With direction from Cole, his immediate boss, Nielsen has devoted his work life and part of his personal life over the last five years to reconstructing a web tying together the 20 companies and at least 15 individuals who systematically and methodically brokered the agreements to fix prices and divide up market shares, according to the lawsuit.
The cigarette makers eventually settled with the state for about $17.6 billion.
Big Tobacco is still paying that settlement and it hasn’t been too much of a burden. They just increased the price of cigarettes and went on to deal with other states and the federal government with the money forked over by millions of smokers. In the end, government and lawyers raked in the cash. The tobacco industry did have to change its marketing strategy a bit, but the same cigarettes are still available just about everywhere—selling well enough to generate record profits for the top tobacco companies—and smokers are still getting sick, still dying. …
Google is trying again to end an advertisement tracking privacy violation court case brought against it in 2012, this time with a settlement offer of US$5.5 million (A$7.3 million). At the heart of the legal action is Google’s bypass of the default cookie settings in Apple’s Safari for iOS and Microsoft’s Internet Explorer web browsers. Cookies are small text files that web servers can place on …
A federal judge in Texarkana has granted class action certification in two lawsuits accusing major insurance companies of unlawfully depreciating labor costs in claims for property damage in Arkansas. The suits accuse State Farm Fire and Casualty Co. and American Modern Home Insurance Co. of improperly depreciating the value of labor costs when …