The Anna’s Archive case has an odd silence. The defendants are not present when a federal judge in Manhattan renders the largest music-piracy judgment in recent memory, a $322 million verdict. The room has never seen them. Nobody is even aware of their identity. The plaintiffs’ attorneys are nodding courteously as Judge Jed Rakoff signs the order on a Tuesday afternoon. Everyone is aware that the number on the page is, for the time being, more symbolic than financial. The organization that went by the name Anna’s Archive chose a battle that it appeared almost willing to lose. They made…
Author: Janine Heller
By lunchtime in Montgomery, the name of a 55-year-old civil rights organization was being read aloud at a Justice Department podium alongside other defendants after the indictment was delivered on a Tuesday morning. Just that felt weird. Federal prosecutors now oversee the Southern Poverty Law Center, which spent decades mapping hate groups throughout the American South and suing Klansmen into bankruptcy. The organization had been covertly transferring donor funds to the very extremists it purported to be dismantling, according to Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche. Key InformationDetailsOrganizationSouthern Poverty Law Center (SPLC)Founded1971 by Morris Dees and Joe LevinHeadquartersMontgomery, AlabamaCEOBryan FairEndowment (Oct…
As is often the case, the complaint was received on April 17 in a quiet manner. Angelica Hernandez Vasquez, a former housekeeper, entered a Los Angeles courtroom and recorded what she claims happened behind Kylie Jenner’s Hidden Hills property’s gates over the course of eleven months. As you turn the pages, you get a sense that the details are too specific to be made up. Fingers snapped. Thrown at her feet were hangers. She was made fun of for her accent. It’s not a story from the press; it’s the feel of a workplace. Vasquez started working for Jenner in…
On Tuesday, the Supreme Court chamber was packed, and reporters could sense that the atmosphere was heavier than usual. Watching two of the biggest telecom firms in the nation, AT&T and Verizon, contend that the federal government has gone too far is subtly dramatic. The justices deliberated over a case that appears narrow on paper but has significant implications outside of the telecom industry for almost eighty minutes. A Seventh Amendment issue and a fine of more than $100 million imposed by the Federal Communications Commission after it was determined that the carriers had sold sensitive customer location data without…
The duration of the call was four minutes. That may turn out to be one of the month’s most talked-about diplomatic exchanges, even though it takes less time than reheating a proper cup of tea. Donald Trump called John Swinney from the White House on Monday afternoon, April 20, and invited him to the state banquet the following week. The First Minister of Scotland graciously declined, according to his own spokesperson. That word has a subtly dramatic quality. When governments want to shut a door without slamming it, they use this kind of language. The timing was mentioned by Swinney,…
Watching a courtroom scene where the judge appears more concerned than anyone else in the room can cause a certain kind of annoyance. That’s essentially what happened on a Friday in federal court when U.S. District Judge Alfred H. Bennett asked the question that many had been wondering for weeks: how did a predatory lending case turn into an immigration enforcement fund? Bennett held up two documents, the original Colony Ridge lawsuit in one hand and the proposed settlement in the other. CategoryDetailsCompany NameColony Ridge, Inc.TypePrivate Land DeveloperLocationNortheast of Houston, TexasFoundedEarly 2000sKey Lawsuit Filed2023 — by U.S. DOJ & Consumer…
When a judge has to inform a lawyer that the case he cited just doesn’t exist, a certain kind of quiet embarrassment descends upon the courtroom. That is basically what happened when Circuit Judge Jordon Kimura examined a brief submitted by Mark Valencia, a practicing lawyer at the Honolulu firm Case Lombardi, and found references to cases that had never been decided by courts that might as well have been made up. Valencia gave a succinct and, in a sense, illuminating explanation: his associate had drafted the brief using an AI program, and he hadn’t bothered to verify. He claimed…
A teacher at the front, children half-listening, and pencils rolling off desks are all familiar signs of controlled chaos when you walk into a traditional elementary school on any Tuesday morning. In contrast, Alpha School appears more like a peaceful co-working area for kids. Students work through AI-driven modules in four subjects—math, science, language, and social studies—for thirty minutes each while seated in rows of laptops with headsets on. The academic part of the day ends at 11 a.m. CategoryDetailsSchool NameAlpha SchoolFounded2014, Austin, TexasFounder & CEOMacKenzie Price, Stanford-educated entrepreneurTuition Range$500/year (Brownsville, TX) to $65,000/year (New York, NY)Academic ModelAI-powered tablets &…
A company experiences a certain kind of tension when its past and future are rapidly diverging. That’s about where Meta is at the moment, launching a brand-new AI model on the one hand while a California jury recently revealed to the world that Instagram was created with children in mind. In a case centered on the experiences of a 20-year-old woman known in court records as KGM, or Kaley, the decision was rendered recently. Her story—severe body dysmorphia, depression, and suicidal thoughts, all purportedly exacerbated by obsessive Instagram use during her early years—was detailed enough to be convincing and intimate…
In one courtroom in Riyadh, an algorithm sorts, flags, and sketches out a file’s procedural roadmap before a judge even reads it. Not a robe. No folder-fumbling clerk. It’s just a machine that silently completed tasks that used to take days in just a few minutes. The extent to which this has already progressed is still unknown to the majority of people in the Kingdom. Saudi Arabia has been working toward this goal for years, carefully integrating AI into its legal system in a way that usually goes unnoticed until all of a sudden it does. More than 150 digital…