Tag: settlement

Kari Lake’s Attorneys Send Letter to Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer Regarding Settling His Defamation Lawsuit

Rachel Alexander
Kari Lake and Stephen Richer

Kari Lake agreed earlier this month to settle the defamation lawsuit against her filed by Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer, citing the enormous cost it would take to go through a full trial. Her attorneys sent a letter on Monday to Richer’s attorneys regarding Richer’s proposed meet and confer terms, rejecting all three proposals from him, at times sarcastically. 

Lake is running for the U.S. Senate and still fighting two election lawsuits, one over her loss in the gubernatorial race and another challenging the use of voting machine tabulators in elections. Richer filed a defamation lawsuit against her for stating that he intentionally sabotaged the 2022 election. Approximately 300,000 ballots in the 2022 election lacked a chain of custody, a class 2 misdemeanor, but the county has strenuously fought litigation efforts to allow Lake to inspect the ballot affidavit envelopes and other requests from her and voter integrity groups related to the election anomalies.

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Consumer Goods Giant 3M Fined More than $6.5 Million for Wooing Chinese Government Officials with Overseas Trips

Just the News

The consumer goods company 3M agreed to pay more than $6.5 million to resolve charges that it violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act after its China-based subsidiary took Chinese government officials on overseas trips in an attempt to convince them to purchase 3M products, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) said.

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Maricopa County Loses First Amendment Lawsuit from The Gateway Pundit, Agrees to Pay $175,000 for Banning Reporter from Elections

Rachel Alexander

Maricopa County agreed last week to pay The Gateway Pundit (TGP) and its reporter Jordan Conradson $175,000 to settle their lawsuit over refusing to provide Conradson with a press pass to cover elections. An Obama-appointed trial court judge sided with the county in November, but after an injunction from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals followed by oral arguments that revealed the three-judge panel was likely to fully reverse the lower court, the Maricopa County Supervisors voted to settle. 

The controversy began in September 2022, when the county implemented a press pass regulation blocking journalists from election press conferences if they showed “conflicts of interest” and were not “free of associations that would compromise journalistic integrity or damage credibility.” The county cited Conradson’s attendance at Republican events as a conflict of interest, and told him, “[Y]ou are not a bona fide correspondent of repute in your profession.” 

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Arizona AG Brnovich Discusses Settlement with Google over Deceptively Obtaining Users’ Location Data for Profit

Rachel Alexander

Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich has sued numerous big players throughout his two terms, including the Biden administration, Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, Arizona State University, and the City of Tucson. Perhaps the biggest entity he sued was Google in 2020, for “deceiving consumers” by tracking their location on smartphones without their knowledge and then selling the information. After over two years of litigation, the tech giant capitulated, settling for $85 million, more than the country of Australia snagged in a similar settlement with Google, $60 million. 

The first attorney general in the country to sue Google over the practice, Brnovich told The Arizona Sun Times that what prompted him in part to file the complaint was the shocking extent of how much personal information was obtained. “Google knew more about where you were going and who you hung out with, more than your travel agent or spouse,” he said. He found out about the practice after a news article revealed that Google was tracking users through its app preloaded on Android smartphones even after they’d disabled their “Location History” setting. Google was told to stop and did not.

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Attorney General Mark Brnovich Achieves Historic Settlement with Google for $85 Million

Neil Jones

Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich announced an $85 million settlement with tech giant Google LLC in a lawsuit involving the company making a profit by deceptively using users’ locations.

“When I was elected attorney general, I promised Arizonans I would fight for them and hold everyone, including corporations like Google, accountable,” said Brnovich in a press release. “I am proud of this historic settlement that proves no entity, not even big tech companies, is above the law.”

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Mark Brnovich Announces Two Multistate Settlements with Four Pharmaceutical Companies for Their Roles in the Opioid Crisis

Neil Jones

Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich (R) recently announced two historic multistate settlements, totaling $26 billion, with four pharmaceutical companies over their roles in the opioid crisis.

“We are working to get these opioid abatement funds to local communities as quickly as possible,” Brnovich said in a press release. “They will help facilitate more effective treatment, education, and prevention as our state continues to tackle this heartbreaking crisis.”

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Sandy Hook Families Reach Settlement with Gun Maker Remington: Reports

Arizona Sun Times Staff

Nine families of victims of the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School mass shooting have reached a settlement in their case against the firearms maker Remington, according to several news reports Tuesday.

The settlement comes roughly seven years after the suit was filed, according to a court document filed Tuesday and reviewed by CNN.

Remington was the maker of the Bushmaster AR-15-style rifle used in the massacre in which the lone shooter killed 20 children and six adults in Newtown, Connecticut.

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15 States Reach Agreement, Pave Way for $4.5 Billion Settlement over Opioid Crisis

Arizona Sun Times Staff
Spilled pill bottle with lid beside bottle

A coalition of 15 states agreed to a deal with drug maker Purdue Pharma, which could soon lead to a $4.5 billion settlement over the company’s role in the U.S. opioid epidemic.

The states agreed to no longer oppose Purdue Pharma’s bankruptcy plan while the pharmaceutical company agreed to publicly release a trove of millions of documents, according to a court filing late Wednesday night. The Sackler family, which owns the company, would pay an additional $50 million under the settlement.

The agreement will be tacked onto a broader proposal that is set to be voted on by more than 3,000 plaintiffs, The New York Times reported. In addition to the states, plaintiffs include cities, counties and tribes that sued the company over its role in boosting its painkiller OxyContin, the cause of thousands of opioid deaths.

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