An Alabama woman says Apple's become "unjustly enriched at the expense of Plaintiff and Class members" because her iPhone 3G doesn't get a good reception. She says where she lives supposedly gets good AT&T coverage and that her iPhone doesn't work as well as Apple said it would in its commercials. It's a common complaint. Check out the video comparing the speed of an iPhone in an Apple commercial versus real life embedded below . But we have to ask: instead of filing an expensive lawsuit, why doesn't the plaintiff just junk her iPhone and buy a Palm Centro or a Nokia N90? That seems easier and, you know, vastly less annoying to the rest of us.

Don't mess with the Mud Truck. The coffee outfit that started out of an old Con Ed utility truck in 2001 and has since earned iconic status downtown (and branched out with a café, line of coffee, and location at Kiehl's) has filed suit against Muud, which sells a line of canned coffee beverages. According to the lawsuit filed in federal court last week, Mud first became aware of Muud last December and instructed Muud's parent company, Underground Beverage Brands, and its founder, Matthew Marini, to stop using the confusingly similar brand name. Muud initially agreed to change its name, then asked permission to license the Mud name, and finally tried to give Mud the ol' run-around and trademark the name "Muud." Now the husband and wife team who founded Mud, Greg Northrop and Nina Kay Berott, have fired back. They're suing Muud for trademark infringement and unfair competition (among other things), and have asked the court to force Muud to turn over any profits from their line as well as hand over damages. (This isn't the first time they've had to deal with brand confusion; late last year, a "Love Truck" made brief appearances around town.) After the jump, the entirety of Mud's case against Muud.

Estiatorio Milos on West 55th Street is one of New York's most upscale Greek restaurants. It's one of the most expensive, too. Since most of the prices on the menu are by the pound, that delicious piece of grilled tuna with oil and lemon can easily cost $50 or more. ("Unless you've worked at a carnival guessing weights, the bill is always something of a surprise," writes New York.) But it seems Milos's owner, Costas Spiliadis, isn't just engaging in a little deception when it comes to the prices on the menu. According to a class action lawsuit filed against the restaurant, Spiliadis has been refusing to pay servers minimum wage, denying them overtime pay, and forcing wait staff to share tips with the restaurant's managers. The lawsuit was filed by Franco Sukaj and Nikolas Tsikitas, who both worked as waiters at the restaurant. You can read the legal nitty gritty for yourself after the jump.

On Sunday, Google featured rowers in a custom Olympics logo on its homepage. Were the mullahs of Mountain View pulling for Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, the Olympics hopefuls in rowing who charged Harvard classmate Mark Zuckerberg with nicking the idea for Facebook from ConnectU, their college social network? The Winklevosses lost in the pair rowing finals, after handing their company to Zuckerberg in a court-ordered settlement. Then again, Google is known for backing losers in social networking.

So here's the new way to get out of your record contract: just "repudiate" it! That's the sophisticated legal strategy employed by 30 Seconds To Mars, Jared Leto's group. His record label, EMI, responded to the band's novel move by suing them for $30 million. Free your mind from the shackles of commerce, EMI! On its website that won't allow you to turn off the god damn music, 30STM explained in a rambling fashion just why they decided to opt out: In California contracts can only last seven years? But they've had theirs for nine years? So they just quit it? No idea if this is legally sound or not.

An Indian construction company called Gremach is suing Google for defamation because Google so far refuses to turn over identifying information regarding an anonymous blogger who wrote nasty things about Gremach using Blogger.com, Google's blogging service. Unlike in the United States, in India, when a Web site's users break the law, the Web site owner can be held liable.Last September, Gremach bought a large stake in several Mozambique coal mines and a blogger going by the name "Toxic Writer" soon began attacking the company. In February, Gremach sued the blogger. An Indian court sided in Gremach's favor on Feburary 26, ordering Google to remove the defamatory article and ID the blogger. So far Google hasn't complied, which is why it's now the defendant. In the past, Google's jumped at the chance to ID users who break local laws. In February 2007, Google turned over to News Corp. YouTube users who had uploaded copyrighted shows. Last fall, Google helped Indian police jail a man — the wrong man, turns out — for posting an insulting picture of an Indian historical figure.

Thirty-two Facebook users signed onto a class-action suit against Facebook and several of its Beacon partners, including Blockbuster, Fandango and Overstock, Hotwire, STA Travel, Zappos.com and Gamefly. Facebook Beacon was the service that reported to a Facebook user's friends that user's activity on partnered sites elsewhere on the Internet. The suit alleges that between November 7, 2007 and December 5, 2007, Facebook did all this without asking first. Technically Facebook did ask, with little pop-up dialogue boxes on partner sites, but apparently they were hard to spot. Still, Beacon did spoil the surprise of a fair number of Christmas gifts, which, as we understand the tradition, are supposed to remain a secret until opened.The users want Facebook and its partners to delete all stored information, the return of any "ill-gotten gains" — of which we understand there to be none — and for the court to "award restitution." If the plaintiffs win the case it'll at least be interesting to see how much our justice system values a good Christmas surprise in monetary terms. Meanwhile, the technology behind Facebook Beacon is back, but now its called Facebook Connect and now its entirely opt-in.

Meet Chris Renfro. Last month, in a case that went wholly unnoticed in the company's unending news flow of highly credible sexual harassment accusations and that lost chihuahua story, he sued American Apparel for race discrimination. (I know, like you put it past them.) We just took a look at his complaint and wondered if it might hold some deeper meaning for hipsterkind. Renfro contends that, while working on the "industrial design and construction" of an American Apparel store (context: said job pays $11.25 an hour) he was called the N-word incessantly by a co-worker named Sean Alonzo who allegedly said they "could use more" N-words at American Apparel (ha ha ha ha) and then proceeded to neg him by bringing a friend he described as "really racist," — along with said friend's vicious dog! — to a store they were opening. Reading the complaint, I remembered how there once was a time when this Vice magazine hipster racism thing used to shock me. Now it just seems sad! And it looks like Renfro agrees, judging from a Malthusian MySpace post he wrote the day before the suit was filed maintaining his hipster tormenters need to develop actual skills. After all, "what is graphic design going to do for you when you're starving?"

This is the best news of the week! Sad-sack boomer troubadour Jackson Browne—Jackson Browne!—is suing John McCain. Why? Because McCain has been using "Running on Empty" in an ad without Browne's permission. Browne says McCain's use of the song misrepresents Browne's own political beliefs, not to mention McCain's age: the senator was pushing 30 in '65, not 17. Not since Loudon Wainwright sued Walter Mondale ETC ETC ETC [HuffPo]

Sad news for Hamptons residents looking to blow $350,000 on a Lamborghini this summer: Manhattan Motorcars Hamptons, the dealership in Westhampton Beach that caters to the rich and even richer, may lose its right to sell the insanely expensive autos in the near future. In June, Lamborghini's parent company, Automobili Lamborghini SpA, informed the dealership that they were no longer using the Lamborghini name with permission. (The legal threat was prompted by Manhattan Motorcars' move to a new location, one which Lamborghini, it seems, didn't approve of.) Now Manhattan Motorcars is fighting back. It's slapped Lamborghini with a $20 million lawsuit for breach of contract, among other things. The court records—and messy details—are below.

Luxury goods-maker Tiffany — you know, the one which sells the gays their wedding rings — is appealing a federal district court's decision clearing eBay of responsibility for counterfeit product listings. The jewelry company sends eBay 135,000 takedown notices a year, and wishes eBay would do more of the work for it. eBay's play-it-cool response: "Tiffany's decision to carry this litigation on after the District Court's decision doesn't do anything to combat counterfeiting." Much like eBay itself. [Atlanta Business Chronicle]

ConnectU cofounders and Olympic rowers Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss beat out Croatia to win their second heat yesterday, advancing to Wednesday's semifinals. Meanwhile, back on the home front, U.S. District Judge James Ware said Monday that ConnectU has until Tuesday to transfer all its stock to Facebook and comply with a settlement to the ConnectU founders' suit alleging that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg stole their idea.The news is hardly bad news for the Winklevoss brothers and ConnectU's third cofounder, Divya Narendra. Court papers say the three will get "millions" of dollars in cash as well as stock in a startup too popular with mainstream America's millennial generation to fail. (The Winklevosses were fighting the settlement after they discovered that the Facebook common stock they would receive was worth less than they supposed.) Plus, there's still that shot at gold.

The U.S. Department of Labor and law firm Fragomen Del Rey Bernsen & Loewy, which represents clients such as IBM on immigration issues, are in a legal tussle. The department is conducting an audit of Fragomen's practices in helping clients disqualify American applicants — a necessary step before employers can obtain H-1B visas for foreign workers. Now Fragomen has fired back with a lawsuit that calls the Labor Department's rules restricting lawyers' activities unconstitutional. How do lawyers work to make sure no citizen applicant could possibly qualify?In the video above from last year, attorneys from law firm Cohen & Grigsby detailed how the firm suggests a minimum of job opening ads are placed in markets where it's unlikely a qualified applicant will apply, so few are received. The firm also provides the company with a checklist which the employer can use to quickly process — and reject — any applications it may receive so that the company can permanently certify the foreign national. If a citizen passes that test, there are further tricks to making sure something arises from the interview process that disqualifies them. Disqualifying Americans also works in the favor of companies overall, since it allows them numbers to cite when complaining about the need to raise immigration quotas and expedite the process. Fragomen is citing the First Amendment and due process in arguing that it should be allowed to offer counsel to employers. Meanwhile, up to 3,000 applications are on hold pending the investigation.

Let's just put it out there: copy editors are vaguely creepy. There they sit in their corner, poring over pages while all the reporters and (other) editors are doing the real, sexy work of journalism. What makes someone want to be a copy editor in the first place? Could it be... sexual perversion? (Kidding of course! We love copy editors, platonically). Charles Cretella, a veteran New York Times copy editor, is now going to court over a sexual harassment case that centers on-you guessed it-a fellow copy editor, who was masturbating at work. Goodness. The strange details: Cretella says the Times didn't give him a promotion because he was falsely charged with sexually harassing a new 33-year-old copy editor that Cretella was training. Very enthusiastically:

A famous megachurch pastor in a (racist?) airplane rage! An extortionate flight attendant! A sham psychologist-for-hire who will say anything for the right price! All the ingredients for a cheap, trite courtoom novel are present in the case of Victoria Osteen, the co-pastor (with her husband Joel) of the 40,000-strong Lakewood megachurch in Texas, which is often used as a convenient public symbol of the creepy huge-church trend. Is Victoria a benign blond brainwashed by Jesus, or a sinister undercover bigot set to explode at any moment? Here are the holy facts:

Bad news for all you vodka-loving patriots out there: that bottle of Skyy vodka you're planning to guzzle later tonight was not actually a "product of the USA." The vodka, itself, is made here, which is why is says it's made in the USA on the bottle. But those "distinctive cobalt blue bottles"? They're made in Mexico! At least that's what a woman named Jennifer Martin claims, who filed suit against Skyy after she picked up some booze for a Independence Day celebration but had insisted on only buying "American made" beverages, and then got fooled into picking up some Skyy. Martin has filed a class action suit and is asking for $75,000 for each plaintiff, plus $5 million in punitive damages. You can review the lawsuit below. And you can probably expect to see Martin make an appearance on Lou Dobbs next week.

In late 2006, Facebook was rumored to be looking to acquire StudiVZ — the German social network that's 10 times the size of Facebook's German edition. In the middle of the sales talks, StudiVZ sold to Holtzbrinck Group, a Germany publishing giant, for up to $134 million. Holtzbrinck then offered the site back to Facebook for a hefty markup. Facebook balked filed suit instead, claiming that StudiVZ's site was a nearly indistinguishable doppelgänger. [PaidContent]

Former network engineer David Walsh worked at Apple from 1995 to 2007 before finally realizing that when the company tags "senior" on to the front of your title, it doesn't mean much except for more work. Now he's suing Apple for violating California's labor laws. In a complaint filed in the Southern District of California, Walsh alleges Apple requires employees to work more than 40 hours a week or eight hours a day, but refuses to pay overtime and instead just "promotes" employees to new overtime ineligible titles. Apparently Walsh also had to be on call for seven day stretches every six weeks. Weblogs Inc. and Mahalo founder Jason Calacanis would urge Walsh to drop the suit, get out of tech, and find work in a post office. We're just happy to report finding another job to add to our list of tech's very worst. (Photo by philentropist)

Here's a story far more interesting than anything you'll watch on YouTube: A prodigal scion of a wealthy family, pitted against his powerful father and an ambitious blonde. It's not a pilot for a new courtroom procedural — it's the tale of Andrew Baron's Rocketboom, an online-video startup held up, inexplicably, as an example of the potential of the medium. Sony's seven-figure deal to distribute Rocketboom is seen by some as evidence that the industry is growing up. But what it really tells us is that having access to a credit line backed by Daddy is as sure a recipe for success online as it was in the old Hollywood. The exciting plot twist: Baron's father was not always happy about the arrangement. We've only learned how daddy-dependent Rocketboom was because Fred Baron loaned his son's company a total of $810,300.40, and then took it to court in order to force repayment last year. If you think it's strange for a father to go after his own son's company in court, then you don't know the elder Baron.He's a leading Dallas attorney who even sued the firm he cofounded, Baron & Budd, and is a regular on blog Overlawyered. More interesting is that Amanda Congdon intervened in order to protect her claim on part of the company. Meanwhile, the younger Baron complains all this legal wrangling tied his dealmaking hands, and that the company nearly went broke twice this year. The Rocketboom episode neatly explains why the world of online video so resembles film school, a parent-funded enterprise of self-indulgent auteurs with macroambitions viewed by microaudiences (including yours truly). Sony's deal doesn't affirm the potential of online video as a means of creative expression; it simply tells us that the rich, despite themselves, can't help getting richer. (Photos by Eric Skiff and Alex de Carvalho)

• Meet the heavyweight political donors who live at River House.