could be perceived as Oracle picking on the customer."

Andreas Chatziantoniou, a software consultant specializing in Oracle products with Accenture Technology Services in the Netherlands, wondered about another potential negative hit on Oracle.

"From the reputation side, I believe that this can backfire," he wrote in an e-mail. "Oracle has a reputation for dumpster diving in order to get information about competitors," alluding to an incident in 2000 when Oracle defended the actions of detectives it hired to investigate two research groups that supported Microsoft Corp. during its antitrust trial.

The lawsuit might be Oracle's way to gain some extra publicity, following the release earlier this week of the vendor's third-quarter financial results, according to Chatziantoniou. Perhaps a case of "read between the lines: our results could have been much better when SAP would play by the rules," he suggested.

The lawsuit alone won't deter customers from buying SAP's applications, but the noise around the legal action might give both SAP and Oracle users the sense that the firms are distracted and not fully focused on customers' needs, he added.

Now isn't the time for either Oracle or SAP to lose focus, given the competitive threat they face.

Last week, Microsoft, which has tended to focus more on the small to midsize business market with its Dynamics applications, vowed to compete more aggressively in the enterprise market against Oracle and SAP.

Another issue that should give vendors pause is that customers have long memories when it comes to scandals, Chatziantoniou wrote. "Even years later, people (the decision makers) remember the 'bad publicity,'" he added. What might suit the vendors' customers and partners is an out-of-court settlement, he concluded.

"So far such a situation has never happened to me in my business life, but if it did I would consider the fact very heavily when doing business with such a company," Manfred Reif, a managing director at HSH Nordbank, a credit investment bank in Luxembourg, wrote in an e-mail response to comment on the lawsuit. "Nevertheless, first of all being suspicious and 'listening' to your gut feeling should be one's daily duty," he added.

Another factor to bear in mind is the number of customers Oracle and SAP share, Seth Ravin, CEO and president of Rimini Street ., pointed out. He's a co-founder of TomorrowNow, selling his share of the company to SAP in early 2005 and establishing Rimini Street as a rival supplier of third-party maintenance and support.

While Oracle and SAP compete bitterly in the applications market, plenty of SAP users run their software on Oracle's database and middleware. It's in both vendors' interest to resolve the current dispute rapidly.

"So far, we've only heard one side of the argument," Ravin said, with SAP yet to comment.

Given how closely Oracle and SAP watch each other, he finds it hard to believe that the alleged actions by TomorrowNow were deliberate. "I strongly doubt it," he said, adding that such behavior wouldn't be in anyone's best interests and would likely be quickly discovered. Oracle appears to require users of its customer support database to be "self-policing," he said, in other words, they have access to more content than their specific needs warrant, which may have led to some confusion about what was OK for SAP to access and what wasn't.




Colombia ex-intelligence chief released on technicality
Legal World News | 2007/03/25 10:33

Colombian appellate judge Leonor Perdomo ordered the release of ex-intelligence chief Jorge Noguera Friday on the grounds that Noguera was "illegally and unconstitutionally being deprived of his freedom" because chief prosecutor Mario Iguaran had not personally issued an arrest request. Perdomo ruled that Iguaran has to personally request ex-intelligence chief's detention because Noguera was a public servant when the crimes were alleged to have been committed. Noguera, who was arrested on Thursday, is accused of murder and conspiracy for allegedly contracting with illegal paramilitary groups to assassinate political opponents. Iguaran disagreed with the ruling, stating that "think Colombia or the international community can tolerate the message that conspiring with criminals has any relation to one's functions as a public servant."

Noguera, who ran the Colombian Department of Administrative Security resigned in October 2005 after he was tape-recorded while discussing plans to sell intelligence to paramilitary groups. Several of the people on Noguera's hit list were later killed, including university professor Alfredo Correa de Andreis, who was investigating the paramilitary groups at the time of his death in 2004.



Quake in central Japan kills one and hurts over 170
Legal World News | 2007/03/25 02:29

A powerful quake tore into a rural area of coastal central Japan on Sunday, killing at least one person as it toppled aging farmhouses and temples, set off landslides and caused a small tsunami. Some 160 people were injured.

The magnitude 6.9 quake struck at 9:42 a.m. (0042 GMT) off the Noto Peninsula on the Sea of Japan coast. The Meteorological Agency issued a tsunami warning urging an evacuation, but the alert was lifted after a 10-centimeter (6-inch) wave hit the shore, causing no damage.

The temblor was a shock to the region, which had not seen a major quake since 1933.

"The shaking was so violent, I freaked out. All I could do was to duck underneath the desk," said Yukiko Taka, 58, the owner of a traditional lacquerware shop in Wajima, the hardest hit town in Ishikawa prefecture (state). "It was so frightening."

Weaker quakes rattled the region through the day, including a magnitude 5.3 aftershock. No additional damage was reported.

The initial quake knocked down buildings, caused landslides, and cut power, water and transportation lines. The Noto airport was closed, and roads were snarled with residents leaving or concerned Japanese rushing to the area to see relatives.

A 52-year-old woman was crushed to death by a falling stone lantern, officials said, and at least 162 other people were injured, most of them hurt when they fell during the shaking or were hit by falling objects and broken glass.

Local authorities said they were thankful the death toll was so low.

"Perhaps our traditional homes were sturdy enough to survive the quake," said Masayuki Murozuka, an Ishikawa official. "I think it was also fortunate that the quake hit in midmorning so most people were fully awake, perhaps even finished breakfast by then."

Television footage of the quake showed buildings shaking violently for about 30 seconds. After the quake, buildings lay in heaps of rubble, and the windows of shops were shattered. Roof tiles cluttered streets with cracked pavement.

Fear of aftershocks and more landslides caused by the loosening of soil waterlogged by overnight rains continued to plague the quake zone -- and keep residents jittery.

"A fairly big aftershock hit just minutes ago and I jumped out the door," said Tomio Maeda, manager of convenience store Family Mart in Anamizu town. "It's scary, I guess it's not over yet."

In Tokyo, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuhisa Shiozaki said officials were doing their best to rescue victims and assess the extent of the damage.

About 30 soldiers had arrived to help with disaster relief, and military aircraft were examining the damage. Some 375 firefighters from seven other prefectures were also dispatched to help, the Fire and Disaster Management Agency said.

The quake also knocked down at least 45 homes in Ishikawa, and partially destroyed another 227, the FDMA said. Most of the injuries and damage were concentrated in Wajima, about 312 kilometers (193 miles) northwest of Tokyo.



[PREV] [1] ..[1192][1193][1194][1195][1196][1197][1198][1199][1200].. [1258] [NEXT]
   Lawyer News Menu
All
Lawyer Blog News
Court Feed News
Business Law Info
Class Action News
Criminal Law Updates
Employment Law
U.S. Legal News
Legal Career News
Headline News
Law & Politics
Attorney Blogs
Lawyer News
Law Firm Press
Law Firm News
Attorneys News
Legal World News
2008 Metrolink Crash
   Lawyer News Video
   Recent Lawyer News Updates
Former Georgia insurance com..
Alabama woman who faked kidn..
A Supreme Court ruling in a ..
Denying same-sex marriage is..
Trump wants N.Y. hush money ..
China’s top court, prosecut..
Supreme Court restores Trump..
Supreme Court casts doubt on..
Donald Trump appeals $454 mi..
Alabama hospital pauses IVF ..
Ken Paxton petitions to stop..
Attorney Jenna Ellis pleads ..
Trump arrives in federal cou..
Why Trump's bid for presiden..
Samsung chief is acquitted o..
UN court rejects most of Ukr..
Hong Kong court orders China..
Man sentenced to death for a..
Pita Limjaroenrat: Thailand ..
Fueled by border crossings, ..
   Lawyer & Law Firm Links
St. Louis Missouri Criminal Defense Lawyer
St. Charles DUI Attorney
www.lynchlawonline.com
Family Law in East Greenwich, RI
Divorce Lawyer - Erica S. Janton
www.jantonfamilylaw.com/about
San Francisco Trademark Lawyer
San Francisco Copyright Lawyer
www.onulawfirm.com
Raleigh, NC Business Lawyer
www.rothlawgroup.com
Oregon DUI Law Attorney
Eugene DUI Lawyer. Criminal Defense Law
www.mjmlawoffice.com
New York Adoption Lawyers
New York Foster Care Lawyers
Adoption Pre-Certification
www.lawrsm.com
Legal Document Services in Los Angeles, CA
Best Legal Document Preparation
www.tllsg.com
Connecticut Special Education Lawyer
www.fortelawgroup.com
Family Lawyer Rockville Maryland
Divorce lawyer rockville
familylawyersmd.com
© Lawyer News - Law Firm News & Press Releases. All rights reserved.

Attorney News- Find the latest lawyer and law firm news and information. We provide information that surround the activities and careers in the legal industry. We promote legal services, law firms, attorneys as well as news in the legal industry. Review tips and up to date legal news. With up to date legal articles leading the way as a top resource for attorneys and legal practitioners. | Affordable Law Firm Website Design