Lawyers

Peter Thiel & Y Combinator Fund a “Litigation Financing” Startup to Make Money Off Other Peoples’ Lawsuits

Legalist is a startup founded by Thiel Fellow Eva Shang and Christian Haigh, backed by Y Combinator: it will use data-mining to identify people who have been legally wronged by deep-pocketed aggressors and offer to finance their litigation in return for a share of the winnings. report this ad This tactic, called “champerty,” used to be illegal, but as it has morphed into the more thrusting, …


CFPB Arbitration Rule Will Enrich Trial Lawyers, Not Protect Consumers

Today, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau closes the comment period on its proposed rule to enrich trial lawyers at the expense of consumers. The Bureau misleadingly styles its proposal as one to regulate arbitration agreements. The truth is that the proposal is very intentionally designed for the singular goal of promoting class action lawsuits—the number one policy priority of the trial …


Appellate Judge Sends Lawyers’ Windfall Up in Smoke

Lawyers dream about doing little to no work and getting paid a fortune for the work they didn’t do. A group of hotshot securities lawyers recently was on the verge of just such a payday. They stood to collect $370,000 in legal fees for work that didn’t benefit their clients one iota.


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 …


12 Attorneys Appeal Ruling in Ethics Case

Texarkana-based attorney John Goodson and 11 lawyers who work with him on class-action lawsuits have appealed a federal judge’s ruling that they broke ethics rules and abused the court system. Their appeal questions whether their conduct violated those rules and whether Chief U.S. District Judge P.K. Holmes III abused his discretion in reprimanding five of the lawyers, according to documents …


Judge Allows Lawsuit Over County Officials’ Pay Raises to Move Forward

A judge today allowed a lawsuit over pay raises for county officials to move forward, despite efforts by attorneys to quash it. At a preliminary hearing, Judge Spencer Ludington denied motions by defense attorneys to dismiss the lawsuit as “non-justiciable.” The hearing was the first in a six-month-old lawsuit from County Comptroller Bob Antonacci.


‘Glaring’ Conflict Doomed $7.25 Billion Visa/MasterCard Settlement

The biggest money-damages antitrust settlement in U.S. history died Thursday at the 2nd U.S. Court of Appeals. Not because of last year’s scandal surrounding leaks to a onetime MasterCard lawyer since charged with fraud, but because the agreement between credit card giants MasterCard, Visa and the merchants suing them for inflating certain fees was fundamentally unfair to some of the retailers. …


New Suit Names Class Action’s 15 Rebuked Lawyers

More than a dozen lawyers who already face a federal judge’s penalties tied to ethics violations in a class-action insurance lawsuit last year — Adams v. USAA — find themselves in another legal tangle involving the same case. Now, policyholders for the insurance company United Services Automobile Association have sued. The latest court action, Wartick v. USAA, alleges that 12 plaintiffs’ …


Companies Forced to Rethink U.S. High Court Class Action Strategy

Lawyers for companies trying to fend off costly class action lawsuits are rethinking longstanding legal strategies after businesses lost two key U.S. Supreme Court cases as well as their staunchest supporter on the bench. At the start of the court’s term in October, the business community had reason to believe the justices would further pare back class action litigation after rulings …