Practice Areas
Class Action
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February 22, 2012
FLSA Collective Action Rights Can Be Waived: Citigroup
A judge erred when he refused to compel arbitration in an overtime suit against Citigroup Inc. and held that an arbitration agreement couldn't waive the right to proceed collectively under the Fair Labor Standards Act, Citigroup told the Second Circuit on Tuesday.
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February 22, 2012
8th Circ. Mostly OKs Toss Of EEOC’s Trucker Sex Bias Suit
The Eighth Circuit on Wednesday upheld the dismissal of almost all of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission's lawsuit on behalf female drivers at CRST Van Expedited Inc. but vacated a $4.5 million attorneys' fee award to the trucking company.
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February 22, 2012
6th Circ. Revives GM Workers' ERISA Suit Against State Street
The Sixth Circuit on Wednesday reversed a lower court's dismissal of a putative class action alleging State Street Bank & Trust Co. violated federal employment law by allowing General Motors employees to invest in the company's stock even after GM's impending bankruptcy became public knowledge.
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February 22, 2012
SAG, Sports Unions Dispute EA’s Likeness Win In 3rd Circ.
The Screen Actors Guild and the players’ associations of the major professional sports leagues on Friday asked the Third Circuit to reverse a ruling that the First Amendment protects Electronic Arts Inc. in a proposed class action over EA’s use of college athletes’ likenesses in video games.
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February 22, 2012
Fed. Circ. Nixes Judicial Pay Raise Again
The Federal Circuit again denied federal judges a cost-of-living pay raise Friday but held that the judges' class action was not barred by a previous ruling, clearing the way for the suit to possibly return to the U.S. Supreme Court.
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February 22, 2012
Payless Wraps Up Text Spam Class Action For $6M
A class of consumers asked a California federal judge Tuesday to sign off on an up to $6.25 million settlement to end a suit accusing Payless ShoeSource Inc. of violating federal law by sending unsolicited text messages.
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February 22, 2012
Judge Narrows Jaco's Targets In LCD Price-Fixing Case
A California federal judge on Wednesday refined Jaco Electronics Inc.'s antitrust claims in multidistrict litigation against a slew of liquid crystal display panel makers, clarifying that Jaco is only allowed to recover damages from entities directly involved in the massive price-fixing conspiracy.
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February 22, 2012
Toxic Fly Ash Used In Golf Course Prompts $2B Suit
Hundreds of Virginia plaintiffs are taking a $2 billion swing at regional power company Dominion, which they accused in two lawsuits filed Tuesday of exposing them to toxic fly ash that was used as fill for a golf course built in the middle of their community.
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February 22, 2012
Suit Says Broker DLA Duped Elderly In $300M REIT Sales
New York-based brokerage firm David Lerner Associates Inc. was hit with a putative class action Tuesday for allegedly misleading elderly and unsophisticated clients into buying more than $300 million worth of securities from two real estate investment trusts.
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February 22, 2012
Judge Won't Revive Suit Over Facebook's Data Sharing
A California federal judge refused Tuesday to revive a claim in a defunct class action accusing Facebook Inc. of improperly sharing consumers' personal information with advertisers, saying the claim's dismissal did not hinge on the nature of the plaintiffs' communications with the company.
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February 22, 2012
Toyota Can't Narrow Shareholder Suit Over Defects
A California federal judge on Tuesday rejected Toyota Motor Corp.’s bid to throw out part of a putative class action alleging the car maker inflated its stock price by misleading the public about a brake defect.
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February 21, 2012
Borrowers, Quicken Spar Over RESPA Reach In High Court
A lawyer for a potential class of mortgage borrowers urged the Supreme Court in oral arguments Tuesday to find that the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act barred Quicken Loans Inc. and other lenders from collecting unearned fees, even if they weren’t shared with another party.
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February 21, 2012
High Court Won't Review Ill. Ruling On Telephone Act Suits
The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday declined to review an Illinois Supreme Court ruling that the federal Telephone Consumer Protection Act requires no stamp of approval from state legislatures before private actions can be brought in state courts.
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February 21, 2012
Dukes Dooms Class Claims In Race Bias Suit, Walgreen Says
Ex-Walgreen Co. workers who allege the company discriminated against Latinos are not only short on facts, but their putative class claims are at odds with the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in Dukes, the drugstore giant told an Illinois federal court Tuesday.
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February 21, 2012
Deepwater Rig Worker Settles Injury Claims Against BP, Others
A Deepwater Horizon worker aboard the vessel during the April 2010 Macondo well explosion said Monday that she had settled her injury claims against companies targeted in ensuing multidistrict litigation, including BP PLC, Transocean Ltd. and Halliburton Energy Services Inc.
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February 21, 2012
Federal Needn't Cover IBM's ERISA Settlement: NY Court
New York's highest court on Tuesday ruled that an excess insurance policy Federal Insurance Co. issued to IBM Corp. didn't cover the settlement of class claims over the company's alleged violations of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act.
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February 21, 2012
Plaintiffs' Experts Will Testify In LCD Screen MDL: Judge
A California federal judge has greenlighted the testimony of two expert economists in multidistrict litigation alleging a major price-fixing conspiracy in the liquid crystal display panel industry, ruling Tuesday the LCD makers failed to establish that the experts' findings should be barred.
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February 21, 2012
Stanford Investors Protest Proskauer's Bid To Pause Suit
Plaintiffs in one of six lawsuits claiming Proskauer Rose LLP protected accused Ponzi schemer Robert Allen Stanford's bank protested a motion to stay the suit Monday, calling it a ploy to prevent the court from remanding the suit before the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation reaches a decision.
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February 21, 2012
Panda Express Faces Seating Class Action
Panda Express Inc. was hit with a putative class action in California court Thursday claiming the fast-casual restaurant chain doesn't provide seating for its cashiers and workers while they're on duty in violation of the state's labor code.
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February 21, 2012
Google Accused Of Secretly Tracking Apple Browser Users
Two proposed class actions were filed against Google Inc. on Friday in the wake of a controversy over the company's alleged efforts to bypass an Apple Inc. Web browser's privacy settings and secretly track users' Internet activity.
Expert Analysis
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A Few Lessons On Managing Product Recalls
A recall by a manufacturer necessarily publicizes the possibility of a product defect, and the publicity can generate lawsuits. While lawsuits cannot be prevented, the outlines of such suits can be anticipated, and defense planning should be an integral part of the recall process, says Jonathan Berman of Jones Day.
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Review: Recent Securities Litigation, Rising Trends
While credit crisis-related litigation continued in 2011, it has extended beyond the securities class action realm, as evidenced by a recent surge in mortgage-backed securities actions. Another trend has been the increase in M&A-related securities litigation, something we expect to continue in the coming year, say attorneys with Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom LLP.
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Law School, Meet Litigation PR ...
The single most important thing law schools can do to manage their reputations in the face of litigation is apply the lessons learned from Wall Street during the recent financial crisis and strive for transparency in all communications. One need only look to Goldman Sachs’ woes or the struggles of Jon Corzine’s MF Global as examples of the catastrophic results of a campaign based on anything but complete honesty, says Spencer Baretz of Hellerman Baretz Communications.
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Daubert At Class Certification: Is Less More?
In Bruce v. Harley-Davidson, a federal judge in California has tried to shed light on the analysis of expert opinions during class certification by adopting a limited Daubert analysis. However, this "focused" standard would provide defendants in class actions that are ultimately certified with two bites at the Daubert apple, say attorneys with Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom LLP.
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Allowing Discovery Of A Confidential Witness's Identity
Two recent decisions in the Southern District of New York — Plumbers and Pipefitters Local Union No. 630 Pension-Annuity Trust Fund v. Arbitron Inc. and In re Bear Stearns Companies Inc. — bring a much-needed practical approach to the issue of whether the identities of confidential witnesses may be discovered, say attorneys with Sidley Austin LLP.
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The Rise Of '2nd Generation' Dukes Issues
2012 looks to be the year that litigants and courts alike increasingly confront “second generation” issues left open by the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in Wal-Mart v. Dukes. One of the prime areas of development is the use of Dukes to attack the architecture of the class theories in a complaint, say Gerald Maatman and David Ross of Seyfarth Shaw LLP.
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A Green Light For Repetitive Class Action Litigation
Most employers assume that if they successfully defeat a plaintiff’s motion for class certification in a wage and hour class action, the same class claims cannot be raised again in another case. However, the California Court of Appeal has dashed that commonly held assumption in Bridgeford v. Pacific Health Corp., says Remy Kessler of Reed Smith LLP.
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Revised Removal Statutes — Possibilities, Pitfalls: Part 2
The Federal Courts Jurisdiction and Venue Clarification Act of 2011 has brought about substantial clarification in the federal removal, jurisdiction and venue statutes. But the act still leaves substantial ambiguity in place when it comes to the scope of these statutes, say Colin Wrabley and Douglas Allen of Reed Smith LLP.
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Case Study: Messner V. Northshore
Following Dukes, the Seventh Circuit decision in Messner v. Northshore University HealthSystem approves intensive examination of merits issues at the class certification stage, and highlights the critical role that reliable expert testimony plays by mandating Daubert review at the class certification stage when expert opinions are material to the decision, say attorneys with Mintz Levin Cohn Ferris Glovsky and Popeo PC.
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Immunity For Potentially Toxic Trailers
The Fifth Circuit has consistently held that the government is entitled to raise any and all defenses that would potentially be available to a private citizen or entity under state law, and it continued to do so in granting the government immunity against putative class actions alleging that trailers provided to hurricane-impacted citizens contained hazardous levels of formaldehyde, says Sean Wajert of Dechert LLP.