The US Court for the District of Texas Austin Division has certified the class in the class action suit against Scribe Media and its successor. Former employees sued the publisher for failing to comply with the WARN Act’s notice requirement when it terminated 90 its employees in 2023. Judge Dustin Howell certified the class as defined as “[a]ll former Scribe employees throughout the United States who were terminated as a result of a ‘mass layoff,’ as defined by the WARN Act, without 60 days advance written notice, beginning on May 24, 2023.” This means that it includes any employees who […]
Legal
Trump Tapes Case Has Been Quiet
Responding to some of the damaging revelations reported to be included in Bob Woodward’s forthcoming WAR, an emailed statement from Trump campaign communications director Steven Cheung included this remark: “Woodward is an angry little man and is clearly upset because President Trump is successfully suing him because of the unauthorized publishing of recordings he made previously.” Trump first filed suit against Woodward and Simon & Schuster in January 2023. But no determination of “success” has been made. The action was moved to the Southern District of New York in August 2023. Notably, though the defendants’ motion to dismiss was fully […]
Publishers File Amended Complaint Against Iowa Book Ban Law
Penguin Random House, Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins, Macmillan, and Simon & Schuster, as well as The Authors Guild and authors including John Green and Jodi Picoult, have filed a new complaint in their suit against a book banning law in Iowa. The case has been litigated since late last year: In December a district court enjoined the law, but after an appeal by the state, the appellate court reversed the decision and sent it back to the district court. The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the previous decision did not properly address whether the law, SF 496, violates […]
Former President of Phoenix Books Found Guilty of Wire Fraud
Kimberly Ann Miletta, former president of Beverly Hills-based Phoenix Books, was found guilty of three counts of wire fraud by the Central District of California. The court found that Miletta defrauded the owners of Phoenix Books, embezzling at least $1.3 million from the company and the owner’s personal bank account. Between October 2013 and January 2018, Miletta used the company credit card, which she controlled exclusively, on personal expenses, including spa treatments, clothing, veterinary bills, designer handbags, and more. She then paid the credit card out of the owner’s personal account. Miletta also made fraudulent wire transfers of almost $1 […]
Books to Be Restored To Libraries After Settlement in FL Case
Books including And Tango Makes Three will be restored to public school libraries in Nassau County, FL, following the settlement of a lawsuit brought by the authors and local students and parents. In their May complaint, plaintiffs including authors Peter Parnell and Justin Richardson asserted that the school board and district officials “unconstitutionally targeted And Tango Makes Three, a widely acclaimed children’s book containing LGBTQIA+ characters and themes, for removal from the District’s public school library shelves…at the behest of an anti-LGBTQIA+ advocacy group,” Citizens Defending Freedom. CDF challenged 35 other books, including those by Toni Morrison, Khaled Hosseini, Jonathan […]
Second Circuit Upholds Lower Court Ruling On Internet Archive
In a ruling released on Wednesday, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court’s finding that the Internet Archive’s copying and lending of digital books infringes copyright. The court writes, “This appeal presents the following question: is it ‘fair use’ for a nonprofit organization to scan copyright-protected print books in their entirety and distribute those digital copies online, in full, for free, subject to a one-to-one owned-to-loaned ratio between its print copies and the digital copies it makes available at any given time, all without authorization from the copyright-holding publishers or authors? Applying the relevant provisions of the […]