LOS ANGELES, Feb. 1 (Xinhua) -- U.S. federal officials in Los Angeles plan to sue the Los Angeles Times and Paramount Pictures over a joint movie promotion effort last April that prompted an evacuation in a local hospital, the newspaper reported on Thursday.

    As an effort to promote the Tom Cruise movie "Mission: Impossible III," marketing teams placed in many news racks across the city digital devices that played the movie's theme song when the racks' doors were opened.

    But several newspaper buyers thought the music players were bombs and reported them to law enforcement, and police blew up one news rack in a remote northern Los Angeles town as a precaution, according to The Times.

    In West Los Angeles, federal police at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center called police bomb squad after a newspaper buyer spied the small red plastic box and its wires, and the hospital were evacuated.

    Assistant U.S. attorney in Los Angeles Linda Kontos said the government-run hospital sustained damages as a result of the evacuation, putting the preliminary estimate of loss at nearly 10,000 U.S. dollars.

    In letters sent last week to the Los Angeles Times and Paramount Pictures, Kontos reportedly said her office intended to recommend that the government sue the newspaper and studio, but was prepared "to provide you with the opportunity to resolve the allegations" without litigation.

    Word of the planned lawsuit came as the cable TV Cartoon Network's use of blinking electronic devices to promote a cartoon show prompted bomb scares on Wednesday in Boston, shutting down bridges, highways and part of the Charles River.