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The daughter of a woman who was killed by extreme heat during the 2021 Pacific Northwest heat dome has filed a first-of-its-kind lawsuit against major oil companies claiming they should be held responsible for her death.
The civil lawsuit, filed on May 29 in King County Superior Court in Seattle, is the first wrongful death case brought against Big Oil in the US in the context of climate change. It attempts to hold some of the world’s biggest fossil fuel companies liable for the death of Juliana Leon, who perished from overheating during the heat dome event, which scientists have determined would have been virtually impossible absent human-caused climate change.
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OpenAI is now fighting a court order to preserve all ChatGPT user logs—including deleted chats and sensitive chats logged through its API business offering—after news organizations suing over copyright claims accused the AI company of destroying evidence.
"Before OpenAI had an opportunity to respond to those unfounded accusations, the court ordered OpenAI to 'preserve and segregate all output log data that would otherwise be deleted on a going forward basis until further order of the Court (in essence, the output log data that OpenAI has been destroying)," OpenAI explained in a court filing demanding oral arguments in a bid to block the controversial order.
In the filing, OpenAI alleged that the court rushed the order based only on a hunch raised by The New York Times and other news plaintiffs. And now, without "any just cause," OpenAI argued, the order "continues to prevent OpenAI from respecting its users’ privacy decisions." That risk extended to users of ChatGPT Free, Plus, and Pro, as well as users of OpenAI’s application programming interface (API), OpenAI said.
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A group of tabletop game companies is suing President Donald Trump because it says his tariffs are reducing their profits to the real-world value of Monopoly money.
Stonemaier Games, which makes the popular board games "Wingspan," "Rolling Realms," and "Vantage," announced its involvement in the lawsuit this week. The company said the lawsuit would "challenge the unchecked authority" of Trump and his tariffs.
"We will not stand idly by while our livelihoods—and the livelihoods of thousands of small business owners and contractors in the US, along with the customers whose pursuit of happiness we hold dear—are treated like pawns in a political game," the company said.
Lawyers for Stonemaier, which is based in St. Louis, said in a legal complaint that the company estimates it will pay "millions in tariffs" because it manufactures all of its games in a Chinese factory owned by Panda Game Manufacturing, which is based in Canada. Stonemaier has printed its games in China for more than 13 years, the lawsuit says.
At least nine other companies joined Stonemaier in the lawsuit, saying Trump's tariffs will cause substantial harm to their business. XYZ Game Labs, Rookie Mage, Spielcraft, and TinkerHouse Games are all board game companies that are joining the lawsuit.
Spielcraft, an independent Nebraska-based board game maker, paid $4,335 in tariff fees in April, the lawsuit says.
Other small businesses also joined the suit. Clothing company Princes Awesome, which makes inclusive clothing for children and adults, paid $1,041 for dresses imported from China in March, according to the lawsuit.
"Princess Awesome has also ordered additional products from Peru, Bangladesh, and India that they anticipate will arrive in the United States in the coming weeks and are continuing to place new orders for imports," the complaint says.
Trump and his treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, have said that the tariffs are part of a strategy to increase manufacturing jobs in the United States. But that could take a while. In the meantime, tariffs can raise prices and reduce the dollar's purchasing power, leaving consumers with less money to spend.
Experts told Business Insider that supply chain disruptions caused by the tariffs could cause prices to spike and the availability of goods to decrease in as early as a few weeks.
Pacific Legal Foundation, which is representing the companies in the lawsuit, said in a statement that Trump's tariffs are unconstitutional and that only Congress should have the power to levy tariffs.
"The Constitution gives Congress—not the president—the power to impose tariffs because policies affecting an entire nation should come from the body most representative of the entire nation," the statement says. "And Congress cannot delegate that core legislative power to the president."
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DoorDash wants Uber's anti-competition lawsuit tossed by the California Superior Court, saying the litigation is a "cynical and calculated scare tactic."
DoorDash filed the motion alongside a press release on Friday.
"It's disappointing behavior from a company once known for competing on the merits of its products and innovation," DoorDash, which tops the online food delivery market in the United States, wrote in the release.
Uber filed a complaint against DoorDash in February, accusing the company of anti-competitive business practices that inflated prices for restaurants and customers. The complaint said DoorDash "devised and is engaged in an unlawful scheme to stifle competition with Uber Eats, its closest rival."
Uber accused DoorDash in the complaint of leveraging restaurants' dependence on its app to secure near-exclusive or exclusive use.
"Restaurants simply cannot afford to stand up to DoorDash, and find themselves powerless to choose the service or services that are best for their businesses in the market for first-party delivery," Uber's complaint said.
Emily Dulla/Getty Images for DoorDash
Earnest Analytics reported in February that DoorDash dominated the food delivery market with a 60.7% share. Uber Eats followed at 26.1% and Grubhub at 6.3%.
DoorDash denied Uber's accusations in the motion on Friday.
Among its arguments, DoorDash said Uber is trying to "shoehorn its competition claims" by using a statute that typically applies to "disputes regarding employee non-compete provisions."
"Uber's lawsuit should be seen for what it is: sour grapes from a competitor that has been told by merchants, time and again, that they prefer working with DoorDash," the company's motion said. That's not the basis for a lawsuit — it's just fair competition. The Court should sustain DoorDash's demurrer."
Uber told Business Insider in a statement that it won't back down.
"It seems like the team at DoorDash is having a hard time understanding the content of our complaint. When restaurants are forced to choose between unfair terms or retaliation, that's not competition — it's coercion. Uber will continue to stand up for merchants and for a level playing field. We look forward to presenting the facts in court," an Uber spokesperson said.
A lawyer for DoorDash told BI, "Uber appears to be upset that they're losing in the marketplace because DoorDash has better and more innovative products, but that isn't a legitimate basis for a lawsuit."
"Uber's legal claims are meritless and should be dismissed," the lawyer said.
DoorDash isn't Uber's only legal battle this year. In April, the Federal Trade Commission sued Uber, saying the company added users to its Uber One subscription program without their consent.
The FTC said in a press release that the company "failed to deliver promised savings" and made it tough for users to cancel the service.
Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi told Semafor on Friday that the FTC's lawsuit was a "head-scratcher."
"We make it incredibly easy to sign up for Uber One, the value is enormous, the renewal rates are over 90%. It's a great product," Khosrowshahi said. "We allow you to cancel. We allow you to pause. That one was a head-scratcher for me."
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