Lawyers

Lawsuit-Abuse Watchdog to Monitor State Taxotere Litigation After Lawsuit Filings Surge in Louisiana

A recent, sudden surge in Taxotere lawsuit filings in the U.S. District Court of the Eastern District of Louisiana has caught Louisiana Lawsuit Abuse Watch’s attention. According to a news release from Schmidt National Law Group, the U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation’s Feb. 15 docket report shows 755 pending actions in the Taxotere litigation, up 50 from the panel’s …


Doctors Ask Court to Reinstate Newtown Gun Maker Lawsuit

A group of doctors who treated mass shooting victims is asking the state Supreme Court to reinstate a lawsuit against the maker of the rifle used in the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre. Lawyers for the 10 doctors said Tuesday that they planned to file a friend-of-the-court brief asking the justices to overturn a lower-court decision in October that dismissed the lawsuit …


Unfairness in Class Action: A New Attack on Civil Rights – Center for American Progress

President Donald Trump’s budget proposal may eliminate the single greatest funder of civil legal aid in the United States, the Legal Services Corporation—a long-standing goal of Vice President Mike Pence. At the same time, Congress is working to block Americans from seeking justice on their own with the Fairness in Class Action Litigation Act of 2017. This bill was drafted to address an …


Auto Workers File Lawsuit Against FCA for Age Discrimination

Employees from Fiat Chrysler Automobiles in the U.S. say they were discriminated against because of their age, according to lawyers representing the workers in a lawsuit. The latest round of performance evaluations from the company led to employees over the age of 55 being unfairly treated, alleges Michigan-based civil rights law firm, Akeel and Valentine, PLC. The firm filed a class-action …


10 Ridiculous Recent Food-Marketing Lawsuits

Class-action lawsuits over food marketing practices have skyrocketed in the past decade, from around 20 at the federal level in 2008 to 118 such suits filed in 2015 and 171 last year. The single most frequent complaint relates to foodmakers’ use of terms like natural or nothing artificial, with suits challenging extra space in product packaging also common, according …


EDITORIAL: Congressman Pushed Class-Action Lawsuit Reform

Trial lawyers are up in arms over a Republican proposal to reign in class-action lawsuit abuses. But their objections stem more from concern over their own bank statements than the well being of their clients. Class-action suits allow a plaintiff to bring legal action on behalf of a large group of individuals.


Republican Proposal Would Make Trump University Lawsuits “Almost Impossible”

A lawyer who led two lawsuits against Trump University, settled for $21 million just weeks after Donald Trump’s election victory, says the suits would have been “almost impossible” to pursue under a law currently being pushed by Republicans in Congress. Helen Zeldes, a founding partner of ZHE Law, investigated and initiated one of two class-action lawsuits against Trump University, along with a …


Billion-Dollar Settlement Netted Little for Retirees

It was hailed as one of the largest anti-trust, class-action settlements ever — nearly $2 billion to be paid to investors by some of the country’s major banks for allegedly fixing the financial markets. And right there near of the top of the list of victims of the alleged fraud was the Essex Regional Retirement System, the Danvers-based organization that manages $370 million in …


[Opinion] The Most Intriguing Idea in House Republicans’ Bill to Gut Class Actions

Most of the proposed procedural rule changes in Representative Bob Goodlatte’s “Fairness in Class Action Litigation Act of 2017,” introduced last week in the House of Representatives, are directly traceable to the business lobby’s anti-class-action talking points. Goodlatte – a Virginia Republican and chair of the House Judiciary Committee – has significantly expanded the changes he proposed …


[Opinion] Consumer Fraud Reaches the Supreme Court

Trump administration spokeswoman Kellyanne Conway recently defended false statements about inauguration crowd size as “alternative facts,” provoking a great kerfuffle. But in the class-action world, trial lawyers have been making millions on alternative facts for decades. And, astonishingly, courts disagree over whether it’s permissible for lawyers to use alternative facts to …