Energizer’s fight with rival Rayovac over alleged trademark infringement related to packaging is over. In December, Town and Country-based Energizer sued Madison, Wis.-based Spectrum Brands , the parent company of Rayovac, alleging Rayovac’s new package designs are confusingly similar to those used for Energizer batteries. “Spectrum has recently begun a campaign to progressively and radically …
A recently-filed federal lawsuit aims to loosen the restrictions placed on registered sex offenders in North Carolina, claiming the state’s laws go too far, and do little to actually make children safer. The National Association for Rational Sexual Offense Laws filed the federal civil rights action, challenging North Carolina’s sex offender registration requirements. The organization and two unnamed plaintiffs allege that the restrictions placed on sex offenders have expanded continuously over the past decade and are now crippling. North Carolina’s laws restrict …
On Wednesday, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) filed a lawsuit against Navient, the largest student loan servicer in the country. If you have a student loan, there is a good chance that it may be serviced by Navient. Navient, which spun off from Sallie Mae, has more than 12 million customers and services more than $300 billion of government and private student loans. Here is what you need to know and the action that you can take …
ProPublica and the Virginian-Pilot filed a lawsuit today in federal court against the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, accusing the agency of stonewalling requests for documents under the Freedom of Information Act. The lawsuit, ProPublica’s second against the VA in two months, seeks a preliminary injunction compelling the government to immediately release correspondence about Agent Orange, …
A federal appeals court ruled in San Francisco Thursday that two consumer lawsuits filed over Samsung smartphones can’t be forced to go to arbitration and instead can proceed toward trials. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said that in both cases, a mandatory arbitration provision contained in a warranty booklet placed in a box packaging the smartphone didn’t amount to a contract.
The number of wage and hour class lawsuits filed in federal court dipped slightly during 2016, but employers should expect a rebound in 2017, according to a management lawyer who tracks workplace class actions.
The 8,304 Fair Labor Standards Act collective actions filed was down, compared with 8,954 such lawsuits filed in 2015, said Gerald Maatman, a Seyfarth Shaw LLP partner who is co-chair of the firm’s class action litigation practice group. But the 2015 figure was the highest since the firm formally began tracking employment law class actions in 2004, and the 2016 total is the second-highest, Maatman told Bloomberg BNA. The top 10 wage and hour settlements reached in 2016 totaled $695.5 million, up from $463.6 million in 2015, Maatman said. The long-term growth in class lawsuits against employers alleging violations of minimum wage, overtime and other wage and hour requirements isn’t stopping anytime soon, he said. The Trump administration could …
The city of Detroit is siding with seven Detroit public schoolchildren suing Gov. Rick Snyder and state education officials over their right to access literacy. On Thursday, attorneys for the city filed an amicus brief in a proposed class action lawsuit against Snyder and state education officials that is being touted as an unprecedented attempt to establish that literacy is a U.S. constitutional right. …
As the world prepares itself for a new presidential administration, no one knows for sure what the future holds. But the lawyers at Crowell & Moring took a hard look at the potential litigation landscape in 2017 and compiled their findings in a new report. The report, here , covers a lot of ground, but we caught up with its architect, Mark Klapow, a Crowell litigation partner in Washington, …
On the last day of the Obama administration, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau wanted to give millions of Americans with student loan debt a little gift: filing a lawsuit against Navient (formerly known as Sallie Mae) for grimy, misleading practices. BuzzFeed reports : Among the most serious allegations is the claim that Navient systematically pushed struggling borrowers away from …
An $800 “he said-she said” over a night out for two pals at a Midtown strip club has ballooned into a $75 million Manhattan lawsuit. Rene Zurita and Matt Friedman claim in their mega-dollar suit that three bouncers and a stripper swiped $776 from them, attacked them and then told police that they robbed the unidentified dancer at Rick’s Cabaret on W. 33rd St. last February. The duo, who filed …