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Class Action
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May 21, 2013
Chevron Gas Pumpers Fight To Revive ZIP Code Privacy Suit
Motorists who allege Chevron USA Inc. illegally required them to provide their ZIP codes when they paid for gas at the pump with a credit card urged a California appeals court Tuesday to revive their class action, saying their privacy rights trumped Chevron's fraud concerns.
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May 21, 2013
Best Buy Wrongly Retained Customer Data, 11th Circ. Told
An Eleventh Circuit panel on Tuesday voiced skepticism over allegations that Best Buy Co. Inc.'s policy of swiping the driver's licenses of customers returning products violated privacy law, and seemed unlikely to reinstate a putative class action challenging the practice.
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May 21, 2013
Tea Party Groups Hit IRS With 1st Suits In Bias Scandal
A pair of tea party groups mounted the first lawsuits against the Internal Revenue Service over the agency’s targeting of conservative groups, claiming in a putative class action and an individual suit Monday that their tax-exempt status applications were illegally scrutinized.
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May 20, 2013
Strine Tells Wal-Mart To Dig Deeper For Mexican Bribery Docs
Wal-Mart Stores Inc. must conduct a more detailed search for documents requested by an institutional investor seeking information about how the retailer's board handled allegations of bribery by its Mexican affiliate, Delaware Chancellor Leo E. Strine Jr. said Monday.
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May 20, 2013
Carnival Wants Suits Over Deadly Cruise Wreck Sent To Italy
Two Florida judges are weighing whether to keep putative class actions filed by survivors of the wrecked cruise ship Costa Concordia in their court or dismiss them for refiling in Italy, which Carnival Corp. argued Monday would be a more appropriate venue.
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May 20, 2013
Pfizer Can't Shake Skelaxin Pay-For-Delay MDL
A federal judge on Monday refused to dismiss multidistrict litigation accusing Pfizer Inc.'s King Pharmaceuticals Inc. and Mutual Pharmaceutical Co. Inc. of keeping generic versions of the muscle relaxer Skelaxin off the market, finding Rite Aid Corp. and others had plausibly alleged a conspiracy.
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May 20, 2013
Nike, Apple Face False Ad Suit Over Fitness Wristband
Sports apparel retailer Nike Inc. and electronics giant Apple Inc. were hit with a proposed class action Friday that challenges their advertising claims that the Nike Plus FuelBand electronic wristband accurately records each calorie burned by its wearer during physical activity.
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May 20, 2013
Sony Wants Toshiba, HannStar Docs In LCD Cartel Suit
A California federal judge should force Toshiba Corp. and HannStar Display Corp. to produce evidence in a suit rolled into multidistrict litigation over alleged price-fixing of liquid crystal display panels, two Sony Corp. units said Friday.
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May 20, 2013
Apple, Amazon, Google Can't Nix IP Suit Over Music Licensing
A New York federal judge on Monday refused to toss out a proposed class action against Apple Inc., Amazon.com Inc., Google Inc. and others in a copyright infringement suit claiming the tech companies failed to ensure that the music they make available for downloading is properly licensed.
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May 20, 2013
Sprint Asks High Court To Back Arbitration Bid In Fee Suit
A Sprint Nextel Corp. unit has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to determine if a California appeals court skirted its 2011 AT&T Mobility LLC v. Concepcion decision by rejecting Sprint's bid to compel arbitration in a class action over early termination fees.
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May 20, 2013
Investors Give Libor Antitrust Claims Another Shot
Investors pushed Friday to revive their antitrust claims against Bank of America Corp., JPMorgan Chase & Co. and other top banks accused of rigging the London Interbank Offered Rate as part of multidistrict litigation over the rate scandal.
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May 20, 2013
BMC Investor Sues To Block $7B Sale To Bain, Golden Gate
A BMC Software Inc. investor on Friday launched a proposed class action in Texas court, complaining that a planned $7 billion sale of the company to Bain Capital LLC and Golden Gate Capital shortchanges shareholders.
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May 20, 2013
Apple, Amazon Fight Over Confidentiality In E-Book Case
Amazon Inc. told a New York federal court Friday that filings in multidistrict litigation alleging Apple Inc. conspired with publishers to fix e-book prices contained business information that should be confidential, prompting Apple to argue the Amazon information was critical to its defense.
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May 20, 2013
Oil Field Workers Say Superior Energy Stiffed Them On OT
Superior Energy Services Inc. deprived over 1,000 Pennsylvania oil field workers of overtime pay by misclassifying them as exempt from federal and state wage laws, according to a proposed class action filed in federal court Friday.
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May 20, 2013
Calif. Insurer Accused Of Bilking Policyholders
A California man claiming he is being shortchanged on his medical insurance benefits lodged a putative class action in state court accusing Unum Life Insurance Co. of America of denying an annual benefit increase guaranteed in its long-term care policies.
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May 20, 2013
High Court Snubs Nucor's Class Cert. Appeal In Bias Suit
The U.S. Supreme Court refused Monday to hear an appeal from Nucor Corp. of a ruling awarding class certification to black workers for the company’s South Carolina factory, who sued alleging they worked in a hostile environment and faced racial discrimination.
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May 20, 2013
Smithfield Unit Ordered To Pay Workers For Prep Time
A federal judge determined Friday that a class of workers at a pork processing plant owned by a Smithfield Foods Inc. subsidiary should be compensated for time spent changing into and out of their uniforms, citing the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Alvarez v. IBP Inc.
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May 20, 2013
Latham Blasts Oxbow DQ Bid In Rail Price-Fixing MDL
Latham & Watkins LLP said Friday it should be able to continue representing Union Pacific Railroad Co. in multidistrict price-fixing litigation, slamming Oxbow Carbon & Mineral LLC for allegedly dropping most of its original arguments in a bid to disqualify the firm.
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May 20, 2013
Macy's Security Checks Violate Wage Laws, Suit Says
An ex-Macy's Corporate Services Inc. employee urged a California federal judge Monday to certify a class of 84,000 current and former workers who claim the department store chain required them to submit to off-the-clock loss-control inspections of their belongings, but didn't pay them for that time.
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May 20, 2013
High Court To Review Preemption Of Frequent Flier Suits
The U.S. Supreme Court said on Monday that it would decide whether or not the Airline Deregulation Act preempts breach of contract suits against airlines, granting writ to a proposed class action brought by consumers against a Delta Airlines Inc. subsidiary.
Expert Analysis
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Horses Are Off The Shelves, But Litigation Will Continue
Regulators, food distributors and lawyers are scrambling to determine the legal and reputational consequences of the still-growing horse meat scandal that recently hit Europe. Amid the recalls, finger-pointing and consumer outrage, one thing remains certain: You will have time to bet on many Derby winners before this scandal is fully resolved, say attorneys with Cozen O'Connor.
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Sui Generis At Supreme Court
Not since Franklin Roosevelt took office in 1933 have we seen a Supreme Court so imbalanced that it would throw its own power away as it did in Twombly, Iqbal and Concepcion, or devalue its own authority through matters of little interest, simply for the benefit of large American corporations, says Fred Isquith of Wolf Haldenstein Adler Freeman & Herz LLP.
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An Economist's View Of Amgen
One consequence of the U.S. Supreme Court's Amgen opinion will be the courts placing greater scrutiny on the empirical results economists use to evaluate the fifth Cammer factor — cause and effect, says Michael Hartzmark of Hartzmark Economics Litigation Practice LLC.
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FRCP Changes Will Have Major Impact On 3rd-Party Discovery
The U.S. Supreme Court recently endorsed significant changes to Rule 45 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure that will greatly simplify the third-party subpoena process, but the changes do not go as far as some would have liked in centralizing third-party discovery disputes to the court where the litigation is pending, say Mark Klapow and Ariel Applebaum-Bauch of Crowell & Moring LLP.
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Keeping Tabs On Employee Social Media Discourse
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's recent investigation on Netflix reminds employers that they may unwittingly violate the SEC’s full-disclosure requirements unless they take steps to guard against employees’ inadvertent disclosures of material, nonpublic information through social media channels, says Reema Kapur of Seyfarth Shaw LLP.
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How To Run Team Meetings In Complex Cases — Part 2
Remember that the structure of a meeting guides the team's conduct. There are three types of alternative meeting structures that can and should be utilized by the litigation team, says David Dolkas of McDermott Will & Emery LLP.
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How To Run Team Meetings In Complex Cases — Part 1
Many litigation teams struggle with making good decisions and running effective team meetings for three reasons: compromised decision-making, lack of healthy meeting conflict, and lack of alternative meeting structures, says David Dolkas of McDermott Will & Emery LLP.
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What To Know About ACA Collective Bargaining
For companies with a unionized workforce, the Affordable Care Act poses additional challenges and strategic considerations above and beyond those confronting nonunionized workforces. In addition to the general matter of "pay or play" provisions, unionized companies must also keep in mind of what may constitute an unfair labor practice under the National Labor Relations Act, say attorneys with Epstein Becker & Green PC.
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Genesis V. Symczyk: A Win For Employers In The End
Even though the U.S. Supreme Court evaded resolving a particular circuit split in Genesis Healthcare Corp. v. Symczyk, the court did resolve another issue that should provide employers confidence in the proper disposition of Fair Labor Standards Act collective actions, say attorneys with Paul Hastings LLP.
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9th Circ. Leaves Broughton-Cruz Hanging
The Ninth Circuit decision in Kilgore v. KeyBank NA leaves open the question of whether and to what extent California's Broughton-Cruz rule survives the U.S. Supreme Court decision in AT&T Mobility LLC v. Concepcion. It also suggests additional guidance to maximize enforcement of arbitration agreements and class action waivers, say attorneys with Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP.