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Amanda Bronstad is the ALM staff reporter covering class actions and mass torts nationwide. She writes the email dispatch Critical Mass. She is based in Los Angeles.
June 21, 2018
A federal appeals panel upheld an award of about $127,800 in attorney fees and costs to the manufacturer of fire engine sirens after finding the plaintiffs’ firm had failed to investigate claims of hearing loss among firefighters while voluntarily dismissing similar cases across the country.
June 20, 2018
A federal judge in Michigan has refused to remove lead attorneys in the Flint water contamination case but plans to bring in a special master to review their fees and expenses.
June 20, 2018
A federal judge in Boston who started off a year ago looking at a $75 million fee request in a case against State Street is now hinting at public corruption involving Labaton Sucharow--a notion the firm is adamantly fighting.
June 19, 2018
What began as a judge's inquiry into a $75 million attorney fee has morphed into hints of public corruption, with one of the top securities plaintiffs firms in the nation on the defensive.
June 19, 2018
A federal judge in Oregon has appointed 11 lawyers to lead more than 40 class actions brought over alleged security flaws in Intel Corp.’s microprocessor chips.
June 18, 2018
A New York state court judge has refused to dismiss lawsuits against several opioid manufacturers in some of the first substantive rulings to come out of the barrage of cases brought by governments over the prescription painkillers.
June 15, 2018
Labaton Sucharow has moved for a federal judge reviewing its billing records to recuse himself from a securities class action settlement, citing a “serious conflict” raised by statements from the judge, which the firm said implied that the New York law firm was engaged in public corruption.
June 13, 2018
Volkswagen has scored a critical court victory in its battle against several state attorneys general who are still pursuing billions of dollars over its emissions scandal.
June 13, 2018
The U.S. Supreme Court dealt another blow to class actions this week with a decision that prevents lawyers from tolling the filing of individual shareholder cases.
June 08, 2018
A federal panel reviewing a $1.04 billion hip implant verdict appeared skeptical about Johnson & Johnson’s arguments that a Dallas judge had…
June 07, 2018
The executive director over an Arkansas pension fund has retained outside counsel but insisted he could continue to serve as lead plaintiff in settlements…
June 06, 2018
A federal judicial panel has ordered that 30 class actions brought against Facebook and Cambridge Analytica be coordinated into multidistrict litigation…
National Law Journal |Live Coverage |News
June 06, 2018
Johnson & Johnson “rigged the tests” to avoid conceding that its baby powder contained asbestos, causing 22 women to get ovarian cancer, plaintiffs lawyer Mark Lanier told a St. Louis jury in opening statements on Wednesday in the most high-volume talcum powder trial to date.
June 06, 2018
Claims by and on behalf of 22 women are going to trial over whether Johnson & Johnson’s baby powder caused ovarian cancer
June 05, 2018
Drug companies defending opioid lawsuits have fired back in the federal court handling the sprawling litigation, insisting that cities and counties lacked standing to bring several of the claims, some of which were pre-empted.
June 04, 2018
An ex-associate who accused Steptoe & Johnson of inequitable pay based on gender has dropped her case in light of last month’s U.S. Supreme Court decision upholding arbitration agreements that bar class actions over employment matters.
June 04, 2018
Claims of 22 women are set to be tested in the case, the first scheduled to go to trial since the Supreme Court’s 2017 decision in "Bristol-Myers Squibb v. Superior Court of California," which made it harder for nonresident litigants to pursue claims in multiplaintiff lawsuits.
June 04, 2018
Heading Johnson & Johnson’s trial team are Peter Bicks, Morton Dubin and Lisa Simpson, all New York partners at Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe.
June 01, 2018
An appeals court has upheld an injunction freezing the assets of Stanley Chesley—once known as the "master of disaster" for his work in mass tort litigation—after concluding that the disbarred Cincinnati plaintiffs attorney is likely to continue what it called a “high-stakes shell game.”
May 31, 2018
A Boston federal judge has ordered the head of a pension fund to explain why the fund should still continue to be lead plaintiff, in light of suggestions that it didn't catch millions of dollars in overcharges by lawyers leading the class action.
May 30, 2018
Plaintiffs' lawyers appointed to lead multidistrict litigation are starting to be less and less of a "boys club," but those gains are coming slowly. According to ALM statistics that I compiled, women increasingly are getting leadership posts--although they aren’t always at the very top and still make up less than 30 percent.
May 30, 2018
U.S. District Judge Peter Sheridan found that individual officers of New Jersey-based Bil-Jim Construction Co. Inc., a subcontractor hired to rebuild the beaches near Barnegat Bay, were not personally liable under the New Jersey Prevailing Wage Act.
National Law Journal |Investigation |Research
May 29, 2018
Some female and minority attorneys have struck out on their own to get appointments, while many firms are diversifying their hiring or pitching new faces to MDL judges, who themselves are evolving into a more diverse corps.
May 29, 2018
U.S. District Judge Mark Wolf in Boston said he would address concerns by three plaintiffs firms currently serving as class counsel to State Street customers about the deadline to propose redactions to the report, which the special master filed under seal on May 14.
May 24, 2018
The U.S. solicitor general has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review a case that addresses one of the most significant federal pre-emption issues for brand drug companies since Wyeth v. Levine.
May 24, 2018
A California jury has awarded $25.75 million to a woman diagnosed with mesothelioma due to asbestos exposure from using Johnson & Johnson’s baby powder thousands of times.
May 23, 2018
The objector, Adam Schulman, is an attorney at the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Center for Class Action Fairness, where Ted Frank, a known class action critic, is the director.
May 23, 2018
The U.S. Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision upholding class action waivers included in arbitration clauses of employment contracts has sent shockwaves through the class action bar.
May 21, 2018
In three separate suits filed on Monday, including one class action, plaintiffs alleged that Dr. George Tyndall performed inappropriate procedures and made sexual remarks to patients who were students at the college.
May 18, 2018
The trial against Johnson & Johnson claims an attorney’s lifetime use of its baby powder caused her to get one of the deadliest forms of cancer.
May 16, 2018
A litigation funding bill introduced in the U.S. Senate last week got a cold reception from financiers and plaintiffs lawyers, who have a few suggestions on how to change it.
May 16, 2018
Christopher Wylie, a research director at Cambridge Analytica from 2013 to 2014, told members of the Senate Judiciary Committee that the firm, co-founded by Steve Bannon, who was campaign manager and later a top White House strategist for President Donald Trump, came up with phrases like “drain the swamp” that became key campaign themes and slogans.
May 16, 2018
Christopher Wylie, former research director at Cambridge Analytica, told members of the Senate Judiciary Committee that the firmcame up with phrases like 'drain the swamp' that became key campaign themes and slogans.
May 16, 2018
Plaintiffs lawyers in the Anthem data breach settlement have objected to the report of a court-appointed special master, which found what it said was inappropriate…
May 15, 2018
Richard Fields talks about Wednesday's hearing and its potential impact on the Facebook litigation.
May 15, 2018
Ahead of Facebook's day on Capitol Hill, Richard Fields talks about Wednesday's hearing and its potential impact on the Facebook litigation.
May 14, 2018
The bill would require disclosure of third-party litigation funding in class actions and multidistrict litigation within 10 days of a case filing, or 10 days after a funding deal. It would also require disclosure of financing that provides cash to plaintiffs.
May 11, 2018
Plaintiffs suing over a 2014 data breach at the U.S. Office of Personnel Management—which may have compromised information for 21.5 million persons—have asked a federal appeals court to revive their cases, citing a significant decision last year finding standing to sue over a cyberattack.
May 10, 2018
The complaints come as the judge preliminarily approved the settlement on behalf of a class of more than 600,000 farmers who alleged Syngenta sold genetically modified corn seed that China refused to import.
May 10, 2018
In a marked shift from the first hearing in the opioid litigation, a federal judge praised lawyers for getting closer to reaching a global settlement…
May 09, 2018
A judge overseeing hundreds of opioid lawsuits has ordered lawyers to disclose their third-party litigation financing arrangements.
May 07, 2018
A federal judge overseeing the multidistrict litigation over the opioid epidemic has ordered lawyers to disclose all third-party financing arrangements in their cases.
May 04, 2018
The pitches for lead plaintiffs counsel pit Steve Berman and a few lawyers at Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro against a 40-lawyer coalition led by Joseph Cotchett, of Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy, and Laurence King of Kaplan Fox & Kilsheimer.
May 03, 2018
A LA judge has tentatively cleared the way for a Johnson & Johnson motion to toss out about 100 out-of-state plaintiffs from the coordinated talcum powder litigation in California in light of the U.S. Supreme Court’s jurisdictional decision last year in Bristol-Myers Squibb v. Superior Court of California.
May 02, 2018
In a win for critics of the doctrine, the U.S. Supreme Court has finally picked a case to review the use of cy pres funds: An $8.5 million class action settlement with Google, which yielded $5.3 million to be distributed to public interest causes, some of which opponents said had ties to lawyers in the case.
May 02, 2018
The suits, filed in five states, were brought by individual persons against opioid manufacturers and distributors, and are among the few class actions filed against drugmakers and marketers.
May 02, 2018
The opioid cases add a new type of plaintiff into the wide-reaching opioid litigation, which have also includes states, Native American tribes, pension funds and hospitals.
May 01, 2018
Ted Leopold and Michael Pitt, co-lead counsel for the lead class action brought on behalf of Flint residents, have asked U.S. District Judge Judith Levy, who is based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, to remove Hunter Shkolnik as one of two lawyers serving as liaison counsel to the individual cases.
April 24, 2018
Merck has moved to coordinate dozens of lawsuits brought over injuries allegedly caused by its shingles vaccine, Zostavax.
April 24, 2018
A San Francisco federal judge, in what was apparently the first case to cite last month's SCOTUS opinion Cyan v. Beaver County Employees Retirement Fund remanded a securities class action against a blockchain startup to San Francisco Superior Court while keeping another in federal court.
April 23, 2018
Plaintiffs who lost all three bellwether trials over Xarelto last year have asked an appeals court to vacate the decisions, saying the judge improperly excluded evidence and gave jurors incorrect instructions.
April 20, 2018
A plaintiffs team suing a pipeline operator over a 2015 oil spill off the coast of California scored a rare win when a federal judge granted certification of thousands of property owners. Of course, that success came on the third try.
April 18, 2018
A federal judge has rejected approval of a class action settlement that drew an unusual objection from the U.S. Justice Department, but one that it withdrew.
April 17, 2018
A federal judge has dismissed cases brought by two counties in Utah and Florida alleging Volkswagen’s emissions fraud violated their state environmental laws.
April 17, 2018
Wells Fargo could be on the hook for $1 billion in regulatory fines tied to allegedly overcharging its consumers for mortgage and insurance products, but lawyers said the full amount was far from certain.
April 13, 2018
Lawyers have asked a federal judge to halt consumer class actions against sports betting sites DraftKings Inc. and FanDuel Inc. while they hash out a possible settlement.
April 13, 2018
Ohio federal District Judge Dan Polster--who is overseeing multidistrict litigation over the opioid crisis--has put the first trial on a fast track, choosing to pursue an ambitious discovery schedule.
April 12, 2018
With lawyers at an impasse over settling the national opioid litigation, a federal judge in Cleveland has set an aggressive discovery schedule that includes going to trial on March 18 of next year.
April 10, 2018
A lawyer accused of unethical conduct in the Flint water case called an attempt to oust him from his leadership appointment “nothing but a retaliatory smear campaign” and a “blatant money grab.”
April 10, 2018
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg came to Capitol Hill this week to deliver an apology for the social media site's role in the Cambridge Analytica debacle, but his tone did not quite match up with the aggressive stance taken by Facebook's lawyers, who argued forcefully in court papers that there was effectively no data breach.
April 09, 2018
As Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has prepared to apologize this week on Capitol Hill over security issues, the social media giant's lawyers struck a…
April 09, 2018
In the runup to Mark Zuckerberg's Congressional testimony, Facebook's lawyers at Gibson Dunn claimed that the company "broke no laws and violated no legal duties" in a filing before the U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation.
April 06, 2018
The federal judge overseeing the $1 billion concussion settlement with the NFL awarded $112.5 million in attorney fees—but it might be another year before she decides how to divide the global amount.
April 05, 2018
A federal judicial panel has ordered dozens of lawsuits against Intel, Apple and Uber into multidistrict litigation—but only one docket went to California’s increasingly congested district in the Bay Area.
April 03, 2018
A class action over gender pay equity at Google has cleared a hurdle, and the ruling could reverberate throughout Silicon Valley and the tech world as a road map for suits targeting pay inequality in major companies.
March 29, 2018
Theodore Leopold and Michael Pitt, lead counsel in a consolidated class action in Michigan federal court, say Hunter Shkolnik has been swiping their clients by forcing them to sign unlawful retainer agreements with excessive fees.
March 28, 2018
The Fourth Circuit cited a 2017 U.S. Supreme Court decision from last year that struck down a procedural tactic used by plaintiffs to get their appeals heard.
March 27, 2018
Remington Outdoor's Chapter 11 bankruptcy could hold up a case brought by 10 families of victims of the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, even if the Connecticut Supreme Court rules in their favor.
March 26, 2018
A federal jury in Illinois awarded an Oregon man $3.2 million in a retrial of a “low testosterone” case that originally netted $150 million.
March 26, 2018
Asbestos filings fell in 2017, and it didn't matter whether they were brought over mesothelioma, lung cancer or other forms of cancer, according to consulting firm KCIC.
March 23, 2018
Lawyers filed the first consumer class action against Facebook and Cambridge Analytica in the wake of reports that a research firm with ties to President Donald Trump's 2016 campaign mined data about Facebook users through an app. Other lawsuits--a securities class action and a derivative shareholder suit--followed soon after.
March 22, 2018
Uniloc USA Inc. brought the motion last month to coordinate 25 patent infringement lawsuits against companies such as Apple and Motorola over seven patents it acquired from Hewlett Packard Enterprise in 2017.
March 20, 2018
The groups said Ninth Circuit ruling conflicts with its own precedent and decisions in the Third and Seventh circuits, parroting the arguments of plaintiffs and defendants Hyundai Motor America and Kia Motors America Inc. in dual petitions for en banc review filed earlier this month.
March 20, 2018
The U.S. Supreme Court handed down its opinion in a securities case that has been closely watched by the tech community, ruling unanimously that certain securities class actions may be litigated in state courts despite a recent federal statute that defense counsel said was intended to curb those suits.
March 19, 2018
Plaintiffs suing Chrysler over its “clean diesel” engines may pursue racketeering claims, according to a federal judge’s ruling.
March 16, 2018
The appellate court on Thursday found that a defendant's due process rights weren't violated when a district attorney in California hired three outside law firms on a contingency basis to pursue a civil lawsuit.
March 16, 2018
The settlement in a sex discrimination case against Chadbourne & Parke is set to go to three lead plaintiffs who ended up securing a total of $2 million in back pay for their Equal Pay Act claims, and a motion seeking court approval for the accord said “there are no other opt-in plaintiffs.”
March 15, 2018
None of the companies have revealed how much the settlements were worth.
March 14, 2018
Laura Simmons, senior adviser at Cornerstone and co-author of the report, said the cases last year were just smaller.
March 14, 2018
A federal judge in Washington, D.C., has found the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' management of the Missouri River caused regular flooding, a liability finding that sets the stage for a trial over what plaintiffs' counsel estimated as $300 million in damages.
March 13, 2018
Yahoo now faces the possibility of punitive damages over recent data breaches, which have impacted a total more than 3 billion user accounts, after Judge Lucy Koh refused to dismiss the case.
March 12, 2018
Yahoo Inc. will face punitive damages over data breaches that affected more than 3 billion email user accounts after a federal judge refused to dismiss most of the claims.
March 09, 2018
Lawyers on both sides of a high-profile case against Hyundai, citing a circuit split, have asked an en banc appeals panel to upend a ruling that they say threatens the future of nationwide class action settlements.
March 07, 2018
U.S. District Judge Dan Polster in Cleveland told lawyers in the multidistrict litigation to come up with a plan by March 16 over the scope and timing of a “litigation track.”
National Law Journal |Expert Opinion |Investigation |News
March 06, 2018
A special master looking into potential overbilling in a $75 million attorney fee request has delayed the findings of a report he said could have “serious and far-reaching adverse ramifications” for plaintiffs firms in the case and “for the practice of the plaintiffs’ class action bar.”
March 06, 2018
All eyes were on Florida this week, where the state’s highest court is reviewing evidence standards, weighing whether it should shift from Frye to Daubert in evaluating expert testimony.
March 05, 2018
Before U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced last week that the federal government might bring legal actions against opioid companies, Department of Justice lawyers were in court fighting over a drug distribution database that could aid ongoing settlement talks.
March 02, 2018
U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ announcement this week that he had commissioned a team to eye direct involvement in the opioid litigation was made just as the DOJ was ordered to turn over Drug Enforcement Agency data to plaintiffs' lawyers.
March 01, 2018
Plaintiffs firm Edelson PC has asked a federal judicial panel to consolidate class actions brought over the 2014 collapse of the bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox after a federal judge last year dismantled its case under the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Bristol-Myers Squibb v. Superior Court of California.
February 27, 2018
At issue is whether the St. Louis judge overseeing the case, abused his discretion in allowing a plaintiff who originally sued in St. Louis County Circuit Court, located in Clayton, Missouri, to go to trial in the city of St. Louis.
February 27, 2018
Attorneys are left to mull what comes next after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear a case that promised to offer a chance to make a definitive statement on plaintiff standing in data breach lawsuits.
February 26, 2018
Plaintiff’s lawyers who allege that baby powder caused a woman’s mesothelioma have voluntarily dismissed their case against Johnson & Johnson less than a month before a scheduled trial.
February 23, 2018
After Rachel Brand said in a speech that the U.S. Justice Department would use the Class Action Fairness Act to review settlements, it didn;t take long for a case to be brought under the microscope.
February 22, 2018
A man whose parking receipt exposed the full expiration date of his credit card lacked standing to sue over the data leak, the court ruled this week.
February 21, 2018
A federal judge has refused to dismiss racketeering claims in a case over GM’s diesel trucks, potentially bolstering cases against other automakers that, like Volkswagen, have been accused of cheating emissions tests.
February 20, 2018
Attorneys general from 16 states have filed an amicus brief urging the Supreme Court to take up the debate over the cy pres doctrine, which directs undistributed class action proceeds.
February 16, 2018
Lawyers are closely watching whether the high court takes up a petition to review a case from the D.C. Circuit that may provide the opportunity to provide an answer on when data breach victims have standing to sue in federal court.
February 15, 2018
That’s how plaintiffs lawyers characterized a settlement reached this week in the Takata bankruptcy that could provide up to $130 million in compensation to victims of exploding air bags.
February 14, 2018
A federal appeals panel appeared unlikely to unravel a controversial class action settlement over defects in Remington rifles, raising doubts that…
February 13, 2018
When U.S. District Judge Thomas Thrash appointed lawyers to lead the class actions against Equifax and that roster includes a lot of familiar faces from the Home Depot data breach litigation, which he also oversaw.
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