Abercrombie & Fitch (NYSE: ANF) is being sued by a Muslim teenager who wanted to work at an Abercrombie Kids store in Oklahoma's Woodland Hills Mall. When she applied in June 2008, Samantha Elauf was told that the hijab she wears is inconsistent with Abercrombie's "Look Policy." So, the 17-year-old took her concerns to U.S. District Court on Wednesday, where a lawsuit was filed by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

A spokeswoman for the retailer wouldn't comment on the lawsuit but did indicate that the store has a strong policy around equal employment opportunity and that it accommodates religious practices "when possible."

We might be tempted to think, in this day and age, that a move as stupid as this one could not happen in our enlightened business world. However, the CEO of American Apparel (AMEX: APP), seems to think otherwise.

According to a story provided by Gawker.com; "American Apparel's ... madman CEO, Dov Charney is demanding the firing of employees he deems unattractive and thus detrimental to the "AA aesthetic."

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to know that people (especially in America) are ultra sensitive to negative comments about appearance. It also does not take a great deal of intelligence to recognize that the firing of employees based on their looks is a stupidly discriminatory practice. So, being that this project is being undertaken at the sole direction of CEO Charney, one does not have to spend much time analyzing exactly who is the stupid one over there.

Late yesterday, chip maker Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) announced a countersuit against Intel (NASDAQ: INTC), as the two quarrel over what should be covered by a license agreement reached in 2004. NVDA's suit is in a Delaware Chancery Court, and it alleges that INTL breached a license agreement wherein the two companies had access to each other's technologies.

The dispute began a month ago, as INTC filed a motion against NVDA (in the same court), noting that the agreement didn't allow NVDA to make chipsets with certain INTC chips. NVDA has dismissed this notion, claiming that INTC is blocking them from "making use of the very license rights that they agreed to provide."

What can happen in a 16-day span? Well, according to Motorola (NYSE: MOT), a former employee -- whom the the firm "appreciated" -- can become a former employee who may have failed "to substantially perform duties," engaged in dishonesty, "gross misconduct," and breached "one or more restrictive covenants." (These are definitions for cause, not actual reasons cited by MOT for Liska's departure.) According to this Wall Street Journal article, former MOT chief financial officer Paul Liska filed a wrongful termination suit against the cellphone producer on February 20.

Yesterday, Liska expressed surprise in realizing that his termination was assigned cause. When MOT reported earnings (actually, a lack thereof) early in February, it stated that Liska was being replaced because the firm was delaying the spinoff of its cellphone unit. The firm's co-CEO actually praised Liska, noting "He did a lot of good work here." However, a recent SEC filing brought to light the fact that MOT asked Liska to repay a $400,000 cash signing bonus on February 19, noting that he was "involuntarily terminated for cause."

There were 210 securities fraud class-action lawsuits filed in 2008, a rise of 19% over 2007 and 80% over 2006, according to a report issued jointly Tuesday by Stanford Law School and Cornerstone Research.

The bulk of the rise in lawsuits can be explained by the writedowns that took place at nearly every financial company: The lawsuits allege that the firms overvalued their mortgage related assets. But more importantly, people are suing companies because they lost money on stocks: Anytime the market goes down, the number of lawsuits goes up.

What will come of these lawsuits? Probably relatively little: Banks will look to settle to avoid the expense and risk of litigation, lawyers will get richer and shareholders will get back a few pennies. Securities attorney Robert Giuffra Jr told (subscription required) The Wall Street Journal that "Plaintiffs lawyers will face an uphill battle if they claim that every bank on Wall Street was engaged in a separate internal conspiracy to commit economic suicide."

Do the banks deserve to be sued? Absolutely! But litigation seems unlikely to solve much here and the expense and distraction may even make things worse.

The U.S. Supreme Court in LaRue vs. DeWolff, Boberg & Associates has just given individual investors the right to sue under ERISA for breach of fiduciary duty to recover individual losses to an individual 401(k) or other defined contribution plans. Previous Supreme Court decisions had pertained to defined benefits plans. Prior to LaRue v. DeWolff, individuals were limited to participating in class action suits for relief for the plan as a whole. Now, individual investors can sue to be "made whole" as individuals, and do not have to settle for equitable relief among all plan investors.

Mr. LaRue had sued his former employer DeWolff, Boberg & Associates for breach of fiduciary duty when it failed to follow his instructions to move some of his 401(k) money to different investments. His initial suit was to recoup a personal loss to be paid into his individual account. Having been denied by the Fourth Circuit Court under two different statutes of ERISA sec. 502, Mr. LaRue appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, thus doing an untold number of individual investors a great service.

It is easy to forget that Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) still faces problems with options-backdating accusations. The New York Times was good enough to remind the financial world of that today.

According to the paper, "A CLASS-ACTION lawsuit contending securities fraud and filed last month may force the Apple board to pay some attention."

While the Justice Department may still be looking into the backdating issue, civil suits may be a larger problem. They can be brought by any one of a number of Apple shareholders. They could drag on for years. The trouble could take up substantial management time and create large legal expenses.

Because of Apple's great success, it is easy to forget that the options trouble could go on for the rest of the decade. But, as long as the press wants to push the issue, it will probably be easier for people who want to try to take money from the Apple treasury to keep hanging around.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

If Countrywide Financial (NYSE: CFC) faces any more suits, Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) may have to withdraw its offer to buy the mortgage lender. The legal bills will be too high.

New York City, which has already filed one set of legal actions against the company, has expanded that to include a number of officers, directors, and underwriters. The city, in a statement picked up by Reuters, said executives of Countrywide Financial "cashed out to the tune of almost $700 million" while borrowers lost homes and the value of investors' shares fell sharply. The new action named "additional company officers and directors, 26 underwriters, and two accounting firms."

The city is overreaching. A suit against the company and CEO Angelo Mozilla might, just might, hold some water. He may have known that the subprime mortgage market was facing problems that would hurt his company. It will probably be hard to collect facts that can show he acted with that intention.

But, to demonstrate that a number of individuals and institutions acted on the same information about upcoming trouble in the markets would require proving a massive fraud.

New York City ought to stick to a case it can make.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

If you've seen Borat, you probably remember the scene: Borat, played by Sacha Baron Cohen, goes to a driving school and takes a driving lesson. During the lesson, he makes ethnic slurs, discusses the relative brain size of women, drives on the wrong side of the road, and offers the driver of a passing car money to "make sexy time".

Well now the driver's ed coach, Michael Psenicska, is suing the filmmakers, saying that they misrepresented the nature of the film when he signed the waiver.

He's asking for $100,000 and frankly, given the success of the film and his fairly prominent role in it (the straight man in a pretty long scene), it seems like a reasonable request.

And do the filmmakers really think that describing Borat as a documentary about the integration of foreign people into the American way of life is a fair and complete description?

Just give the guy his $100,000. It's fair.

Pfizer (NYSE: PFE) is facing a number of lawsuits that say its painkiller Celebrex can cause heart attacks. Yesterday, a court threw some of those cases out. The Wall Street Journal wrote "U.S. District Judge Charles R. Breyer of San Francisco ruled that plaintiffs in the litigation haven't presented scientifically reliable evidence that Celebrex caused heart attacks or strokes when taken at a daily dosage of 200 milligrams." Pfizer says that the 200 milligram dose is the one most commonly given.

The cases involving Celebrex include over 3,000 plantiffs, and some are suing about effects of the drug at a higher dose, but the ruling is still a considerable relief for the big pharma company.

Like most drug liability cases, this one hinges on whether Pfizer knew that there were risks that the drug could cause significant problems beyond those disclosed on the labels. In that case, the amount of the dose would seem to be academic, especially for anyone who became sick.

But the court may have more wisdom than Wall Street and some plaintiffs will go unrewarded. As the tobacco companies proved two decades ago, suing big business rarely yields much reward.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

My recent Investing in Ontario post took a look at the Royal Bank of Canada (NYSE: RY), Manulife Financial Corp. (NYSE: MFC), and Toronto-Dominion Bank (NYSE: TD); three public companies examined by the Motley Fool this past summer.

However, Ontario is more than just Canada's financial center. Its abundance of resources and location on Great Lakes have made Ontario a manufacturing powerhouse, including steel production and automobile manufacturing in southern Ontario, and mining and forestry in the north. Toronto is Canada's film and media center, as well as an important tourism destination. Niagara Falls is one of world's most popular tourist destinations. Other Ontario companies the Motley Fool liked include Research in Motion Ltd. (NASDAQ: RIMM), Nortel Networks Corp. (NYSE: NT), and IMAX Corp. (NASDAQ: IMAX).

Research in Motion (RIM), Canada's largest public company, is well know for its BlackBerry smart phones, but it also provides software development tools and produces radio-based modems used in portable devices. The consensus recommendation of analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial is to buy RIM, and has been since April. RIM met analysts' earnings per share estimate when it reported second quarter FY2008 earnings in early October, and Wall Street expects EPS of 62 cents in the third quarter, double the 31 cents actual from a year ago. RIM has a five-year EPS growth rate of 73.5%, easily beating the S&P 500 and the technology sector average. RIM's share price has been climbing since a share split in August, to reach a 52-week high of $128.36 on Tuesday; it opened today at $124.75. Also this week, RIM announced plans to sell the BlackBerry in China, and introduced Facebook for the BlackBerry as well. For more on Microsoft Corp.'s (NASDAQ: MSFT) challenge to RIM and other RIM-related news, see Bloggingstocks' RIM coverage.

Deaths come in threes and the latest lawsuit against Vonage Holdings Corp. (NYSE: VG), the VoIP pioneer, may just put it under. It is the third such suit by a major telephone company.

Vonage has now lost or settled patent infringement suits brought by Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE: VZ) and Sprint Nextel Corp. (NYSE: S). Each loss has brought a one time payment and royalties on future revenue.

An SEC filing by the VoIP company disclosed that an action has been filed buy AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T), which accuses Vonage of "violating a single patent that lets users access an Internet phone system using a standard phone device," according to The Wall Street Journal.

Vonage opened at $17 on its IPO in 2006. The stock is lucky to hold $1 now. And, the AT&T suit may be the end of the line. In the June quarter, the company had an operating loss of $33 million on $20 million in revenue. The company's cash was down to under $350 million.

It is Chapter 11 time for Vonage. One of the large cable companies would probably be willing to pay enough for the company to pay off lawsuits and, perhaps, leave a few pennies for the shareholders.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 24/7 Wall St.

According to a recent report from CBS News, "Direct-marketing firm Quixtar Inc., a sister company of Amway Corp., has sued 30 people who anonymously posted what it considers disparaging remarks about Quixtar in blogs and online forums and in YouTube.com videos."

The company is seeking subpoenas to compel internet sites, including Google (NASDAQ: GOOG)'s YouTube, to give the company information it needs to find out who is making the videos that it believes are defamatory. Amway/Quixtar believes some of the videos were made by former distributors who unsuccessfully sued the company and are under court order not to disparage the company.

For years, Amway has been battling allegations that the company is a pyramid scheme. In 1979, the FTC ruled that Amway was not a pyramid scheme, but ordered the company to change many of its sales and marketing practices.

Unfortunately, the media as a whole lacks a strong understanding of how Amway and other multi-level marketing companies work. For instance, take this line from the CBS piece:

Quixtar develops and manufactures nutrition, beauty and cleaning products that are marketed in the United States and Canada through a tiered selling system, hiring entrepreneurs to sell its products.

This is not even close to how Quixtar really works. Quixtar does not "hire entrepreneurs." "Independent business owners," as Amway euphemistically calls them, must buy products in order to qualify for commissions, and can earn by recruiting others to buy products as well. Sites like Pyramid Scheme Alert have documented how little "selling of products" actually happens.

Early in my career I worked for Dean Witter Reynolds, now Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS), and had the opportunity to get to know Brian Biggins. Brian was a broker, an office branch manager and a compliance director in his 10-year stint with Dean Witter, until he went through a major career change. He put himself through law school at the tender age of 31 and became an advocate for the aggrieved individual investor.

Biggins opened his own law practice in Cleveland, Ohio, but has represented investors in nearly all 50 states. He works on behalf of investors who have been defrauded by unscrupulous brokers. He has handled, and won, hundreds of cases ranging from $10,000 to multi-million dollar losses. He has taken on almost every big Wall Street firm and insurance companies. Many of these firms know to sit down at the settlement table rather than go to arbitration against Mr. Biggins. What makes him so successful in helping investors who have been ripped off, defrauded or just plainly mismanaged by their brokers?

Biggins was in the securities industries for over a decade. He knows exactly how big firms operate and where the bones are buried. He can interrogate a broker or the other firm's counsel like no one else because Biggins was "one of them." Firms know that they cannot throw a fast ball past him because of his vast knowledge and experience in the industry. A true advocate for the individual investor.

Paris Hilton has reportedly sued Hallmark for a greeting card that uses a photo of her and her trademarked catch-phrase "That's hot."

Hilton is seeking at least $500,000 in damages and a permanent injunction barring Hallmark from further use of her name, likeness, and catchphrase. She accuses the company of invading her privacy and misappropriating her image.

Yes, it isn't the sex tape that has hurt her privacy. Oh, and what about the innocent people who could have been harmed when Paris drove drunk? What about their rights to privacy/life? No, it's all a Hallmark greeting card.

Paris Hilton is being an idiot with this lawsuit. She's a public figure -- in fact, that's all she is. She's famous for being famous, and has been among the most shameless self-promoters this side of Don King. Given that, she should expect to be satirized, and that's exactly what Hallmark has done.

When Hilton went on Larry King after her release from the slammer, Paris talked about her "new outlook on life," and later mentioned her desire to do some good in the world and devote time to philanthropy.

She appears to be back to her old stunts: feeling sorry for herself as a result of her own self-inflicted celebrity. Hey Paris, get on with the charity work you waxed about, and stop being lame.