Jan 1, 2017

Second FOIA Lawsuit Targets Details on Election Interference

Journalists and transparency advocates are now turning to the courts to force the Obama administration to provide more information about Russian interference in the U.S. election. A second Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit targeting U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies’ investigations into foreign election interference was filed in the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., …


Uber Drivers Try Unique Lawsuit Challenging Their Contractor Status

Reader CDW passes along another challenge to Uber’s assertion that its drivers are just contractors. A federal judge in eastern Pennsylvania is hearing a case where Uber drivers are claiming that they should be on the clock when they are logged into the Uber app, waiting for a ride. In addition, they are claiming this should entitle them to minimum wage and overtime pay .


Kansas AG Seeks Rejection of Deal to End Health Insurance Lawsuit

The attorney general of Kansas joined a coalition of 14 states in opposition to a proposed class-action settlement of a Florida lawsuit providing little compensation to consumers while paying attorneys handling the case nearly $3 million. Attorney General Derek Schmidt joined a friend-of-the-court brief filed in U.S. District Court in a lawsuit that alleged UnitedHealthcare improperly denied …


TrueVisions May Face Class-Action Lawsuit

While regulators continue to press TrueVisions to improve compensation to subscribers after cancelling six popular pay-TV channels, some customers have taken to an online “crowd-suing” platform in hopes of pursuing a class-action lawsuit. As of 5pm Saturday, more than 1,000 people had signed up to initiate the …


A New Health Lawsuit Compares Big Soda to the Tobacco Industry

The term “Big Soda” gets thrown around a lot to describe how soda companies have a tendency to act like the big, bad oil and tobacco companies who wield immense lobbying power and advertising budgets to match. It might sound like an exaggeration to compare the big three soda companies (The Coca-Cola Company, PepsiCo, and the Dr Pepper Snapple Group) to corporations like Philip Morris, but a …


St. Ives Apricot Scrub Faces Lawsuit for Causing Facial Irritation

The first facial scrub you probably used was St. Ives Apricot Scrub, a viscous, gloppy paste speckled with granules of crushed walnut shells that you rubbed on your teenaged visage in an attempt to sandblast your way out of acne, operating under the assumption that it was good for you. As it turns out, that might not be the case and Unilever, the parent company of St. Ives, is …



Wells Fargo Advisors to Pony Up $35.5M in Race Discrimination, Class Action Settlement

Wells Fargo Advisors has reached a $35.5 million settlement with a group of African-American financial advisers who claimed the firm discriminated against them due to their race. The group of six brokers, with lead plaintiff Lance Slaughter, are joined by 325 confirmed African American brokers or trainees at the firm, said Linda Friedman, the attorney for the class plaintiffs. There could be …


Opinion: A 2017 Food-Court Resolution: End Regulation-Through-Litigation Crusade Against Trans Fat

In 2016, class-action lawsuits alleging that a processed food product or its labeling violated state consumer-protection laws continued to clog the federal courts, especially in California. The number of new food-related consumer class actions filed last year nearly equaled the number filed in 2015, according to a report in Food Navigator USA . It’s unclear whether these trends will hold in 2017, but there is one set of blatantly frivolous claims that should disappear this year: those that seek judicial regulation of products that contain partially hydrogenated oil (PHO), the main source of trans fat. A December 13, 2016 Southern District of California decision should …