The group is suing Sears and a former maintenance worker who allegedly videotaped them from 2009 to April 2012.
Michael Alder, the attorney for the plaintiffs, said an unknown number of female customers were also likely videotaped in the store during that period.
"There's a lot of people who were patrons and don't have any idea that they've been videotaped," Alder said.
Alejandro Gamiz, 27, a maintenance worker who worked at Sears for seven years, who is accused of placing hidden cameras behind the walls of the store. He was arrested on April 12 for burglary and surreptitious filming of unsuspecting women by North Hollywood Area Sexual Assault detectives. Gamiz posted $20,000 bail and was released from custody.
The Los Angeles District Attorney's office is still reviewing the case and has not yet filed charges against Gamiz. Gamiz did not return a request for comment.
Krystel Dean, an employee and one of the plaintiffs, said she was "shocked" when she learned of the secret videotaping.
"My heart immediately sank," she said. "Not only have I used the restroom and dressing rooms, but my small children have used them as well. I feel like our privacy has been invaded."
Dean is also suing Sears in the same suit for retaliation, saying her employer cut her work hours after she was the first to hire an attorney and speak to the media about the the alleged taping.
Of the women filing the lawsuit against Sears, 16 are employees while the other nine are store customers who believe they may have been taped, including four children. The plaintiffs' last names, including Dean's, were not included in the lawsuit.
The group filed a lawsuit against Sears on June 11 in the Los Angeles Superior Court, asking for unspecified compensatory and punitive damages for unpaid wages, mental and emotional distress, and attorney fees and costs, among other damages.
The plaintiffs said Sears knew or should have known that Gamiz had installed video equipment and created peep holes within the three years he had set up the equipment. They are suing Sears for invasion of privacy, intentional infliction of emotional distress, hostile work environment harassment, and negligent hiring, supervision, retention, among other charges.
Alder has invited other female patrons or employees who were in the dressing rooms or bathroom of the North Hollywood store in the three years before Gamiz was arrested to contact his law firm and visit the special website his law firm has established, SearsPeepingTom.com.
"As information gets out, they will realize they frequented that Sears for the last three years and undressed," he said.
Kimberly Freely, spokeswoman for Sears Holding Corp., said the company could not comment because the litigation is pending.
"But as we said previously, and with all due respect to the associates who may have been impacted by this incident, no member of management or leadership in the company had any prior knowledge of the accused's alleged conduct until it was discovered in our store," she said. "At that point, we immediately launched an investigation and turned the matter over to the police."
The lawsuit states that Gamiz created "peep holes" in women's restrooms and dressing rooms, and children's dressing rooms too. He then installed video equipment to record the women and children. He uploaded some of the videos to the Internet, according to the lawsuit, on a site that police have since been taken down.

RPSC RAS Answer Key, Solution & Cut off marks of PRE-Exam that will be announcing on 18th JUNE (2012). As you know that RTS,Paper-1,Paper2, set a, set b, set c, set d and RAS PRE EXAM has recently held on 14th June in which 2 lack students have participated, there result will be published by Rajasthan Public Service Commission at rpsc.gov.in.

Kindly keep in mind that Rts written test of main examination and cut off marks has not yet issued but it will be issue soon at www.rpsc.gov.in also. you will also get solution sheet of paper 1 & paper 2 for set a, b, c and d just after declaring of ras pre and main exam.

Rpsc is top commission of Government of Rajasthan, they are responsible for recruiting officers in different government department, every year they contact exams in which almost 2 lack students from different states participate, they provide jobs in Rajasathan Administrative Service also known as RAS and RPS Rajasthan Police service.

Candidates wants to see answer keys, cut-off marks and solutions before pre-test because it is essential to understand paper pattern and especially due to that fact that most of the question that have already come in earlier exams is likely to come again. Rpsc usually provides information regarding issue of answer keys for RAS and Rts exam, which can be downloaded from there main page after providing application no, DOB in the requested fields. Successful candidates are then call via postal call letter for Interview, RPSC Office is located near Jaipur road, Rajasthan, Ajmer you can visit there head office to receive latest information.

 A man, accused in the Bhanwari Devi murder case, escaped from the police custody after a shoot-out between his accomplices and policemen at a court in Rajasthan’s Jodhpur city Thursday. Another accused was re-captured.

The accused, Kailash Jhakhar, had been brought to the district and sessions court for a hearing of another case related to some land deals few years back, they added.

Jakhar is accused of disposing the remains of nurse Bhanwari Devi who was abducted and then murdered Sep 1 last year at the alleged behest of sacked state minister Mahipal Maderna and Congress legislator Malkhan Singh Bishnoi.

The Central Bureawu of Investigation (CBI) had arrested Maderna and Bishnoi in the case. It is alleged that Maderna and Bishnoi were being blackmailed by the nurse on the basis of sex CDs showing them in a compromising position with the nurse.

“Some undertrials including two Bhanwari Devi murder case accused – Bishna Ram Bishnoi and Jhakhar – had been brought to the court for hearing in another case related to firing. Jhakhar is a member of Bishna Ram Bisnnoi’s gang,” a police officer told IANS.

He added that a ground of about a dozen criminals was already inside the court premises.
“They were armed. As soon as Jhakar and Bishna Ram got off the police vehicle, the criminals opened fire in the air to scare away the policemen. While Jakhar and all the attackers managed to escape, Bishnoi was caught on the spot,” said the officer.

Officials said that a massive search operation has been launched to locate Jakhar.
Bhanwari Devi had allegedly been kidnapped by three men – Shahabuddin, Baldev Jat alias Balia and Sohan Lal. As per the CBI chargesheet filed in a court, the trio murdered the nurse and then handed over her body to Bishna Ram Bishnoi and Jakhar who brunt her to ashes and dumped her remains in a canal in Jodhpur.

During the national safety day celebrations at the Visakhapatnam Steel Plant (VSP) in March this year, CMD AP Choudhary said productivity of the organisation is directly linked to its safety performance which, in turn, will have a huge bearing on the plant's profitability. He went on to claim that VSP had made giant strides in improving safety in the plant. D Chandra Sekhar Varma, joint chief inspector of factories, who also spoke, was no less eloquent when he lauded the VSP for showing 'very positive' signs of declining rate of accidents.

Contrary to their claims, eight major mishaps have taken place in the steel plant in the last one year. While Wednesday night's disaster was waiting to happen, a big question mark hangs over safety at VSP with lives of workers and officers in danger. A safety department is in place since 1990 and each of the process plants has a dedicated safety officer who is responsible for advising the plant with regard to safety aspects. But shockingly, safety norms have been neglected by the authorities even as the plant expansion works taken up at Rs 12,500 crore are on at a feverish pace. Sources said a risk strategy group was allegedly disbanded during the tenure of CMD PK Bishnoi. "Safety is not about wearing helmets or shoes. Focus should be on the safety of the equipment and those who handle the key units in a highly combustible environment but the management is clueless," pointed out a senior executive in the blast furnace unit. Enquiries have revealed that too much dependence on contract labour even in critical units is leading to mishaps at regular intervals. "Had the senior managers isolated the valve to absolve the abnormal pressure building up in the oxygen plant, the explosion could have been averted but who will take the call," the officer sought to know.

The blast on Wednesday night was caused by improper supply of oxygen to the converter in the steel melting shop II. The technical staff reportedly blew oxygen not once, but thrice to the converter, due to which the gas gushed back at great pressure and exploded. According to industry experts, the oxygen section is a crucial part of a steel plant as it helps facilitate the extraction of steel from iron. Once the iron is melted in the blast furnace, it is taken into the basic oxygen furnace where oxygen is blown over the molten iron to remove impurities such as carbon, sulphur, etc. Once the carbon in the molten iron is brought below a certain percentage it becomes steel. "Oxygen is a dangerous commodity but it cannot explode unless there is a highly explosive mixture. There seems to have been some problem with the oxygen flow and perhaps when they were not getting adequate oxygen, they tried to fiddle with it causing the blast," pointed out a former officer. "The blast surely must have been caused by some slippage somewhere. All accidents occur due to negligence," reasoned a former top gun of VSP.

Plant sources said skilled persons and experienced officials are not at hand to manage key units such as pressure gauge, motor guards and circuit section. "Where the hot metal at 3,000 degrees and water interact, even a slight aberration could lead to a catastrophe. It's like an atom bomb which could explode any moment," explained YSR Congress leader Jupudi Prabhakar, who worked as a metallurgical engineer in Midhani.

Another point in question is that employees and officers sent abroad for training on blast furnace management get posting in sinter plant and other units. Some time back, a group of officers and employees was sent abroad for training in blast furnace but they were posted in another wing after they returned. "Previously, the management used to send newly-recruited employees to Bhilai, Rourkela and Bokaro steel plants for training. But now the focus is more on commissioning of new units, expansion of business and filing success reports," rued Bharat, a senior official in the steel melting shop (SMS).

Amazon and Google are staking claims to large swaths of the Internet under a new system for labeling Web domains, bolstering their ability to control traffic as the Web expands beyond the realms of “.com,” “.gov” and “.org.”

The bids by those companies to acquire new domain names such as “.book,” “.shop” and “.movie” renewed fears among competitors that a powerful few will dominate the Internet marketplace of the future.

A slate of roughly 2,000 new Web suffixes, including “.app” and “.sex,” was revealed Wednesday by the nonprofit organization tasked with regulating domain names, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. The group announced last year that it would take applications for new domain names to foster growth and competition online. The new domains are scheduled to go into effect next year.

“We’re standing at the cusp of a new era of online innovation,” said Rod Beckstrom, president of the group, known as ICANN.

If Internet users embrace the new domains, the companies that control them could bear considerable influence on Web traffic.

Amazon has applied to control the “.book” and “.movie” names, for example, meaning that anyone else selling those items would have to get the company’s permission to be listed within that domain.

The National Retail Federation had urged that oversight of such generic domain names be given to impartial entities rather than individual companies.

“The results for now are as potentially unfair to businesses and consumers as we feared they might be,” said Mallory Duncan, general counsel for the trade group.

For example, if a grocery store controls the “.grocery” suffix, it could theoretically exclude competitors from listing their sites there.

Duncan said consumers may not realize that the new domains are under private control and that the open competition that prevails within the “.com” realm may not exist within, say, “.grocery.”

“Consumers going to that domain may not realize that all of their shopping is being done with one company instead of a competitive market,” Duncan said.

Google was among the most prolific applicants, seeking to register 101 names at an application cost of $18.7 million. Never lacking in its quest for virtual completeness, the company is seeking to control “.mom,” “.dad” and “.kid.”

Amazon applied for 76 new names, including “.amazon” and “.zappos.”

The expansion of Web domains has the potential to make over how surfers conceive of the Internet. Until now, entities have largely broken down by type of institution: “.gov” for government agencies, “.com” for businesses and “.org” for other groups.

The new suffixes add a potentially confusing array of categories. Among the many that have been formally proposed are “.sucks,” “.rip” and “.vip.” While some might sound like jokes, the fact that the application fee for each is $185,000 tends to keep things serious.

Applicants were heavily concentrated in North America (911), Europe (675) and the Asia-Pacific region (303). There were only 17 applications from Africa, which raised questions about whether the cost of an application was too high to be equitable.

Many of the potential new domain names are being sought by multiple companies. The most popular was “.app” with 13 applications, but even “.sucks” is the prize in a three-way contest.

The applicants must first pass an initial review by ICANN. If groups competing for a domain name cannot reach an agreement among themselves, the names will be auctioned off.

ICANN said it expects the first new address to go live in 2013.

What’s not clear, however, is whether consumers will embrace any of the new names.

“It’s going to present users with a lot of new choices,” said Brian Cute, chief executive of the Public Interest Registry, which runs the “.org” domain. “If you have 50 choices of toothpaste, the average consumer is going to the brands they know. That could be the case here.”

In reportedly another twist in Presidential race, UPA on Thursday rejected PM Manmohan Singh's name as president. Trinamool Congress and Samajwadi Party, came out with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's name.
Earler, on WednesdayTrinamool Congress and Samajwadi Party, came out with Prime
Minister Manmohan Singh's name, along with that of former president APJ Abdul Kalam and former Lok Sabha speaker Somnath Chatterjee as their

Their political manoeuvre probably put Congress' initial choice of finance minister Pranab Mukherjee and vice president Hamid Ansari out of serious reckoning and opened up the possibility of several scenarios.

Though some Congress sources ruled out the possibility of Singh participating in the presidential race, there was no official response from the party to the odd manner in which SP chief Mulayam Singh Yadav and TMC leader Mamata Banerjee mentioned the PM name at a joint press conference.

The West Bengal chief minister drove to Yadav's house from Congress chief Sonia Gandhi's residence where, after the meeting, Banerjee had disclosed to the media that Mukherjee and Ansari were the Congress party' choices - and in that order.

Later, ignoring both the names, Mulayam and Mamata declared that the PM, Kalam and Chatterjee were their choices, saying any one of them would be acceptable to them. They also made it clear that the names they had proposed were not in order of preference.

The name of Singh as a possible presidential candidate had done the rounds for some time.

But a few days ago, the PM himself ruled out any such move, saying, "I am happy doing what I am doing."

Gandhi, too, heaped praise for his stewardship of the government and the country at the Congress working committee though some Congress leaders had urged the UPA to undertake bold measures to shore up the government's image.

After making the announcement, the SP chief discussed the issue with NDA convenor Sharad Yadav while the BJP's core group decided to wait for the Congress response to their suggestion since they were UPA allies.

 It is all set to be another fairy tale wedding in Hyderabad on Thursday. Although it will lack national and international razzamatazz like Sania Mirza and Shoaib Malik’s wedding, the marriage of actor-turned Congress leader Chiranjeevi’s son Ram Charan Teja, is expected to be a mega event.

Ram Charan, who made a debutant entry into Tollywood with his ‘Chiruta’, is all set to tie the nuptial knot on June 14 with Upasana Kamineni, the eldest daughter of a corporate hospital tycoon Anil Kamieni and grand daughter of Pratap C Reddy of Apollo hospitals.

Unlike the weddings with European cutlery, Chinese chandeliers and exotic flowers from Bangkok, the couple say they decided to give a 'desi ' touch to their pre-wedding and post-wedding ceremonies. Local folk weavers of Kalamkari have been hired to weave special carpets for the D-day.  Celebrity fashion designer, Tarun Tahliyani, has designed the wedding costumes for Ram Charan and his childhood sweetheart Upasana. The  wedding mantapam set at the Temple Tress resort in Gandipet and also the Sangeet set at the Annapurna studio, were designed by popular art director Anand Sai. The family has hired two security companies to keep a tab on all the movements; CCTV have been installed at various places. Nearly 200 cars including 10 Mercedes have been hired to ferry the guests and two Merc Phantoms have been specially booked for family use.

On Tuesday, the sangeet ceremony was held at a specially-made set in the Annapurna studios, which was attended by nearly 2,000 guests including stars from the film industry, and their families.