The US Supreme Court is distinctly unimpressed with a cozy deal cooked up by Google's lawyers after the ad giant lost an $8.5m class action lawsuit for violating user privacy. On Wednesday, the nation's top court was asked to tighten up rules over so-called "cy pres" settlements where most, or sometimes all, of a settlement …

Analysis A US federal judge has approved a $33m class-action lawsuit against fitness tracker maker Fitbit – but put the brakes on a massive $8.25m lawyer award claim. The case was brought by angry shareholders after Fitbit failed to disclose problems with the build quality of its products which, when revealed, caused a significant …

The remains of Yahoo! will be forced to defend the class action complaint filed by customers whose data was exposed in the 2014 megahack. ON Friday Judge Lucy Koh denied in part a motion by parent company Verizon to have the complaint thrown out of court. The scope of the suit, however, was narrowed as parts were dismissed. …

It's not just Intel facing a legal firestorm over its handling of the Spectre and Meltdown CPU design flaws – AMD is also staring at a growing stack of class-action complaints related to the chip vulnerabilities. At least four separate lawsuits have now been filed against the California-based processor slinger, alleging …

Intel says it is facing 32 separate class-action lawsuits following the revelations it shipped millions of processors with security design flaws dubbed Meltdown and Spectre. The figure was slipped into its annual 10-K financial filing, submitted earlier this week to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Speaking to …

A group of 16 US state attorneys general are urging America's Supreme Court to tear up an $8.5m legal settlement from Google – because none of the cash will go to the folks the class-action lawsuit was brought on behalf of. Led by the attorney general of Arizona, Mark Brnovich, the legal eagles have taken issue with the fact …

Just days after The Register revealed a serious security hole in its CPU designs, Intel is the target of three different class-action lawsuits in America. Complaints filed in US district courts in San Francisco, CA [PDF], Eugene, OR [PDF], and Indianapolis, IN [PDF] accuse the chip kingpin of, among other things, deceptive …

VTech, the toy company pierced by attackers in late 2015, is hoping an Illinois court will toss out the resulting class action against it. The company's woes began on 27 November 2015, when it belatedly owned up to a breach. At the time, Troy Hunt believed the breach contained details of 4.8 million customers, and journalist …

Apple may have to pay its employees extra for time it spends rifling through their personal belongings at work, if it loses a long-running lawsuit that is now in front of the Californian Supreme Court. The American state’s Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals is kicking the thorny question of whether employees are entitled to pay …

Snap Inc is being sued by its shareholders who claim that executives misled investors about the value of SnapChat app maker ahead of its IPO earlier this year. The lawsuit [PDF], filed this month in the California Central US District Court, accuses Snap, CEO Evan Spiegel and CFO Drew Vollero of violating US securities laws. …

Google has agreed to settle a class-action lawsuit that accused the ads broker of failing to pay overtime to contract workers. The aggrieved freelancers asked the Santa Clara County Court in California to approve a deal in which Google and contract staffing agency Urpan Technologies will pay $5.5m to a bunch of workers who …

Elon Musk’s SpaceX has agreed pay out nearly $4m to thousands of underpaid employees – yet one of them is curiously annoyed with his court-backed windfall. Los Angeles judge Elihu M. Berle gave his court’s backing to SpaceX’s settlement of the class-action lawsuit after first hearing, and dismissing, the objections of former …

A chap in Chicago is suing headphone maker Bose after discovering how much personal information its app was phoning home to base – this slurped data includes songs listened to, for how long, and when. The class-action lawsuit, filed Tuesday in the US district court of Illinois by a one Kyle Zak, claims the Bose Connect …

Cable modem maker Arris is facing a class-action suit in America over its handling of a lag-prone line of cable modems. The complaint, filed in the Northern California District Court, accuses the vendor of violating four consumer protection laws and seeks relief for folks in the Golden State who purchased an Arris SURFboard …

Uber has been hit with a class-action lawsuit alleging the dial-a-ride app maker deliberately cuts driver payouts while at the same time overcharging riders. The complaint [PDF], filed this week in the California Central District US Court, claims the Uber phone app deliberately chooses longer routes to calculate fares, then …

Samsung was handed a rare win this week when a judge decided not to pause its defense of a lawsuit over faulty washing machines. Judge Donald Middlebrooks of the Florida Southern US District Court this week denied a request from Plaintiff Kenneth Menzer that his class-action lawsuit against the Korean electronics giant be put …

Netflix is facing a class-action lawsuit from one of its investors, who claims executives withheld bad news from shareholders – and cost them billions of dollars in losses. The video-streaming giant is accused of failing to promptly warn shareholders that raising the cost of its monthly subscriptions was putting off potential …

A US Court of Appeals has resurrected a class-action lawsuit accusing Apple of monopoly behavior with its iOS App Store. The case, Pepper et al v Apple, was sparked by Cupertino customers Robert Pepper, Stephen Schwartz, Edward Hayter and Eric Terrell, who were upset at Apple's stranglehold on software for their iThings. …