Government

Seattle Trial to Impact Deportation Cases of Thousands of Immigrant Children

A federal judge in Seattle has rejected the Obama administration’s effort to dismiss a class-action lawsuit that could force the government to provide attorneys to thousands of children who face deportation in U.S. immigration courts. U.S. District Judge Thomas Zilly has set the outline of the class of child immigrants who will be represented in the lawsuit, and told the coalition of …


‘Excessive’ PACER Fees Prompt Class Action Complaint

The government agency running the PACER system, which provides online access to federal court records, charges more fees than necessary to recoup its costs in providing its services, a complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia April 21 alleges. “The judiciary has taken no steps to change the fee structure or the way it has administered the system and so …


Victims to File Class-Action Lawsuit Against Humidifier Sterilizer Producers, Gov’t

A group of people affected by toxic humidifier sterilizers plan to file a class-action lawsuit next month against the manufacturers, distributors and the government. The group of plaintiffs, the Asian Citizen’s Center for Environment and Health, and Lawyers for a Democratic Society or Minbyun held a news conference on Tuesday in southern Seoul to announce the plan. Minbyun lawyers who will …


Law Firm of Kirby McInerney LLP Announces $1.5 Million Settlement Resolving Whistleblower Claims That Athletic Wear Company Underpaid U.S. Import Duties

Kirby McInerney LLP is pleased to announce that its client, a Hong Kong-based whistleblower, helped the U.S. government recover $1.5 million in allegedly underpaid U.S. import duties from Winds Enterprises, Inc. of California, and its affiliate, Winds Enterprises, Ltd. of Hong Kong, which manufacture and import athletic wear for popular brands in the United States.…


Truth and Justice for Haiti

Victims of Haiti’s raging cholera epidemic got a glimmer of good news recently when a class-action lawsuit seeking recompense from the United Nations for its role in spreading the disease finally got a hearing in a New York courtroom. The three judges on the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit panel asked tough questions of both sides — the US government is representing the United …


Left Behind: The History of Residential Schools in N.L.

More than 1,000 former Newfoundland and Labrador residential school students say the federal government must recognize the abuse they suffered. Survivors from this province said they were unjustly excluded from a multi-billion-dollar settlement with other Canadian residential school survivors. The group of survivors from this province launched a class-action lawsuit and, after years of delays, …


First Nations Seek Closure for Sixties Scoop With Class-Action Suit

Indigenous people who say they lost their cultural identity when they were removed as children from their homes on Ontario reserves to be placed with non-aboriginal families are urging the federal government to negotiate a settlement in a long-standing case that will go before a judge later this year. The class-action suit seeks redress for what the plaintiffs say was the government’s failure …


Do You Have to Disclose a Government Investigation? Practical Considerations, Legal Standards, and Recent Case Law

After receiving an inquiry from a government agency, such as a subpoena, a Civil Investigative Demand (“CID”), or an informal request for information, public companies ask whether they must disclose publicly that they may be under investigation. A corollary question to public disclosure is how broadly to disclose internally, to lenders, or to D&O insurers. The standards for disclosing …


There’s Another Crime Happening in Flint, on Top of the Poisoning — the Victims Can’t Sue

“There’s real danger that the injury is going to be permanent and lifelong in them,” Dr. Philip Landrigan, Dean of Global Health at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, said of the residents exposed to the water crisis in Flint. “The problem here is, no level of lead is safe,” Landrigan says. “Even low levels of lead — especially if exposure to low levels continues over many months — is going to …


Former Residential School Student Says Info Withheld on Priest Who Abused Him

Justice department lawyers have been accused of withholding documents that show a priest who worked at an infamous Indian residential school for nearly four decades was a serial sexual predator even as they persuaded an adjudicator to deny compensation to a former student who said the priest abused him. The man, who was a student of St. Anne’s Indian Residential School in Fort Albany, Ont., is …