The Daily Blog

Ricki Lake Sued For Starting House Fire.

Ricki Lake is busy developing a new talk show, chatting about her love life in the press and writing her life story — a new book deal will have her memoir on shelves next spring. But there’s one chapter in her life she probably doesn’t want to talk about.

Lake is now being sued by Hovsep Kousayan, the owner of a house in Malibu, Calif., that the TV star and her family rented last year.

The beachfront home was destroyed by a massive fire in September, which allegedly began after Lake spilled oil while refilling a space heater.

The lawsuit, according to a report by TMZ, was filed in a Los Angeles court earlier this week. Damages sought could be in the millions.
In preparing the lawsuit, Kousayan reportedly spoke with emergency responders who claim that on the scene, Lake essentially admitted to causing the blaze. And in the panicked 911 call she placed when her couch first went up in flames, Lake is heard telling her children, “Mommy made a mistake.”

The Sheriff’s Dept. of Los Angeles County, however, investigated the fire at Lake’s rental home and concluded that it was an accident.

Lake, 42, is the mother of two sons, Milo and Owen, with her ex-husband, Rob Sussman. The boys were at home at the time of the fire — thankfully, no one was injured. Hours after the harrowing incident, Lake tweeted: “Thank you everyone for your concern and well wishes…My sons, beloved dog and I are are safe and very grateful.”

Players call NFL a ‘cartel’ in court filing.

MINNEAPOLIS — NFL players who sued the league for alleged antitrust violations liken the league to a “cartel” in their latest court filing, again urging an appeals court to lift the lockout.

In arguments filed in the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, just minutes before Friday’s midnight deadline, attorneys for the players reiterated their argument that the NFL has violated antitrust laws. They also argued the lockout has imposed immediate, career-ending threatening harm on players and may deprive the public of the 2011 professional football season.

“The players face immediate, continuing, severe irreparable injury from unlawful conduct orchestrated to force them to re-unionize against their will and make immense financial concessions,” the players’ attorneys wrote. “The NFL, by contrast, claims only a temporary loss of leverage by members of a cartel that is no longer entitled to any exemption from the antitrust laws.”

The longer the fight over how to divvy up $9 billion in annual revenue drags on, the closer the league and players get to missing games. The first preseason game is Aug. 7, with the regular season opener between the Saints and Packers set for Sept. 8 in Green Bay, Wis.

In Friday’s filing, the players reiterated that the decision to dissolve their union was their lawful right, and the absence of a collective bargaining agreement shouldn’t stop the NFL’s ability to “conduct professional football.” And, they argued, the harm they would suffer isn’t comparable to the league’s argument that it would suffer an “intangible blow to their ‘negotiating position’ and ‘leverage.’”

“The overwhelming inequity in that imbalance is patently obvious,” the players’ attorneys wrote.

The players have argued all along that their careers are being harmed by the work stoppage — they can’t work out, or sign contracts with any of the 32 clubs while the lockout persists. A federal judge in Minnesota agreed and lifted the lockout April 25, but the league appealed.

The appeals court reversed U.S. District Judge Susan Richard Nelson’s decision just four days later. And on Monday, the appellate court ruled the lockout can stay in place until a full appeal is heard on whether it is legal. That hearing is set for June 3.

The players got some support Friday from other pro players and fans. The unions for hockey, baseball and basketball players filed a legal brief saying the lockout should be lifted because professional athletes’ careers are short, and the loss of even part of a season causes personal and professional injuries for which they can’t be compensated.

In their filing, the unions for the MLB, NBA and NHL wrote, “there is no off-season in professional sports — only the portion of the work year during which no games are played.” The unions said that part of the year brings opportunities — such as the option to change cities, teams or the trajectory of one’s career.

Also Friday, a nonprofit group that has been fighting sport work stoppages said the lockout should be lifted. The Sports Fans Coalition, which says it gives fans a voice on public policy issues and fights for fan access to games, said in a legal brief that the lockout is not in the best interest of fans, who pay billions of dollars to see their teams perform.

The players’ attorneys argued: “The NFL does not suffer irreparable harm from operating the game of football — especially at a profit.”

“Here, there is no question that the interest of the public — the fans, stadium workers, parking lot attendants, sports bars and restaurants, and local governments — favors an injunction to allow football to proceed on whatever lawful terms the NFL Defendants collectively impose,” the players’ attorneys wrote.

The group of players suing the league, including star quarterbacks Tom Brady, Peyton Manning and Drew Brees, have said the lockout is inflicting irreparable harm on their brief playing careers by preventing them from working out at team headquarters, holding full practices with teammates and coaches and jeopardizing games.

Their attorneys wrote that suggesting monetary damages, even triple damages, would fully redress the harm to players “ignores the reality of the game.”

The NFL has argued in its appeal that lifting the labor lockout without a new contract in place would allow better-off teams to sign the best players, tipping the NFL’s competitive balance and damaging the league.

The league also said that lifting the lockout with no labor deal in place would cause chaos, with teams trying to make decisions on signing free agents and making trades under a set of rules that could change drastically under a new agreement.

The league says the union’s move to decertify after the initial bargaining talks broke down is a sham; that Nelson does not have the jurisdiction to lift the lockout; and, that she should have waited for a decision from the National Labor Relations Board before issuing that ruling.

The players disagree with all those points.

They argued that by decertifying, every player gave up many rights, including having union representation at grievances, and the right to collectively bargain and strike. Now, players seek the protections of federal antitrust laws that limit monopolies.

The players also have a federal antitrust lawsuit against the league pending before Nelson. And attorneys for the players filed documents in U.S. District Court on Friday, opposing a league request for more time to respond to the claim. The league has argued it shouldn’t have to respond to the lawsuit until the appeal over the lockout is resolved.

But the players say the lawsuit will go forward whether or not the lockout is lifted and that the NFL’s request for an extension is “yet another deliberate step in their campaign to crush the players by extending the lockout for as long as they can.”

“The players face immediate, continuing, severe irreparable injury from unlawful conduct orchestrated to force them to re-unionize against their will and make immense financial concessions,” the players’ attorneys wrote. “The NFL, by contrast, claims only a temporary loss of leverage by members of a cartel that is no longer entitled to any exemption from the antitrust laws.”

The longer the fight over how to divvy up $9 billion in annual revenue drags on, the closer the league and players get to missing games. The first preseason game is Aug. 7, with the regular season opener between the Saints and Packers set for Sept. 8 in Green Bay, Wis.

In Friday’s filing, the players reiterated that the decision to dissolve their union was their lawful right, and the absence of a collective bargaining agreement shouldn’t stop the NFL’s ability to “conduct professional football.” And, they argued, the harm they would suffer isn’t comparable to the league’s argument that it would suffer an “intangible blow to their ‘negotiating position’ and ‘leverage.’”

“The overwhelming inequity in that imbalance is patently obvious,” the players’ attorneys wrote.

The players have argued all along that their careers are being harmed by the work stoppage — they can’t work out, or sign contracts with any of the 32 clubs while the lockout persists. A federal judge in Minnesota agreed and lifted the lockout April 25, but the league appealed.

The appeals court reversed U.S. District Judge Susan Richard Nelson’s decision just four days later. And on Monday, the appellate court ruled the lockout can stay in place until a full appeal is heard on whether it is legal. That hearing is set for June 3.

The players got some support Friday from other pro players and fans. The unions for hockey, baseball and basketball players filed a legal brief saying the lockout should be lifted because professional athletes’ careers are short, and the loss of even part of a season causes personal and professional injuries for which they can’t be compensated.

In their filing, the unions for the MLB, NBA and NHL wrote, “there is no off-season in professional sports — only the portion of the work year during which no games are played.” The unions said that part of the year brings opportunities — such as the option to change cities, teams or the trajectory of one’s career.

Also Friday, a nonprofit group that has been fighting sport work stoppages said the lockout should be lifted. The Sports Fans Coalition, which says it gives fans a voice on public policy issues and fights for fan access to games, said in a legal brief that the lockout is not in the best interest of fans, who pay billions of dollars to see their teams perform.

The players’ attorneys argued: “The NFL does not suffer irreparable harm from operating the game of football — especially at a profit.”

“Here, there is no question that the interest of the public — the fans, stadium workers, parking lot attendants, sports bars and restaurants, and local governments — favors an injunction to allow football to proceed on whatever lawful terms the NFL Defendants collectively impose,” the players’ attorneys wrote.

The group of players suing the league, including star quarterbacks Tom Brady, Peyton Manning and Drew Brees, have said the lockout is inflicting irreparable harm on their brief playing careers by preventing them from working out at team headquarters, holding full practices with teammates and coaches and jeopardizing games.

Their attorneys wrote that suggesting monetary damages, even triple damages, would fully redress the harm to players “ignores the reality of the game.”

The NFL has argued in its appeal that lifting the labor lockout without a new contract in place would allow better-off teams to sign the best players, tipping the NFL’s competitive balance and damaging the league.

The league also said that lifting the lockout with no labor deal in place would cause chaos, with teams trying to make decisions on signing free agents and making trades under a set of rules that could change drastically under a new agreement.

The league says the union’s move to decertify after the initial bargaining talks broke down is a sham; that Nelson does not have the jurisdiction to lift the lockout; and, that she should have waited for a decision from the National Labor Relations Board before issuing that ruling.

The players disagree with all those points.

They argued that by decertifying, every player gave up many rights, including having union representation at grievances, and the right to collectively bargain and strike. Now, players seek the protections of federal antitrust laws that limit monopolies.

The players also have a federal antitrust lawsuit against the league pending before Nelson. And attorneys for the players filed documents in U.S. District Court on Friday, opposing a league request for more time to respond to the claim. The league has argued it shouldn’t have to respond to the lawsuit until the appeal over the lockout is resolved.

But the players say the lawsuit will go forward whether or not the lockout is lifted and that the NFL’s request for an extension is “yet another deliberate step in their campaign to crush the players by extending the lockout for as long as they can.”

Charles Oakley sues Las Vegas resort over ‘beat down’.

LAS VEGAS — Charles Oakley, one of the NBA’s all-time tough guys and now a Charlotte Bobcats assistant, has sued a Las Vegas resort over what he calls a May 2010 “gang-style beat down” by security guards who injured him.

Oakley filed the lawsuit Thursday in Clark County District Court against the Aria hotel-casino at MGM Resorts International’s CityCenter complex, the Las Vegas Sun reported. Five security officers also were named in the lawsuit.

Oakley was an invited guest at Aria’s VIP pool area May 28 when he left the area, the complaint says, but security officers and staff prevented him from re-entering.

After a “verbal altercation” with officers, Oakley attempted to return to his room when he was “assaulted” by them in a secluded area of the resort, the lawsuit alleges.

The complaint contends the officers wrestled Oakley to the ground and punched and handcuffed him, and that he was taken to the hospital with injuries to his neck, back, head and wrist, “all or some of which may be permanent and disabling.”

The complaint alleges negligence, assault, assault with excessive force, battery, false imprisonment and defamation. It seeks unspecified general, special and punitive damages.

An MGM Resorts International spokeswoman said the company doesn’t comment on pending litigation.

The 47-year-old Oakley has been among VIPs who have participated in Michael Jordan’s Celebrity Invitational golf fundraiser presented by Aria.

The 6-foot-9, 245-pound Oakley was a power forward for Chicago, New York, Toronto, Washington and Houston between 1985 and 2004. Now an assistant coach with Charlotte, he developed a reputation over the years as an enforcer, rebounding machine and Jordan’s bodyguard.

Prince Sued by His Own Lawyers for $700,000.

In a decidedly ironic twist, Prince is being sued by a law firm that claims the artist formerly hired them to settle financial obligations — but then failed to settle his financial obligations with them as well. Billboard reports that the firm — Patterson Belknap Webb & Taylor — filed in New York state’s Supreme Court in Manhattan earlier this week.

In terms of figures, the firm alleges that Prince owes them more than $700,000 in addition to the $125,000 that he already paid them. The firm represented Prince in separate cases in Ireland, California and New York, as well as handling his divorce.

Last week, Prince played three near-capacity shows at the Oracle Arena in Oakland — concerts which were announced less than a week in advance and which moved an estimated 60,000 tickets — ranging from around $50 to $250 — at a brisk pace. You can do the math… but we’re guessing the problem isn’t that he doesn’t have the money.

Fabolous Sued for Assault by Atlanta Busboy.

Fabolous is in trouble. The New York rapper, who made a recent trip down to Georgia, has been sued by an Atlanta busboy named Octavious Butler, who claims that the ‘Body Ya’ MC assaulted him with a glass bottle at ATL’s Fox Sports Grill.

While working at the restaurant, Butler, who filed the lawsuit on Jan. 31 in Fulton County Superior Court, alleges that the Brooklyn native hit him with not only a glass bottle, but with his fist. He claims that Fab joined another attacker and assaulted him unprovoked. The financial terms of the lawsuit have not been disclosed.

This isn’t the first time that the 31-year-old rapper has gotten into trouble. Back in October 2006, he was arrested for carrying an unlicensed weapon after getting shot in the leg, and the following year, he was suspected to have been involved in the fatal stabbing of a childhood friend. In February 2009, police discovered 500 pounds of weed on his tour bus, though he dodged charges since he wasn’t aboard at the time.

Fabolous and Def Jam have yet to comment on the incident and lawsuit. The rapper is currently focusing on recording his upcoming mixtape ‘The S.O.U.L. Tape,’ set for release later this month.

Twitter Gets Sued For Letting Famous People Interact Online.

Part of Twitter‘s appeal is that people can ‘connect’ and engage with celebrities online, even if most of them consider it to be, and treat it like, just another push marketing channel rather than a multi-dimensional communication system.

Be that as it may, Twitter owes a lot of its popularity to notable celebrities like Ashton Kutcher, Stephen Fry, P Diddy, Ellen Degeneres, 50 Cent and plenty of others using and promoting the service.

Now, some company called VS Technologies is suing Twitter, alleging that it infringes on a patent of theirs, entitled “Method and system for creating an interactive virtual community of famous people”. For real? For real.

In the complaint, filed earlier this week (and embedded below), VS Technologies alleges that Twitter has purposefully infringed the above-mentioned patent, US patent no. 6,408,309.

Straight from the documents:

As it pertains to this lawsuit, very generally speaking, the ’309 Patent discloses methods and systems for creating interactive, virtual communities of people in various fields of endeavor wherein each community member has an interactive, personal profile containing information about that member.

For reasons unknown, the company was awarded the patent back in 2002. Since I can’t find any information or website about the company, it appears like they did absolutely nothing productive with their ‘invention’, and thus I’m declaring it a YAPT (Yet Another Patent Troll).

VS Technologies is asking for damages to be paid, which, and I quote, should adequately compensate the company “for Defendant’s infringement, which by law cannot be less than would constitute a reasonable royalty for the use of the patented technology, together with interest and costs as fixed by this Court”.

Yeah, good luck with that.

Woman Sues Debt Collector for Stalking Her on Facebook.

Melanie Beacham had received letters, phone calls and a courier from the auto loan debt collector, but when an agent contacted her family and friends through Facebook, she decided to fight back.

Beacham sued MarkOne Financial LLC of Tampa, Fla. for harassment and inflicting emotional distress and has asked a Florida court to bar the agency from contacting her loved ones through the social media site in what the lawsuit said is “a campaign to embarrass, intimidate and harass her into paying an alleged debt.” The lawsuit seeks $15,000 in damages and also seeks punitive damages.

Beacham claimed a MarkOne agent pretended to be “Jeff Happenstance” and contacted her friends, asking they get Beacham to call him. It was the latest in the debt collector’s bag of tricks that included phone calls up to 10 times a day to her home, work and cell phones, according to the lawsuit filings. MarkOne also sent a letter by courier to her workplace after Beacham set up a payment schedule with Mark One for the alleged $1,172 debt, the lawsuit said.

MarkOne denied any wrongdoing and in a statement sent to Consumer Ally said that its collectors use Facebook after people don’t respond to other means:

“Mark One has and will continue to operate in a legal manner. We have not and will not publicly discuss or disclose private facts about a MarkOne customer’s situation in the media, even though we believe the full facts will clearly defend our position. We do not comment on pending litigation. We firmly believe that the facts will demonstrate that the harassment allegations made against us are false, and that we have and do operate within the spirit and scope of the law.

“We understand that there are a myriad of reasons that customers experience interruptions in their ability to pay. We attempt to make direct contact with a customer to help them stay current and reduce the incidence of repossessions. We can only do this when we have contact with the customer.”

“MarkOne’s policy is to use Facebook to locate customers when the customer has a fully
public profile, and when the customer has not responded to MarkOne through conventional
means. Our policy is to respect privacy disclosure requirements and no negative or account
information is shared with third parties.”

Facebook can be an attractive tool to debt collectors because it does their work for them, Beacham’s lawyer Billy Howard told Consumer Ally. But a consumer’s right to privacy includes their use of Facebook.”It’s a very cheap and easy way to harass people,” he says. “It’s a scary proposition when it happens, because people aren’t expecting it. People are used to it over the phone … People shouldn’t be in fear of their Facebook account.”

Howard said his firm has gotten more than a dozen complaints in the past couple of months from consumers who have been contacted by debt collectors on Facebook. Howard, who specializes in consumer protection issues, recommends that if you receive harassing messages in any electronic form - text messages, email or voice mails — to save them as evidence of the harassment.