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“American Idol” has been sued by 10 former contestants alleging racial discrimination. The complaint, weighing in at a hefty 429 pages, targets Fox Broadcasting, Fremantle Media, executive producer Nigel Lythgoe, and a host of the show’s corporate sponsors, reports The Hollywood Reporter. But the plaintiffs – who are each seeking at least $25 million in damages, according to their complaint – will need to overcome a wide range of legal hurdles to succeed....

‘Rafting Gone Wild,’ the second annual event on the American River in California, started in sunshine but ended in a brawl. Drunken rafters started fighting in the late afternoon and multiple incidents led to arrests. Several years ago, Sacramento County banned alcohol on the American River during major holidays including Memorial Day, Fourth of July, and Labor Day. Revelers took the ban in stride, planning a new ‘holiday’ to celebrate drinking on the river according to The Sacramento Bee....

Jessica Alba was perhaps setting herself up for trouble when she called her business the Honest Company. The company makes a range of products touted as clean and pure – honest, as it were – but it has repeatedly been the target of complaints and lawsuits from consumers. Most recently the actress faced questions about Honest Company’s organic baby food, the subject of another suit while on a panel at a conference....

The Sony lawsuit filed by a blind gamer named Alexander Stern was dismissed by U.S. District Judge Percy Anderson. The Sony lawsuit, which we wrote about previously in FindLaw’s Injured Blog, centered around whether or not Sony needs to revise their video games to be more accessible to disabled individuals under Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and under California civil rights law. Judge Anderson wrote that the reason for the dismissal of the lawsuit hinged on a failure to state a claim....

The North Carolina woman who accused Bright Eyes frontman Conor Oberst of rape has now changed her tune: She’s admitted she made the whole thing up to “get attention.” In a notarized statement, Joanie Faircloth wrote that the online allegations she made late last year that Oberst raped her after a show were “100 percent false,” Rolling Stone reports. What compelled Faircloth to lie about the rape, and does Oberst have any legal recourse for damage done to his reputation?...

Ahh, coffee, it gives you that get up and go. But Magic Power Coffee, which promises a whole lot of get up and go, is not only possibly ineffectual, but potentially dangerous, according to the FDA. Magic Power Coffee is an instant coffee with a bit more than cream and sugar in it. The FDA says that the active ingredient in the supplement is hydroxythiohomosildenafil, a chemical which is similar to sildenafil, the active ingredient in Viagra....

Whenever you open your email inbox, you’re flooded with messages that you never signed up for. Maybe there’s some company that’s hawking some kitschy t-shirts. Or, maybe there’s some email that claims they can sell you “v1agra” over the web. Spam is annoying. That may be why you might wonder if sending spam is a crime – or if there are anti-spam laws out there to protect you. There are. But most of the time, sending spam itself isn’t a crime punishable by jail time....

Suspect James Holmes’ charges in the Colorado theater shootings include 24 counts of first-degree murder, giving potential jurors two routes to reach a verdict. Prosecutors on Monday charged Holmes with 12 counts of first-degree murder and 12 counts of first-degree murder with extreme indifference, Reuters reports. Police arrested Holmes after he allegedly opened fire on a movie theater audience in Aurora, Colo., killing 12 and wounding 58 others. So what is the difference between the two types of first-degree murder charges?...

In a harshly worded opinion, Federal District Court Judge Martin Feldman struck down the six-month moratorium on deep water drilling sought by the Obama Administration. The judge characterized the moratorium as overly-broad and based on the mistaken assumption that because one oil rig failed, all will fail. Judge Feldman held the Administration’s court papers were based on “incomprehensible” studies and made “factually incorrect” arguments that abused “reason (and) common sense.” According to CBS News, Feldman called the Deepwater Horizon oil spill “an unprecedented, sad, ugly and inhuman disaster,” but noted it was only the fourth such incident worldwide in 41 years, and the first ever in the Gulf of Mexico....

Judge Robert J. Perry dismissed two criminal charges against Anna Nicole Smith’s boyfriend Howard K. Stern saying that there was “insufficient evidence,” Reuters reports. This is even though a jury convicted Howard K. Stern in Oct, 2010. Judge Perry also dismissed 3 of 4 charges against Anna Nicole Smith’s former psychiatrist Dr. Khristine Eroshevich; she was also convicted on her charges. The case involved both Howard K. Stern’s and Dr. Eroshevich’s involvement in the former Playboy Playmate’s drug overdose in Feb....

Kim Zolciak should be used to drama but this time it’s coming from her mom’s demand for visitation, not her role on ‘Real Housewives of Atlanta.’ Her mom, Karen Zolciak, wants visitation rights with her four grandchildren. She says that she previously had a good relationship with her granddaughters, ages 9 and 15, and spent a lot of time with them before Kim’s wedding, reports the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Now she says she never gets to see them....

Dr. Michael Kamrava, the Beverly Hills fertility doctor who helped his patient Nadya Suleman (a/k/a ’the Octomom’) birth octuplets after delivering her six other children via in vitro fertilization, was sued by California’s Medical Board for multiple counts of gross negligence. According the lawsuit (see below), Kamrava: Negligently used fresh embryo transfers when he should have used already available frozen embryos; Systematically transferred an excessive number of blastocyt embryos that exceeded the medically recommended number for Suleman’s age and medical history; Failed to refer Suleman for a mental health evalution, given her multiple IVF births to six children prior to getting pregnant and delivering octuplets; Failed to maintain adequate medical records;and Engaged in repeated acts of negligence which, in addition to the above allegations, included giving Suleman high doses of Gonadotropin protein hormones You can read the Medical Board’s administrative lawsuit seeking to revoke or suspend the Dr....

To many criminal defendants, taking the stand to defend themselves seems like a righteous and principled choice. That may have been Sulaiman Abu Ghaith’s reasoning last week, when the man better known as Osama bin Laden’s son-in-law took the stand during his terrorism trial. However, other high-profile defendants like George Zimmerman have opted not to testify at trial. Should you be convinced to take the stand in your own defense?...

Music streaming service Spotify will pay up to $25 million in royalties and a $5 million penalty to settle a long-standing licensing dispute with the National Music Publishers’ Association (NMPA). The issue concerned royalties for “unmatched” songs for which Spotify couldn’t or didn’t identify the original publisher. So who gets paid what, and what does this mean for other streaming sites? Fixing the Past Uncompensated NMPA members will be able to opt in to participate in the disbursement of somewhere between $16 and $25 million, depending on how many publishers come forward with claims....

Merck, manufacturer of the painkiller Vioxx, was slow to convey information on health risks associated with the drug, and the company wrote a number of research studies which were later published as the work of well-known doctors, according to two studies published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). The Washington Post reports that one study accuses Merck of giving the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) an “incomplete accounting of deaths in a clinical trial of Vioxx in people with mild dementia....

In a unanimous opinion today, the Supreme Court ruled that people who suffer sex discrimination in schools can sue under both Title IX, a 1972 law prohibiting discrimination on gender, and a post-Civil war statute that prohibits a wider range of behavior. The case was brought by Lisa and Robert Fitzgerald, the parents of a kindergarten student who was allegedly bullied by an older boy into lifting her skirt and other similar abuse....

The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) has put tanning beds in its highest risk category: “carcinogenic to humans.” This echoes a growing chorus of experts calling for increased attention to tanning bed use. The question is what to do next: simply issue stronger warnings or actually restrict their use? “Carcinogenic to humans” is Group 1 within IARC’s 5 levels of danger. Tanning beds got bumped up from “probably carcinogenic to humans....

Two’s a charm? Unfortunately the saying is three’s a charm, but hopefully a second round in bankruptcy court will be the last for the latest celebrity to fall so deeply in debt that she is forced to file for bankruptcy. Toni Braxton filed for a second bankruptcy in California claiming to owe somewhere between $10-$50 million in multiple states. TMZ reports that the 43 year-old songstress, who has sold more than 40 million records in her career, just can’t seem to handle her finances....

Tyler Perry’s April 1 Facebook post about police pulling him over was no April Fool’s joke: The highest-paid man in entertainment is accusing a pair of white Atlanta police officers of racial profiling. Four days later, Perry’s post boasts more than 117,000 “likes,” 21,000 comments, and 12,000 shares. Atlanta police have launched an internal investigation, E! News reports. Perry’s predicament began when he admittedly made a left turn from a far-right lane – a trick his security detail taught him, to make sure he wasn’t being followed, Perry explained on Facebook....

In an interesting plot twist, Johnny Depp’s defamation suit against The Sun, a British tabloid, could lead to the dissemination of some pretty dicey, and confidential, information about the former marriage between Depp and Amber Heard. A 471 page deposition transcript previously unreleased is now out in the open, shedding a lot of new information on the now defunct marriage. And if both sides end up testifying, things may definitely heat up this winter across the pond....