Milwaukee County has sued its former actuarial firm, Mercer Human Resource Consulting, for malpractice and breach of contract related to the 2000 county pension deal. Mercer advised the county on the cost of the pension enhancements under a contract signed by the former personnel director Gary Dobbert. (Dobbert crafted the pension package and went to jail in 2004 for lying about the deal’s costs.)

The lawsuit alleges that Mercer

…made repeated, serious actuarial mistakes, grossly underestimated costs and totally failed to assess the actuarial effect..

The lawsuit is being brought by Milwaukee County, the county’s [tag]Employee Retirement System[/tag], and the county’s Pension Board.

The European Union’s chief antitrust regulator has warned Microsoft Corp that it can’t sell the Windows Vista operating system in Europe if it has certain features. One concern is Microsoft’s potential to unfairly direct users to Microsoft’s internet search service. The EU is also concerned about certain security functions in the system which may prevent consumers from being able to choose various software packages. Symantec Corp., for example, is concerned that if Microsoft included antivirus software in Vista, their product lines would suffer.

A 2004 EU antitrust order against Microsoft fined the company $600 million, ordered it to sell a version of Windows XP without audio-visual software attached, and ordered the company to create a how-to manual for competitors trying to write software that works with Windows.