Brianna Smith is a freelance writer and editor in Southwest Michigan. A graduate of Grand Valley State University, Brianna has a passion for politics, social issues, education, science, and more. When she’s not writing, she enjoys the simple life with her husband, daughter, and son.
A free-speech lawsuit settled earlier today regarding an Iowa man who claimed he was “threatened by city officials with legal action for saying on a website that his hometown smelled like ‘rancid dog food.’” The man, Josh Harms, filed the lawsuit earlier this month in U.S. District Court in an effort to prevent “Sibley officials from suing him.” At the end of the day, the court sided with Harms and awarded him damages.
Have you ever been discriminated against for your age? One former manager at Mondelez International was, and filed a lawsuit as a result. Fortunately for her, that lawsuit ended with a jury verdict for $200,000. Joan Konsavage, a long-time employee of Mondelez International, first began getting hints from her supervisor that she should “step aside and let younger employees shine” back during the summer of 2013. Shortly before the comments began, the company, a “multibillion-dollar snack-food giant…split off from Kraft Foods and was building a new team at its Wilkes-Barre distribution center.” However, Konsavage, who was 50-years-old at the time, had no plans of retiring any time some and was not a fan of her boss’s suggestions. In addition, she had a growing list of other concerns that began around the same time.
Almost two years after the tragic accident at Schlitterbahn Waterparks and Resorts claimed the life of 10-year-old Caleb Schwab, the co-owner of the waterpark, Jeffrey Wayne Henry, has been arrested. Currently, Henry is being held without bond “in Texas pending his return to Kansas to face charges in connection with the accident that caused the boy’s death.” Last week the “company’s Kansas City, Kansas park and its former director of operations, Tyler Austin Miles, were indicted in Kansas state court,” and soon after a federal warrant was issued for his arrest.
Lyft was recently hit with a class-action lawsuit filed by Disability Rights Advocates after two people alleged the company discriminated against them by not “making available wheelchair-accessible cars in the San Francisco Bay Area.” Filed in Alameda County Superior Court, the lawsuit goes on to accuse the ride-sharing company of directly violating “the law by not providing an equal and accessible transportation option to all.” In addition, in failing to provide wheelchair access to customers, the lawsuit alleged “Lyft is in violation of the Unruh Civil Rights Act, which guarantees people with disabilities are entitled to full and equal accommodations, and claims the company is in “violation of the California Disabled Persons Act.”
In July 2016, actor Anton Yelchin was found pinned between “his Jeep and a brick pillar outside his house,” dead. Now, nearly two years later, that parents of the Star Trek star reached a settlement with Fiat Chrysler, the makers of the Jeep Grand Cherokee that “crushed their son in his driveway in a what’s been deemed a freak accident,” according to court documents.
The child welfare agency in Oregon recently agreed to pay a $1.3 million settlement, ending a lawsuit filed on “behalf of a girl who was allegedly sexually abused by her Gresham foster father in 2014.” This latest horrid incident of abuse began when the child was only four-years-old when state workers placed her with “Gabriel David Wallis and his wife” after the state determined she needed a safe and stable home instead of living with her mother and step-father. According to court documents, her mother and step-father “neglected her and exposed her to a high-risk environment involving drugs, prostitution and gang activity.” However, Wallis was “self-identified as a sex addict during the state’s screening and caseworkers either knew or should have known that he looked at child pornography online,” according to the lawsuit.
Did Uber discriminate against a woman with cerebral palsy in Texas? One lawsuit thinks so. According to a lawsuit filed earlier this week, D’Edra Steele was denied rides from a number of Uber drivers on “approximately 25 separate occasions” between 2016 and 2017. In the lawsuit, Steele claims that “drivers repeatedly canceled rides because she requires the use of a service dog” and as a result, she has accused “Uber of violating the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Texas Human Resources Code.” She currently hopes to receive damages for “intentional infliction of emotional distress.”
A lawsuit involving Joanna Gaines’ furniture line recently reached a settlement, meaning the co-star of HGTV’s Fixer Upper “will not have to sit for a deposition.” What was the lawsuit about, though? Who filed the suit? According to court documents, the lawsuit was filed by “Standard Furniture Manufacturing against its Chinese suppliers LF Products for delivering chairs and sofas labeled ‘top grain leather’ and using water buffalo hide instead.”
The Board of Education at Avon High School recently agreed to settle a federal lawsuit filed against it almost four years ago that “claimed three teachers and a guidance counselor at the school had indoctrinated two former students into a religious cult.” The lawsuit itself was filed by a family whose children attended the school. According to the family’s lawsuit, “three teachers and a guidance counselor exerted an improper influence on their three daughters and alienated two of them from the rest of the family.”
Discrimination is never okay, especially when it’s directed towards someone who is or was recently pregnant. One woman in Tallahassee, Florida learned just how awful it feels to be discriminated against, and decided to file a lawsuit as a result. Kissi Moore, a former employee at Whole Foods, is an African-American woman who claims in her pregnancy and racial discrimination lawsuit against the supermarket chain that she was “treated unfairly after her pregnancy and because of her race.”