Court battle of the week

The death of Zappos founder (pictured) without a will has led to a fierce battle between friends and family over his estate, which is thought to be worth at least $500m, reports The Wall Street Journal. Lawyers trying to resolve the claims are now perusing an eccentric collection of sticky notes that Hsieh used to cover the walls of his Utah mansion, which detail everything from his spiritual “life mantras” to specifics of financial deals. Hsieh died in November last year aged just 46, following injuries sustained in a fire. His longtime friend Mimi Pham is seeking $90m, while his financial advisor Tony Lee is pursuing $7.5m. The latter accuses Hsieh’s brother Andy of enabling the drug and alcohol problems that dogged Hsieh in his last year of his life. The family meanwhile counter-claims that Lee, Pham and Pham’s boyfriend exploited their friendship to encourage Hsieh to make “impulsive” investments.

Good week for:

Superhero film Spider-Man: No Way Home, starring Tom Holland and Zendaya (pictured), had already sold $587.2m of tickets globally as of last weekend, says the Financial Times – the third-best opening weekend of all time. new film also set a pandemic-era record, outstripping other big releases including recent James Bond flick No Time to Die.

Sony Pictures’

are being gifted $1,000 by the company to kit out their home offices after it announced they can all work from home indefinitely as coronavirus cases linked to the Omicron variant surge, says The New York Times. The company has temporarily closed three of its shops in Miami, Ottawa and Annapolis after a spike in the number of positive tests among staff in the branches.

Apple employees Bad week for:

Musician Eric Clapton successfully sued a German woman known as

for trying to sell a bootleg recording of one of his 1987 concerts online, landing her with both party’s legal fees of €3,400, says DW News. The woman – who had tried to sell the CD on eBay for €9.95 – said that her husband had bought it from a department store, but the judge ruled that it didn’t matter that she didn’t know the recording was made illegally.

Gabriele P Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al-Maktoum,

72, Dubai’s billionaire ruler, is to pay around £554m in child maintenance and security costs to his “estranged” wife Princess Haya Bint Al-Hussain, 47, reports the BBC. Princess Haya, youngest of the sheikh’s six wives, fled Dubai for Britain with her two children in 2019 “in fea rofh er life” after discovering the Sheikh had previously kidnapped two of his other daughters and forced them to return to Dubai.