Author: Errica Jensen

Standing in a Whole Foods aisle, picking up a canister of hot cocoa, and feeling in your hands what appears to be a reassuringly substantial container is almost comical. However, when you get home and peel off the lid, you discover that the powder inside only reaches halfway up the tin. Whole Foods agreed to pay $650,000 to settle the Goodwin Hot Cocoa Settlement, a class action lawsuit that took four years to navigate the California legal system. The Superior Court of California, Los Angeles County, received the case in November 2021 under the name Goodwin v. Whole Foods Market,…

It was difficult not to feel as though something truly historic was taking place when the governor of Wyoming, two U.S. senators, a sitting congresswoman, and the country’s Energy Secretary were gathered in front of cameras outside the Brook Mine last July in the sweltering summer heat. The first rare earth mineral mine to open in the United States in more than 70 years was being inaugurated by Lexington, Kentucky-based coal company Ramaco Resources. Chris Wright, the Energy Secretary, referred to it as a renaissance. Randall Atkins, the CEO, referred to it as a rising tide. For a while, the…

Watching a business you trust acknowledge that it failed you—quietly and through legal documents—leads to a certain kind of tiredness. That’s essentially what’s happening with LastPass, the password manager that marketed itself for years as the secure location to store your most private data. The company has agreed to a class action settlement of up to $24.45 million in response to its 2022 data breach, and notifications are currently reaching millions of American inboxes. The actual breach, which occurred in two phases during the summer and fall of 2022, was more serious than LastPass first disclosed. Hackers stole encrypted copies…

Washington settles disputes in a way that is slow, costly, and typically infuriates half of the nation. The announcement on March 25, 2026, that the U.S. Department of Justice had agreed to pay $1.25 million to Michael Flynn, a man who had admitted to lying to the FBI twice, fell into a long history of outcomes that are difficult for anyone outside of the Beltway to understand. And yet, here it is. The check is no longer valid. With prejudice, the case has been dismissed. Flynn has moved on. Flynn filed a lawsuit in 2023 seeking $50 million in damages…

On April 7, just after 2:30 in the afternoon, something that no one had planned for and for which very few people were ready passed over the northeastern United States. A meteor that was burning brighter than Venus and traveling at 30,000 miles per hour sliced through the upper atmosphere from somewhere above the Atlantic Ocean off Long Island. It broke apart 27 miles above Galloway Township, New Jersey, leaving behind a series of flashing fragments, a streak of light, and, a few minutes later, a boom loud enough to startle people out of their normal Tuesday activities. Nicholas Samuelian…

From a distance, Tumon Bay appears to be incredibly tranquil. The resorts lining its shore have spent decades packaging the water’s seemingly digitally enhanced turquoise hues into something marketable, such as weekend packages, birthday getaways, and customized family memories. It was precisely that kind of trip for 70-year-old South Korean man Young Jae Chung. To celebrate his birthday, he traveled to Guam in September 2023 with his wife, son, and two young grandsons. The plan included a snorkeling lesson at the Pacific Islands Club. Nobody’s expectations were fulfilled. Chung’s family filed a wrongful death lawsuit in the District Court of…

A small Texas town experiences a certain kind of silence when an adolescent fails to return home. When Larissa Nicole Rodriguez, a 17-year-old cheerleader who was described by her family’s lawyer as “full of life, full of love, smart, academic, and with a bright future,” passed away in October 2025 from what the Hidalgo County Medical Examiner would later determine was cardiomyopathy brought on by excessive caffeine consumption, there was silence in Weslaco, a city tucked up against the southern edge of Texas near the Rio Grande Valley. According to her family, Alani Nu, an energy drink, was crucial. Alani…

On April 9, 2026, inside the Richard J. Daley Center in Chicago, a Cook County jury rendered a decision that will probably reverberate for years in the legal and medical communities following over a month of testimony and slightly more than a day of deliberation. In relation to four premature infants who developed necrotizing enterocolitis after consuming its specialized formula, Abbott Laboratories, one of the most well-known healthcare companies in the US, was found liable on three counts: defective design, failure to warn, and negligence. The total amount of compensatory damages was $53 million. The jury came back the next…

Someone gained unauthorized access to Avis Rent A Car’s systems in early August 2024 and spent about four days going through files that contained nearly 300,000 customers’ private information. names. numbers on driver’s licenses. Expiration dates and credit card numbers. dates of birth. phone numbers. Customers had trusted one of the most well-known car rental companies in the world to protect their data, and by the time it was over, the breach had lasted from August 3 to August 6. The ensuing class action lawsuits were eventually combined into a single case that was submitted to the U.S. District Court…

Between October 16 and October 19, 2023, an unauthorized individual gained access to Comcast’s systems through a known Citrix software vulnerability. Like millions of other businesses, Comcast, one of the biggest internet and cable providers in the US, had been utilizing Citrix’s cloud computing infrastructure. Comcast primarily operated under the Xfinity brand. The vulnerability was disclosed by Citrix. Many companies, including Comcast, had failed to patch it in time. By the time the attack was finished, over 31 million customers’ personal data had been compromised. Names and addresses. Social Security numbers. dates of birth. Hashed answers to secret questions. There…