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White couple sues, says sperm bank gave vials from black donor By Meredith Rodriguez, Tribune reporter contact the reporter A white Ohio woman is suing a Downers Grove-based sperm bank, alleging that the company mistakenly gave her vials from an African-American donor, a fact that she said has made it difficult for her and her same-sex partner to raise their now 2-year-old daughter in an all-white community. Jennifer Cramblett of Uniontown, Ohio, alleges in the lawsuit filed Monday in Cook County Circuit Court, that Midwest Sperm Bank sent her the vials of an African American donor's sperm in September 2011...

You may have thought you’d heard the last of Chelsea Manning, given that he’s currently doing the long haul in the Big House, but apparently you’d be wrong. (For the record, we are now referring to the prisoner as “Chelsea” because the guy has done the paperwork and had his name legally changed. This does not, however, mean that I’m obliged to change pronouns.) There is no change in his status as a semi-permanent resident of Fort Leavenworth, but he still wants hormone treatments for gender dysphoria and his legal team is willing to sue Chuck Hagel to get...

David Denenberg, a Nassau County legislator who’s running for the Senate as a Democrat, billed for fictional expenses from the day he arrived at the firm in 2006 through most of last year, according to a lawsuit the firm Davidoff Hutcher & Citron says it will file Tuesday. Denenberg’s former colleagues call him a 'criminal mastermind still inexcusably running for public office.'

Cher might be wishing she could turn back time after a new lawsuit claims she was being racist. According to TMZ, the veteran diva was auditioning dancers for her 2014 Dressed To Kill tour when choreographer Kevin Wilson had a particular liking for a "minority female dancer." Cher allegedly told Wilson to seek out a white, blonde dancer, saying, "We have too much color onstage." He claims in the suit that she also requested not to cast "anymore dark skinned black dancers on the tour."

HOUSTON - Opening statements started Tuesday afternoon in a civil suit involving legendary singer Patti LaBelle. LaBelle and her entourage are being sued in federal court for an incident that happened at Bush Intercontinental Airport in 2011.

DENVER (Reuters) - The parents of a woman killed in the Colorado theater shooting rampage filed a lawsuit on Tuesday against four companies that sold the accused gunman James Holmes ammunition, body armor and other gear used in the massacre. Sandy and Lonnie Phillips, the parents of Jessica Ghawi, say the retailers including BulkAmmo.com, which sold Holmes more than 4,300 rounds of ammunition, were negligent when they sold the items to "a patently dangerous homicidal man." Ghawi, a 24-year-old aspiring sports broadcaster, was one of 12 people killed in July 2012 when Holmes opened fire inside a suburban Denver theater...

Warner Bros. has filed a lawsuit against a small bar from Amityville, New York, for playing one of their songs without permission. The track in question is not a recent pop song, but the 80-year old love song "I Only Have Eyes for You" which first appeared in Warner's 1934 movie "Dames." giacomoMany bars, pubs and restaurants like to entertain their guests with live music, with bands often playing covers of recent hits or golden oldies. As with all music that’s performed in public, the bar owners are required to pay the royalties, even if there are just handful of...

A former senior executive for the New York Mets charged that she was "humiliated" and eventually fired by chief operating officer Jeff Wilpon for having a baby out of wedlock in a new lawsuit filed in Brooklyn federal court on Wednesday. Leigh Castergine, who earned a six-figure salary as head of Mets Ticket Sales and Service Operations from 2010 to 2014, said that in one executive meeting she attended Wilpon brought up her pregnancy in a discussion of e-cigarette ads.

Reuters) - The secret marriage this year of a 96-year-old Virginia woman and a 95-year-old man has drawn the scrutiny of a judge, who has ruled the marriage may be illegal, a lawyer said on Tuesday. Judge James Clark of the Alexandria Circuit Court ruled this month that the marriage between Eddie Harrison and Edith Hill may not be legally binding and ordered Hill's attorney, Jessica Niesen, to investigate it. The legality of the marriage surfaced during a custodial dispute over who should care for Hill, who was ruled legally incapacitated in 2011. Hill's granddaughter, Rebecca Wright, and daughter Patricia...

Mallory Musallam filed a class action complaint against CBS Broadcasting, CBS Corporation and the retiring late night host’s Worldwide Pants Inc. for herself and everyone who has ever been an intern on the show. "Named Plaintiff has initiated this action seeking for herself, and on behalf of all similarly situated employees that also worked on The Late Show with David Letterman, all compensation, including minimum wages and overtime compensation, which they were deprived of, plus interest, attorneys’ fees, and costs," says the jury demanding filing in New York Supreme Court ... Claiming that the production company and CBS intentionally wrongfully...

In a victory for the Obama administration, a federal appeals court in Washington, D.C. Thursday threw out an earlier ruling that said financial subsidies are not available for people who bought health insurance on the federal exchange. A three-judge panel of the D.C. Court of Appeals reached that conclusion in late July. On the same day, a federal appeals court in Richmond reached the opposite conclusion and said the subsidies are available. But Thursday, the full D.C. Court of Appeals said it will re-hear the case, which erases the lower court ruling that went against the subsidies. This greatly diminishes...

KAMLOOPS, B.C. - A 22-year-old B.C. woman is suing her ex-boyfriend to pay tuition for a class she says she failed due to distress over the breakup. Roopam Plawn, a marketing student at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops, says in her notice of claim that she is seeking $500 for the class, $600 for anxiety, depression, insomnia and loss of working time and performance and $250 for "severe distress." She also wants Jasmeet Ahluwalia to pay court costs. Plawn says in the court document that she met the international student in September 2013, they broke up in early 2014, got...

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — A federal judge has upheld Louisiana's ban on same-sex marriages, as well as the state's refusal to recognize gay marriages legally performed in other states. U.S. District Judge Martin Feldman's ruling Wednesday ...said gay marriage supporters failed to prove that the ban violates equal protection or due process provisions of the Constitution. Feldman agreed ...that states have the right to define marriage.

A 16-year-old in South Carolina is suing the state's Department of Motor Vehicles because the agency won't allow the teen to take a driver's license photo wearing makeup. Chase Culpepper, who was born male, regularly wears makeup and either androgynous or women's clothing. The teen does not identify with gender-specific pronouns. Culpepper told reporters Tuesday that being ordered by officials to remove what they called a disguise was humiliating. The lawsuit filed in federal court Tuesday says the DMV violated the teen's rights.

Hundreds of adoptive parents in New York City who've sent their children to live elsewhere continue to get monthly government subsidies of up to $1,700 per child. They can continue receiving the checks until the child turns 21 years old.They gave up on their “hard-to-place" adopted kids — but not on the government check intended for the discarded kids’ care. Hundreds of adoptive parents across the five boroughs who've sent their children to live elsewhere are continuing to pull in monthly checks of up to $1,700 per child while the city, state and feds look the other way, the Daily...

A stolen consecrated host that was at the center of a lawsuit filed by Archbishop Paul S. Coakley and intended for use at a planned Satanic “black mass” in Oklahoma City has been returned. According to the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City, an attorney representing the head of the satanic group presented the host to a Catholic priest the afternoon of Aug. 21. With the return of the host and an accompanying signed statement from the satanic group leader that the group no longer possesses a consecrated host, nor will they use a consecrated host in their rituals, the Oklahoma City...

Broadcasters are threatening to stand in the way of next year's highly anticipated airwave auction, putting one the Obama administration’s top priorities at risk. Officials in the broadcast and wireless industry are hopeful that a new lawsuit from the National Association of Broadcasters will put pressure on the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to reach a reach a compromise to save the auction — expected to net billions of dollars — from would could be a months-long delay. “This lawsuit puts a cloud over the auction,” said one Republican FCC aide. “It would make sense for the Commission to work something...

Donald Sterling's former assistant claims she never had sex with the billionaire bigot because he’s homosexual — and she was his beard. V. Stiviano made the bombshell allegation in court paperwork filed Thursday as an answer to a prior lawsuit filed by Sterling’s wife, Shelly Sterling, a source told the Daily News.

<p>According to the suit, Nizewitz signed on to the show before it had a name. She claims she was advised of the nudity, but was assured that all frontal and genital nudity would be blurred. During one brief moment, though, during a "wrestling takedown" of her date, her crotch was allegedly flashed on the screen without blurring.</p>

A watchdog group on Monday sued the U.S. government, accusing the Obama White House of interfering in and thwarting the release of public documents under the Freedom of Information Act. The lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia by the group Cause of Action (CoA) names 12 federal agencies that delayed the release of documents so officials could consult with White House under a new process established in spring 2009. The process, which gave White House officials review authority over documents that federal agencies wanted to release that mentioned the White House or presidential aides,...