In the ongoing game we imagine going on between Starbucks and Dunkin' Donuts, Dunkin' Donuts just scored a point. At least their local employees aren't suing them. A Starbucks employee in Chestnut Hill is suing because he feels the company didn't give him his due from the tip jar. Specifically, the employee claims that the managers, who were already getting paid more, were getting a cut from the tips: "In a class-action suit filed yesterday......

--Snow? Tomorrow morning? Surely you jest. We were hoping this long winter was over. Silly us. [WBZ] --The Globe notices female mayors, hears them roar, is surprised. [Boston Globe] --The body of the man who fell in the Sudbury River has been recovered. [WHDH] --An update on the attempt to limit the number of students to an apartment to four. [Brighton Centered] --Is Harvard trying to shake up its ultra-liberal reputation? They've invited Karl......

After much fanfare, Bechtel Parsons/Brinckerhoff has agreed to settle a lawsuit from the state and will pay $407 million. Smaller companies involved with the Big Dig will pay $51 million. $400 million seems small given the cost overruns of the Big Dig, but the state won't be turning that kind of money down. The AP report on WBZ notes that Bechtel Parsons/Brinckerhoff received $2 billion for consulting on the project, so this is a partial......

Mark A. Flomenbaum, the former Chief Medical Examiner who was dismissed after the office of the Chief Medical Examiner was revealed to be an unsanitary hellhole, is suing because he feels "Governor Deval Patrick lacked grounds to dismiss him." Okay, okay, all charges alleged. But a body went missing. The Herald reported blood on the floor and a "constant stench of decomposition." If that's not grounds for dismissal, then what is? In terms of sheer......

Donald Trump might be serious about putting a casino in Massachusetts after all. The Globe is reporting that Donald Trump and Charles Sarkis, who owns Wonderland, are talking. Matt Viser points out that this could touch off a battle between Trump Wonderland and Suffolk Downs. Sarkis and Suffolk Downs owner Richard Fields had been in talks in the past to join forces, but Trump could drive a wedge in that relationship. Viser writes, Fields and......

Pollock Matters Through December 9 McMullen Museum of Art Boston College 140 Commonwealth, Devlin Hall 108, Chestnut Hill (T: Boston College. Directions by car.) Boston College is running an art exhibit addressing the relationship between painter Jackson Pollock and his friend Herbert Matter. The exhibit is national news because the paintings, which were discovered by Matter's son Alex, may or may not be original Pollocks. Numerous experts have evaluated these paintings to discover the truth,......

Scratch this subject off the list of what Senator Edward Kennedy will talk about in his memoirs--the love child the National Enquirer accused him of having with a Massachusetts woman. In 2006, the Enquirer claimed that Kennedy fathered a child with Caroline Bilodeau-Allen in 1984 and that a cover-up ensued. Bilodeau-Allen filed a lawsuit in Boston claiming that is completely false and that she and her 22-year-old son, who is also a plaintiff, have suffered......

The T announced that it is going to order 10 more of the infamous Breda cars for the Green Line. We wondered why the T would order more cars that don't work. The T's problems with Italian company AnsaldoBreda go waaay back: The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority signed a $222 million contract in 1995 with an Italian company now known as AnsaldoBreda to provide the trains. The company was supposed to deliver 100 "Breda" cars,......

One of the most famous sights in Cambridge--MIT's Stata Center, designed by Frank Gehry--is leaking. MIT is now suing Gehry for negligence. The Stata Center may look amazing on the outside, and it got a shout-out in Doonesbury, but Shelley Murphy at the Globe reports that the inside is a mess of cracks, drainage backups, and mold. MIT paid $1.5 million to fix problems in the Stata Center's amphitheater--which is a rotten icing on top......

We thought it was weird when a former Nader advisor filed suit against Bill Belichick for Videotapegate. But Paul Flannery at the Boston Magazine blog came across what may be the weirdest lawsuit of all time. Jonathan Lee Riches is a convicted felon who likes to file lawsuits. Flannery writes that Riches filed 36 of them in September. In the Pats-related suit, according to the Smoking Gun, Richman hand-writes, "Defendants cheated in the 2005 Superbowl......

A Jets fan took Videotapegate way too personally and is suing the New England Patriots and Bill Belichick for taping the Jets' signals. When this item appeared on Sports by Brooks, it looked like a clever gag. But someone is actually suing the Pats, and they want $148 million for himself and the disillusioned Jets ticket holders. Carl Mayer of Princeton Township, New Jersey, has some high-minded notions about the sports complex. Mayer's attorney said,......

Protest over national vs. regional chains, the never-ending debate over the place of cars and bicycles in our metropolises, professional sports scandals, remembering a solemn day, and being issued a search warrant - it all happened across our sites this week! Another banner week at Chicagoist started off with daily reports from food writer Lisa Shames on her attempt to eat only locally grown and raised foodstuffs all week as part of a farmers market......

Boston native Bobby Brown is known for many things. New Edition. A rather successful solo career. A tumultuous marriage with songbird Whitney Houston. A reality show in which Brown and Houston discussed highly inappropriate subjects on national television. Not paying child support. These days, Brown is probably best known for the child support issue. Every time he sets foot in Massachusetts to see his children from a previous relationship, he winds up in the cooler......

Just over a year ago (in June 2006) the ACLU threatened the MBTA with a lawsuit, alleging that their unwritten policy against amateur photography on the nation's oldest subway system was unconstitutional. Specifically the ACLU asserted that it was a violation of the first amendment rights (free speech specifically, though a fair argument could be made for freedom of press, we challenge you to give us a legitimate application for freedom of religion.) The......

All of Fung Wah's accidents were kind of cute, in a twisted sort of way. Fung Wah is the cheap transportation of choice for all the cool kids wanting to get out of town. But Fung Wah's latest scrape with the law isn't cute at all. Fung Wah must pay a blind couple $50,000 because the company wouldn't let the couple take its seeing-eye dog on the bus. Fung Wah must also cough up a......

--Forbes announced that former Massachusetts governor and presidential aspirant Mitt Romney placed fourth in their "creepiest candidate" poll. We can understand why – and it has nothing to do with Mormonism or big sticks. It's simply the fact that the man has not aged for several decades. Of course he's creepy – he's hiding a portrait in the attic! --Romney's new "crazy eyes" ad certainly won't help him get off the creepy list. Earlier in......

After the groper and the shouter from yesterday, it seems that everything settled down a little bit last night. The big news is the potentially large blotter that might result if people don't start shoveling their sidewalks. According to Fox 25, you'll get fined if you don't shovel, and 4,000 citations have been given since Wednesday. If you are a business or homeowner reading this, and you haven't been shoveling - then start! Not only......

The spring semester is just underway. The student population has brought back an influx of students into Boston and across the Commonwealth. But a student, Brian Marquis, at UMass Amherst won't let the fall semester go. He's holding on and disputing a grade he received. He's exchanged the emails with the TA, talked to various higher-ups in the department, and taken it to the next step. He's filed grievance in the courts – fifteen counts......

Is the hoody a Yoda thing or a Darth Vader thing? It all comes down to that hoody. Pats coach Bill Belichick uses it to woo women, but the hoody might also empower him to treat his players badly. Former Pats linebacker Ted Johnson has gone public with accusations that Belichick made him get back into the game when he hadn't fully recovered from a concussion. Johnson feels Belichick's decision to put him back on......

In case you haven't heard the next week promises to show us the winter we've been missing out – only minus the snow. Cold temperatures (below freezing every day!) will be the rule according to the current outlook. Perfect time to head out to your favorite music venue. There's no better way we can think of to stay warm. This week you'll find the old, the new, the nerd, and some classical among the......

We all know about Donald Trump's taste in women. His wives get younger and younger. The same might go for Trump's chosen contestants on The Apprentice, according to a lawsuit filed in Boston by a man who is accusing the toupeed mogul of age discrimination. When Richard J. Hewett tried out for the show in 2005, he was 49. He didn't make it past the first tryout. There's any number of reasons he didn't make......

The Supreme Judicial Court gave Mitt Romney and his conservative cohorts a mild smacking today when the justices ruled that they cannot force legislators to vote on whether or not a proposal to ban gay marriage should be on the 2008 ballot. This ruling is the latest in a set of complex legal wranglings, which Bostonist has explained here and here, that started when the Legislature recessed before voting on the proposed ballot measure. Romney......

Breaking news out of the tunnels today is that the inevitable legal action is now official. The family of Milena Del Valle, the Jamaica Plain resident killed when ceiling tiles in the I-90 connector tunnel crushed her in July, are suing in a wrongful death case. The legal action names the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority, Bechtel/Parsons Brinckerhoff, and eight other companies who worked on the project as responsible for the death of Del Valle. There was......

In what could be the biggest news to hit school lunch since Reagan attempted to classify ketchup as a vegetable, State Senator Jarrett Barrios is set to introduce legislation to outlaw the Fluffernutter on school lunch trays around the state. After Barrios' son was served a Marshmallow Fluff and Peanut Butter sandwich at his elementary school, the Senator took up the fight against the gooey, delicious sandwich. On the heels of the vending machine battle......

Pearl Jam was in town for the last few days playing a pair of shows at the TD Banknorth Garden. We were totally into them back in, oh, say 1995. But then the whole Ticketmaster lawsuit happened and we started to really dislike the convenience we were being charged on top of the already steep ticket prices. Well that, and they released No Code and Yield. Our interest waned. But we still can sing-along to......

Seattlest saw a house party get senselessly attacked with a shotgun and end in seven dead. A local senator is debated and their version of the big dig is investigated. To truly get to the bottom of it they interview the writer Jonathan Raban. Bostonist has its first birthday party and investigates how to attach more gambling dollars to the Red Sox. Benjamin Franklin is celebrated and Johnny Damon is not. Image by Ethan Bagley......

With parents hailing from the Midwest, little Bostonist was not exposed to locally-created Fluffernutter sandwiches until Kindergarten when a lunch mate pulled out what appeared to be some strange variation of PB & J. Turns out it was Marshmallow Fluff and peanut butter on Wonder Bread. (This was the 80s, so nutritional value for kids was lacking a bit back then.) We've been hooked on this sandwich ever since, so when we heard that the......

The new and improved (?) Supreme Court dropped a decision yesterday that has a ton of relevance to the Boston area, ruling that it is constitutional for Congress to require law schools to give access to military recruiters, even if the schools have a general policy banning employers who, like the military, discriminate against homosexuals. The law schools' theory was that a rule requiring them to let bigots on campus forced them to endorse the......

One of the many things we have in abundance here in the Commonwealth, in addition to snow, liberals, and Venezuelan oil, is lawyers. In fact, we have more lawyers per capita than any other state. That means there's probably at least one lawyer on your holiday gift list this year. Ordinarily, the best present you can give to your favorite litigator is a set of facts giving rise to a multi-million-dollar class action lawsuit that......

There are those who say that voting is a hollow exercise because one vote is but a drop in the ocean, and unlikely to make a difference. Bostonist doesn't think this is a good attitude in general (what's the alternative? Using money to control large blocks of votes, giving undue influence to those with greater resources? That would be terribly un-American), but in today's preliminary election in Boston, it's not even true! Since this election......