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/raid1/www/Hosts/bankrupt/CAR_Public/161221.mbx C L A S S A C T I O N R E P O R T E R Wednesday, December 21, 2016, Vol. 18, No. 254 Headlines 1-800-CONTACTS: "Stillings" Suit Moved from N.D. Cal. to D. Utah ALASKA AIRLINES: Settles Class Action Over Virgin Acquisition ALEXION PHARMACEUTICALS: Khang & Khang Files Class Action Lawsuit ALORICA: Faces Complaint Over Mandatory Arbitration Agreement ANTHONY'S AVEDA: Starts Class Action Lawsuit Over Water Crisis APPLE: Former Retail Workers Win $2 Million in Class-Action ASRC ENERGY: "Alli" Suit Seeks Overtime Pay, Bonuses AUTOVEST LLC: Motion to Certify Class in "Brown" Suit Withdrawn B & B COLEMAN: "Vargas" Suit Seeks Unpaid Overtime Under FLSA BANK OF AMERICA: Sued in S.D.N.Y. Over USD-Denominated SSA Bonds BAXTER INTERNATIONAL: Sued Over IV Saline Solution Price-Fixing BLU PRODUCTS: "Aguilar" Alleges Wiretapping in Blu Phones CANADA: Court Allows Class Action Over School Fees to Proceed CANADA: Armed Forces Faces Third Sexual-Abuse Class Action CANADA: McKiggan Hebert, Koskie Minsky File Class Action v. CAF CANDELA CORP: Faces Class Action Over Ultrashape Power Device CBE GROUP: Court Grants Truglio's Bid for Class Certification CHEMTURA CORP: Rigrodsky & Long Files Securities Class Action CNN: Faces Racial Discrimination Class Action COINBASE INC: Silver Law Firm, Wites Kapetan Files Class Action DELAWARE, USA: Bid to Certify Class in "Saunders" Suit Denied DICK'S SPORTING: TCPA Case Won't Proceed as Class Action DYNAMIC RECOVERY: Brown Withdraws Bid for Class Certification FACEBOOK INC: Lundin Law Discloses Securities Class Action FIELDTURF USA: Carteret Borough Files Class Action Lawsuit GLACIER COUNTY, MT: Taxpayers Appeal Class Action Dismissal GOLDCORP INC: Glancy Prongay Appointed Class Action Lead Counsel INTEGRITY HOME: "Cooper" Suit Seeks Unpaid OT Pay Under FLSA INTERACTIVECORP: Company Control Challenged in CA Pension Suit IOWA: DOT Seeks Dismissal of Class Action Over Traffic Tickets KRAFT HEINZ: "Beale" Suit Seeks Restoration of Retiree Benefits KROGER: Faces Class Action for Discrimination L'OREAL USA: Faces Class Action Over Hair Care Product L-3 COMMUNICATIONS: Securities Class Action Pending in New York MCCORMICK & COMPANY: Faces Class Action Over "All Natural" Label MED-CARE DIABETIC: Arwa Chiropractic Seeks to Certify TCPA Class OPTUMRX INC: Insurance Meds Clawback Scheme Hit in "Alston" Suit PAM TRANSPORT: "Browne" Suit Claim Minimum Wages PATRIOT NATIONAL: Faces Class Action, Court to Set Hearing PHD FITNESS: Faces Class Action Over Supplement False Advertising PRIMORIS SERVICES: "Atkins" Suit Seeks Overtime Wages Under FLSA PROBALANCE INC: Status Hearing in "Ulrich" Suit Set for Dec. 22 RAVAGH PERSIAN: "Baten" Suit Seeks Overtime, Reimbursements RDJE INC: "Olmstead" Suit Seeks Unpaid Overtime Wages Under FLSA REMINGTON ARMS: Seeks Approval of Rifle Class Action Settlement RIO TINTO: Guinean Scandal Spurs US Class Action SAN RAFAEL, CA: "Alviso" Suit Seeks Overtime Pay SET ENTERPRISES: Class of Exotic Dancers Certified Under FLSA SOUTHERN RESPONSE: Earthquake Class Action Gets the Green Light SPRINT CORP: Class of Sales Farmers Certified in "McGlon" Suit SYKES ENTERPRISES: "Meeks" Suit Seeks Overtime Pay Under FLSA TARGET: Motion to Intervene Filed Against Class Action Objectors TERRAVIA HOLDINGS: Bronstein, Gewirtz Files Securities Class Suit TEVA: Faces Class Action Over US Antitrust Probe Into Price-Fixing TEVA PHARMA: Sued in E.D. Pa. Over Generic Drug Price-Fixing TREE HOUSE: Closures A Fit Case For Class Action, Official Says UFC: Fighters' Class Action Lawyers In Dispute with MMAAA UNITEDHEALTH: "Ackerman" Suit Alleges Prescription Profiteering VERITAS ENTERTAINMENT: Golans Supplement Bid to Certify Class WELLS FARGO: Senators Criticize Use of Forced Arbitration WALT DISNEY: Sued by U.S. Employees Over Discrimination YAHOO! INC: Failed to Protect Consumers From Hacking, Lawsuit Says * Class Actions May Face Tougher Limits Under Trump Presidency ********* 1-800-CONTACTS: "Stillings" Suit Moved from N.D. Cal. to D. Utah ---------------------------------------------------------------- The class action lawsuit titled PAM STILLINGS, on behalf of herself and all others similarly situated, the Plaintiff, vs. 1-800-CONTACTS, INC., the Defendant, Case No. 3:16-cv-05400, was transferred from the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, to the U.S. District Court for the District of Utah (Central). The Utah District Court Clerk assigned Case No. 2:16- cv-01257-TS to the proceeding. The case is assigned to Hon. Judge Ted Stewart. The case is all about Plaintiff and all members of the proposed class having overpaid for contact lenses that they each purchased within the past four years from 1-800-Contacts. The Plaintiff will demonstrate the probable amount of these overcharges at a later stage of these proceedings. In addition, Plaintiff and each member of the proposed class have been deprived of information about contact lenses, competition for their business, and the offer of alternative and better prices, products, and services. 1-800 Contacts retails contact lenses online for consumers in the United States. It provides daily disposables, toric lenses, color lenses, and bifocal lenses. The Plaintiff is represented by: William A. Markham, Esq. Dorn Bishop, Esq. Jason Eliaser, Esq. LAW OFFICES OF WILLIAM MARKHAM, P.C. 550 West C Street, Suite 2000 San Diego, CA 92101 Telephone: (619) 221 4400 E-mail: wm@markhamlawfirm.com db@markhamlawfirm.com je@markhamlawfirm.com - and - Ronald Marron, Esq. Michael Houchin, Esq. LAW OFFICES OF RONALD A. MARRON, P.C. 651 Arroyo Drive San Diego, CA 92103 Telephone: (619) 696 9006 E-mail: ron@consumersadvocates.com mike@consumersadvocates.com ALASKA AIRLINES: Settles Class Action Over Virgin Acquisition ------------------------------------------------------------- Robert Silk, writing for Travel Weekly, reports that Alaska Airlines has agreed to settle a federal class-action claim brought by consumers opposing its acquisition of Virgin America. Terms of the settlement are confidential, Alaska said. The announcement came one day after the Department of Justice (DOJ) gave antitrust approval to the proposed $4 billion acquisition. The complaint, filed in San Francisco, alleged that the merger would harm consumers by reducing the number of airlines serving Hawaii and both U.S. coasts; reducing capacity overall, leading to higher ticket prices and ancillary fees; and depriving passengers of the lower fares and "unique flying experience" offered by Virgin America. As part of the DOJ approval, regulators required Alaska Air to relinquish some codeshare routes with American Airlines. "We look forward to closing the transaction in the very near future," Alaska said. ALEXION PHARMACEUTICALS: Khang & Khang Files Class Action Lawsuit ----------------------------------------------------------------- Khang & Khang LLP disclosed the filing of a class action lawsuit against Alexion Pharmaceuticals, Inc. Investors who purchased or otherwise acquired shares between February 10, 2014 and November 9, 2016 inclusive, are encouraged to contact the Firm in advance of the January 17, 2017 lead plaintiff motion deadline. "If you purchased shares of Alexion during the Class Period, please contact Joon M. Khang, Esquire, of Khang & Khang LLP, 18101 Von Karman Avenue, 3rd Floor, Irvine, CA 92612, by telephone: (949) 419-3834, or by e-mail at joon@khanglaw.com." Khang & Khang said. "There has been no class certification in this case. Until certification occurs, you are not represented by an attorney. You may choose to take no action and remain a passive class member." Khang & Khang said. The complaint alleges that Alexion made false and/or misleading statements and/or failed to disclose: that the Company employed improper sales practices with respect to its product Soliris; that the Company's revenues from Soliris sales were unlikely to be sustainable; and that as a result of the above, Alexion's public statements were materially false and misleading at all relevant times. On November 4, 2016, Alexion cancelled an appearance at the Credit Suisse Healthcare Conference. Following the cancellation, analysts noticed that the Company also failed to file its Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q with the SEC within two days of its earnings announcement on October 27, 2016. On November 9, 2016, Alexion announced that the Company would not be able to timely file its financial and operating results for the quarter ended September 30, 2016. When this information was released, shares of Alexion declined in value, causing investors harm. ALORICA: Faces Complaint Over Mandatory Arbitration Agreement ------------------------------------------------------------- Bill Lueders, writing for The Progressive, reports that for four- and-a-half years, Jennifer Fultz was for many people the face -- make that the voice -- of JPMorgan Chase. She worked at a call center in Rockford, Illinois, helping the finance giant's customers with their banking accounts, credit cards, and auto loans. She liked her job, though it paid just $11 an hour, barely enough for Ms. Fultz, a single mother, to get by. On three occasions, she says, her team leader presented her with certificates of commendation. "Once you have so many years under your belt you become very knowledgeable and are able to help customers without putting them on hold or anything," Ms. Fultz recalls. "I became very good at my job." On Monday, September 12, Ms. Fultz was summoned to a meeting with the human resources manager at her company, EGS Customer Care. She was given a form and told she needed to sign it. The form, titled "Agreement to Arbitrate," bore the name of EGS's parent company, Alorica. It pledged employees to resolve all workplace claims and disputes through arbitration and not "class action, collective action, and representative action procedures." Ms. Fultz says she asked to see a lawyer and was denied. Instead, she was given thirty minutes to sign or else be deemed to have voluntarily resigned. What happened next highlights both the casual contempt companies like Alorica have for the rights of their workers and the extraordinary courage of Jennifer Fultz, who took a stand on principle rooted in her own family's experience. This is a story whose reach extends from the lowliest working stiff to the highest court in the land. It concerns a massive corporate-driven rejiggering of the social contract with regard to access to the courts, impacting a huge segment of U.S. workers and virtually every consumer. And it's something most people have never even heard about. But for Fultz, it has meant paying a terrible price. She left work that day escorted by police, with a box of belongings the company had retrieved from her desk. She was fired and lost her health insurance. Her former employer initially fought her efforts to obtain unemployment benefits. She went from living paycheck to paycheck to struggling day by day. She is still reeling from the unfairness of it all. "Why should anyone be faced with that kind of choice?" she asks, through tears. "To choose between supporting your family or giving up your employment rights?" But it's not at all uncommon. Encouraged by court rulings, corporations are increasingly insisting that those they do business with, and those they employ, agree to handle disputes through arbitration. In some cases, this makes pursuing certain claims practically impossible. In others, it dramatically tilts the balance in favor of the companies. "It's huge nationally, what's happening," says Seth Goldstein, a union-affiliated lawyer who has filed a labor complaint on Ms. Fultz's behalf. "It's gigantic. It's a sweep against everybody. It's a sweep against consumers. It's a sweep against employees. It's a sweep against people who use financial institutions and nursing homes. It's the biggest racket. It's a modern-day yellow- dog contract. It's a prohibition against collective action." Yellow-dog contracts, in which workers must vow not to join unions as a condition of employment, were in widespread use until the 1930s, when they were outlawed. Critics of mandatory arbitration agreements say they similarly violate the National Labor Relations Act, which expressly protects workers who join together for "mutual aid or protection." The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has in recent years consistently held that these agreements are illegal. But the courts are divided, with some agreeing and some saying that the Federal Arbitration Act trumps the labor law. The case is almost certainly destined for Supreme Court review, probably next year. But, in the meantime, employees like Ms. Fultz are still being forced to give up their rights or give up their jobs. Cliff Palesfsky, civil rights and employment attorney. Chances are you've agreed to them. They are clauses included in all kind of contracts and in the fine print you don't read before clicking the button that says you have. Amazon uses them. So does Google, Netflix, eBay, and Travelocity. The clauses require customers to solve disputes individually through arbitration, not by joining with each other in class actions. The increased insistence on arbitration was propelled by two U.S. Supreme Court decisions authored by the late Justice Antonin Scalia. In AT&T Mobility LLC v. Concepcion, decided by a 5-4 margin in 2011, the court held that mandatory arbitration clauses can include class-action bans. In American Express Co. v. Italian Colors Restaurant, a 2013 case, the court voted 5-3 to allow class-action waivers in arbitration clauses even if that made seeking redress prohibitively expensive. Wrote Justice Scalia in that decision, "The fact that it is not worth the expense involved in proving a statutory remedy does not constitute the elimination of the right to pursue that remedy." Some people just can't afford to invoke their rights. (This is the same Justice who could not find a constitutional problem with executing people who are actually innocent.) Companies contend arbitration is a quicker and simpler way to resolve grievances than going to court or using administrative law proceedings. But as The New York Times found in a three-part series last year, it means far fewer grievances are heard at all: "By banning class actions, companies have essentially disabled consumer challenges to practices like predatory lending, wage theft, and discrimination, court records show." As federal Appellate Judge Richard Posner once remarked, "The realistic alternative to a class action is not 17 million individual suits, but zero individual suits, as only a lunatic or a fanatic sues for $30." Mandatory arbitration clauses were an essential tool for Wells Fargo as it swindled its own customers out of millions of dollars by signing them up for accounts and services they didn't request. The company used language tucked into its account-opening agreements to repel class-action lawsuits that would have brought the practice to light. "By pushing these cases into secret arbitration, Wells Fargo was able to keep this scandal out of public view for years and continue profiting from massive fraud," wrote Amanda Werner of the nonprofit advocacy group Americans for Financial Reform. In the employment realm, the boom in mandatory arbitration has hamstrung efforts by nonunion workers to bring collective action against unfair wage and hour practices, workplace discrimination, and unjust termination. Companies from Halliburton to the Olive Garden have included mandatory arbitration agreements in their covenants with workers. Sometimes workers are told to sign agreements, as in Ms. Fultz's case; sometimes language is included in job-offer letters or employee handbooks. A December 2015 report by the Economic Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank, estimated that "a quarter or more of all employees in non-union workplaces are subject to mandatory arbitration agreements." Mr. Goldstein, senior business representative with the Office and Professional Employees International Union, Local 153, based in New York City, believes the actual total is closer to half. So does Cliff Palefsky, a civil rights and employment lawyer in San Francisco who has been battling mandatory arbitration for decades. In fact, he thinks it may be as high as 70 to 80 percent in California, a state where protections for workers are as strong as the desire of corporations to circumvent them. "Management lawyers say it is almost malpractice for companies not to prohibit class actions," Mr. Palefsky says. "I mean, they were given a 'get out of jail free' card." The desire for this card was heightened by the growing and often successful use of employment-based class-action lawsuits. In 2010, the pharmaceutical company Novartis paid $175 million to settle a lawsuit filed by female employees alleging discrimination in pay and promotions. And, in 2007, Nike reached a $7.6 million settlement in a race-discrimination class action brought on behalf of black employees in Chicago. Now such suits are being bottled up. On November 1, a federal judge blocked a class-action suit alleging race discrimination by the room-renting company Airbnb, due to its mandatory arbitration policy. Mr. Palefsky says it's no mystery why companies prefer arbitration, usually involving private arbitrators hired by the companies themselves: "You never have to stand in front of a public jury. The media will never see your case. You can limit damages, you can limit discovery. The arbitrators know who's paying them. You win more often. You pay less if you lose." And, in most cases, there is no right to appeal. Consumers and employees seldom invoke their right to engage in individual arbitration and mostly lose when they do. According to the Economic Policy Institute report, "Employee win rates in mandatory arbitration are much lower than in either federal court or state court, with employees in mandatory arbitration winning only just about a fifth of the time (21.4 percent)." "Any notion that it provides greater access to justice is just fraud," Mr. Palefsky asserts. "The whole purpose of it is to suppress claims and make it too expensive." On September 12, Ms. Fultz made her usual commute from her home in Roscoe, Illinois, to the EGS office in Rockford. She arrived in time for her 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. shift, which she worked five days a week, with Thursdays and Saturdays off. She joined about 300 others in the section of the building devoted to JPMorgan Chase. The Rockford office, she says, has similarly sized operations serving two other clients, Verizon and CVS Pharmacy. Ms. Fultz, who will turn thirty-two in mid-December, was born in Mississippi and raised in Machesney Park, Illinois, where her parents still live. She entered the workforce after high school, including stints at a Chrysler factory, the U.S. Postal Service, and the Illinois Tollway. She began working in March 2012 for a company that was bought out by EGS (Expert Global Solutions), which was later acquired by Alorica, a California-based firm with more than 90,000 workers worldwide that promises on its website to "create insanely great customer experiences." After fielding calls for about an hour, Ms. Fultz was called in to meet with then-EGS human resources manager Katie Aldrich and presented with the "Agreement to Arbitrate." Ms. Fultz had seen this document about two months earlier, when she was asked to go to a company web portal and agree to it. But there was no way to decline or make a copy to review, so Ms. Fultz "clicked out." When her request to have a lawyer review the document was denied and she was given thirty minutes to sign, Ms. Fultz left the room and called her father. "He's always helped me and encouraged me to stand up for my employment rights," she explains. "I asked him what he would do." John Fultz told his daughter she needed to make her own choice, understanding that refusing to sign would mean losing her job. But John has his own work experience to draw on, which he mulled after the call. He remembers how, as a young man working at a factory in Mississippi, he was presented with a blank piece of paper and told where to sign by a supervisor who said the text would be added later, when the office copy machine was fixed. He looked around him, amazed to see others signing. He refused, and never heard about it again. John worked at other factories where people were missing fingers and hands, and where burns and broken bones were a regular, preventable occurrence. Ten years ago, he was able to quit working for others and start his own small business, Express Sharpening Service. His wife, DeAnn, left her job to join him two years ago. "So many companies out there don't treat their employees right, don't pay their employees right, and then they go a step further and try to take away your rights," says John, calling that he's seen workers subjected to "mental cruelty." The question Jennifer had asked him was, "What would you do?" After a few minutes, he texted her: "Don't sign it." Jennifer had by this time signed the form, writing "under protest" on it. She took it back. "I told them I wasn't going to sign it. I told them I'm here to work. I want to work." As her father advised, she said she was not quitting and asked that police be called. They were. "We have an employee who is refusing to leave the premises, or a former employee," the caller from EGS told the Rockford dispatch center. The call was logged as "disorderly conduct," although the call log states that she was "NOT DISORDERLY JUST REFUSING." When police arrived, Ms. Fultz was escorted out. She was not cited or charged. Aldrich, who left EGS shortly after this incident to take a job at GE Aviation, also in Rockford, did not respond to an interview request. Officials at EGS passed the baton to Alorica spokesman Ken Muche, who declined via email to comment on Fultz's termination "for privacy reasons, and as a matter of policy." He added that arbitration agreements "are common in our industry and, in fact, are commonly used by many companies in a wide variety of completely unrelated industries." After being fired, Ms. Fultz had to explain to her eleven-year-old son, Ryan, what happened: "Mommy lost her job, but there was nothing that I did wrong." It's a hard concept even for her to grasp. Researching the issue, Ms. Fultz found a Labor Radio story about another worker who was fired under similar circumstances. Tara Zoumer, who also drew coverage in The New York Times, had worked at a $16 billion startup called WeWork, which rents trendy office space. Her job at the company's office in Berkeley, California, included changing out the beer keg that lubricates the worker bees. In November 2015, after seven months on the job, Ms. Zoumer was given a class-action waiver with the Orwellian name "WeWork Employment Dispute Resolution Program." She was granted a few days to look it over and realized when she did, "This is going to completely kill our ability as employees to fight as a collective unit." She asked what would happen if she did not sign and was told in an email that "continued employment with WeWork is sufficient to constitute acceptance of the new employee documents." Ms. Zoumer responded that she was not going to sign and planned to file a claim against the company with California labor officials. The next day, a Friday, she emailed co-workers urging them to know their rights before signing. On Monday, she was fired. She filed a complaint with the NLRB, and a lawsuit against the company. WeWork has confirmed, in filings with the NLRB, that it fired Zoumer for not signing this and another document but insists it had every right to do so. The NLRB in May found merit in several of Zoumer's charges; the case is still playing out. But WeWork cited language in Zoumer's original job offer to thwart her lawsuit and force her to pursue arbitration in New York. That process is pending, although California Governor Jerry Brown recently signed a bill to bar companies in the future from forcing California residents to adjudicate their claims out of state. Ms. Zoumer, who has since found work as "a nanny/chef for a wonderful family," says the whole experience makes her feel patriotic. S he realized "this was my right as an American citizen to have access to the judicial system. And no one, especially a company, should ever be able to take that away." The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a federal agency, has proposed new rules to bar financial institutions from requiring arbitration to deny consumers the chance to sue in court. In late September, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services moved to prohibit mandatory arbitration by nursing homes that receive federal funding. There are calls to similarly restrict for-profit colleges, some of which have already rescinded their class-action bans. An executive order signed by President Obama says companies with federal contracts over $1 million cannot require arbitration for civil rights or harassment claims. The rule, which took effect October 25, does not apply to wage and hour claims. Hillary Clinton, as a candidate, vowed to give federal agencies "broad and clear authority to restrict the use of arbitration clauses and related provisions in consumer, employment, and antitrust contexts." Donald Trump, reported Time magazine, was "quiet on the issue" but made his campaign workers agree to arbitration. Democratic Senators Al Franken and Patrick Leahy have each introduced bills to curb mandatory arbitration. Former Fox News anchor Gretchen Carlson, whose own effort to sue over sexual harassment ran up against a forced arbitration clause, has agreed to testify in support of the bills. Harris Freeman, a professor at Western New England School of Law in Massachusetts, says employees may be better able than consumers to beat back mandatory arbitration because federal labor law "grants workers a right to act in concert that no law grants to consumers." Since January 2012, the NLRB has taken the position that clauses to preclude collective action violate the National Labor Relations Act. But in late 2013, the Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in New Orleans ruled that the act is effectively preempted by the Federal Arbitration Act of 1925. Mr. Palefsky calls this interpretation "ridiculous." The NLRB apparently agrees. The independent body, in recent years dominated by Obama appointees, has defied the Fifth Circuit ruling and continued to reject class-action waivers in dozens of cases. And some courts have agreed, most notably the Seventh Circuit Court in Chicago, which in May 2016 ruled against Epic Systems, a Wisconsin-based software provider, for blocking a class action brought by employees over the denial of overtime pay. "There's no doubt the Supreme Court is going to have to accept this issue for review, because there is a dramatic split on a very important issue," says Mr. Palefsky. Both he and Mr. Goldstein hold out hope that the court will rule that arbitration cannot be used to deprive workers of substantive rights, even after the new President is able to make his appointments. "I'm as committed as ever after the election, as before the election, that people's rights need to be upheld," Mr. Goldstein says. Ms. Fultz's case is now before the NLRB, based on charges filed by Mr. Goldstein naming Alorica and EGS. The company, in fighting Ms. Fultz's application for unemployment benefits, admitted her job ended because she refused to sign an arbitration agreement. (It subsequently failed to appear at a hearing contesting this decision, and Ms. Fultz was awarded these benefits.) The NLRB, Mr. Goldstein says, has issued a preliminary ruling in Ms. Fultz's favor, although the ultimate outcome will likely hinge on the Supreme Court. Mr. Goldstein says Ms. Zoumer and Ms. Fultz are the only workers he knows of who were fired for refusing to sign arbitration agreements. He considers them heroes. Mr. Palefsky is aware of workers fired in the past but not other current cases. Both lawyers say they wouldn't counsel anyone to refuse to sign if it meant losing a valued job. But, Mr. Goldstein adds, "If they were willing to do it, I'd represent them in a minute." Surprisingly, Ms. Fultz says that if she were offered her job back she'd take it, even after all that's happened and the fact that she "hadn't had a raise in four years." Reinstatement with back pay is a remedy the NLRB and the courts could require. But there is one thing Ms. Fultz will likely never get back: the certificates of commendation she had received from her employer and kept at her desk. These were, she says, not in the box of belongings she was given before police escorted her out the door. ANTHONY'S AVEDA: Starts Class Action Lawsuit Over Water Crisis -------------------------------------------------------------- Stephania Jimenez at Kristv.com reports that there are always winners and losers when an area has a crisis involving a natural resource such as water. Water distributors won big selling gallons of water to people across Corpus Christi last December 15. But some businesses aren't doing so well; they're in the red, and they want Valero and Ergon Asphalt & Emulsions to pay. On December 14, the city of Corpus Christi notified residents that a toxic chemical possibly made its way into the water supply. It advised people to avoid the city's tap water at all costs. That was bad news for businesses such as Anthony's Aveda Concept Salon, a hair salon/spa that needs tap water to serve its customers. Anthony's Aveda Concept Salon on Everhart Rd. canceled 200 appointments. Attorney Bob Hilliard launched a class-action lawsuit on its behalf against Valero and Ergon Asphalt & Emulsions. The asphalt company is blamed for releasing anywhere from 3-24 gallons of Indulin into the water supply. The chemical is considered hazardous by the OSHA Hazard Communication Standard. It causes eye and skin burns and can damage the digestive system and gastrointestinal tract. On the evening of December 15, city leaders were awaiting test results to find out the extent of the damage on our water supply. The longer the city goes without answers, the longer businesses such as Anthony's Aveda Concept Salon suffers. "We're in the holidays. This is Thursday, Dec. 15 . . . . if a water ban stays through tomorrow, you lose a full holiday weekend," said Hilliard. The plaintiffs in the lawsuit are asking for at least $1 million in damages. However, that number could change depending on how long the water ban lasts and how much money businesses lose. APPLE: Former Retail Workers Win $2 Million in Class-Action ----------------------------------------------------------- Stephanie Mlot at PC Mag reports that Apple has lost a class- action lawsuit filed by former employees who claimed the company denied them sufficient breaks and owed unpaid back wages. Cupertino must now pay $2 million into a fund to compensate some 21,000 plaintiffs. Workers stand to get a maximum of $95 each, according to Apple Insider, an amount that is likely to shrink once legal fees are applied. Apple did not immediately respond to PCMag's request for comment. Filed in December 2011 by Brandon Felczer and other former Apple Store employees, the suit was certified as a class-action in July 2014. Cupertino sought to appeal the ruling, but a three-judge panel in California's Superior Court denied the tech giant's motion for dismissal. Other plaintiffs named in the complaint against Apple include former retail employees Ryan Goldman, Ramsey Hawkins, and Joseph Lane Carco. A similar suit brought against Apple -- filed in 2009 by former Genius Bar worker Steve Camuti -- also claimed the company failed to provide employees with breaks in violation of California Labor Code. ASRC ENERGY: "Alli" Suit Seeks Overtime Pay, Bonuses ---------------------------------------------------- Ray Alli, on behalf of those similarly situated and the proposed Rule 23 Alaska Class Members v. ASRC Energy Services, LLC, Defendant, Case No. 3:16-cv-00280 (D. Alaska, December 9, 2016), seeks overtime compensation, all required remuneration, non- discretionary bonuses, final injunctive and/or declaratory relief, and prejudgment and post-judgment interest for violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act and the Alaska Wage and Hour Act. ASRC is an Alaskan Corporation that provides consulting and contracting services to energy, natural resources, industrial and power industry companies throughout the United States. The Plaintiff is represented by: Daniel I. Pace, Esq. PACE LAW OFFICES 101 E 9th Ave, Ste 7A Anchorage, AK 99501 Tel: (907) 222-4003 Fax: (907) 222-4006 Email: dan@pacelawoffices.com - and - Jack Siegel, Esq. SIEGEL LAW GROUP PLLC 10440 N. Central Expy., Suite 1040 Dallas, TX 75231 Tel: (214) 790-4454 Fax: (469) 339-0204 Email: jack@siegellawgroup.biz - and - J. Derek Braziel, Esq. Jay Forester, Esq. LEE & BRAZIEL, L.L.P. 1801 N. Lamar Street, Suite 325 Dallas, TX 75202 Tel: (214) 749-1400 Fax: (214) 749-1010 AUTOVEST LLC: Motion to Certify Class in "Brown" Suit Withdrawn --------------------------------------------------------------- The Clerk of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois made a docket entry on December 6, 2016, in the case captioned Scott Brown v. Autovest LLC, Case No. 1:16-cv-07969 (N.D. Ill.), relating to a hearing held before the Honorable Milton I. Shadur. The minute entry states that: -- Motion hearing set for December 9, 2016, was stricken; -- Plaintiff's unopposed motion for entry of stipulation with respect to withdrawal of class certification motion is granted; and -- Plaintiff's motion to certify class is withdrawn without prejudice. A copy of the Notification of Docket Entry is available at no charge at http://d.classactionreporternewsletter.com/u?f=3LEfBMlc B & B COLEMAN: "Vargas" Suit Seeks Unpaid Overtime Under FLSA ------------------------------------------------------------- MIGUEL ANGEL SANCHEZ VARGAS, on behalf of himself and all other Plaintiffs similarly situated, known and unknown, the Plaintiff, v. B & B COLEMAN & COMPANY, an Illinois corporation, d/b/a COLEMAN'S TAVERN & GRILL, and BARRY COLEMAN, an individual, the Defendants, Case No. 1:16-cv-11348 (N.D. Ill., Dec. 14, 2016), seeks to recover unpaid overtime compensation, liquidated damages, reasonable attorneys' fees and costs under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) and the Illinois Minimum Wage Law (IMWL). The Defendants violated federal and state overtime laws by failing to pay Plaintiff, and other similarly situated cooks, dishwashers, and kitchen workers, and overtime premium when they worked more than 40 hours in individual workweeks. Coleman's Tavern is a restaurant engaged in selling and serving prepared food and beverages, including alcoholic beverages, to customers for consumption on the premises. The Plaintiff is represented by: Timothy M. Nolan, Esq. Nicholas P. Cholis, Esq. NOLAN LAW OFFICE 53 W. Jackson Blvd., Ste. 1137 Chicago, IL 60604 Telephone: (312) 322 1100 Facsimile: (312) 322 1106 E-mail: tnolan@nolanwagelaw.com ncholis@nolanwagelaw.com BANK OF AMERICA: Sued in S.D.N.Y. Over USD-Denominated SSA Bonds ---------------------------------------------------------------- IRVING FIREMEN'S RELIEF AND RETIREMENT FUND, on Behalf of Itself, and, in a Representative Capacity, on Behalf of All Those Similarly Situated, the Plaintiff, v. BANK OF AMERICA CORPORATION; BANK OF AMERICA, N.A.; MERRILL LYNCH, PIERCE, FENNER & SMITH, INC.; BANK OF AMERICA MERRILL LYNCH INTERNATIONAL LIMITED; CITIGROUP INC.; CITIBANK N.A.; CITIGROUP GLOBAL MARKETS INC.; CITIGROUP GLOBAL MARKETS LIMITED; CREDIT AGRICOLE S.A.; CRêDIT AGRICOLE CORPORATE AND INVESTMENT BANK; CRêDIT AGRICOLE SECURITIES (USA) INC.; CREDIT SUISSE GROUP AG; CREDIT SUISSE AG; CREDIT SUISSE SECURITIES (USA) LLC; CREDIT SUISSE SECURITIES (EUROPE) LTD.; DEUTSCHE BANK AG; DEUTSCHE BANK SECURITIES, INC.; NOMURA HOLDINGS, INC.; NOMURA SECURITIES INTERNATIONAL, INC.; NOMURA INTERNATIONAL PLC; HIREN GUDKA; AMANDEEP SINGH MANKU; SHAILEN PAU; BHARDEEP SINGH HEER, the Defendants, Case No. 1:16-cv-09656 (S.D.N.Y., Dec. 14, 2016), seeks relief under federal antitrust laws and the common law of unjust enrichment. The Defendants injured Plaintiff and the Class by secretly colluding to fix the prices of USD-issued Supranationals and Agencies (SSA) bonds. As a direct and proximate result of Defendants' collusion, Plaintiff and the Class paid artificially inflated, anticompetitive prices when they purchased or sold USD- denominated SSA bonds from Defendants in the secondary market. Bank of America is an American multinational banking and financial services corporation headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina. It is the second largest bank holding company in the United States by assets. The Plaintiff is represented by: Angela L. Baglanzis, Esq. HIPPEL LLP 360 Lexington Avenue, 13th Floor New York, NY 10017 Telephone: (212) 922 9182 E-mail: Angela.baglanzis@obermayer.com - and - William J. Leonard, Esq. OBERMAYER REBMANN MAXWELL & HIPPEL LLP Centre Square West 1500 Market Street, Suite 3400 Philadelphia, PA 19102 2101 Telephone: (215) 665 3228 Facsimile: (215) 665 3165 E-mail: william.leonard@obermayer.com - and - Michael J. Boni, Esq. Joshua D. Snyder, Esq. BONI & ZACK LLC 15 St. Asaphs Road Bala Cynwyd, PA 19004 Telephone: (610) 822 0200 Facsimile: (610) 822 0206 E-mail: mboni@bonizack.com jsnyder@bonizack.com BAXTER INTERNATIONAL: Sued Over IV Saline Solution Price-Fixing --------------------------------------------------------------- WARREN GENERAL HOSPITAL, on behalf of itself and all others similarly situated, the Plaintiff, v. BAXTER INTERNATIONAL INC.; BAXTER HEALTHCARE CORPORATION; HOSPIRA, INC. and HOSPIRA WORLDWIDE, INC., the Defendants, Case No. 1:16-cv-11353 (N.D. Ill., Dec. 14, 2016), seeks to recover damages suffered by Plaintiff and the Class and to secure equitable and injunctive relief against Defendants for violating the Sherman Act. The lawsuit is about a conspiracy among the major U.S. manufacturers of a critical medical product, intravenous (IV) saline solution (IV Saline Solution), to restrict output and artificially fix, raise, maintain and/or stabilize the prices of IV Saline Solution sold throughout the United States under the pretext of a supply shortage, in violation of the Sherman Act. Baxter is an American health care company with headquarters in Deerfield, Illinois. The Plaintiff is represented by: William H. London, Esq. Douglas A. Millen, Esq. Robert J. Wozniak, Esq. FREED KANNER LONDON & MILLEN LLC 2201 Waukegan Road, Suite 130 Bannockburn, IL 60015 Telephone: (224) 632 4500 Facsimile: (224) 632 4521 E-mail: skanner@fklmlaw.com wlondon@fklmlaw.com dmillen@fklmlaw.com rwozniak@fklmlaw.com - and - W. Joseph Bruckner, Esq. Heidi M. Silton, Esq. Brian D. Clark, Esq. LOCKRIDGE GRINDAL NAUEN P.L.L.P. 100 Washington Avenue South, Suite 2200 Minneapolis, MN 55401 Telephone: (612) 339 6900 Facsimile: (612) 339 0981 E-mail: wjbruckner@locklaw.com hmsilton@locklaw.com bdclark@locklaw.com - and - Arthur N. Bailey, Esq. Marco Cercone, Esq. R. Anthony Rupp, III, Esq. RUPP BAASE PFALZGRAF & CUNNINGHAM, LLC 1600 Liberty Building 424 Main Street Buffalo, NY 14202 Telephone: (716) 854 3400 Facsimile: (716) 332 0336 E-mail: bailey@ruppbaase.com cercone@ruppbaase.com rupp@ruppbaase.com BLU PRODUCTS: "Aguilar" Alleges Wiretapping in Blu Phones --------------------------------------------------------- Vincent Aguilar, individually and on behalf of all others similarly situated, Plaintiff, v. Blu Products, Inc. and Adups USA LLC, Defendants, Case No. 1:16-cv-25131, (S.D. Fla., December 9, 2016), seeks statutory damages, injunctive and declaratory relief, pre-judgment and/or post-judgment interest, reasonable attorneys' fees and costs and such other and further relief as may be just and proper resulting from invasion of privacy and violations of the Wiretap Act, Electronic Communications Privacy Act and the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act. Blu is a manufacturer and seller of cell phones while Adups develops firmware installed on approximately 120,000 Blu phones. Adups firmware on Blu phones allegedly captured and transmitted to a server in China the cell phone owners' text messages, personal contacts, call logs, physical locations and other confidential data without the knowledge or consent of the cell phone owners. Plaintiff purchased two R1 HD phones from Amazon.com in September and October 2016. Blu Products, Inc. is a Delaware corporation headquartered in Miami, Florida. Shanghai Adups Technology Co., Ltd. is a Chinese entity based in Shanghai, People's Republic of China. Adups USA LLC is a Delaware corporation. Plaintiff is represented by: Norwood S. Wilner, Esq. Richard J. Lantinberg, Esq. THE WILNER FIRM 444 East Duval St., 2nd Floor Jacksonville, FL 32202 Tel: (904) 446-9817 Fax: (904) 446-9825 Email: nwilner@wilnerfirm.com rlantinberg@wilnerfirm.com - and - Lori G. Feldman, Esq. Courtney E. Maccarone, Esq. LEVI & KORSINSKY LLP 30 Broad Street, 24th Floor New York, NY 10004 Tel: (212) 363-7500 Fax: (212) 363-7171 Email: lfeldman@zlk.com cmaccarone@zlk.com - and - Janine L. Pollack, Esq. Correy A. Kamin, Esq. WOLF HALDENSTEIN ADLER FREEMAN & HERZ LLP 270 Madison Avenue New York, NY 10016 Tel: (212) 545-4600 Fax: (212) 686-0114 Email: pollack@whafh.com kamin@whafh.com CANADA: Court Allows Class Action Over School Fees to Proceed ------------------------------------------------------------- The Canadian Press reports that Quebec Superior Court has given the green light to a class-action lawsuit filed by a mother over various school fees. The suit seeking damages and interest was authorized on Dec. 6 by Justice Carl Lachance in Chicoutimi. Daisye Marcil, the mother of two public school-educated kids, considers the extra fees to be abusive and launched a suit against 68 school boards in the name of the parents of 900,000 students. The suit alleges boards allowed the fees to be charged to parents, contravening the province's Education Act, which guarantees free elementary and high school education. The fees have been collected since 2008-2009 by many Quebec boards. The action seeks a reimbursement of the fees paid and $100 per member of the group for punitive damages. In her own case, Ms. Marcil paid a $41 bill for one year for field trips, photocopy fees, a recorder, a protractor and a grammar guide. The list of items and amounts varies greatly from school to school. CANADA: Armed Forces Faces Third Sexual-Abuse Class Action ---------------------------------------------------------- Gloria Galloway, writing for The Globe and Mail, reports that a former reservist from Northern Ontario has launched what she hopes will be a class-action suit against the federal government for sexual harassment and discrimination she says she experienced during the seven years she was a member of the Canadian Armed Forces. The lawsuit that Sherry Heyder of Thunder Bay has begun is the third proposed class-action initiated in recent weeks by former members of the military who say they were subjected to degrading treatment in conditions where the sexualization of female staff is tolerated and ignored. Ms. Heyder filed her statement of claim in Federal Court. It says: "The Canadian Armed Forces is poisoned by a discriminatory and sexualized culture that condones and encourages sexual assault, sexual harassment and gender-based discrimination towards women." It follows a proposed class-action suit launched in British Columbia by a Nicola Peffers, a former sailor, who says a superior subjected her to unwanted sexual advances. Ms. Peffers says female and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender members of the Canadian Forces are routinely subjected to sexual harassment and abuse. Meanwhile, a proposed class action filed late in November in the Ontario Superior Court says two women and a man experienced sexual assault or sexual harassment in their service with the Canadian military. In that suit, the plaintiffs are members of a Canada- wide peer support group for survivors of "military sexual trauma." "There is certainly overlap between the different actions," said Jonathan Ptak, the lawyer for Ms. Heyder, "and that will have to be worked out and ultimately determined by the court." Jonathan Vance, the Chief of the Defence Staff, has said he will not tolerate sexual misconduct. One of his first orders of business as head of the military was to initiate what he called Project Honour to address harmful and inappropriate sexual behaviour. Nearly 1,000 Canadian Forces members who took part in a massive Statistics Canada survey last spring said they had been sexually assaulted within the previous 12 months. And a study released last year by former Supreme Court justice Marie Deschamps found that women in the army, navy, air force and at military colleges are routinely subjected to degrading expressions, sexual jokes and unwanted touching. Ms. Heyder enrolled with the reserves in Thunder Bay when she was still in high school in 1988 in the hope of joining the infantry. But, she said in her statement of claim, she was both sexually harassed and discriminated against professionally. Shortly after she completed basic training, the statement says, she "was advised that she was no longer permitted to pursue a career in the infantry because she was a woman" and was instead forced to do administrative work. She claims that sexual harassment, sexual assault and gender-based discrimination begins when women enter the Canadian Armed Forces, and that female military personnel learn to keep their concerns to themselves because the perpetrators go unpunished and complaints are not taken seriously. In addition, she says in the statement of claim, the Canadian Armed Forces has historically discriminated against women on permissible employment roles and advancement and continues to do so. "We have included a great deal of detail with respect to allegations of fault and failure of duty by the Canadian Armed Forces and its commanding officers with respect to policies, conduct, etc., because we wanted to provide a claim which gave a fulsome outline of the allegations," Mr. Ptak said. The policies have changed over time, he said. "But we still allege in the statement of claim that, notwithstanding the fact that entry to women has been made permissible in some instances in certain divisions, they continue to struggle with respect to discriminatory conduct towards them." CANADA: McKiggan Hebert, Koskie Minsky File Class Action v. CAF --------------------------------------------------------------- McKiggan Hebert Lawyers in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and Koskie Minsky LLP in Toronto, Ontario have commenced a class action against the Attorney General of Canada on behalf of current and former members of the Canadian Armed Forces and the Department of National Defence who were stationed in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland and Labrador between 1969 and 1993. The claim alleges that between the 1950s and the 1990s, the Canadian government engaged in systematic campaign to identify and purge lesbians, gay men, and those suspected of being gay from the Canadian Armed Forces and the Department of National Defence. As a result of their sexual orientation, lesbians, gay men, and those suspected of homosexuality were put under surveillance, investigated, interrogated, and denied security clearances. Pressure was put on these individuals to leave the Canadian military service. Gay men and lesbians in the Canadian military service were systematically harassed, intimidated and discriminated against. Ultimately the employment of thousands of lesbians, gay men, and those suspected of being gay was terminated without proper compensation or due process of law. The claim seeks $150 million in damages for breach of fiduciary duty and breach of the class members' rights under section 15 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms which states that every individual is equal before and under the law and has the right to the equal protection and equal benefit of the law without discrimination. "For too long, gay men and lesbians in the Canadian military have faced inappropriate and unlawful discrimination," says John McKiggan -- john@mckigganhebert.com -- co-lead counsel at McKiggan Hebert Lawyers, "and this case can start to right these wrongs of the past." McKiggan Hebert Lawyers, based in Halifax, Nova Scotia, is one of Canada's leading personal injury, medical malpractice and sexual abuse claim law firms. John McKiggan Q.C., lead counsel from McKiggan Hebert Lawyers, has a special interest in representing victims in civil claims for historical abuse compensation. McKiggan is co-lead counsel in Hayes v. City of Saint John a proposed class action filed on behalf of victims of sexual abuse by former Saint John Police officer Kenneth Estabrooks. He represented over 600 former residents of the Shubenacadie Indian Residential Schools in a claim for compensation for childhood physical, sexual and racial abuse and loss of cultural identity. He sits on the steering committee in Baxter v. Canada, a claim brought on behalf of 70,000 former aboriginal children across Canada. McKiggan is counsel in Martin v. Lahey, the first certified class action under Nova Scotia's Class Proceedings Act against the Roman Catholic Diocese of Antigonish. Koskie Minsky LLP, based in Toronto, is one of Canada's foremost class action, pension, trade union, and litigation firms. Its class actions group has been a leader in class actions since 1992 and has prosecuted many of the leading cases in the area. Kirk M. Baert, lead counsel from Koskie Minsky LLP, was counsel to the survivors of former residents of Huronia Regional Centre and 14 other residential facilities for people with disabilities against the Province of Ontario, wherein the Province agreed to pay survivors over $103.6 million and to provide an apology to former residents for the harm they sustained. Mr. Baert was also counsel in Cloud v. Canada, the first Indian residential schools class action certified in Canada, which resulted in a $5 billion pan- Canadian settlement. CANDELA CORP: Faces Class Action Over Ultrashape Power Device ------------------------------------------------------------- Jonathan Bilyk, writing for Cook County Record, reports that a Barrington plastic surgeon has filed a class action lawsuit against the makers of the Ultrashape Power device, which purportedly "uses pulsed, highly focused ultrasound energy to target and permanently destroy unwanted fat cells," accusing the company of falsely promising the system would help patients quickly lose dress sizes and centimeters from their circumference. On Dec. 2, Renee Burke, who operates a private plastic surgery practice in the northwest suburb, filed suit in Cook County Circuit Court against Wayland, Mass.-based Candela Corporation, alleging the company violated Illinois state consumer fraud laws when promoting its UltraShape System. According to the complaint, Dr. Burke has used the system since May 2015, treating "dozens of patients" with the system. According to the UltraShape website, the system is the only non- invasive "body sculpting" treatment approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to target fat cells. The company lists the product as a "comfortable," non-surgical alternative to liposuction and other surgical techniques to reduce body fat deposits that are "resistant to diet and exercise." Dr. Burke said she purchased and began using the product on patients partially in response to what she said were UltraShape marketing materials declaring patients "would 'lose two dress sizes in just three treatments' and that 'clinical studies showed an average 3.3-6.3 cm reduction.'" However, Dr. Burke said "the representations were not true" and the patients she treated with UltraShape "did not realize the results promised by" UltraShape. Dr. Burke said she no longer uses the system. However, her practice's website still includes a page, headlined "5 Things That Make UltraShape Great," which declares "with a plethora of products on the market promising to help shape, sculpt, whittle and thin your body, it can be hard to know what really works. At the office of Dr. Renee Burke, we are loving UltraShape." On UltraShape's website, however, Dr. Burke's office is not listed among the Chicago area medical practices using the device. Dr. Burke said she wished to expand the legal action to include "numerous persons and businesses" who purchased the UltraShape system, and "did not realize the results" allegedly represented by UltraShape in its marketing campaign. The lawsuit asks the court to order Candela Corp. to refund the purchase price of the UltraShape system to all plaintiffs class members, and award unspecified compensatory and punitive damages to Burke and the class members. The lawsuit also requests attorney fees and litigation costs. Dr. Burke is represented in the action by attorney Arnold H. Landis, of Chicago. CBE GROUP: Court Grants Truglio's Bid for Class Certification ------------------------------------------------------------- The Hon. Peter G. Sheridan granted the Plaintiff's motion to certify class in the lawsuit captioned MARNI TRUGLIO, on behalf of herself and all others similarly situated v. CBE GROUP, et al., Case No. 3:15-cv-03813-PGS-TJB (D.N.J.). A copy of the Order is available at no charge at http://d.classactionreporternewsletter.com/u?f=CKuUiNrx CHEMTURA CORP: Rigrodsky & Long Files Securities Class Action ------------------------------------------------------------- Rigrodsky & Long, P.A., on Dec. 7 disclosed that it has filed a class action complaint in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania on behalf of holders of Chemtura Corporation ("Chemtura") common stock in connection with the proposed acquisition of Chemtura by Lanxess Deutschland GmbH ("Lanxess") announced on September 26, 2016 (the "Complaint"). The Complaint, which alleges violations of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 against Chemtura, its Board of Directors (the "Board"), and Lanxess, is captioned Scarantino v. Chemtura Corporation, Case No. 2:16-cv-06051-ER. If you wish to discuss this action or have any questions concerning this notice or your rights or interests, please contact plaintiff's counsel, Seth D. Rigrodsky or Gina M. Serra, at Rigrodsky & Long, P.A., 2 Righter Parkway, Suite 120, Wilmington, DE 19803, by telephone at (888) 969-4242; by e-mail at info@rl- legal.com; or at: http://rigrodskylong.com/investigations/chemtura-corporation- chmt/. On September 25, 2016, Chemtura entered into an Agreement and Plan of Merger (the "Merger Agreement") with Lanxess. Pursuant to the Merger Agreement, Lanxess will acquire Chemtura, and Chemtura shareholders will receive $33.50 per share in cash for each share of Chemtura that they own (the "Proposed Transaction"). The Complaint alleges that, in an attempt to secure shareholder support for the Proposed Transaction, on November 4, 2016, defendants issued materially incomplete disclosures in a Proxy Statement (the "Proxy Statement") filed with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. The Proxy Statement, which recommends that Chemtura stockholders vote in favor of the Proposed Transaction, omits material information necessary to enable shareholders to make an informed decision as to how to vote on the Proposed Transaction, including material information with respect to the process and events leading up to the Proposed Transaction and the opinions and analyses of Chemtura's financial advisor. Plaintiff seeks injunctive and equitable relief and damages on behalf of holders of Chemtura common stock. If you wish to serve as lead plaintiff, you must move the Court no later than February 5, 2017. A lead plaintiff is a representative party acting on behalf of other class members in directing the litigation. Any member of the proposed class may move the Court to serve as lead plaintiff through counsel of their choice, or may choose to do nothing and remain an absent class member. With offices in Wilmington, Delaware and Garden City, New York, Rigrodsky & Long, P.A. -- http://www.rigrodskylong.com-- regularly prosecutes securities class, derivative and direct actions, shareholder rights litigation, and corporate governance litigation, on behalf of shareholders in states and federal courts throughout the United States. CNN: Faces Racial Discrimination Class Action --------------------------------------------- Gene Maddaus, writing for Variety, reports that internal data shows that African-Americans face a "glass ceiling" at CNN, according to a class-action lawsuit filed on Dec. 7. The suit, filed in Atlanta, draws heavily on an internal HR Diversity Trends Report, which showed that men of color consistently received the lowest ratings on performance reviews. The report also found that the upper ranks of management were substantially less diverse than the company as a whole. Though CNN and its parent, Turner Broadcasting, which is owned by Time Warner, have made efforts to diversify, the class-action suit alleges that once they are hired, African-Americans are held back by an unfair and arbitrary promotions process. The suit alleges that African-Americans must wait much longer for promotions, and make less than their white counterparts. The class-action case arose from an earlier lawsuit filed on behalf of DeWayne Walker, an African-American employee who sued CNN earlier this year, saying he had been passed over for promotion nine times. Attorney Daniel Meachum said that following the filing of that lawsuit, "we have uncovered stories involving abuse of power, nepotism, revenge, retaliation, and discrimination." The class-action suit names two additional plaintiffs: Celeslie Henley and Ernest Colbert. Ms. Henley, an administrative assistant, said she was required to work 12-13 hour shifts while white administrative assistants worked 8-hour days. When she complained to HR about the excessive workload, she was fired, according to the suit. Mr. Colbert, a mid-level manager who still works at TBS, alleged that he was only promoted twice in 19 years. He also contended that he worked twice as hard as his white counterparts while being paid thousands less. CNN declined to comment. COINBASE INC: Silver Law Firm, Wites Kapetan Files Class Action --------------------------------------------------------------- Silver Law Group and Wites & Kapetan, P.A. have filed a nationwide class action lawsuit in federal court against California-based Money Services Business and cryptocurrency exchange operator Coinbase, Inc. According to the lawsuit, Paul Vernon -- the former CEO and principal operator of a cryptocurrency exchange and Money Services Business known worldwide as Cryptsy -- converted approximately $8.2 million in Cryptsy customer assets over a three-year period and liquidated to his own benefit those stolen funds through accounts Mr. Vernon and Cryptsy maintained at Coinbase. As alleged in the lawsuit, Mr. Vernon told Coinbase that the $8.2 million represented either a portion of the revenues Cryptsy had generated from its business or represented Bitcoin that Mr. Vernon himself personally owned. Despite Mr. Vernon's assertions of business revenue and personal ownership, Coinbase -- as a Money Services Business regulated under the FinCEN division of the U.S. Treasury Department -- was required to reasonably verify those facts. The lawsuit asserts that Mr. Vernon's claims were untrue, and Coinbase failed to satisfy its regulatory requirements or perform any reasonable investigation into the suspicious activity in Mr. Vernon's and Cryptsy's Coinbase accounts. Although the exact amount remains undetermined, the lawsuit estimates that the value of the digital funds laundered through Coinbase exceeds $8,200,000.00. Mr. Vernon is believed to have absconded with those funds when he abandoned Cryptsy and fled to China in late- 2015. The class action lawsuit is pending in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida under Case No. 9:16-cv- 81992. As stated in the lawsuit, the class of victims pursuing relief includes "All CRYPTSY account owners who: (1) deposited Bitcoins, alternative cryptocurrencies, or any other form of monies or currency at CRYPTSY, (2) had such currency liquidated by VERNON and CRYPTSY through COINBASE, and (3) have been denied access to their accounts and funds between May 22, 2014 and the present date." The lawsuit asserts claims for aiding and abetting breach of fiduciary duty, aiding and abetting conversion, negligence, and unjust enrichment. Also joining as a plaintiff in the lawsuit is James D. Sallah, Esq., the Receiver/Corporate Monitor appointed by the Court to marshal Cryptsy's assets after Mr. Vernon's disappearance to China. Among his many responsibilities, Mr. Sallah is charged with protecting and retrieving assets belonging to Cryptsy or its customers, including by pursuing adjudication against those individuals and entities he believes acted in concert or participation with Mr. Vernon. If you have entrusted your cryptocurrency to an exchange or have lost money in alternative investments, you might have the grounds upon which to assert a claim to recover your losses. Silver Law Group is a nationally-recognized securities law firm headquartered in South Florida, with satellite offices in New York and Washington, DC, representing investors worldwide with their claims for losses due to financial misconduct and investment firm negligence in securities litigation and arbitration matters. Likewise, Wites & Kapetan is a South Florida-based firm that has represented Court-appointed trustees, corporations, investors, and shareholders in numerous multi-jurisdictional litigation matters involving securities, commodities, precious metals, asset recovery matters, Ponzi schemes and other investment frauds. The two firms have each successfully recovered multi-million dollar awards for their clients. To discuss your legal matter, contact David C. Silver toll-free at (800) 975-4345 or by e-mail at -- dsilver@silverlaw.com DELAWARE, USA: Bid to Certify Class in "Saunders" Suit Denied ------------------------------------------------------------- In a memorandum entered in the lawsuit entitled ROBERT SAUNDERS a/k/a Shamsidin Ali v. DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTION, et al., Case No. 15-1184-GMS (D. Del.), the Hon. Gregory M. Sleet will: (1) deny the requests for counsel without prejudice to renew; (2) deny the motions for class certification; (3) grant the motion for leave to amend; (4) deny the request for entry of default; (5) enter an order to respond to the plaintiffs motion for injunctive relief; and (6) enter an order for personal service upon the medical defendants, who failed to return the waiver of service of summons. "After reviewing Saunders' motion, the court concludes that the case is not so factually or legally complex that requesting an attorney to represent Saunders is warranted. Saunders' filings in this case demonstrate his ability to articulate his claims and represent himself," Judge Sleet opined. "In addition, he is a frequent litigator and has much experience in this court." The plaintiff, Robert Saunders, also known as Shamsidin Ali, an inmate at the James T. Vaughn Correctional Center, in Smyrna, Delaware, filed the lawsuit pursuant to 42 U.S.C. Section 19831 and the Americans with Disabilities Act. He appears pro se and was granted permission to proceed in forma pauperis. He raises medical needs claims and claims under the ADA. A copy of the Memorandum is available at no charge at https://goo.gl/bSDbvI from Leagle.com. The Plaintiff appears pro se. Defendants Department of Corrections and Dr. Vincent Carr and Cross Claimant Dr. Vincent Carr are represented by: Joseph Clement Handlon, Esq. DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE 114 E Market St. Georgetown, DE 19947 Telephone: (302) 856-5353 E-mail: joseph.handlon@state.de.us DICK'S SPORTING: TCPA Case Won't Proceed as Class Action -------------------------------------------------------- Tim Bauer, writing for insideARM, reports that on December 1, 2016 a California federal judge issued two rulings in a lawsuit where an attorney/plaintiff accused Dick's Sporting Goods Inc. (DSG) of sending him text messages in violation of the TCPA. The attorney/plaintiff survived a Motion to Dismiss by DSG but was deemed not to be an adequate class representative and, as a result, was denied a request for class certification. The case is Nghiem v. Dick's Sporting Goods, Inc. (Case No. 8:16- cv-00097, United States District Court, Central District of California). insideARM has previously written about this case. In July of this year the same judge ruled that DSG could not compel arbitration in the case. Our July 6, 2016 story on that decision can be found here. Background Plaintiff Phillip Nghiem (Plaintiff or Nghiem) brought this action against Defendants DSG and Zeta Interactive Corporation (Zeta) for violations of the TCPA. Nghiem is a plaintiffs' attorney who handles consumer and debtor disputes, including TCPA claims. The Complaint sought statutory damages, treble damages, attorney's fees, and an order certifying a class. The Complaint alleged that DSG administers a marketing program centered on what they call "mobile alerts" -- text messages sent to subscribers. Consumers can sign up for mobile alerts on DSG's website or by sending a text message with the word "JOIN" to a number associated with DSG, called a "short code." On May 4, 2015, Plaintiff enrolled in DSG's mobile alert program by texting the word "JOIN" to DSG's short code. Thereafter, on December 6, 2015, Plaintiff texted the word "Stop" to that same short code, indicating that he no longer wished to receive mobile alerts from DSG. DSG sent Plaintiff a text message indicating that he had unsubscribed and would no longer receive mobile alerts. But, the Complaint alleges that DSG continued to send Plaintiff text messages, including on at least eight particular occasions between December 11, 2015 and January 22, 2016. The Motion to Dismiss the Complaint On October 27, 2016, DSG filed a Motion to Dismiss, contending that Plaintiff lacked standing to bring this action in light of the Supreme Court's recent opinion in Spokeo, Inc. v. Robins, 136 S. Ct. 1540 (2016), because Plaintiff had not alleged a concrete and particularized injury in fact as required by Article III of the Constitution. In the alternative, they argued that Plaintiff does not have "prudential standing." "The issue of "prudential standing" and the arguments made by the parties and Court's opinion are hyper-technical and best left for a Law School Civil Procedure exam." The Honorable Cormac J. Carney, United States District Court Judge, denied Defendant's motion to Dismiss. After a lengthy discussion of Spokeo and its aftermath, Judge Carney ruled: "Based on Spokeo, the Court is satisfied that Plaintiff has alleged an injury-in-fact that is concrete and particularized." When considering the issue of "prudential standing" Judge Carney determined: "The statutory question of the TCPA's "zone of interests" involves disputed issues of material fact that cannot be resolved by the Court at this early stage of the case. What matters at this early stage are the allegations of the First Amended Complaint (FAC), and those allegations explicitly state that Plaintiff opted out of DSG's mobile alerts program and yet continued to receive text messages from DSG that violated his privacy. This is all that is necessary for Nghiem to defeat Defendants' motion." The Motion for Class Action Certification Plaintiff sought to certify a class as "[a]ll persons who, after opting-out of Dick's Sporting Goods, Inc.'s mobile alerts program, received unconsented text message advertisements from Defendants via Dick's mobile alerts program." The FAC alleged that as a result of Defendants' conduct, "Plaintiff and class members have had their privacy rights violated, have suffered actual and statutory damages, and, under the TCPA are each entitled to, among other things, a minimum of $500.00 in damages for each of Defendants' violations of the TCPA." The FAC seeks statutory damages, treble damages, attorneys' fees, and an order certifying a class. Judge Carney wrote: "Under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23, district courts have broad discretion to determine whether a class should be certified. The party seeking class certification bears the burden of showing that each of the four requirements of Rule 23(a) and at least one of the requirements of Rule 23(b) are met. Rule 23(a) provides that a case is appropriate for certification as a class action if: "(1) the class is so numerous that joinder of all members is impracticable; (2) there are questions of law or fact common to the class; (3) the claims or defenses of the representative parties are typical of the claims or defenses of the class; and (4) the representative parties will fairly and adequately protect the interests of the class." These four requirements are often referred to as numerosity, commonality, typicality, and adequacy. Judge Carney determined that the numerosity and commonality requirements existed in this case. However, when considering the typicality and adequacy requirements, the Judge decided that those requirements were not met. When considering typicality Judge Carney wrote: "Ninth Circuit authority directs district courts not to grant class certification if 'there is a danger that absent class members will suffer if their representative is preoccupied with defenses unique to it.' Here, there is such a danger. Defendants will continue to dispute whether Nghiem opted in and out of DSG's mobile alerts program in good faith and if he suffered any invasion of privacy whatsoever. Indeed, Defendants will argue at every opportunity that (1) Nghiem fabricated this lawsuit; (2) he welcomed and hoped for text messages that violated the TCPA; (3) he is perpetrating a fraud by claiming his privacy was invaded when he received more text messages from DSG after opting out of its mobile alerts program; and (4) he should not be awarded a penny for his lawyer shenanigans. The major focus of this litigation will be on these issues and defenses unique to Nghiem, not on the claims of the class." When considering adequacy, Judge Carney wrote: "Defendants argue that Nghiem is not an adequate class representative because he is subject to defenses that do not apply to the rest of the class and has no credibility. While these arguments primarily relate to typicality, "a named plaintiff who has serious credibility problems or who is likely to devote too much attention to rebutting an individual defense may not be an adequate class representative. Additionally, "[t]he honesty and credibility of a class representative is a relevant consideration when performing the adequacy inquiry 'because an untrustworthy plaintiff could reduce the likelihood of prevailing on the class claims. The Court is convinced that if Nghiem is the class representative, he and his counsel will have to devote most of their time and resources trying to refute Defendants' attacks on his character and his motivations for filing and litigating this lawsuit. This skewed focus and diversion of resources will come at the expense of Nghiem's ability to vigorously prosecute this case on behalf of the rest of the class and obtain monetary recovery for any members of the class who undisputedly had their privacy invaded when they received unwanted text messages from DSG." insideARM Perspective This story is interesting to the ARM industry for two reasons. First. The TCPA/Spokeo discussion is quite topical. Though, in this instance the court decided that the case should survive a Motion to Dismiss for Lack of Standing. Second, the portion of the story relating to the denial of class certification is also required reading for companies in the ARM industry that are being sued by alleged "professional" plaintiffs. Does this case continue a trend in court's view of TCPA cases started by the June 24, 2016 Opinion and Order in the case of Stoops v. Wells Fargo Bank, NA (Case No. 3-15-83, United States District Court, W.D PA) and continued with the August 8, 2016 decision in Telephone Science Corporation. v. Asset Recovery Solutions, (Case No. 15-CV-5182, N.D. Ill)? Here the facts are slightly less salacious. But, the implications are similar. In this case the defendants also believe that the plaintiff/attorney was trying to manufacture a TCPA claim. It will be interesting to see where this case goes next. DYNAMIC RECOVERY: Brown Withdraws Bid for Class Certification ------------------------------------------------------------- The Clerk of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois made a docket entry on December 6, 2016, in the case titled Scott Brown v. Dynamic Recovery Solutions, LLC, et al., Case No. 1:16-cv-07534 (N.D. Ill.), relating to a hearing held before the Honorable Milton I. Shadur. The minute entry states that: -- Motion hearing set for December 12, 2016, was stricken; -- Plaintiff's unopposed motion for entry of stipulation with respect to withdrawal of class certification motion is granted; -- Plaintiff's motion to certify class is withdrawn without prejudice; and -- Plaintiff's motion to continue is denied as moot. A copy of the Notification of Docket Entry is available at no charge at http://d.classactionreporternewsletter.com/u?f=DxdFs5WC FACEBOOK INC: Lundin Law Discloses Securities Class Action ---------------------------------------------------------- Lundin Law PC, a shareholder rights firm announces a class action lawsuit against Facebook, Inc. Investors, who purchased or otherwise acquired shares between April 1, 2015 and November 16, 2016 inclusive, are encouraged to contact the Firm in advance of the January 23, 2017 lead plaintiff motion deadline. "No class has been certified in the above action yet. Until certification occurs, you are not represented by an attorney. You may choose to take no action and remain a passive class member." Lundin Law says. According to the Complaint, Facebook introduced advertising and content "metrics," designed to help advertisers assess results for paid advertising purchases and to "better understand how people respond to (their) videos on Facebook," by measuring the success of Facebook advertisements and campaigns. Facebook revealed its new advertising assessment as an important tool to weigh engagement with paid campaigns and advertisements. Facebook does not use a third-party to independently determine the accuracy of information and new metric tools. On April 1, 2015, Facebook found problems with the marketing and content metrics, but did not release this information to the public and did not release these errors in its SEC filings. The company still sold a significant amount of Facebook shares for profit, under this information. Facebook had stated that it found problems in its video advertising metric, that it had falsified its average viewing time tool, understated its significance, gave conflicting releases about the error, and did not reveal other information about the problems. Facebook failed to inform investors of the effect the errors would have on future ad revenue. After announcing an expected reduction in ad revenue and capital expenditures, the value of Facebook stock dropped, causing investors harm. Lundin Law PC was established by Brian Lundin, a securities litigator based in Los Angeles dedicated to upholding shareholders' rights. FIELDTURF USA: Carteret Borough Files Class Action Lawsuit ---------------------------------------------------------- Mike Ozanian at Forbes reports that the Borough of Carteret in New Jersey filed a class action complaint on behalf of itself and others against FieldTurf USA and its parent, Tarkett, last December 15. According to the suit, "Plaintiff purchased six defective Synthetic Grass Fields, defined below, from FieldTurf between late 2006 and 2010, at a time when FieldTurf knew that its marketing claims and sales campaign were grossly exaggerated, and that the Synthetic Grass Fields were defective." U.S. Senators Cory Booker and Robert Menendez have urged the Federal Trade Commission to open an investigation into FieldTurf's conduct, noting the need for government officials to be "vigilant against deception and misuse of taxpayer dollars." This is the second big suit filed against the artificial turf company in recent days. Several days ago, Newark, New Jersey schools filed a class action suit against against FieldTurf, the nation's leading maker of artificial sports fields, alleging the company defrauded more than 100 public and private schools and municipalities in the state. Two years ago I wrote that schools that have replaced their grass fields with artificial turf are finding out the hard way that the plastic stuff doesn't always last as long as advertised. The Newark complaint capped followed an NJ Advance Media investigation that revealed the company sold high-end turf for years after executives knew it was falling apart. GLACIER COUNTY, MT: Taxpayers Appeal Class Action Dismissal ----------------------------------------------------------- LeAnne Kavanagh, writing for Pioneer Press, reports that Elaine Mitchell said she's had numerous taxpayers asking if they should still pay their Glacier County taxes under protest after a District Court Judge dismissed the Class Action Suit against Glacier County and the State of Montana. "Yes!" said Ms. Mitchell. "The case is not final," stressed Great Falls attorney Lawrence A. Anderson, the attorney for Ms. Mitchell and all other plaintiffs and appellants, on Nov. 30. Anderson filed a Notice of Appeal to the Montana Supreme Court on Nov. 29, appealing District Judge Mike Menahan's Nov. 16 order dismissing the case for lack of standing. Mr. Anderson, on behalf of Mitchell, et al., filed a Class Action Lawsuit against Glacier County on Aug. 13, 2015 and later amended the lawsuit in February 2016. The Class Action lawsuit allows any and all Glacier County taxpayers the right to pay their county taxes under protest until the lawsuit is settled. Ms. Mitchell stressed, "When I first paid my taxes under protest in May 2015 it was because the County Commissioners had failed to address any of the conditions of the Fiscal Year audits of June 2013 and June 2014, which included failure to follow generally accepted accounting principles and tax statements had been mailed in spite of the fact that a budget had not been completed," explained Ms. Mitchell. "Now, 18 months later, there still has been no corrective action taken by the commissioners and there is still no audit scheduled for the fiscal years ending June 2015 and June 2016. For these reasons, I urge taxpayers to continue to pay their taxes under protest," stated Ms. Mitchell. Many taxpayers paid their May 2015 taxes under protest, and many more did so in November 2015 and May 2016. Ms. Mitchell concluded, "Since taxpayers paid their taxes under protest in 2015 there have been many more examples of taxpayers' rights being diminished in Glacier County. The loss of these rights is definitely grounds for another class action suit against Glacier County. All we are asking the commissioners to do is follow the laws of Montana while governing." GOLDCORP INC: Glancy Prongay Appointed Class Action Lead Counsel ---------------------------------------------------------------- Glancy Prongay & Murray LLP ("GPM") on Dec. 7 disclosed that it has been appointed Lead Counsel in the securities class action against Goldcorp, Inc. ("Goldcorp") and certain executive officers of the Company, currently pending in the United States District Court for the Central District of California. Investors that purchased shares of Goldcorp between March 31, 2014 through October 3, 2016 are encouraged to contact Lesley F. Portnoy, Esq. of GPM at 310-201-9150 to discuss the status of the case and the claims in the litigation. The complaint filed in this lawsuit alleges that defendants misled investors regarding one of its most important mining assets, and otherwise engaged in a fraudulent course of conduct surrounding Goldcorp's mining operations at its Penasquito mine. Located in Zacatecas, Mexico, the Penasquito mine is the largest gold mine in Latin America and one of the largest in the world, accounting for approximately one-third of the Company's sales in 2015. Yet, the Company allegedly violated several environmental regulations and allowed dangerous chemicals to seep into local water reserves. These action threatened human life nearby and threatened closure of the Penasquito mine. If you purchased shares of Goldcorp securities between March 31, 2014 through October 3, 2016, inclusive, or if you have any questions concerning this case, this announcement, or your rights or interests with respect to these matters, or if you would like an update concerning the status of this case, would like to learn more about the case, or have information and wish to discuss these matters further, please contact Lesley Portnoy of GPM, 1925 Century Park East, Suite 2100, Los Angeles, California 90067, by telephone at 310-201-9150, toll-free at 888-773-9224, by email at shareholders@glancylaw.com, or visit our website at http://www.glancylaw.com. If you inquire by email please include your mailing address, telephone number, transaction date(s) and number of shares purchased. INTEGRITY HOME: "Cooper" Suit Seeks Unpaid OT Pay Under FLSA ------------------------------------------------------------ DANA COOPER, individually and on behalf of all others similarly situated, the Plaintiff, v. INTEGRITY HOME CARE, INC., the Defendant, Case No. 4:16-cv-01293-SWH (W.D. Mo., Dec. 14, 2016), seeks to recover unpaid overtime compensation under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) and the Missouri Minimum Wage Law (MMWL). According to complaint, the Plaintiff's hours varied from week to week in 2015 but she regularly worked more than 40 hours a week, including some weeks in which she worked up to and including 75. Despite her overtime work, she was not properly compensated for all overtime hours worked in excess of 40 hours per week for work performed from January 1, 2015, to the present. Integrity Home Care offers a full range of services from Companion Care to Skilled Nursing Care. The Plaintiff is represented by: George A. Hanson, Esq. STUEVE SIEGEL HANSON LLP 460 Nichols Road, Suite 200 Kansas City, MO 64112 Telephone: (816) 714 7115 Facsimile: (816) 714 7101 E-mail: hanson@stuevesiegel.com - and - Philip Bohrer, Esq. Scott E. Brady, Esq. BOHRER BRADY, LLC 8712 Jefferson Highway, Suite B Baton Rouge, LA 70809 Telephone: (225) 925 5297 Facsimile: (225) 231 7000 E-mail: phil@bohrerbrady.com scott@bohrerbrady.com INTERACTIVECORP: Company Control Challenged in CA Pension Suit -------------------------------------------------------------- California Public Employees' Retirement System on behalf of itself and all other similarly situated stockholders of IAC/InterActiveCorp, Plaintiff, v. IAC/Interactivecorp, Barry Diller, Edgar Bronfman, Jr., Michael Eisner, Bonnie Hammer, Bryan Lourd, Alan Spoon, Victor Kaufman, Chelsea Clinton, Alexander Von Furstenberg, Joseph Levin, David Rosenblatt and Richard F. Zannino, Defendants, Case No. 12975, (Del. Ch., December 12, 2016), seeks appropriate compensatory damages, together with pre- and post-judgment interest, costs, expenses, and disbursements of this action, including attorneys' and experts' fees and such other and further relief for breach of fiduciary duty. Plaintiffs allege that IAC's controlling stockholder, Barry Diller, plans to create a new, non-voting class of stock for the express purpose of maintaining the Diller family's voting control. Diller, his family, and their trusts own less than 8% of IAC's outstanding stock, but wield 44% of the Company's voting power through super-voting Class B shares. Diller exercises further control as Chairman and Senior Executive. At 74 years old, he is now improperly using his control to perpetuate himself in power for the remainder of his life, and then pass control to family members who have never run IAC, says the complaint. California Public Employees' Retirement System owns 171,500 shares of IAC common stock. Plaintiff is represented by: Joel Friedlander, Esq. Jeffrey Gorris, Esq. Christopher M. Foulds, Esq. FRIEDLANDER & GORRIS P.A. 1201 N. Market Street, Suite 2200 Wilmington, DE 19801 Tel: (302) 573-3500 - and - Mark Lebovitch, Esq. John Vielandi, Esq. David MacIsaac, Esq. BERNSTEIN LITOWITZ BERGER & GROSSMANN LLP 1251 Avenue of the Americas New York, NY 10020 Tel: (212) 554-1400 - and - Blair Nicholas, Esq. Benjamin Galdston, Esq. BERNSTEIN LITOWITZ BERGER & GROSSMANN LLP 12481 High Bluff Drive, Suite 300 San Diego, CA 92130 Tel: (858) 793-0070 IOWA: DOT Seeks Dismissal of Class Action Over Traffic Tickets -------------------------------------------------------------- Jason Clayworth, writing for The Des Moines Register, reports that an effort to force Iowa to expunge and refund thousands of traffic tickets is an "extreme measure" that would create "a most profound impact to the detriment of public safety," the state argued in court documents made public on Dec. 7. Iowa asked the Polk County District Court to dismiss an effort to create a class-action lawsuit against the state, following an October judge's ruling that the state's transportation department did not have legal authority to issue a speeding ticket to 16-year-old Peyton Atzen. Iowa continues to issue tickets, despite the ruling that says DOT officers are not legally authorized to issue most traffic citations to noncommercial vehicles. Three motorists in November launched court actions that would force the state to reverse course, clear records and refund fines and court fees. Tens of thousands of tickets and millions of dollars are on the line, potentially going back five or more years. Iowa argues that the October ruling by Polk County District Court Associate Judge Heather Lauber shouldn't be considered to set court precedent, partly because district court decisions are not binding to other district courts. The state said that motorists who believe they've been wronged by the system can and should individually challenge their cases. ". . . 'The Atzen ruling' is merely the decision in one case," lawyers from the office of Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller argued in the newly filed court documents. "Judge Lauber's decision is an unpublished opinion with no precedential value whatsoever." At the heart of the issue is a law that restricts the enforcement powers of state officers. It limits officers outside of the state's public safety department from enforcing most moving violations. The Iowa Supreme Court ruled nearly 70 years ago that DOT officers did not have those powers. A 1990 Iowa attorney general opinion concurred, saying DOT officers' authority is limited to drunken driving enforcement and commercial motor vehicle violations related to registration, size and weight, based on another section of the law. Mr. Atzen's attorney, Brandon Brown, and Gina Messamer, another lawyer at the Parrish Kruidenier law firm, also represent the three motorists seeking a class-action judgment against Iowa. Mr. Brown said on Dec. 7 that his team had anticipated the state's resistance and would continue to seek a court order to halt the state's ongoing ticketing practice. Geoff Greenwood, a spokesman for the Iowa Attorney General's Office, said that the office believes DOT officers have citizen arrest powers that include traffic citations. He cited a case that went before the Iowa Supreme Court in 1994. The 1994 case involved a South Dakota police officer who had observed the motorist in both states with a moving violation that ended with a drunk driving arrest after he was pulled over in Sioux City. The court ruled the South Dakota officer had the right to make the arrest in Iowa for crimes committed in their presence. "This means, of course, when a DOT peace officer witnesses a motorist driving by going 84 miles per hour in a 55 miles-per-hour zone, he or she does not have to stand pat and allow the lawbreaker to speed on to the jeopardy of the public's safety," Iowa attorneys wrote in the court documents filed Wednesday, which referenced the speeds Mr. Atzen was ticketed for earlier this year. A Register review in July showed the DOT had issued more than 25,000 tickets over five years. Roughly half -- nearly $2 million in payments -- were to noncommercial vehicles, which are the tickets being challenged. Each ticket, with court costs, averaged about $150. The class-action lawsuit seeks to extend beyond speeding tickets. It encompasses most moving violations to noncommercial vehicles, including seat belts, expired insurance cards and failure to obey traffic control devices. Revenue from the tickets goes into Iowa's general fund, which is allocated by lawmakers to state agencies to help conduct state government work. On another but similar front, the DOT continues its effort to prevent city governments from issuing automatic speeding tickets, saying the fines don't make roads safer. In that case, revenue generated from the tickets is directed to city or county governments, not state government. KRAFT HEINZ: "Beale" Suit Seeks Restoration of Retiree Benefits --------------------------------------------------------------- Martin Beale, Sr., Robert Garrow, Melvin Hill, for themselves and all persons similarly situated, and United Food and Commercial Workers, Plaintiffs, v. Kraft Heinz Food Company, Inc., Defendant, Case No. 3:16-cv-00119, (S.D. Iowa., December 9, 2016), seeks restoration of the Plaintiff's health and prescription drug plans pursuant to the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 and the Labor-Management Relations Act. Plaintiffs are retired Kraft Heinz employee who were members of United Food and Commercial Workers Local Union 431 and subject to the terms and conditions of collective bargaining agreements that includes retiree health and prescription drug insurance. Each Plaintiff currently receives retiree health and prescription drug insurance from Kraft Heinz. During negotiations for the CBA effective July 26, 2010-14, and the CBA effective July 20, 2014-18, Kraft Heinz representatives proposed that retiree health care coverage terminate when retirees reach age 65 and become eligible for Medicare. Kraft Heinz operates meat processing plants and other food processing facilities throughout the country. It operates a meat processing plant located in Davenport, Iowa. Plaintiff is represented by: Kurt C. Kobelt, Esq. ARELLANO & PHEBUS, S.C. 1468 N. High Point Road, Suite 202 Middleton, WI 53562-3683 Tel: (608) 827-7680 Fax: (608) 827-7681 Email: kkobelt@aplawoffice.com - and - Michael Halpin, Esq. MCCARTHY CALLAS CHURCH & FEENEY P.C. 329 Eighteenth Street Rock Island, IL 61201 Tel: (309) 788-2800 (309) 558-9062 Email: mhalpin@mcfe-law.com KROGER: Faces Class Action for Discrimination --------------------------------------------- Rewire reports that Jessica Craddock of Nashville was shocked when the grocery store she had worked at for two years refused to make accommodations for a difficult pregnancy in 2014. "I just needed to avoid heavy lifting so that I could stay healthy," she said in a news release from A Better Balance, a national legal advocacy organization promoting fairness in the workplace. "They put me on unpaid leave so I . . . . had to go without income when I needed it the most," Craddock, now 24, said. In a class action lawsuit filed in November by A Better Balance in U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee, Craddock is seeking a policy change to allow pregnant Kroger employees to receive similar workplace accommodations that injured workers already receive at the grocery chain, which is one of the country's largest employers. This case is filed against Kroger Greater Tennessee Division, which consists of at least 90 stores with more than 12,000 employees, according to court documents. Although she felt it wasn't safe, Ms. Craddock said she was doing some heavy lifting in her pregnancy because she was afraid of losing her job. But when there were complications, she provided a doctor's note indicating that she should not lift more than ten pounds. The store manager told her she could not be accommodated because Kroger's policy did not allow employees to work with medical restrictions, with an exception for "on-the-job injuries-workers compensation," the complaint states. Ms. Craddock was pushed out of her job into taking unpaid leave, according to the complaint. The suit claims that the company's policy violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as amended by the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, which states that "women affected by pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions shall be treated the same for all employment-related purposes . . . . as other persons not so affected but similar in their ability or inability to work." The company's Tennessee division policy imposes "a significant burden on pregnant workers who rely upon income from work to provide for themselves and their families," the complaint states, the report notes. Kroger's discriminatory policy and practice puts many pregnant workers on unpaid leave, short-term disability with lesser pay, or deprives them of their jobs altogether, says the complaint, the report discloses. Others must risk their health for fear of losing income during a critical period. "Pregnant workers at Kroger should not have to choose between their health and their careers," the complaint states. "Kroger thinks it's perfectly legal to treat pregnant workers like second-class citizens," said Dina Bakst, co-founder and co- president of A Better Balance, in the release. "This is not only shameful -- but illegal." Most pregnant women do not need much accommodation except maybe some breaks, less heavy lifting, or a stool to sit down from time to time. "That's not a lot to ask for," said Elizabeth Gedmark, director of the southern office of A Better Balance, to Rewire. "This is a public health issue and concerns family and women's health. You would think that one of the largest companies in the country would step up." Moreover, policies such as Kroger's disproportionately affect low- wage women and women of color. "Those who can afford it the least are hit the hardest," she said. Tennessee has the highest percentage of minimum wage-workers in the country. Women of color dominate these jobs and pregnancy discrimination is most common in low-wage jobs, according to Allison Glass, state director of the coalition Healthy and Free TN, which works to ensure that the policies legislators introduce in Nashville meet the needs of Tennessee women. "Women are the head family earners for a large percentage of families across the country and they need to be supported and not discriminated against at work, especially when pregnant and planning to expand their family," she told Rewire. Decades after the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, courts across the country are seeing cases like this one, especially those involving pregnant women in physically demanding jobs like UPS and other retail, food service, and policing, Gedmark said. "Accommodations for pregnant women at work is an issue that impacts all women, regardless of race or socioeconomic level," said Liz Morris, deputy director of the Center for WorkLife Law and law professor at University of California in an emailed comment to Rewire. "Data show that low-wage earners and women of color are more likely to need an accommodation at work, and these women are more vulnerable in the workplace during pregnancy as a result." In Craddock's case, she lost her apartment and had to move in with her mother, Gedmark said. After she was placed on unpaid leave, Craddock filed a charge of discrimination under Title VII and the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, and the Americans with Disabilities Act and its Amendments Act, with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in Nashville, in May 2014. The company responded that an "inadvertent mistake" had been made and allowed her to return to work, according to the lawsuit. The June 3 letter said Craddock was "mistakenly placed . . . on a leave of absence." Craddock continues to work at Kroger. "Kroger allowed her to return to work after A Better Balance intervened but they still have not changed their policy. It is really unjust and unfair," Gedmark said to Rewire. "Unfortunately it shows that companies don't value their female workforce enough." While Ms. Craddock and others like her remain subject to the company's policies, some see the lawsuit filing as significant. "The beauty of the class-action lawsuit brought by a Better Balance is that a single woman who has faced discrimination is seeking relief for other women who have faced -- or will in the future face-similar unlawful treatment," Morris told Rewire. "By stepping forward and speaking out on behalf of her coworkers who have also been discriminated against when they became pregnant, Ms. Craddock can secure protection for other women who may be afraid to come forward." "This lawsuit shows big companies that they can't take their workers for granted and shirk the law, especially when it comes to pregnant workers," said Glass. "We should be supporting families and our economy, not discriminating against women who are working and pregnant." L'OREAL USA: Faces Class Action Over Hair Care Product ------------------------------------------------------ Louie Torres, writing for Legal Newsline, reports that a New York woman is suing L'Oreal, alleging fraud and negligent misrepresentation. Vivian Lee and John Does 1-100 filed a class action complaint, individually and on behalf of all others similarly situated, Nov. 30 in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York against L'Oreal USA, Inc. alleging false claims regarding its beauty care products. According to the complaint, Lee and John Does 1-100 suffered monetary damages from purchasing a falsely advertised beauty product. The plaintiffs allege L'Oreal falsely advertises that its Advanced Haircare Total Repair Damage-Erasing Balm product contains a rinse-out reconstructing balm that repairs damaged hair. The suit says this claim is false. Lee seeks trial by jury, restitution and disgorgement, interest, court costs and all relief the court grants. The plaintiffs are represented by attorneys C.K. Lee and Anne Seelig of Lee Litigation Group PLLC in New York. U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York Case number 1:16-cv-09266-PGG L-3 COMMUNICATIONS: Securities Class Action Pending in New York --------------------------------------------------------------- Sarraf Gentile LLP on Dec. 7 disclosed that a class action lawsuit has been filed against L-3 Communications Holdings, Inc. ("L-3" or the "Company") (NYSE: LLL) concerning possible violations of federal securities laws on behalf of purchasers of the Company's common stock. The action is pending in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York and is captioned Patel v. L-3 Communications Holdings Inc., et al., No. 1:14-cv-06038. The complaint alleges that defendants issued materially false and misleading statements and/or omitted adverse information about the Company's business and prospects. No class has been certified in the above action. Until a class is certified, you are not considered represented by an attorney. You may also choose to do nothing and be an absent class member. Sarraf Gentile LLP has not filed a lawsuit against the defendants. If you are a current Company shareholder and want to discuss your legal rights, at no cost and without obligation, please contact Joseph Gentile at Sarraf Gentile LLP (telephone: 516-699-8890, extension 12; e-mail: joseph@sarrafgentile.com). Sarraf Gentile LLP litigates shareholder actions across the United States. MCCORMICK & COMPANY: Faces Class Action Over "All Natural" Label ---------------------------------------------------------------- Robert Lawson, writing for Legal Newsline, reports that what is natural? The courts are constantly looking at how to resolve this very issue, according to a Minnesota attorney, as is the case with another food ingredient labeling lawsuit, this time against spice maker McCormick & Company. Megan Holve of New York filed a class action lawsuit against McCormick & Company Inc., alleging negligent misrepresentation, which attorney Chris Kennedy of Minnesota says is the only charge that could possibly be brought by Ms. Holve successfully. Ms. Holve filed her complaint on behalf of all in the class defined in her complaint Oct. 13, in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York. She alleges McCormick & Company made false claims regarding one of its products as all-natural. "I think there are a number of frivolous lawsuits against large corporations," Mr. Kennedy said. "I don't know that is the case here but it does happen with great frequency. They're not always intending to be malicious. No two people's idea of what all- natural is is exactly the same." The complaint from the plaintiff alleges she suffered from purchasing what she believed to be made from natural ingredients but wasn't. She asserts McCormick is responsible because it alleged its product to be "all natural" but knew it contained synthetic, artificial and genetically modified ingredients. Ms. Holve said no reasonable consumer would consider the ingredients natural by definition. She asserts the company is taking advantage of consumer demand for healthier products but not actually delivering what is claimed. She cited research from the Consumers' Union to back this up. That research says 86 percent of consumers define natural as not containing any artificial ingredients and perceive products labeled natural as healthier and wholesome. Moreover, they are willing to pay higher prices for access to these kinds of products. Ms. Holve, in her complaint, said she bought McCormick's Herbes de Provence roasted chicken & potatoes mix in 2014 and believed the product she purchased was "natural." She indicated she would not have made the purchase had she known the real ingredients contained in the mix. She compiled a list of 29 McCormick seasoning blends and gravy mixes and contends those products ought to be considered in the suit as well. McCormick also faces several other lawsuits related to false advertising claims. The plaintiff requests a trial by jury and seeks declaratory and injunctive relief, restitution, disgorgement, compensatory, treble and punitive damages, interest, court costs and any further relief this court grants. She is represented by attorneys Michael R. Reese and George V. Granade of Reese LLP in New York, and by Joshua H. Eggnatz -- JEggnatz@ElpLawyers.com -- of Eggnatz, Lopatin & Pascucci, LLP in Davie, Florida. MED-CARE DIABETIC: Arwa Chiropractic Seeks to Certify TCPA Class ---------------------------------------------------------------- Arwa Chiropractic, P.C., moves the Court to issue an order certifying the action styled ARWA CHIROPRACTIC, P.C., etc. v. MED- CARE DIABETIC & MEDICAL SUPPLIES, INC. and STEVEN SILVERMAN, D.C., Case No. 1:14-cv-05602 (N.D. Ill.), as a class action pursuant to the Telephone Consumer Protection Act. Arwa Chiropractic proposes this class definition: All persons who were sent one or more facsimiles from Med-Care Diabetic & Medical Supplies of Boca Raton, FL on any of the following 6 dates: July 2, 2013, July 10, 2013, October 2, 2013, October 9, 2013, October 17, 2013, or October 25, 2013, stating, "Your patient has asked us to contact you regarding authorization for a Nebulizer and its medications to help with their breathing problems. . . . In order to supply those products to your patient, under the Medicare program, we must obtain a signed order by the patient's physician." The Plaintiff also asks to be appointed as the class representative, and appoint its attorneys as class counsel. A copy of the Motion is available at no charge at http://d.classactionreporternewsletter.com/u?f=rp6HNlfR The Plaintiff is represented by: Phillip A. Bock, Esq. Jonathan B. Piper, Esq. Kimberly M. Watt, Esq. John P. Orellana, Esq. BOCK, HATCH, LEWIS & OPPENHEIM, LLC 134 N. La Salle Street, Suite 1000 Chicago, IL 60602 Telephone: (312) 658-5500 Facsimile: (312) 658-5555 E-mail: phil@bockhatchllc.com jon@classlawyers.com kimberly@classlawyers.com OPTUMRX INC: Insurance Meds Clawback Scheme Hit in "Alston" Suit ---------------------------------------------------------------- Erika Alston, for herself and all others similarly situated, Plaintiffs, v. OptumRX, Inc., Unitedhealth Group Inc., United Healthcare Services, Inc., inclusive, Defendants, Case No. 8:16- cv-02165 (D. Minn., December 9, 2016), seeks restoration of profits; equitable relief; injunction prohibiting Defendants from continuing their clawback scheme; accounting and disgorgement of profits; restitution; reasonable attorneys' fees and costs; and such other relief for violation of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 and the Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. Alston is covered by a health plan currently administered by Optum. Plaintiff has received prescription drug coverage through this plan but is obligated to make a co-payment when filling a prescription. The amount Optum requires the pharmacy collect from the patient often exceeds the amount that Optum pay the pharmacy for the patient's prescription drug. This results in the patient being overcharged for prescription drugs and results in the patient paying the entire copayment and the Defendants collecting hidden additional payments. There is no sharing of costs between the patient and the plan. Optum is a California corporation with its principal place of business in Irvine, California. Optum is a pharmacy benefits manager and currently manages the coverage and policies provided by Unitedhealth. UnitedHealth Group, Inc. and its subsidiaries are health care companies that offer health insurance plans to individuals and employers. Plaintiff purchased health insurance through UnitedHealth and receives pharmacy benefits. The Plaintiff is represented by: Garrett D. Blanchfield, Esq. Mark Reinhardt, Esq. REINHARDT WENDORF & BLANCHFIELD E-1250 First National Bank Bldg. 332 Minnesota Street St. Paul, MN 55101 Telephone: (651) 287-2100 Email: g.blanchfield@rwblawfirm.com - and - Eugene A. Spector, Esq. William G. Caldes, Esq. Jonathan M. Jagher, Esq. SPECTOR ROSEMAN KODROFF & WILLIS, P.C. 1818 Market Street, Suite 2500 Philadelphia, PA 19103 Telephone: (215) 496-0300 Email: espector@srkw-law.com bcaldes@srkw-law.com jjagher@srkw-law.com - and - David P. McLafferty, Esq. LAW OFFICES OF DAVID P. MCLAFFERTY & ASSOCIATES, P.C. 923 Fayette Street Conshohocken, PA 19428 Tel: (610) 940-4000 Fax: (610) 940-4007 Email: dmclafferty@mclaffertylaw.com PAM TRANSPORT: "Browne" Suit Claim Minimum Wages ------------------------------------------------ David Browne, Antonio Caldwell, and Lucretia Hall, on behalf of themselves and all those similarly situated, Plaintiffs, v. P.A.M. Transport, Inc., Daniel Cushman and John Does 1-10, Defendants, Case No. 4:16-cv-00888, (E.D. Ark., December 9, 2016), seeks minimum wages due, liquidated damages, interest, reasonable attorney fees and costs and all other relief under the Fair Labor Standards Act. PAM is an Arkansas Corporation that maintains a business address at 297 West Henri de Tonti Blvd., Tontitown, AR 72770 where Plaintiffs work for Defendants as over-the-road truck drivers. Plaintiff is represented by: Richard S. Swartz, Esq. Justin L. Swidler, Esq. Joshua S. Boyette, Esq. Travis Martindale-Jarvis, Esq. SWARTZ SWIDLER, LLC 1101 KingsHwyN, Suite402 Cherry Hill, NJ 08034 Phone: (856) 685-7420 PATRIOT NATIONAL: Faces Class Action, Court to Set Hearing ---------------------------------------------------------- Reuters reports that the court is expected to set a hearing date for early January 2017 to consider whether a preliminary injunction will be ordered. On Nov. 30, shareholder class action lawsuit was filed in court against Patriot National Inc. and the company's CEO and directors. On Dec. 7, the court granted temporary restraining order enjoining the company from issuing a special cash dividend of $2.50 per share on Dec 9. PHD FITNESS: Faces Class Action Over Supplement False Advertising ----------------------------------------------------------------- Louie Torres, writing for Legal Newsline, reports that three consumers are suing a California fitness company, alleging fraud and negligent misrepresentation. Jeff Johnston of Michigan, John Sandviks of South Carolina and Tanner Kirchoff of Washington filed a class action complaint, individually and on behalf of all others similarly situated, Nov. 26 in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan against PhD Fitness LLC of Thousand Oaks, California, alleging the defendant made misleading claims regarding its supplements to consumers. According to the complaint, the plaintiffs sustained monetary damages from purchasing a falsely advertised supplement, Creatine HCL. The plaintiffs allege PhD Fitness says its product provides benefits proven by scientific claims when this is not true. The plaintiffs seek trial by jury, actual damages, rescind the plaintiffs' purchases, statutory damages, restitution, court costs and interest, plus any further relief the court grants. They are represented by attorneys Nick Suciu III -- nicksuciu@bmslawyers.com -- of Barbat, Mansour & Suciu PLLC in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, and by Jonathan N. Shub -- jshub@kohnswift.com -- of Kohn, Swift & Graf, P.C. in Philadelphia. U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan Case number 2:16-cv-14152-LJM-SDD PRIMORIS SERVICES: "Atkins" Suit Seeks Overtime Wages Under FLSA ---------------------------------------------------------------- TERRANCE ATKINS, GERALD WOODS, and LEANDRE SMITH, Individually and on Behalf of All Others Similarly Situated, the Plaintiffs, v. PRIMORIS SERVICES CORPORATION and PRIMORIS ENERGY SERVICES CORPORATION, the Defendants, Case No. 2:16-cv-00524 (S.D. Tex., Dec. 14, 2016), seeks to recover overtime wages, liquidated damages, costs, and attorneys' fees owed to workers under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). The Plaintiffs worked for Defendants as hourly paid employees who received a daily per diem, which was not included in the regular rate calculation for purposes of determining the required overtime rate pursuant to the FLSA. The per diem represents compensation that is primarily for the benefit and convenience of Defendants' hourly employees. As a result, the FLSA requires that this type of compensation be included in the calculation of the regular rate of pay for overtime purposes. Because the per diem and other allowances were not included in the regular rate of pay calculation, Defendants' hourly paid employees were not properly compensated at a proper overtime rate of one-and-one-half times their regular rate of pay for all hours worked in excess of forty hours in a single week. Primoris Services is a publicly traded specialty construction and infrastructure company, with a particular focus on pipelines for natural gas, wastewater and water. The Plaintiffs are represented by: Robert R. Debes, Jr., Esq. Ricardo J. Prieto, Esq. SHELLIST, LAZARZ, SLOBIN LLP 11 Greenway Plaza, Suite 1515 Houston, TX 77046 Telephone: (713) 621 2277 Facsimile: (713) 621 0993 E-mail: bdebes@eeoc.net rprieto@eeoc.net PROBALANCE INC: Status Hearing in "Ulrich" Suit Set for Dec. 22 --------------------------------------------------------------- The Clerk of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois made a docket entry on December 6, 2016, in the case entitled John M Ulrich v. Probalance, Inc., Case No. 1:16-cv-10488 (N.D. Ill.), relating to a hearing held before the Honorable Jorge L. Alonso. The minute entry states that: -- Plaintiff's motion for class certification is entered and continued to December 22, 2016, at 9:30 a.m.; -- Plaintiff's request for status conference is granted; and -- Initial status hearing is set for December 22, 2016, at 9:30 a.m. A copy of the Notification of Docket Entry is available at no charge at http://d.classactionreporternewsletter.com/u?f=mhNOJsJg RAVAGH PERSIAN: "Baten" Suit Seeks Overtime, Reimbursements ----------------------------------------------------------- Abel Baten, on behalf of himself, FLSA Collective Plaintiffs, and the Class, Plaintiff, v. Mr. Kabob Restaurant Inc., First Avenue Persian Grille, Inc., Parmys Kabob and Grill, Inc., Ravagh Restaurant Corp., Masoud Tehrani, Monireh Tehrani, Mojgan Raoufi and Amir Raoufi, Defendants, Case No. 1:16-cv-09559, (S.D. N.Y., December 12, 2016), seeks unpaid overtime, unpaid minimum wages, including those resulting from an improperly claimed tip credit, unreimbursed expenses of "tools of the trade" and maintenance/repair costs, liquidated damages and attorneys' fees and costs pursuant to the Fair Labor Standards Act and New York Labor Law. The suit also seeks liquidated damages, statutory penalties and attorneys' fees and costs. Defendants operate a restaurant enterprise under the trade name "Ravagh Persian Grill" at the following locations, namely 11 East 30th Street, New York, New York 10016, 1135 First Avenue, New York, New York 10065 and 125 First Avenue, New York, New York 10003. The Restaurants are a family business, commonly owned and operated by Masoud Tehrani, Monireh Tehrani, Mojgan Raoufi and Amir Raoufi. Baten was hired by Defendants to work as a delivery person for the different branches but also performed preparing salad, cleaning the restaurant, stocking the refrigerators, and sweeping and mopping the restaurants he was assigned to. For deliveries, he used his own bike and was never reimbursed for his maintenance expenses. Plaintiff is represented by: C.K. Lee, Esq. Anne Seelig, Esq. LEE LITIGATION GROUP, PLLC 30 East 39th Street, Second Floor New York, NY 10016 Tel: (212) 465-1188 Fax: (212) 465-1181 RDJE INC: "Olmstead" Suit Seeks Unpaid Overtime Wages Under FLSA ---------------------------------------------------------------- Kenneth Olmstead and similarly situated employees, the Plaintiffs, v. RDJE, Inc., and Ronny D. Jones, Individually, the Defendants, Case No. 3:16-cv-00198-TCB (N.D. Ga., Dec. 14, 2016), seeks to recover unpaid overtime compensation, unpaid wages, declaratory relief, and other relief under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). The Plaintiff was an hourly paid employee performing general labor duties within the last three years from March 11, 2012 through April 23, 2016, for Defendant in Coweta County, Georgia. During his employment with Defendants, Plaintiff, and those similarly situated employees, regularly worked more than 40 hours a week, but were not paid time and one-half his regular rate of pay for all hours worked in excess of 40 per work week during one or more work weeks. RDJE is a full service construction company headquartered in Newnan, Georgia, a suburb of Atlanta. The Company provides construction services for commercial, municipal, private development and specialty projects. The Plaintiff is represented by: Adian Miller, Esq. MORGAN & MORGAN, P.A. 191 Peachtree Street, N.E. Suite 4200 Atlanta, GA 30303 Telephone: (404) 496 7332 Facsimile: (404) 496 7428 E-mail: ARMiller@forthepeople.com REMINGTON ARMS: Seeks Approval of Rifle Class Action Settlement --------------------------------------------------------------- Scott Cohn, writing for CNBC.com, reports that The Remington Arms Company, which is seeking court approval of a landmark class action settlement involving alleged defects in its most popular rifles, said in a series of court filings that its critics have "ulterior motives" in objecting to the deal. In one instance, the company claimed, an objector first tried to extract more than $1 million from the company to buy his silence. Remington has agreed to replace the triggers in millions of guns, including its popular Model 700 bolt-action rifle, to settle allegations that the guns are prone to firing without the trigger being pulled. But the company continues to maintain that the guns are safe, and that the accidents and deaths associated with the alleged defect are the result of user errors. Several gun owners have filed formal objections to the settlement as a result, alleging the company is deliberately downplaying the risks. Remington reserved its harshest criticism for Richard Barber, a Montana man who says his nine-year-old son was killed when a Remington 700 went off during a family hunting trip in 2000. Mr. Barber has been a central figure in multiple CNBC reports about the company since 2010. Remington settled a wrongful death claim by the Barber family for an undisclosed amount in 2002, but Mr. Barber went on to amass a huge trove of internal company documents and became a sought-after expert on the alleged defect. Mr. Barber initially served as a paid consultant to the class action plaintiffs, but resigned in early 2015. In November, he filed a formal, 40-page objection to the proposed class action settlement citing what he called "deceitful and misleading statements" by Remington and plaintiffs' attorneys. But in a scathing response filed on Dec. 6, Remington said Mr. Barber only objected to the settlement after first demanding that the company pay him $1.5 million, and supply him with two Remington Modular Sniper Rifles -- which we found listed for sale online for $21,000 apiece -- plus 4,000 rounds of ammunition. In exchange, the company claimed that Barber offered to support any class action settlement, stop making disparaging statements about the company, and destroy all of his research. "In light of Barber's vexatious conduct, his objections to the class action settlement should be summarily rejected," the filing said. In an interview, Mr. Barber acknowledged making the demands but said Remington is mischaracterizing them in an attempt to deflect attention from the real issues in the case. He said the demands were drawn up by attorneys who no longer represent him, and said he ultimately withdrew the demands after concluding that he would be "making a deal with the devil." Those same attorneys represent plaintiffs in the class action case, and stand to collect a portion of $12.5 million in fees if the nationwide settlement is approved. Remington has generally been careful about publicly criticizing Mr. Barber, but after he appeared in a 2010 CNBC documentary about the rifles, the company included him and his family in a point-by- point rebuttal online. Mr. Barber sued the company in federal court for defamation. It was during settlement talks in that case in 2014 that Mr. Barber -- through his attorneys -- made the demands. "You have to talk about a settlement before you go to trial," Barber said, and he claims his attorneys pressed him to come up with a concrete proposal to present to Remington. "The only thing this company understands is money," he said. Mr. Barber claimed he had second thoughts and formally withdrew the offer in an e-mail in April, 2014. But Remington cited an e- mail from one of Barber's attorneys in July of that year reiterating his offer to destroy his document archive if the defamation case was settled. By that point, Mr. Barber said, he was desperate to "get my life back," and believed the company was prepared to stop claiming the guns were safe. Remington claims Mr. Barber only dropped his demands after a federal appeals court ruled in May of 2015 that he had forfeited his right to make future claims against the company as a result of the 2002 wrongful death settlement, dismissing the case and rendering his demands moot. Mr. Barber said he regrets making the demands, which he said he assumed were confidential. He has spoken broadly about settlement talks in the past and acknowledged them in court filings, but never volunteered details to the court or CNBC. "I pray for forgiveness every day for the things I've done and left undone," he said. But, he added, "I believe my actions speak for themselves, and truth is still a defense." Specifically, Mr. Barber alleges the company and plaintiffs' attorneys in the class action case intentionally misled the court about a particular class of Remington rifles -- the Model 600 -- that the company claims is too old to retrofit. Owners of those rifles -- several hundred thousand in all -- are ineligible for a new trigger under the proposed settlement, and can only claim a $12.50 product voucher. Mr. Barber alleges the attorneys concealed the fact that Remington recalled the Model 600 in 1978 and says the company remains obligated to fix it. In its latest filing, Remington argues that the recall has been part of the court record from the beginning of the case. U.S. District Judge Ortrie D. Smith in Kansas City, who is overseeing the class action case, has given Mr. Barber until January 1 to file a formal response to Remington. Judge Smith has scheduled a hearing for February 14 to consider final approval of the settlement. Other gun owners have alleged that Remington and the plaintiffs' attorneys have deliberately structured the settlement to discourage customers from returning their guns and reduce the cost to Remington, a charge the company and plaintiffs have denied. But a Connecticut gun owner wrote to the court to complain that he has been getting the run-around when trying to return his gun, including "30-minute hold times" on Remington's customer service line, "representatives that intentionally disconnect the line," and a web site that is "plagued with errors." "I am now convinced the Remington Arms Co. is intentionally making it difficult for owners, such as me, to have our defective guns properly repaired," wrote Paul Vigano of New Canaan. Remington's attorneys have not yet responded in court to the letter, and did not respond to an e-mail seeking a comment. RIO TINTO: Guinean Scandal Spurs US Class Action ------------------------------------------------ Peter Ker at Financial Review reports that Rio Tinto has been hit with a new class action in the US, which claims the company's Guinean scandal has caused damages and losses for holders of Rio's American securities. The class action complaint was filed in a New York court in recent days. Among the defendants are former Rio chief executives Sam Walsh and Tom Albanese, former chief financial officer Guy Elliott and current Chief Financial Officer Chris Lynch. The plaintiff, Jeffery P Weiner Supplemental Trust, bought Rio American depositary receipts (ADRs) between March 16, 2012, and November 14, 2016. Mr. Weiner said he was "seeking to recover damages caused by defendants' violations of the federal securities laws and to pursue remedies" under the US Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Rio Tinto ADR Share Price Mr. Weiner identified three occasions in November when news reports about Rio's Guinean scandal coincided with falls in the value of Rio's ADRs. Mr. Weiner alleges Rio Tinto and the four former executives made materially false and misleading statements when they claimed in multiple annual reports that the company was "operating within all applicable laws and regulations" in the nations where it operated. Mr. Weiner claimed updates on progress towards developing the Simandou iron ore deposit at the heart of the Guinea scandal also contained false and misleading statements. "Throughout the class period, defendants made materially false and misleading statements regarding the company's business, operational and compliance policies," he claimed in the filing. Mr. Weiner also claimed Rio "failed to disclose material adverse facts about the company's business, operational, and compliance policies". "Defendants made false and/or misleading statements and/or failed to disclose that Rio Tinto violated anti-corruption laws in connection with its operations with respect to the Simandou project, the foregoing violations would expose the company to significant scrutiny and large fines, and as a result of the foregoing, Rio Tinto's public statements were materially false and misleading at all relevant times," he claimed. The claim is ironic on one level, given the value of Rio ADRs has risen since the scandal emerged on November 9, when Rio announced it had contacted fraud and securities regulators over a series of leaked emails that discussed a controversial $US10.5 million ($14.2 million) payment to a political adviser in Guinea. Rio's ADRs were fetching $US38.24 on November 9, and had risen to $US41.50 by the day Mr. Weiner filed his case in a New York court this week. Rio's Australian shares have also risen since the scandal became public. But the value of Rio's ADRs have fallen by about 28 per cent over the 56-month period outlined by the class action, which covers much of the mining industry downturn. A spokesman for Rio said the company would seek to have the action dismissed. Mr. Weiner's claim may not be the last Rio has to face over the Guinea scandal, with lawyers in Pennsylvania and California advertising on Friday morning for holders of Rio securities to come forward with a view to participating in legal action. The class action is the second legal threat made against Rio this week, after bitter rival Beny Steinmetz threatened to pursue Rio for billions of dollars of damages for its alleged role in convincing the Guinean government to remove Mr. Steinmetz's company from two tenements covering part of the Simandou project. SAN RAFAEL, CA: "Alviso" Suit Seeks Overtime Pay ------------------------------------------------ Anthony Alviso, Sam Achondo, Melissa Ainsworth, Randall Ainsworth, Jimmy Alvarez, Daniel Barnes, Justin Barrow, William Berkey, Paul Bernard, Paul Bowermaster, Richard Brown, Esteban Cespedes, Matt Chandra, Nathan Clark, Jeffery T. Conover, Chris Cooper, David Cornell, Paul M. Crimmins, Steven Davis, Chris Donohue, Jeffrey Endaya, Gregory Geide, Nicholas A. Giusti, Nicolas Gonzalez-Pomo, Ryan Goodwin, Shawn Gordon, Robert Ground, Richard Hamilton, Jason Hatfield, Gary Hax, Eric Jennings, Steven Kadzielawa, Kevin Kelleher, Conan Kelly, James Kieffer, Ryan Kirkpatrick, Kyle Kleinschmidt, Angel Landaverde, Michael Lewis, Matt Locatelli, David C. Lopes, Eric Macausland, Kenneth J. Martin, Michael Mccarthy, Kristen Miller, Evan Minard, Trevor Mollenkopf, Joseph D. Morel, Mike Morgenlaender, Cameron Mrsny, Rich Nettelman, Garrett, Northern, Miguel Padilla, Arthur Phillips, Scott Preckwinkle, Kyle Reuter, Andrew Rogerson, Richard Rojo, Jacob Santos, Grant Saysette, Andrew Schifando, Jason Schmitt, Mark Sedlack, David Shubin, Stephan Stornetta, Daniel Sutherlin, Trina Vadon, Joseph A. Vasco, Bill Wasdyke, Michael Wasdyke, Gabriel Williams, Graham Winkelman, Robert Winner, Ivan Zhuk, on behalf of themselves and all similarly situated individuals, Plaintiffs, v. City of San Rafael, Defendants, Case No. 3:16-cv-07056 (N.D. Cal., December 9, 2016), seeks unpaid overtime and other compensation, interest thereon, liquidated damages, costs of suit and reasonable attorney fees, and other relief under the Fair Labor Standards Act. Plaintiffs are current and former employees of the City of San Rafael, a political subdivision of the State of California. The Plaintiff is represented by: Gregg McLean Adam, Esq. D. Paul Bird II, Esq. MESSING ADAM & JASMINE LLP 235 Montgomery Street, Suite 828 San Francisco, CA 94104 Telephone: (415) 266-1800 Facsimile: (415) 266-1128 Email: gregg@majlabor.com paul@majlabor.com.com SET ENTERPRISES: Class of Exotic Dancers Certified Under FLSA ------------------------------------------------------------- The Hon. William P. Dimitrouleas granted in part the Plaintiffs' motion for conditional certification of FLSA Collective Action and authorization to send notice to the FLSA Class in the lawsuit entitled SARAH SHAW, REBECCA WILES, JENNIFER SCOTT, and ASHLEY HOWELL, Individually, and on Behalf of All Others Similarly Situation v. THE SET ENTERPRISES, INC., a Florida Corporation, et al., Case No. 0:15-cv-62152-WPD (S.D. Fla.). The Court conditionally certifies a collective action under the Fair Labor Standards Act consisting of all current or former entertainers, who worked for Cheetah Hallandale and Cheetah Pompano during the three years preceding the filing of this action through and including the date of entry of judgment in the case. The Plaintiffs were formerly exotic dancers (entertainers) at Cheetah. They allege that the Defendants failed to comply with the FLSA because the Defendants classify entertainers as independent contractors and the Defendants do not pay entertainers a minimum wage or overtime wages. The Court has instructed the parties to confer and to submit a joint proposed notice. Within 14 days of the Court's entry of an order approving the joint proposed notice, the Defendants will provide the Plaintiffs' counsel with legal or stage name, last known address, phone number, e-mail address, and phone number of the entertainers (however that position is titled) who work, or previously worked, for the two Cheetah clubs at issue on or after October 13, 2012. The approved notice will be posted by the Defendants in a conspicuous place in the dressing rooms that are frequented by potential collective action members. A copy of the Order is available at no charge at http://d.classactionreporternewsletter.com/u?f=7Whw7fWB SOUTHERN RESPONSE: Earthquake Class Action Gets the Green Light --------------------------------------------------------------- Nick Truebridge at Stuff reports that a class action against Southern Response has been given the green light to continue proceedings against the Canterbury earthquake insurer. About 40 policy holders want to sue Southern Response, claiming misrepresented policies, undue delays in processing and the understatement of build costs. They want to sue as a joint action, thereby sharing costs. In February, the High Court in Christchurch denied the group permission to proceed as a class action, saying the individual claims in the action did not appear to have enough in common to meet the test for a class bid. The group's lawyers returned to court in a second attempt to have the class action approved in October. On December 16, solicitor Grant Cameron said the application to go ahead with a representative action against the insurer had been approved. Mr. Cameron said Justice Warwick Gendall was satisfied that the strategy employed by Southern Response to settle claims provided a common "spine" to the group. Justice Gendall wanted to have the matter "properly ventilated and determined before the Court", he said. Mr. Cameron said his clients were "thrilled with the outcome" and were looking forward to "progress". "They now have the way forward needed to achieve a fair and reasonable resolution," he said. In a statement a Southern Response spokeswoman said the firm was "disappointed" by the ruling. The insurer was "concerned" that a representative action would not "efficiently and fairly" resolve each of its customers' individual earthquake claims, she said. "As a result, Southern Response is considering its options, including an appeal." SPRINT CORP: Class of Sales Farmers Certified in "McGlon" Suit -------------------------------------------------------------- The Hon. Julie A. Robinson granted the Plaintiff's motion for conditional certification in the lawsuit styled MICHAEL MCGLON, on behalf of himself and others similarly situated v. SPRINT CORPORATION, ET AL., Case No. 2:16-cv-02099-JAR-TJJ (D. Kan.). The Court conditionally certifies the Plaintiff's collective action under Section 216(b) of the Fair Labor Standards Act for this class of persons: All persons who worked as BISO Inside Sales Farmers for Sprint within three years prior to the filing of the Complaint. Plaintiff Michael McGlon is designated as the class representative and his counsel will act as class counsel. Judge Robinson denied without prejudice the Plaintiff's motion to approve his form of notice -- to be reasserted after the parties have conferred. The parties will meet and confer in an attempt to reach an agreement on a proposed notice and consent form to be sent to putative plaintiffs, including a proposed deadline for the potential opt-in plaintiffs to join the action. If an agreement is reached, the parties will submit a joint proposed notice and consent form to the Court for approval within 21 days of the Court's order. To the extent the parties are unable to reach an agreement, the Plaintiff will file a motion within 21 days of the Court's order, to seek approval of the proposed forms, and Defendants will have 14 days to respond to the Plaintiff's motion. The Defendants may, if necessary, submit an alternative proposed notice and consent form with its response. Within 14 days of the Court's Order, the Defendants must provide the Plaintiff a list of the first and last names, last-known addresses, dates of employment, location of employment, telephone numbers, and e-mail addresses of all members of the putative class. A copy of the Order is available at no charge at http://d.classactionreporternewsletter.com/u?f=9nGgzIKv SYKES ENTERPRISES: "Meeks" Suit Seeks Overtime Pay Under FLSA ------------------------------------------------------------- JANICE MEEKS, MARY POWERS, and DAVID SLAUGHTER, on behalf of themselves and all others similarly situated, the Plaintiffs, v. Sykes Enterprises, Inc. d/b/a Sykes Home Powered by Alpine Access, the Defendant, Case No. 8:16-cv-03405-JSM-AEP (M.D. Fla., Dec. 14, 2016), seeks to recover overtime compensation for Plaintiffs and other similarly situated Team Leaders (TLs) who work or have worked for Defendant Sykes Enterprises pursuant to the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). According to the complaint, TLs' primary value to Sykes is payroll costs-savings. Sykes requires TLs to work long hours in order to displace the work of non-exempt ATLs, who perform similar duties. Specifically, like non-exempt ATLs, TLs spend the majority of their time performing routine inspections of agents' calls to track quality-control metrics using standardized forms provided by Sykes; running routine reports regarding call data; and completing forms relating to computer-generated metrics. As a result of Sykes's willful violations of the FLSA, Plaintiffs and the FLSA Collective have suffered damages by being denied overtime wages. The Plaintiffs and the FLSA Collective have been deprived of overtime compensation and other wages in amounts to be determined at trial, and are entitled to recover of such amounts, liquidated damages, prejudgment interest, attorneys' fees, costs and other compensation. Sykes was founded in 1977 and provides comprehensive customer contact management services in the business process outsourcing arena to Global 2000 companies in the communications, financial services, healthcare, technology, transportation, and retail industries. The Plaintiff is represented by: Gregg I. Shavitz, Esq. Paolo Meireles, Esq. SHAVITZ LAW GROUP, P.A. 1515 South Federal Highway, Suite 404 Boca Raton, FL 33432 Telephone: (561) 447 8888 Facsimile: (561) 447 8831 - and - Justin M. Swartz, Esq. Melissa Lardo Stewart, Esq. Cheryl-Lyn Bentley, Esq. OUTTEN & GOLDEN LLP 685 Third Avenue, 25th Floor New York, NY 10017 Telephone: (212) 245 1000 TARGET: Motion to Intervene Filed Against Class Action Objectors ---------------------------------------------------------------- Jacob Gershman, writing for The Wall Street Journal, reports that a pair of legal complaints filed recently allege that "objector blackmail" is corrupting class-action litigation. The complaints, connected to unrelated cases, are asking courts to clamp down on serial class-action objectors whom they accuse of squeezing money from plaintiffs' lawyers by threatening to hold up settlement payouts. They allege that lawyers are demanding large payments from plaintiffs' counsel in exchange for withdrawing frivolous and time-consuming objections to settlements. The complaints characterize the tactics as "objector blackmail," essentially the class-action equivalent of "patent trolling." Reuters's Alison Frankel reports on a racketeering lawsuit brought by consumer class-action firm Edelson PC: On Dec. 5, the plaintiffs' firm Edelson filed a complaint in Chicago federal district court against notorious class action objectors Christopher Bandas and Darrell Palmer, asserting that Bandas, Mr. Palmer and Illinois lawyer Jeffrey Thut of Noonan Perillo & Thut are engaged in an ongoing scheme to extort class action lawyers via frivolous objections to proposed settlements. Specifically, Mr. Edelson claims that Messrs. Bandas and Palmer demanded a payment of between $225,000 and $445,000 to drop an objection to Mr. Edelson's $13.8 million settlement of a robocalling class action against Gannett. (The objector was represented in court by Mr. Thut, but Mr. Edelson alleges Mr. Palmer recruited him and Bandas also purported to be his counsel.) According to the complaint, Mr. Edelson reluctantly agreed to pay the objectors $225,000 in order to allow the settlement to take effect. "I have read all of his allegations. He is wrong on the law. His claim for RICO is patently frivolous. And no court in the country has ever supported his very specious position," Mr. Bandas told Am Law Daily, which reported on the suit. Law Blog has reached out to Messrs. Palmer and Thut for comment. Separately, a complaint in the form of a motion to intervene has been filed against objectors in a consumer class-action against big-box retailer Target alleging false advertising of a joint-pain supplement. The motion, filed on Dec. 7 in Illinois federal court, was brought by Ted Frank, a litigator with the Competitive Enterprise Institute and himself a frequent objector to class-action settlements. Mr. Frank, whose objections typically protest disproportionately high attorneys' fees, is asking the court to disgorge any payments made to three objectors in the Target case whom he accuses of appealing the settlement for personal enrichment. "Bad-faith" objectors are giving good-faith ones a bad name, his complaint says. "[T]he cacophony created by shoddy objections brought by bad-faith objectors," the lawsuit states," interferes with a court's ability to fairly consider the reasoned good-faith objections brought by the Center." TERRAVIA HOLDINGS: Bronstein, Gewirtz Files Securities Class Suit ----------------------------------------------------------------- Bronstein, Gewirtz & Grossman, LLC reminds investors that a class action lawsuit has been filed against TerraVia Holdings, Inc. ("TerraVia" or the "Company") (TVIA) and certain of its officers, and is on behalf of shareholders who purchased or otherwise acquired Arrowhead securities between August 8, 2016 and November 7, 2016, both dates inclusive (the "Class Period"). Such investors are advised to join this case by visiting the firm's site: http://www.bgandg.com/tvia. This class action seeks to recover damages against Defendants for alleged violations of the federal securities laws under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (the "Exchange Act"). The Complaint alleges that throughout the Class Period, Defendants made materially false and misleading statements and/or failed to disclose that: (1) TerraVia's products caused gastrointestinal problems, including nausea and vomiting; and (2) consequently, Defendants' statements about TerraVia's business, operations, and prospects were false and misleading and/or lacked a reasonable basis at all relevant times. On November 7, 2016, Bloomberg broadcasted a news report, "Soylent Thinks It Found What Was Making People Sick: Algae." The article described how Soylent, Rosa Foods, Inc.'s meal replacement drink, includes an algal flour ingredient provided by TerraVia. This ingredient has caused Soylent consumers to become sick and Rosa Foods said it will remove the ingredient by early 2017. Mark Brooks, TerraVia's Senior Vice President denied that the Company's algal flour was responsible for making consumers sick, however Bloomberg added that TerraVia had sent a letter in July to EN-R-G Foods, LLC, a separate customer, warning that TerraVia's algal protein ingredient had been linked to a "modest number of reports" with similar complaints and ailments, like nausea and vomiting, connected with EN-R-G's Honey Stinger energy bar. Following this news, TerraVia stock dropped $0.15 per share, or 8.11%, to close at $1.70 on November 7, 2016. A class action lawsuit has already been filed. If you suffered a loss in TerraVia, you have until January 17, 2017 to request that the Court appoint you as lead plaintiff. Your ability to share in any recovery doesn't require that you serve as a lead plaintiff. Bronstein, Gewirtz & Grossman, LLC is a corporate litigation boutique. Our primary expertise is the aggressive pursuit of litigation claims on behalf of our clients. In addition to representing institutions and other investor plaintiffs in class action security litigation, the firm's expertise includes general corporate and commercial litigation, as well as securities arbitration. Attorney advertising. Prior results do not guarantee similar outcomes. TEVA: Faces Class Action Over US Antitrust Probe Into Price-Fixing ------------------------------------------------------------------ Times of Israel reports that the Israeli pharmaceutical giant Teva has been fielding a number of legal troubles in recent weeks, including a class action suit by US investors as a result of a US Department of Justice probe into alleged price-fixing alongside a number of other companies in the field, and an internal investigation into bribery allegations in Romania. US prosecutors said Dec. 14 that leading pharmaceutical companies, including Teva Pharmaceuticals and Mylan, have received subpoenas in a wide-ranging antitrust probe of the industry. US prosecutors accused two former pharmaceutical executives -- Jeff Glazer, former chief executive of Heritage Pharmaceuticals, and Jason Malek, the former president of the same company -- of conspiring with other drug companies to fix prices of an antibiotic, doxycycline hyclate and the diabetes drug glyburide. "By entering into unlawful agreements to fix prices and allocate customers, these two executives sought to enrich themselves at the expense of sick and vulnerable individuals who rely upon access to generic pharmaceuticals as a more affordable alternative to brand- name medicines," said deputy assistant attorney general Brent Snyder. According to the lawsuit, Teva is accused of making "false and/or misleading statements and/or failed to disclose that [it] was engaging and/or had engaged in conduct that would result in an antitrust investigation" and possible "criminal charges against Teva by the end of 2016 for suspected price collusion." "In turn, Teva lacked effective internal controls over financial reporting; and . . . . as a result, Teva's public statements were materially false and misleading at all relevant times," read the statement by Rosen Law Firm, a global investor rights law firm. Earlier this month, Teva revealed that it is in the midst of an internal investigation into allegations that the company has been bribing Romanian healthcare workers into prescribing its medication. The probe was launched in 2015 after an anonymous tipster sent a series of emails to Teva's chief executive, accusing the company of courting Romanian doctors -- paying them speaking and consulting fees, covering travel expenses -- in exchange for their recommending a Teva medication "to as many patients as possible," according to the email sent to the company by the tipster and which was reviewed by Reuters. The emails were also sent to Teva's audit committee and compliance staff, according to the report. The specific medication in question was the multiple sclerosis drug Copaxone, which generated $1.1 billion in sales in Teva's last quarter, the company said last month in a regulatory filing according to Reuters. The tipster informed the company that the information was also being sent to the Securities and Exchange Commission and the US Department of Justice. According to a filing in November cited by Reuters, Teva has been in "advanced discussions" with both the Justice Department and the SEC to settle separate bribery allegations in other foreign countries including Russia, the Ukraine and Mexico. TEVA PHARMA: Sued in E.D. Pa. Over Generic Drug Price-Fixing ------------------------------------------------------------ Plumbers & Pipefitters Local 178 Health and Welfare Trust, on behalf of itself and all others similarly situated, the Plaintiffs, v. Teva Pharmaceuticals USA, Inc., Mylan, Inc., Glenmark Pharmaceuticals Inc., USA, Apotex, Inc., Sandoz, Inc., Lek Pharmaceuticals, d.d., Dr. Reddy's Laboratories, Ltd., Dr. Reddy's Laboratories, Inc., Lupin Pharmaceuticals, Inc., Lupin Ltd., Cadila Healthcare, Actavis Holdco U.S., and Zydus Pharmaceuticals (USA) Inc., the Defendants, Case No. 2:16-cv- 06421-TON (E.D. Pa., Dec. 14, 2016), seeks to recover damages, to the maximum extent allowed under the law, and that a joint and several judgment in favor of Plaintiff and members of the Damages Class be entered against Defendants in an amount to be trebled to the extent laws permit. The claims in the case arise from a broad conspiracy among manufacturers of generic drugs to fix the prices charged for those drugs in recent years. The conspiracy appears to have been effectuated by direct company-to-company contacts among generic drug manufacturers, as well as joint activities undertaken through trade associations such as the Generic Pharmaceutical Association (GPhA). The unlawful acts undertaken with respect to generic pravastatin sodium are merely two manifestations of that overall conspiracy. The Antitrust Division of the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) commenced in 2014 a wide-ranging criminal investigation of this broad conspiracy and has caused grand jury subpoenas to be issued to various Defendants in connection with the investigation. Teva is the largest generic drug manufacturer in the world. The Plaintiff is represented by: Lee Albert, Esq. Gregory B. Linkh, Esq. GLANCY LAW 122 East 42nd Street, Suite 2920 New York, NY 10168 Telephone: (212) 682 5340 Facsimile: (212) 884 0988 TREE HOUSE: Closures A Fit Case For Class Action, Official Says --------------------------------------------------------------- Money Control reports that following Tree House playgroup downing the shutters on 113 branches across India, the company has come under a spotlight. It has claimed that it hasn't been able to pay staff salaries leading to the shutting of branches. In August, Tree House and Zee Learn revised the terms of their merger. Both companies were in talks for a deal as early as December 2015. Speaking to CNBC-TV18 JN Gupta, Former ED, SEBI, said that there is a governance issue at the playgroup. "Someone had to question. It is a fit case for a class action suit, a SEBI probe and action by Ministry of Corporate Affairs." The Zee Learn shareholders should review the merger and see whether it is worthwhile or not, he said. UFC: Fighters' Class Action Lawyers In Dispute with MMAAA --------------------------------------------------------- MMAWeekly.com reports that the history of trying to organize mixed martial arts fighters has been riddled with competing factions that can't seem to get on the same page in representing the fighters' best interests. And it doesn't look like that is going to change any time soon. Attorneys representing Cung Le, Jon Fitch, Nate Quarry and other fighters in a class action lawsuit filed against the UFC in 2014, sent a letter to Bjorn Rebney about the recently announced Mixed Martial Arts Athletes Association, claiming he and his "investors" are being less than forthright about their intentions, and warning that their attempt to achieve a "settlement" with the UFC could compromise the efforts of their lawsuit and divide the efforts of fighters attempting to organize. "As you must be aware, the fighters are better off united than divided, and thus your attempts to sow division operate to no one's advantage but Zuffa's," said the letter from attorneys Eric L. Cramer, Michael Dell'Angelo, Joseph R. Saveri, and Benjamin D. Brown, which was obtained by BloodyElbow.com. The class-action attorneys went on to detail the alleged improprieties of Mr. Rebney's group when they all met late last year. "Worse, as we both know -- but which you have failed to disclose publicly -- you, your investors, and your legal team had previously sought to be included in our efforts to prosecute the UFC Class Action -- as long as you and your investors could share in any recovery. Indeed, well after the UFC Class Action was underway, at the invitation of Ken Pavia, Class Counsel agreed to attend an October 15, 2015, meeting with you (as the former CEO of Bellator), representatives of Creative Artists Agency ('CAA'), Mr. Pavia and your lawyers at the offices of CAA in New York. "You and your representatives told us that you had formed the MMAAA, which (you then said) was supported by 'hundreds' of current and former MMA fighters. You claimed further that you had contemplated starting your own rival antitrust action if Co-Lead Counsel did not meet certain demands. Five days later, on October 20, 2015, the 'Mixed Martial Arts Athletes Association' was registered with the California Secretary of State and assigned entity number C3836158.2 "Ten days after the meeting at CAA, on October 25, 2015, your attorneys presented us with your demands. You proposed that we, as Co-Lead Counsel, promise to devote a certain percentage of any class-wide recovery in the Class Action to the MMAAA, which monies you told us would be used for compensating unnamed 'investors' for unspecified expenses incurred in establishing the organization, among other things. You further demanded that your representatives should be allowed full participation in any settlement negotiations that might occur in the Class Action. As you know, we rejected your demands because we believed that they were neither consistent with applicable canons of professional ethics, nor with our duties as Co-Lead Class Counsel to protect the interests of all UFC fighters in the proposed classes that the Court appointed us (and not you or your lawyers) to represent." The MMAAA, of course, was quick to respond. Attorneys Jim Quinn and Eric Hochstadt sent the following statement to MMAWeekly.com: "As Georges St-Pierre, Donald Cerrone, T.J. Dillashaw, Tim Kennedy, and Cain Velasquez made clear in the official public announcement, the Mixed Martial Arts Athlete Association ("MMAAA") is all about looking out for the fighters and their well-being long-term. "The MMAAA received a 'cease and desist' letter from a group of lawyers seeking to stop the MMAAA from signing up fighters and sticking up for their rights against the UFC and its owners WME- IMG. The MMAAA will do no such thing. Those lawyers -- who represent only a few fighters -- are focused on getting some money out of one case, of which they seek a significant portion for themselves. Those lawyers do not speak for anyone else, and certainly not the MMAAA and all the fighters the organization represents now and will quickly grow to represent in the sport. "Over a year ago, those same lawyers reached out to the MMAAA to join forces with us. We had a meeting and made clear that the MMAAA's primary focus would be on achieving three core goals: 1) substantially increasing UFC fighter pay to 50%; 2) securing all- encompassing long term benefits for UFC fighters; and 3) a settlement to compensate past and current UFC fighters for all of the UFC's wrongs. To achieve these goals for the benefit of the fighters, we also made clear the MMAAA needed to receive a percentage of a monetary settlement to cover the costs to fund the MMAAA for staffing and attorneys both for past work getting to this point and the long fight ahead. The lawyers made clear that they did not share the MMAAA's vision. They are focused on a short-term monetary recovery, of which they will seek 33%, and then they are gone from this sport. We parted ways at that point. "The MMAAA is all about the fighters benefitting when the UFC is finally forced to take a powerful group of the fighters seriously. The MMAAA will be executing on that plan and will not be stopped in this effort on behalf of fighters." The fighting between competing fighter organizational factions has only served to slow progress in forming any sort of significant entity to represent mixed martial arts athletes. This current fray between the filers of UFC anti-trust lawsuit and the MMAAA is just the latest example, and is sure to slow the efforts of both. UNITEDHEALTH: "Ackerman" Suit Alleges Prescription Profiteering --------------------------------------------------------------- Michael Ackerman, on behalf of himself and all others similarly situated, Plaintiffs, v. Unitedhealth Group Inc., United Healthcare Services, Inc., inclusive, Defendants, Case No. 0:16- cv-04136 (D. Minn., December 12, 2016), seeks restoration of profits; equitable relief; injunction prohibiting Defendants from continuing their clawback scheme; accounting and disgorgement of profits; restitution; reasonable attorneys' fees and costs; and such other relief for violation of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 and the Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. Ackerman is covered by a health plan provided the Defendants. He has received prescription drug coverage through this plan but is obligated to make a "co-payment" when filling a prescription. The amount the pharmacy collect from the patient often exceeds the amount that the insurance pays the pharmacy for the patient's prescription drug. This results in the patient being overcharged for prescription drugs and results in the patient paying the entire copayment and the Defendants collecting hidden additional payments. There is no sharing of costs between the patient and the plan. UnitedHealth Group, Inc. and its subsidiaries are health care companies that offer health insurance plans to individuals and employers. Plaintiff purchased health insurance through UnitedHealth and receives pharmacy benefits. The Plaintiff is represented by: Vildan A. Teske, Esq. Marisa C. Katz, Esq. TESKE, MICKO, KATZ, KITZER & ROCHEL, PLLP 222 South Ninth Street, Suite 4050 Minneapolis, MN 55402 Tel: (612) 746-1558 Fax: (651) 846-5339 Email: teske@teskemicko.com katz@teskemicko.com - and - Simon Bahne Paris, Esq. Patrick Howard, Esq. Charles J. Kocher, Esq. SALTZ, MONGELUZZI, BARRETT & BENDESKY, P.C. One Liberty Place, 52nd Floor 1650 Market Street Philadelphia, PA 19103 Tel: (215) 575-3986 Fax: (215) 575-3894 Email: sparis@smbb.com phoward@smbb.com ckocher@smbb.com VERITAS ENTERTAINMENT: Golans Supplement Bid to Certify Class ------------------------------------------------------------- The Plaintiffs in the lawsuit titled RON GOLAN and DORIT GOLAN, individually and on behalf of all others similarly situated v. VERITAS ENTERTAINMENT, LLC, et al., Case No. 4:14-cv-00069-ERW (E.D. Mo.), file with the Court their supplemental motion for class certification. Ron and Dorit Golan ask the Court to approve John Simon, Sr., Esq., as co-counsel with Robert Schultz, Esq., and Ronald J. Eisenberg, Esq., as attorneys for the class. A copy of the Motion is available at no charge at http://d.classactionreporternewsletter.com/u?f=ITsVCYHw The Plaintiffs are represented by: Robert Schultz, Esq. Ronald J. Eisenberg, Esq. SCHULTZ & ASSOCIATES LLP 640 Cepi Drive, Suite A Chesterfield, MO 63005 Telephone: (636) 537-4645 Facsimile: (636) 537-2599 E-mail: rschultz@sl-lawyers.com reisenberg@sl-lawyers.com WELLS FARGO: Senators Criticize Use of Forced Arbitration --------------------------------------------------------- Chris Morran, writing for Consumerist, reports that Wells Fargo is facing multiple lawsuits from customers and employees over the long-running fake account fiasco that saw more than two million bogus, unauthorized accounts being opened in customers' names. Even though lawmakers and consumer advocates have repeatedly asked the bank to not sidestep its liability by using an often-ignored clause in its customer agreement, lawyers for Wells Fargo have already begun to play that "get out of jail free" card. Wells -- just like most major banks, telecom and cable companies, online retailers, and electronics manufacturers -- includes a forced arbitration clause in its consumer contracts. These clauses do two things: First, they prevent the customer from bringing a lawsuit through the legal system. Instead, any dispute can be shunted off into private arbitration. Second, and more importantly, they prohibit similarly wronged customers from joining their complaints into a single class action -- even through arbitration. Thus, rather than having a handful of named plaintiffs representing an entire class of harmed individuals, each wronged customer must go through arbitration on their own. That might be worth the effort if your individual claim is substantial, but in many class actions the rewards for a single class member are often small; however the total damages for the company can be huge. The purpose is to hold the wrongdoer accountable financially and to do so in a public forum, so that any additional information that might be brought to light does not remain hidden in a file cabinet somewhere. As a result of this high-effort, low-reward system, only a small number of potential plaintiffs ever enter into arbitration -- the overwhelming majority of bank customers don't even know that they have signed away this right to sue. When Wells Fargo acknowledged that its employees had been gaming the bank's sales quota and incentives system by opening and closing millions of fake accounts in existing customers' names, lawmakers directly asked then-CEO John Stumpf if Wells planned to play the arbitration card to compel the inevitable class actions out of court and into discrete arbitration disputes. Mr. Stumpf declined to say yes or no, but the answer was pretty clear when he responded that he had "instructed my team to do whatever it takes, within reason, to take care of these customers," and that he would discuss the issue with his legal team. In response, a coalition of senators wrote to Mr. Stumpf, calling on him to rethink this tactic, arguing that the lack of transparency surrounding closed arbitration hearings "helps hide fraudulent schemes such as the sham accounts at Wells Fargo from the justice system, from the news media, and from the public eye." More recently, members of both the House and Senate introduced the Justice For Victims Of Fraud Act, which if passed would forbid Wells from compelling these disputes into arbitration. However, the bank has already begun the process of diverting these lawsuits out of public view and dividing them up into individual arbitration disputes. In November, the bank filed a motion to compel arbitration [PDF] for the 80 plaintiffs in a class action filed in a Utah federal court. The bank successfully used a similar tactic to break up a May 2015 class action lawsuit filed more than a year before Wells Fargo ever publicly admitted to the fake account fraud. In Sept. 2015, a full year in advance of Wells' $185 million settlement with state and federal regulators, the court granted [PDF] the bank's motion to compel that case into arbitration. The New York Times reported on more of the bank's efforts to keep these lawsuits out of the courtroom, even though there is no dispute that Wells Fargo employees opened these unauthorized accounts. "It is ridiculous," one of the named plaintiffs in the Utah lawsuit tells the Times. "This is an issue of identity theft -- my identity was used so employees could meet sales goals. This is something that needs to be litigated in a public forum." Wells claims that arbitration is a "last resort," in spite of the fact that it's asking for these cases to be dismissed only weeks after they have been filed. "We want to make sure that no Wells Fargo customer loses a single penny because of these issues," explains the bank in a statement to the Times. While making customers whole again is a positive step, it doesn't address the potential punitive aspect of a class action, wherein the bank would be made to feel the sting of its bad practices by having to publicly admit culpability. "I think it's a major problem when you have a bank that is so large, doing the things that Wells Fargo did on a systematic basis, to be able to keep that under wraps," explains one lawyer representing a Wells customer whose case was forced into arbitration. On Dec. 7 Senators Patrick Leahy (VT) and Sherrod Brown (OH) wrote to new Wells Fargo CEO Tim Sloan expressing their disappointment. "Wells Fargo's demand to deny defrauded customers their fundamental rights demonstrates your complete failure to understand the gravity of the company's actions and an utter unwillingness, despite promises to the contrary, to actually put your customers first," reads the letter, also signed by Sen. Al Franken (MN), Sen. Elizabeth Warren (MA), Dick Durbin (IL), and Richard Blumenthal (CT). "Forced arbitration denies Americans their constitutional right to seek justice in a court of law and shields companies from accountability -- both from the courts and the public eye," continue the senators. "We will not simply trust you to get this right as long as your actions continue to belie your words. We will not forget that your company has harmed millions of Americans. We will continue to watch closely and hold you accountable at every misstep. We strongly urge you to reconsider your use of forced arbitration." WALT DISNEY: Sued by U.S. Employees Over Discrimination ------------------------------------------------------- Fox25boston reports that a class-action lawsuit filed on behalf of 250 senior administrative office workers, managers and specialists accuses Walt Disney Parks and Resorts of laying them off so they could be replaced by foreign employees. The suit was filed December 12 by 30 named plaintiffs and was entered into the record December 13, according to court documents. This is not the first time this issue has been taken to court. Similar actions were dismissed in state court in October, and Disney spokeswoman Kim Prunty told WFTV that she expected this filing be dismissed as well. "Like the two other dismissed cases brought by this lawyer, this latest lawsuit is nonsense and we will defend it rigorously," she said. The lawsuit alleges that about 250 people received notice in October 2014 that on Jan. 31, they would no longer have a job. The employees being laid off were then responsible for training the people who would be replacing them, the lawsuit said. All of the new employees were "of Indian national origin," the suit alleges. Disney Chief Executive Officer Bob Iger addressed the training issue in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter in June. "The mistake that was made is that we asked people who were leaving to help train their successors. That's common in the business, but it doesn't necessarily mean that it's right," he said. "And looking back, I'm sorry that we did that because there's something insulting about that. That got a huge amount of attention and rubbed people the wrong way, and I completely understand why it would. It just does not pass a smell test, even if it is common practice." Mr. Iger also pointed out that the 250 people who were laid off were maintaining "legacy technology" that the company was moving away from. "We decided that we had to upgrade technology, and the best way to do it was to use a company from the outside to provide that help," Mr. Iger told The Reporter. "That affected 250 jobs. So we went to 250 people and said, 'We're basically eliminating your jobs because we need this higher, more modern technology.'" Of the 250 people who lost their jobs, 100 were rehired and another 170 jobs were created at the company. "So, the net result was actually more jobs, rather than fewer," Mr. Iger said. Pay for the positions the rehired individuals were given was comparable, if not higher, than their original jobs, Disney said. Regardless, the lawsuit claims that the 30 named plaintiffs applied for open positions with Disney that they were "well- qualified for," but were not rehired. According to the lawsuit, the individuals suing Disney claim they were laid off "based solely on their national origin and race." It is a claim that Disney denies, saying it did not replace the workers but transferred their job functions to outside vendors, distributed them among other employees or deemed them as unnecessary and eliminated them outright. One of the plaintiffs, Leonardo Perrero, testified before Congress in February, breaking down in tears at one point while telling the story of the day he found out his 20-year career with Disney was soon to be over. "I clearly remember going to the local church pumpkin sale and having to tell the kids we couldn't buy any that year because of my job," he said. The Disney executive who delivered the news told Mr. Perrero and others that if they didn't cooperate by training their replacements, they would get no severance pay, he testified. "I started to think what kind of American I was becoming," he said. "Was I going to become part of ruining our country by taking severance pay in exchange for training my foreign replacement? How many other American families would be affected by the same foreign worker that I trained?" Over the course of 90 days, Perrero and his co-workers trained the foreign workers until the point when they completely took over the position. "The final period of the 90 days was the most disgraceful and demoralizing, as we had to watch the foreign workers completely take over our jobs," he said. Among other things, the lawsuit is seeking reimbursement of lost wages and benefits and reinstatement to a comparable position at the company with back pay plus interest. YAHOO! INC: Failed to Protect Consumers From Hacking, Lawsuit Says ------------------------------------------------------------------ Margaret Cronin Fisk at Bloomberg reports that Yahoo! Inc. allowed hackers to access personal and confidential information of its users and failed to warn consumers of a cybersecurity breach, a proposed class-action lawsuit claims. The suit followed within hours of Yahoo's disclosure December 14 that a second major security breach may have affected more than 1 billion user accounts. The company said in a statement then it hasn't been able to identify the "intrusion'' associated with the theft, which occurred in August 2013. Suzanne Philion, Yahoo spokeswoman, declined to comment on the lawsuit. In September, Yahoo said the personal information of at least 500 million accounts was stolen in 2014, exposing data from a wide swath of its users. Yahoo said the attacker was a "state-sponsored actor'' and stolen information may have included names, e-mail addresses, phone numbers, dates of birth, encrypted passwords and, in some cases, encrypted-security questions and answers. "Yahoo failed, and continues to fail, to provide adequate protection of its users' personal and confidential information,'' New York consumer Amy Vail said in the complaint. "Yahoo users' personal and private information has been repeatedly compromised and remains vulnerable.'' Vail filed the suit as a class action, seeking to represent all U.S. Yahoo users. Multiple lawsuits were filed after the first breach disclosure as well; those suits have been combined before one judge in San Jose, California. An initial case-management conference is scheduled for March 2. The case is Vail v. Yahoo! Inc., 16-cv-07154, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California (San Francisco). * Class Actions May Face Tougher Limits Under Trump Presidency -------------------------------------------------------------- Carter Dougherty, writing for Inside Sources, reports that Donald Trump is no stranger to bringing lawsuits -- not by a long shot. But he may turn out to be the president that makes bringing them a lot harder. The imminent Republican control of the White House and Congress has created an unexpected opening for advocates of reducing the number of medical malpractice lawsuits, limiting challenges to corporate conduct and, above all, making it harder to bring class- action cases. "There are an unbelievable number of things that Congress could do to gut the class action process," said Paul Bland, executive director of Public Justice, a group that supports the policy and law behind civil lawsuits. Most immediately, the new political constellations in Washington put into doubt plans by the nation's lead consumer financial regulator to stop mandatory arbitration in contracts for credit cards, checking accounts and other financial services, a step that would have opened the door to many more class-action suits. It may also give running room to Rep. Bob Goodlatte, the Virginia Republican who chairs the House Judiciary Committee, to enact legislation he's previously introduced that would limit class- action cases. And companies may seek changes that have enabled lawsuits over unwanted telephone calls. At the same time, the effort could unleash powerful opposition. Attacking the consumer regulator's work will likely bring liberal Democrats in the Senate to its defense, possibly using the still- available filibuster for legislation. Even business interests, notably investors, rely on class-action suits. And the only thing less popular than politicians might be telephone solicitors that call in the middle of dinner. Trump Loves Litigation If the Trump administration presides over a raft of legislation that constrains access to the courts, it will be a surprising coda for a candidate who threatened legal action more than any other. The blog FiveThirtyEight tallied 20 instances in which Trump said he'd sue during the campaign alone, mostly involving allegedly defamatory speech; only 2 of them actually panned out. USA Today counted 4,095 lawsuits involving Trump over 30 years, mostly relating to his hotels, casinos and branding agreements. (Only 14 were media and defamation cases.) At the same time, limiting class-action suits has long been a political priority of Republicans, which also explains why trial lawyers are, overwhelmingly, net contributors to Democrats. The lawyers' trade group, the American Association for Justice, gave Democrats 97 percent of its $1.8 million in contributions this election cycle, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Partly because the incoming administration is not expected to have the policymaking apparatus that previous ones did, the impulses for policy in many areas are likely to come from Congress, especially the House of Representatives. Rep. Goodlatte introduced the Fairness in Class Action Litigation and Furthering Asbestos Claim Transparency Act, which the House passed early this year. It gives a sense of where he would take legislation in the coming years. Most importantly, the bill limits the scope of who can be covered in a class action suits, which would probably limit both their number, and the payout -- to plaintiffs and lawyers -- of suits that do move forward. "Only those people who share injuries of the same type and extent should be part of a class action lawsuit," Rep. Goodlatte said when it was introduced. Arbitration Ban Fight The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, created by Congress in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, this year proposed banning clauses that require customers to submit disputes with banks and other financial services providers to arbitration, and waive their right to be part of a class-action suit. The recent scandal over Wells Fargo's fraudulent account openings has thrown a harsh spotlight on the obscure arbitration process. In November, Wells asked a federal court to enforce arbitration for customers in whose names accounts were opened without their permission, essentially forcing on them a contract which they never actually signed. The bid prompted a withering riposte from Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts Democrat who assailed Wells over the scandal "After dozens of Wells Fargo customers sued the bank to recover fees they were charged from these fake accounts, Wells Fargo tried to boot the claims from court and into the closed-door, industry- friendly arbitration process," Sen. Warren wrote on Facebook. Mr. Bland, the trial lawyer, veritably relished the prospect of Republicans going after the CFPB's plan to ban arbitration. Telemarketing Calls "I'm going to call that the Wells Fargo Immunity Act," he said. "That'll be a great way to start off a Trump presidency. It gives the microphone to Elizabeth Warren. It's about siding with banks not regular people." Business has long had on its list changes to the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, the law that created the do-not-call lists. In response to cold-calling telemarketers, the law also creates grounds for some lawsuits when consumers voluntarily offer up their telephone numbers to businesses, prompting complaints that the law is outdated, and that trial lawyers go after not the ephemeral telemarketers but other firms. "While protections should remain for consumers, businesses too need protection from astronomical liability," Becca Wahlquist -- bwahlquist@swlaw.com -- a partner at Snell & Wilmer, told a congressional committee. The idea that Republicans would change a law aimed at telemarketing calls also left the trial lawyer Bland spoiling for a fight. The law also bans robocalls and unwanted text messages to cell phones, and creates a basis for lawsuits, an immensely popular provision with which voters can instantly identify as more people shift toward a cellphone-only existence. "There's a chance that Republicans will bite off way more than they chew," Mr. Bland said. "Talk to a bunch of 20 year olds and they go crazy at the notion that somebody can call or text their cell phone." Ira Rheingold, executive director of the National Association of Consumer Advocates, said too many restrictions on civil suits could bring out the fissures within the business lobby over how much access to the courts is too much. Buy-side investors and activist investors rely on the judiciary to make their cases. And not all that class-action cash goes to Democrats. "The corporate defense bar would be in serious trouble if class- actions simply went away," Mr. Rheingold said. "And there are Republican trial lawyers." ********* S U B S C R I P T I O N I N F O R M A T I O N Class Action Reporter is a daily newsletter, co-published by Bankruptcy Creditors' Service, Inc., Fairless Hills, Pennsylvania, USA, and Beard Group, Inc., Washington, D.C., USA. Marion Alcestis A. Castillon, Ma. Cristina Canson, Noemi Irene A. Adala, Joy A. Agravante, Valerie Udtuhan, Julie Anne L. Toledo, Christopher G. Patalinghug, and Peter A. Chapman, Editors. Copyright 2016. All rights reserved. ISSN 1525-2272. This material is copyrighted and any commercial use, resale or publication in any form (including e-mail forwarding, electronic re-mailing and photocopying) is strictly prohibited without prior written permission of the publishers. Information contained herein is obtained from sources believed to be reliable, but is not guaranteed. The CAR subscription rate is $775 for six months delivered via e-mail. Additional e-mail subscriptions for members of the same firm for the term of the initial subscription or balance thereof are $25 each. For subscription information, contact Peter A. Chapman at 215-945-7000 or Nina Novak at 202-362-8552. * * * End of Transmission * * *