Monday afternoon, local news station KOMO sued the Seattle Police Department over refusal to release department records -- specifically, KOMO has been trying for over a year to gain access to the department's archive of dashcam videos. Last night, KOMO reported that SPD has apparently lost over 45,000 of them over the past three years. How severe is this loss? It's a huge chunk of their archive. KOMO says that one month in 2008, "more than 14,000 videos disappeared in less than two days...that represented about 22 percent of all videos in the system at the time." more ›

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The NW Jesuits allegedly used a remote area in NW Alaska as a "dumping ground" for such priests as Poole -- those that had been involved in sexual abuse investigations and lawsuits. more ›

Sounders striker Nate Jaqua, the reigning MLS player of the week, stands accused of rape, according to the Courthouse News Service. more ›

A teenager was shot by a gun his stepbrother both obtained and stored at Highline High School. So can the Highline school district be held partially responsible for his death? How about the stepbrother's family? The victim's mom, Michele Lucero, thinks so: long-distance from New Mexico, she's suing the district, her kid's father, and his wife for failing to divine the future. Er, technically she's calling it "failing to secure the gun" that issued the bullet that killed her son. This is a fascinating twist in what has been a complex, emotional case since Michael Miller was shot by his stepbrother nearly three years ago. What will it mean for the district, we wonder, if Lucero wins her lawsuit? Will it change anything? more ›

In 1964, most of Fort Lawton's land on the Magnolia Bluff was declared surplus by the U.S. military. That's when locals first banded together to voice their concerns over the future use of the area, forming a group called Citizens For a Fort Lawton Park and ultimately attracting the attention and support of a U.S. Senator in their efforts to prevent the government from turning the land into an ABM base. By 1971, the land was in the hands of the City of Seattle, and Discovery Park was formed. more ›

"The Board's decision ... was sentimental and capricious, but not legal," says one of the two filings that make up the suit. "The Board's action was improper and illegal."

Seventeen teams showed up at the Old Pequliar last night to see if our voice would give out. We managed to get through the evening without having a Peter Brady moment, but we're grateful to those of you who were willing to step up to the mic at a moment's notice. more ›

Seven years ago tomorrow, nine people died in a wet, muddy, suffocating crowd surge during a Pearl Jam show at the Roskilde Festival in Denmark. This past Tuesday, the band was back to play Copenhagen for the first time since the tragedy. more ›

And in news related to what will fill the iPhones purchased at the U Village Apple Store this week: UW has announced that not only will they not protect students from file-sharing lawsuits, they will hunt them down and club them to death to protect the violated rights-holders. Ok, a shoot-on-sight order isn't in effect yet--for the time being the University of Washington will only serve legal papers to students who use the school's network to download music. more ›

McMenamins, a Portland-based chain of hotels, restaurants and brew pubs, submitted a 2005 letter of intent to lease the seminary building and turn it into a hotel with a restaurant and a conference center. more ›

Ed Note: Hey, this is our new guy David Forrester. He's a transplant from Boston so while we've tried to warn him off of reaching for the Big Dig comparisons every day, he'll probably slip a few past us at some point. Out of the gate it looks like he's unearthed historical precedent for our current situation. Give him a warm Seattle welcome. more ›

Seattlest once got lost in Kmart while our mom was trying to buy our brother clothing, and we're still reeling from it one week later. So we're curious about a story that the Times has picked up from the AP, reporting that some national parks and search and rescue organizations will be testing out a radio transmitter system originally designed to help law enforcement types find disabled people (primarily those with Alzheimer's or autism) who wander away from home. The theory goes that it might assist in searching for lost hikers/climbers/etc. more ›

The latest Survey USA Election Poll has Maria Cantwell at 54% and Mike!!!!!! at 42%. The poll was taken the weekend after the kick-ass debate on KING-5, and during the release of McGavick’s Seattle Times endorsement. more ›

Last time we reported on a Starbucks lawsuit, public sympathy was tilted in the caffeine giant's favor. Even the frequently anticorporate commenters at Consumerist thought it was stupid to sue them for "betrayal" over a botched email coupon. more ›

Yes, Starbucks fucked up. Their "complimentary iced grande beverage" email coupon rapidly escalated beyond its intended audience, to no-one's surprise but Starbucks management's. They're embarrassed, and they should be -- it's a rookie Internet mistake, the kind of thing that we associate with the wild-'n'-woolly days of early '00 or so. more ›

Costco has a lawsuit in progress that revolves around the artificially high prices of wine in the state of Washington. There are a bunch of laws in the books that severely restrict how beer and wine sales happen in the state and Costco is attempting to undo those, and they've had some success. The end result may be cheaper wines from, unfortunately, fewer wineries. Seattlest buys a few bottles of wine a week, but we can't really see the outcome of Costco's lawsuits affecting us all that much. Maybe we're wrong. more ›

Earlier in the week it looked as if Mayor Nickels' plan to replace the Alaskan Way Viaduct with a tunnel had run out of time. Olympia lawmakers wanted him to present a funding package by April 1, an almost impossible task given the project's 3 to 4 billion dollar cost. more ›

Suddenly a couple of council members aren't so sure it would be a good idea to have Summer Nights concerts in Gas Works park after all. Maybe it's better to have them at South Lake Union where the views suck, but at least there's no entrenched ninja NIMBYs chucking lawsuits like chinese stars. Licata and McIver are asking the parks department to take another look at South Lake Union, and although events the size of Summer Nights weren't originally in the plan for the park there we're gonna go ahead and say that Vulcan probably owes the city council a few and things can be arranged. more ›

The Stranger's article on Dale Chihuly and his recent lawsuits is exactly what you think it is; Dale bashing at its finest. If you live in Seattle and you're even vaguely paying attention you know that Dale Chihuly hasn't touched an actual piece of glass in years and he's more of a pirate captain figurehead directing his little glass gnomes here and there. You can be forgiven for imagining him with a whip when he's standing over the laboring blowers. Jen Graves goes over all of that in her article, minus the whip. more ›

Texas A&M University believes that, because of some game in 1922, only they should be able to recognize football fans as the 12th man. more ›

According to news stories via The Globe and Mail and The LA Times (registration required), an accused lawyer by the name of Jules Zalon representing Robert Crumb filed a lawsuit in a Seattle court December 21 against Amazon.com seeking compensation for an older case of copyright infringement whereby the online shopping behemoth allegedly made an unauthorized use of Crumb's keep on truckin' character on its website in 2003. more ›

Have you ever had to make up your mind? Have you ever had to finally decide? Well, then, you're not like us, flip-flopping all over the place. And you're also not like McSteamy—er, Dreamy—who finally chose between his two little lovelies last night. And we're not talking a Kelly-Taylor-I-choose-me cop out choice, either, folks. We're talkin' a real deal, someone's heart is gonna break and we're gonna be there for every glorious second of it choice. But like us, you're not gonna find out who wins out in the game of coupling til later on. So let's get cracking. more ›

John Bruce "Jack" Thompson is an attorney often cited in the media for his views on the effects of obscenity and violence in popular media. That's cribbed directly out of the Wikipedia entry for him and that same Wikipedia entry contains a large warning that the neutrality of the entry is disputed, which is cool to see in an encyclopedia. Jack Thompson has been hating on popular culture (the neutraility of this post should definitely be disputed) since lawsuits against 2 Live Crew back in the Eighties. Howard Stern, Grand Theft Auto, the list of defendants contains all the usual suspects. more ›

Watch the news tonight (local and national) for references to Seattle's top political blog Horsesass.org and his involvement with the forces of darkness (in this case former FEMA head Brown's lawyers). The Westneat column in the Seattle Times is on the story as well and much of the going's on have been cross-posted to The Daily Kos. more ›

A movie will cost you nearly ten dollars at a theater. March of Penguins at the Guild 45th, for example, will set you back $9. We hear that's something to see. Cheapskates can drive up to the Crest and see second-run films for a three-spot weeks after everyone else, but generally a movie costs you ten in the theater. more ›

We dropped our Stranger vs. Weekly faceoff feature (lawsuits), but we do occasionaly still flop those rags open for a scan. Last night we were grinding through the top-heavy feature section of this week's Stranger, when almost without noticing we began flying through one of them. Take us away, Stranger, take us away. Until suddenly we came to a screeching halt on a single word: gimcrack. Gimcrack..? Raban! Our eyes scanned upwards and sure enough, the one man in Seattle good enough to drop a "gimcrack" from time to time was our host for this trip. Jonathan Raban, we love you. more ›

The big news in the music world today revolves around the most rocking of government branches, the Supreme Court, where the justices unanimously voted against Grokster and for the movies/music industry. more ›

The DIY armour that that guy killed at the federal courthouse yesterday attempted to use didn't prevent him from becoming "that guy killed at the federal courthouse yesterday." Future desperados may want to take note: a cutting board in a Jansport on your chest will not be enough to protect you if you are planning on furtively waving a WWII grenade at a court building. more ›

You probably remember the story of Rachel Corrie from many many internet years ago. Rachel is the Evergreen College student who was killed by an Israeli bulldozer while attempting to sheild Palestinian homes from destruction. more ›