What is Digg?Sponsored by Best Buy
Best Buy Employees Turn Carolers For A Day view!
www.youtube.com/bestbuy - Go behind the scenes to see real employees croon their way to star in Best Buy's holiday campaign.
39 Comments
- SniperGX1, on 10/12/2007, -2/+64Not good enough, I want those responsible imprisoned for a very long time. I want the company dissolved. Most importantly I want the NSA to stop trampling the fourth amendment.
- JimV, on 10/12/2007, -1/+40I love it, they just paid off the investigators and didn't admit any guilt.
When you try that, they call it bribery. When big corporations do it, they call it a "settlement". - thewebguy, on 10/12/2007, -3/+41i don't even understand why you can "settle" an investigation like this, this isn't spilling hot mcdonalds coffee on yourself..
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+39Half a million?! That's ***** IT?!
- darkened, on 10/12/2007, -0/+28This is absolutely ridiculous
For Sale: Americans Privacy in all entieity!
Do I hear $600,000?
$550,000
Going Once
Going Twice
SOLD For $550,000 - jo42, on 10/12/2007, -0/+26Monopoly get out of jail card only $550K.
- nedzalife, on 10/12/2007, -1/+20Yea that was my reaction too. No where near enough for the BS that both AT&T and the US Government have been pulling.
- chrono13, on 10/12/2007, -5/+23http://www.lectlaw.com/files/cur78.htm
http://www.centerjd.org/free/mythbusters-free/MB_mcdonalds.htm
The McDonald's coffee = frivolous lawsuit thing is dead. It wasn't frivolous. She was reasonable. She wanted her *third degree* burns taken care of. McDonald's refused. She didn't want money, she just wanted to get on with her life and not suffer the bills along with the scars.
When McDonald's pushed back and refused to help her in any way, that is when she sued. Further, the coffee was too hot. They eventually admitted it. They also admitted that safety was never a factor in their considerations. Neither was her well-being after she got injured by their *admittedly* defective product.
The jury gave her 2.7 million (two days of McDonald's coffee sales), but it was reduced before her and McD entered private negotiations.
"The trial court subsequently reduced the punitive award to $480,000 --
or three times compensatory damages -- even though the judge called
McDonald's' conduct reckless, callous and willful." - CAJason80, on 10/12/2007, -0/+17I wish real jail worked like this.
By this logic and math, I'm thinking I'd need to pay about 2 bucks to get off the hook in a murder case, ratio wise. Awesome! - finkployd, on 10/12/2007, -1/+16And who are they paying this money to?
All the article says is "The payment, due within 30 days, does not constitute an admission of wrongdoing, according to language in the agreement." - conedude13, on 10/12/2007, -0/+14And who is this money going to? Shouldn't it go to the customers that got their information sold?
- plamoni, on 10/12/2007, -0/+13I agree.... $550,000 doesn't even amount to a slap on the wrist. The minimum required damages by law in this are $1000 per incident. So their minimum liability is something like $100,000,000,000... I cannot believe that they would get away with this...
- cjnance, on 10/12/2007, -1/+11Keep in mind this is not the same case that the EFF is pursuing (that has been mentioned here many times.)
- SniperGX1, on 10/12/2007, -1/+10It should go to the EFF to continue fighting the good fight
- Stecchino, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8That's EXACTLY my thoughts. "Paid $$$$ to end the investigation" = Bribery.
- JimV, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8This isn't like a fine, it's like "go away" money...
- jmnormand, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7it can be settled because att has to many connection in the fcc and knows which palms to grease to make things go away.
- Meshyf, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7Yaye go legal system!
- Ryosen, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5@chrono13
It was also found that that particular McDonald's location had several complaints filed against it, for its coffee being scalding, before the incident with the woman had occurred. They were negligent and found thusly. - akwhitacre, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4This is a case involving just the FCC. Would this rule out similar investigations by the Justice Department or FBI (let alone investigations stemming from lawsuits like that by EFF)?
- x713, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4They spend more on food for their ***** employees in a month!!! wtf is half a million to them. I want to kick somebody in the nutts.
- uptown, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4It's amazing how quickly cases like this wrap up. This was uncovered when? Like a couple months ago, tops?
- cjnance, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Here is the brief from EPIC:
http://www.epic.org/privacy/consumer/conboy_brief.html
It doesn't appear to be a class action law suit, and it seems to be centered around one man's information being sold to a credit card company. That said, $550,000 is a substantial amount for one alleged violation.
The EFF case is the one involved in the class action suit for disclosing information to the NSA.
http://www.eff.org/legal/cases/att/ - glock22ownr, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3That's such crap, they commit fraud, and they bought their way out? Gosh let us hope this practice stops here. If only the Enron CEO and all the other head hanchos would have thought of that! The American consumer has no rights anymore, we are merely targets of marketing. Everybody wants to sell us something, enlarge this, grow that, lose this, get that. FRAK!
- hackwrench, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3This is July 2006 and according to the article:
"The Electronic Privacy Information Center prompted the investigation when it submitted a petition to the FCC in August 2005."
So no. - akwhitacre, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3"It doesn't appear to be a class action law suit"
The EIPC brief you link to describes Conboy as suing "Individually and on behalf of all others similarly situated." Does that imply a class-action, the "similarly situated" bit? - Mekun, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Reuters reports this http://today.reuters.com/news/newsarticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyid=2006-07-20T185641Z_01_N20435292_RTRUKOC_0_US-SECURITY-ATT.xml&src=rss
So i dont think they are getting off this easy, we shall see.. - TimU, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2That's a different case.
- pr0t0, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2
Well, I didn't mod him/her down, but I thought about it. It was a thoughtful and well-researched response that did in fact help to clarify a popular misconception. That said, I don't think this was the time for it. I'm not even sure that the original poster was saying the McDonalds lawsuit was frivolous. I took their comment to mean that this isn't a simple injury case, the ramifications of this case are huge and involve a citizen's right to privacy from his/her government.
But regardless of the OP's intent, let's not cloud the issue by getting into debate as to whether the McDonald's case had merit. - kualla, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1same here, couldn't agree more, they paid them off to STOP THE FRICKEN INVESTIGATION FROM FINISHING!!!! and are walking away being called not guilty after making a small "settlement" coughbribecough, must be nice to be buddy buddy with the FCC.
What are we left to do when big companies can stomp all over the laws? - cjnance, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1My bad. Conboy v. AT&T was a different case. This case appears only to be a complaint filed by EPIC to the FCC:
http://www.epic.org/privacy/iei/cpnipet.html
This still has nothing to do with the NSA. - MacGeekGuy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Am I missing something? The article says nothing of NSA access or monitoring... more third party marketing companies. I believe they are two somewhat related but yet quite separate topics.
- MasterDwarf, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Chump change.
Funny thing is...they'll make 10 times that when they're awarded government contracts based on their previous cooperation. That 500k is just an investment to AT&T for expanding their business. - Petrarch1603, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2jeez McDonalds is OT
- SoulCast, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0In this day and age, a company needs to be transparent in order to gain credibility. Though it seems that AT&T is being very compliant, I don't think the worst is over yet.
- velezda, on 10/12/2007, -2/+0My reviewed the McDonald's coffee case after I cracked a joke about it. The woman lost the ability to reproduce and all sexual pleasure. The coffee temparature had been raised substantially, enough for it to burn her genatalia off.
- jasonwc, on 10/12/2007, -5/+3Why the hell was Chrono13s message modded down? It was a thoughtful and well-researched comment that clarifies the very popular misconception, and the belief of the parent poster, that the McDonalds verdict was completely frivolous.
Since Digg 3.0, the comment system has become completely arbitrary and useless. - pabster, on 10/12/2007, -5/+1@SniperGX1
Unfortunately, the EFF doesn't exactly have a shining track record. Most of the cases they decide to go after are losing causes and all they're doing is wasting money. OUR money. - Cardiakke, on 10/12/2007, -8/+0I just LOVE watching the nutroots go ape over this. Just like Fitzmas and the rest of their hallucinations
© Digg Inc. 2009
— Content created and posted by Digg users is