The SEC’s two investigations into accounting issues at Barnes & Noble have provoked at least one shareholder lawsuit, filed in New York State Supreme Court on Wednesday. In his complaint, David Shaev accuses the bookseller’s board and several of its executives of breaching fiduciary duties and an abuse of control. “Barnes & Noble has operated with deficient and inadequate financial reporting and inventory management systems since at least 2001,” Shaev said in his complaint. “These systems do not adhere to industrywide best practices and company internal audits have repeatedly shown them to be unreliable and subject to manipulation.” Later he […]
Legal
Court Dismisses Bookseller DRM Suit
Fast on the heels of our round-up of a busy year in court for publishing, Judge Jed Rakoff has cleared the docket of one of the strangest cases of 2013. In a 19-page opinion he swatted away the “threadbare allegations” by independent booksellers Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza, Posman Books, and Fiction Addition against the largest trade publishers and Amazon and dismissed the lawsuit. On the vague idea that publishers’ acceptance of Amazon’s proprietary DRM “suggests that there may have been oral agreements or discussions” among the publishers, Judge Rakoff notes “the evasiveness of this allegation is remarkable.” Then there […]
2013: The Year We Gaveled On
We don’t usually play the game of making broad simplistic declarations about players of the year, but in our newsroom 2013 was truly the “Year of the Gavel.” New York Southern District Court Judge Denise Cote — recently the focus of a scathing editorial in the WSJ calling her “a disgrace to the judiciary” — was the dominant Publishing Person of the Year, and no matter what the OED claims, the “word of the year” was certainly not “selfie.” It was “spiderweb,” a term that speaks volumes about the DOJ’s winning trial against Apple on ebook price-fixing charges that was the […]
Barnes & Noble Discloses SEC Investigation
In their quarterly SEC filing for the period ending October 26, Barnes & Noble reported that just before the close of their second quarter, on October 16, the SEC notified the company that it was being investigated. The agency’s New York office is looking into: “(1) the Company’s restatement of earnings announced on July 29, 2013, and (2) a separate matter related to a former non-executive employee’s allegation that the company improperly allocated certain Information Technology expenses between its Nook and Retail segments for purposes of segment reporting.” BN says it “is cooperating with the SEC, including responding to requests […]
Judge Continues Order Blocking Malcolm X Book
After a hearing on Friday, New York District Court Judge Laura Swain continued the temporary restraining order she first imposed on November 8, continuing to prevent the release of Third World Press’s planned THE DIARY OF MALCOLM X. The restraining order will stay in place through January 31, when Judge Swain will hear further arguments from the parties. The book was originally scheduled for publication on November 15.
Court Hears Arguments On Restraining Order for Malcolm X Diary
The heirs to Malcolm X’s estate will know after a court hearing today whether the temporary restraining order blocking Third World Press’s planned publication of the civil rights leader’s final writings THE DIARY OF MALCOLM X will hold. The estate, under a new umbrella company called X Legacy LLC, sued Third World Press in New York’s Southern District Court earlier this month, and the TRO was granted on a preliminary basis on November 8, the day the suit was filed. The book was originally scheduled for publication on November 15. In a separate letter delivered to presiding Judge Laura Swain on […]