Federal

Ninth Circuit Invalidates Class Waiver in Arbitration Agreement

In a ruling that widens the divide between federal appellate courts, the Ninth Circuit sided today with the Seventh Circuit and the National Labor Relations Board (“NLRB”) in holding that the class action waiver provision of a company’s arbitration agreement with employees violates the National Labor Relations Act (“NLRA”). Prior to this decision, the Seventh Circuit was alone in its dissention …





US Aid to Israel Illegal: Lawsuit

American aid to Israel is illegal under a decades-old law that prohibits aid to nuclear powers that have not signed the international Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), according to a lawsuit filed in federal court in Washington, DC. The lawsuit, filed this week by Grant Smith, the director of the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy, comes as the US and Israel have closed many of …


Judge Doesn’t Rule in Texas’ Lawsuit Over Transgender Protections

Despite the state’s request for an expedited ruling, a federal judge took no action Friday on a request to block the Obama administration’s guidelines to accommodate transgender students. U.S. District Court Judge Reed O’Connor did not issue a ruling from the bench after an almost two-hour-long hearing during which state attorneys — as part of a Texas-led, 13-state effort to block …



Judge Dismisses $750M Fort Detrick Pollution Lawsuit

A federal judge has dismissed a $750 million class-action lawsuit alleging the Army’s reckless handling of chemical and biological toxins caused death and illness among people living near Fort Detrick in Frederick. The Frederick News-Post (http://bit.ly/2buYcdz ) reports that U.S. District Judge Catherine Blake filed the dismissal notice Thursday in Baltimore.


Calif. Lawyers Mull Class Action Suit to Hold Carolinas HealthCare ‘accountable’

Two months after the federal and state governments sued Carolinas HealthCare System over alleged antitrust violations, a San Francisco-based plaintiffs’ law firm has announced it’s looking for people who might have been harmed and could sue for related damages. In a notice on its website, the 65-lawyer firm of Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein says it’s investigating the Charlotte-based …


Canadian Law Prevents Ottawa From Making VW Pay for Rigging Emissions

Canadians should not expect the federal government to collect any cash from Volkswagen as a penalty for lying about emissions levels. In late June, the United States government announced a US$15.3-billion civil settlement with the German automaker that included US$2.7 billion for the public sector to spend on environmental mitigation efforts. Several diesel-powered VW models had so-called …