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Call of Duty Maker Seeks Dismissal in Texas School Shooting Case
Court Watch |
2025/09/16 13:00
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A lawyer for the maker of the video game Call of Duty argued Friday that a judge should dismiss a lawsuit brought by families of the victims of the Robb Elementary School attack in Uvalde, Texas, saying the contents of the war game are protected by the First Amendment.
The families sued Call of Duty maker Activision and Meta Platforms, which owns Instagram, saying that the companies bear responsibility for promoting products used by the teen gunman.
Three sets of parents who lost children in the shooting were in the audience at the Los Angeles hearing.
Activision lawyer Bethany Kristovich told Superior Court Judge William Highberger that the “First Amendment bars their claims, period full stop.”
“The issues of gun violence are incredibly difficult,” Kristovich said. “The evidence in this case is not.”
She argued that the case has little chance of prevailing if it continues, because courts have repeatedly held that “creators of artistic works, whether they be books, music, movies, TV or video games, cannot be held legally liable for the acts of their audience.”
The lawsuit, one of many involving Uvalde families, was filed last year on the second anniversary of one of the deadliest school shootings in U.S. history. The gunman killed 19 students and two teachers. Officers finally confronted and shot him after waiting more than an hour to enter the fourth-grade classroom.
Kimberly Rubio, whose 10-year-old daughter Lexi was killed in the shooting, was among the parents who came from Texas to Southern California, where Activision is based, for the hearing.
“We traveled all this way, so we need answers,” Rubio said outside the courthouse. “It’s our hope that the case will move forward so we can get those answers.”
An attorney for the families argued during the hearing that Call of Duty exceeds its First Amendment protections by moving into marketing.
“The basis of our complaint is not the existence of Call of Duty,” Katie Mesner-Hage told the judge. “It is using Call of Duty as a platform to market weapons to minors.”
The plaintiffs’ lawyers showed contracts and correspondence between executives at Activison and gunmakers whose products, they said, are clearly and exactly depicted in the game despite brand names not appearing.
Mesner-Hage said the documents show that they actually prefer being unlabeled because “it helps shield them from the implication that they are marketing guns to minors,” while knowing that players will still identify and seek out the weapons.
Kristovich said there is no evidence that the kind of product placement and marketing the plaintiffs are talking about happened in any of the editions of the game the shooter played.
The families have also filed a lawsuit against Daniel Defense, which manufactured the AR-style rifle used in the May 24, 2022, shooting. Koskoff argued that a replica of the rifle clearly appears on a splash page for Call of Duty.
Josh Koskoff, the families’ Connecticut-based lead attorney, also represented families of nine Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting victims in a lawsuit against gunmaker Remington and got a $73 million lawsuit settlement.
He invoked Sandy Hook several times in his arguments, saying the shooters there and in Uvalde shared the same gaming obsession.
Koskoff said the Uvalde shooter experienced “the absorption and the loss of self in Call of Duty.”
He said that immersion was so deep that the shooter searched online for how to obtain an armored suit that he didn’t know only exists in the game.
Koskoff played a clip from Call of Duty Modern Warfare, the game the shooter played, with a first-person shooter gunning down opponents.
The shots echoed loudly in the courtroom, and several people in the audience slowly shook their heads.
“Call of Duty is in a class of its own,” Koskoff said.
Kristovich argued for Activision that the game, despite its vast numbers of players, can be tied to only a few of the many U.S. mass shootings.
“The game is incredibly common. It appears in a scene on ‘The Office,’” she said. She added that it is ridiculous to assert that “this is such a horrible scourge that your honor has to essentially ban it through this lawsuit.”
Highberger told the lawyers he was not leaning in either direction before the hearing. He gave no time frame for when he will rule, but a quick decision is not expected.
The judge did tell the plaintiffs’ lawyers that their description of Activision’s actions seemed like deliberate malfeasance, where their lawsuit alleges negligence. He said that was the biggest hurdle they needed to clear.
“Their conduct created a risk of exactly what happened,” Mesner-Hage told him. “And we represent the people who are exactly the foreseeable victims of that conduct.”
Meta’s attorneys will make arguments on a similar motion next month.
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Anthropic to pay authors $1.5 billion to settle lawsuit over pirated books
Court Watch |
2025/09/09 10:34
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Artificial intelligence company Anthropic has agreed to pay $1.5 billion to settle a class-action lawsuit by book authors who say the company took pirated copies of their works to train its chatbot.
The landmark settlement, if approved by a judge as soon as Monday, could mark a turning point in legal battles between AI companies and the writers, visual artists and other creative professionals who accuse them of copyright infringement.
The company has agreed to pay authors or publishers about $3,000 for each of an estimated 500,000 books covered by the settlement.
“As best as we can tell, it’s the largest copyright recovery ever,” said Justin Nelson, a lawyer for the authors. “It is the first of its kind in the AI era.”
A trio of authors — thriller novelist Andrea Bartz and nonfiction writers Charles Graeber and Kirk Wallace Johnson — sued last year and now represent a broader group of writers and publishers whose books Anthropic downloaded to train its chatbot Claude.
A federal judge dealt the case a mixed ruling in June, finding that training AI chatbots on copyrighted books wasn’t illegal but that Anthropic wrongfully acquired millions of books through pirate websites.
If Anthropic had not settled, experts say losing the case after a scheduled December trial could have cost the San Francisco-based company even more money.
“We were looking at a strong possibility of multiple billions of dollars, enough to potentially cripple or even put Anthropic out of business,” said Thomas Long, a legal analyst for Wolters Kluwer.
U.S. District Judge William Alsup of San Francisco has scheduled a Monday hearing to review the settlement terms.
Anthropic said in a statement Friday that the settlement, if approved, “will resolve the plaintiffs’ remaining legacy claims.”
“We remain committed to developing safe AI systems that help people and organizations extend their capabilities, advance scientific discovery, and solve complex problems,” said Aparna Sridhar, the company’s deputy general counsel.
As part of the settlement, the company has also agreed to destroy the original book files it downloaded.
Books are known to be important sources of data — in essence, billions of words carefully strung together — that are needed to build the AI large language models behind chatbots like Anthropic’s Claude and its chief rival, OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
Alsup’s June ruling found that Anthropic had downloaded more than 7 million digitized books that it “knew had been pirated.” It started with nearly 200,000 from an online library called Books3, assembled by AI researchers outside of OpenAI to match the vast collections on which ChatGPT was trained.
Debut thriller novel “The Lost Night” by Bartz, a lead plaintiff in the case, was among those found in the dataset. Anthropic later took at least 5 million copies from the pirate website Library Genesis, or LibGen, and at least 2 million copies from the Pirate Library Mirror, Alsup wrote.
The Authors Guild told its thousands of members last month that it expected “damages will be minimally $750 per work and could be much higher” if Anthropic was found at trial to have willfully infringed their copyrights. The settlement’s higher award — approximately $3,000 per work — likely reflects a smaller pool of affected books, after taking out duplicates and those without copyright.
On Friday, Mary Rasenberger, CEO of the Authors Guild, called the settlement “an excellent result for authors, publishers, and rightsholders generally, sending a strong message to the AI industry that there are serious consequences when they pirate authors’ works to train their AI, robbing those least able to afford it.”
The Danish Rights Alliance, which successfully fought to take down one of those shadow libraries, said Friday that the settlement would be of little help to European writers and publishers whose works aren’t registered with the U.S. Copyright Office.
“On the one hand, it’s comforting to see that compiling AI training datasets by downloading millions of books from known illegal file-sharing sites comes at a price,” said Thomas Heldrup, the group’s head of content protection and enforcement. |
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Washington, Oregon and California governors form a health alliance
Court Watch |
2025/09/03 13:14
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The Democratic governors of Washington, Oregon and California announced Wednesday that they created an alliance to safeguard health policies, believing the Trump administration is putting Americans’ health and safety at risk by politicizing the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The move comes with COVID-19 cases rising and as Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has restructured and downsized the CDC and attempted to advance anti-vaccine policies that are contradicted by decades of scientific research. Concerns about staffing and budget cuts were heightened after the White House sought to oust the agency’s director and some top CDC leaders resigned in protest.
“The CDC has become a political tool that increasingly peddles ideology instead of science, ideology that will lead to severe health consequences,” the governors said in a joint statement.
“The dismantling of public health and dismissal of experienced and respected health leaders and advisers, along with the lack of using science, data, and evidence to improve our nation’s health are placing lives at risk,” California State Health Officer Erica Pan said in the news release.
Washington state Health Secretary Dennis Worsham said public health is about prevention — “preventing illness, preventing the spread of disease, and preventing early, avoidable deaths.”
“Vaccines are among the most powerful tools in modern medicine; they have indisputably saved millions of lives,” Oregon Health Director Sejal Hathi said. “But when guidance about their use becomes inconsistent or politicized, it undermines public trust at precisely the moment we need it most.”
Partnership seeks expert medical advice
The partnership plans to coordinate health guidelines by aligning immunization plans based on recommendations from respected national medical organizations, said a joint statement from Gov. Bob Ferguson of Washington, Gov. Tina Kotek of Oregon and Gov. Gavin Newsom of California.
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services spokesman Andrew G. Nixon shot back in a statement Wednesday that “Democrat-run states that pushed unscientific school lockdowns, toddler mask mandates, and draconian vaccine passports during the COVID era completely eroded the American people’s trust in public health agencies.”
He said the administration’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices “remains the scientific body guiding immunization recommendations in this country, and HHS will ensure policy is based on rigorous evidence and Gold Standard Science, not the failed politics of the pandemic.”
Florida announced Wednesday that it plans to phase out all childhood vaccine mandates as Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis plans to curb vaccine requirements and other health mandates during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Meanwhile, public health agencies across the country have started taking steps to ensure their states have access to vaccines after U.S. regulators came out with new policies that limited access to COVID-19 shots.
Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker’s health department said last week it is seeking advice from medical experts and its own Immunization Advisory Committee on COVID-19 vaccines and other immunizations for the fall respiratory season.
The health department plans to provide citizens “with specific guidance by the end of September to help Illinois health care providers and residents make informed decisions about vaccination and protecting themselves and their loved ones,” Health Director Sameer Vohra said in a statement. |
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Victims feeling exhausted and anxious about wrangling over Epstein files
Court Watch |
2025/07/31 06:32
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Women who say they were abused by Jeffrey Epstein are feeling skeptical and anxious about the Justice Department’s handling of records related to the convicted sex offender, with some backing more public disclosures as an overdue measure of transparency, and others expressing concerns about their privacy and the Trump administration’s motivations.
In letters addressed to federal judges in New York this week, several victims or their attorneys said they would support the public release of grand jury testimony that led to criminal indictments against Epstein and his former girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell — if the government agreed to allow them to review the material and redact sensitive information.
The Justice Department has asked the court to take the rare step of unsealing transcripts of that secret testimony, in part to placate people who believe that the government has hidden some things it knows about Epstein’s wrongdoing.
Other victims, meanwhile, accused President Donald Trump of sidelining victims as he seeks to shift the focus from Epstein, who killed himself in 2019 while awaiting trial on charges that he habitually sexually abused underage girls. Some expressed concern that the administration — in its eagerness to make the scandal go away — might give Maxwell clemency, immunity from future prosecution or better living conditions in prison as part of a deal to get her to testify before Congress.
“I am not some pawn in your political warfare,” one alleged victim wrote in a letter submitted to the court by her lawyer this week. “What you have done and continue to do is eating at me day after day as you help to perpetuate this story indefinitely.”
Added another victim, in a letter submitted anonymously on Wednesday: “This is all very exhausting.”
Maxwell was convicted in 2021 of helping Epstein sexually abuse underage girls and is serving a 20-year prison sentence. A top Justice Department official, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, interviewed Maxwell for nine hours late last month, saying he wanted to hear anything she had to say about misdeeds committed by Epstein or others. After that interview, Maxwell was moved from a federal prison in Florida to a low-security prison camp in Texas.
Alicia Arden, who said Epstein sexually assaulted her in the late 1990s, held a news conference on Wednesday in Los Angeles. She said she would support the release of additional material related to the case, including a transcript of Maxwell’s interview with Blanche.
But she also expressed outrage at the possibility that Maxwell could receive clemency or other special treatment through the process, adding that the Justice Department’s approach had been “very upsetting” so far.
The Trump administration has faced weeks of furor from some segments of the president’s political base, which have demanded public disclosure of files related to Epstein. Epstein has long been the subject of conspiracy theories because of his friendships with the rich and powerful, including Trump himself, Britain’s Prince Andrew and former President Bill Clinton.
Last month, the Justice Department announced it would not release additional files related to the Epstein sex trafficking investigation.
Prosecutors later asked to unseal the grand jury transcripts, though they’ve told the court they contain little information that hasn’t already been made public. Two judges who will decide whether to release the transcripts then asked victims to share their views on the matter.
In a letter submitted to the court Tuesday, attorneys Brad Edwards and Paul Cassell, who represent numerous Epstein victims, wrote: “For survivors who bravely testified, the perception that Ms. Maxwell is being legitimized in public discourse has already resulted in re-traumatization.”
An attorney for Maxwell, David Oscar Markus, said this week that she opposed the release of the grand jury transcripts.
“Jeffrey Epstein is dead. Ghislaine Maxwell is not,” he wrote. “Whatever interest the public may have in Epstein, that interest cannot justify a broad intrusion into grand jury secrecy in a case where the defendant is alive, her legal options are viable, and her due process rights remain.”
The Justice Department did not respond to a request for comment on the victims’ statements.
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Judge blocks Trump’s birthright citizenship restrictions in third ruling
Court Watch |
2025/07/22 14:50
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A federal judge on Friday blocked the Trump administration from ending birthright citizenship for the children of parents who are in the U.S. illegally, issuing the third court ruling blocking the birthright order nationwide since a key Supreme Court decision in June.
U.S. District Judge Leo Sorokin, joining another district court as well as an appellate panel of judges, found that a nationwide injunction granted to more than a dozen states remains in force under an exception to the Supreme Court ruling. That decision restricted the power of lower-court judges to issue nationwide injunctions.
The states have argued Trump’s birthright citizenship order is blatantly unconstitutional and threatens millions of dollars for health insurance services that are contingent on citizenship status. The issue is expected to move quickly back to the nation’s highest court.
White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said in a statement the administration looked forward to “being vindicated on appeal.”
New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin, who helped lead the lawsuit before Sorokin, said in a statement he was “thrilled the district court again barred President Trump’s flagrantly unconstitutional birthright citizenship order from taking effect anywhere.”
“American-born babies are American, just as they have been at every other time in our Nation’s history,” he added. “The President cannot change that legal rule with the stroke of a pen.”
Lawyers for the government had argued Sorokin should narrow the reach of his earlier ruling granting a preliminary injunction, saying it should be “tailored to the States’ purported financial injuries.”
Sorokin said a patchwork approach to the birthright order would not protect the states in part because a substantial number of people move between states. He also blasted the Trump administration, saying it had failed to explain how a narrower injunction would work.
“That is, they have never addressed what renders a proposal feasible or workable, how the defendant agencies might implement it without imposing material administrative or financial burdens on the plaintiffs, or how it squares with other relevant federal statutes,” the judge wrote. “In fact, they have characterized such questions as irrelevant to the task the Court is now undertaking. The defendants’ position in this regard defies both law and logic.”
Sorokin acknowledged his order would not be the last word on birthright citizenship. Trump and his administration “are entitled to pursue their interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment, and no doubt the Supreme Court will ultimately settle the question,” Sorokin wrote. “But in the meantime, for purposes of this lawsuit at this juncture, the Executive Order is unconstitutional.”
The administration has not yet appealed any of the recent court rulings. Trump’s efforts to deny citizenship to children born to parents who are in the country illegally or temporarily will remain blocked unless and until the Supreme Court says otherwise.
A federal judge in New Hampshire issued a ruling earlier this month prohibiting Trump’s executive order from taking effect nationwide in a new class-action lawsuit. U.S. District Judge Joseph LaPlante in New Hampshire had paused his own decision to allow for the Trump administration to appeal, but with no appeal filed, his order went into effect.
On Wednesday, a San Francisco-based appeals court found the president’s executive order unconstitutional and affirmed a lower court’s nationwide block.
A Maryland-based judge said last week that she would do the same if an appeals court signed off.
The justices ruled last month that lower courts generally can’t issue nationwide injunctions, but it didn’t rule out other court orders that could have nationwide effects, including in class-action lawsuits and those brought by states. The Supreme Court did not decide whether the underlying citizenship order is constitutional.
Plaintiffs in the Boston case earlier argued that the principle of birthright citizenship is “enshrined in the Constitution,” and that Trump does not have the authority to issue the order, which they called a “flagrantly unlawful attempt to strip hundreds of thousands of American-born children of their citizenship based on their parentage.”
They also argue that Trump’s order halting automatic citizenship for babies born to people in the U.S. illegally or temporarily would cost states funding they rely on to “provide essential services” — from foster care to health care for low-income children, to “early interventions for infants, toddlers, and students with disabilities.”
At the heart of the lawsuits is the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which was ratified in 1868 after the Civil War and the Dred Scott Supreme Court decision. That decision found that Scott, an enslaved man, wasn’t a citizen despite having lived in a state where slavery was outlawed.
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