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Legal News Report 12-11-15
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BP faces class action lawsuit in Mexico from Gulf oil spill, The Guardian reports
Dec 11, 2015 | The Guardian
By Greg LaRose
BP is facing another potentially huge compensation bill from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill after a class action law suit was launched in Mexico for the environmental catastrophe caused in its territory by the fatal disaster. -
Uber tries to limit size in class-action lawsuit with new driver contract
Dec 11, 2015 | LA Times
By Tracey Lien
If there ever was a time for Uber drivers to carefully read their contracts, it’s now. The on-demand transportation company issued a new driver partner agreement to Uber drivers Friday containing a revised arbitration clause that would exclude anyone who signs it from participating in current or future class-action lawsuits. -
Lawsuit Against Class-Action Firm Offers Unusual Detail On How It Finds Plaintiffs
Dec 11, 2015 | Forbes
By Daniel Fisher
It is hardly a secret that plaintiff lawyers often decide who they’re going to file a class action against and then try to find a plaintiff to represent the class. But a recently filed lawsuit against a prolific San Diego firm claims lawyers there crossed the line by repeatedly paying people to serve in the vital role as plaintiff, as well as inducing them to present false testimony. -
Texas Retirement Funds Federal Lawsuit Targets Dole Food Buyout
Dec 11, 2015 | CBS Local
Two Texas public employee retirement funds have filed a shareholder lawsuit in Delaware challenging a deal in which Dole Food chairman and CEO David Murdock took the company private.
Legal News
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BP faces class action lawsuit in Mexico from Gulf oil spill, The Guardian reports
Dec 11, 2015 | The Guardian
By Greg LaRose
BP is facing another potentially huge compensation bill from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill after a class action law suit was launched in Mexico for the environmental catastrophe caused in its territory by the fatal disaster.
The company recently agreed a final settlement of $20.8bn with US authoritiesover the damage caused by the 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The settlement – the biggest pollution penalty in US history – was reached after a federal court found the company guilty of gross negligence.
BP now faces calls to pay for the clean-up in Mexican waters and compensate for the irreparable damage caused to marine life by the oil itself, and the toxic dispersant chemical subsequently used to solidify and sink the oil droplets.Deepwater Horizon: BP got 'punishment it deserved' Loretta Lynch says.
The Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded on the evening of 20 April 2010 after gas seeped into the well that the rig was drilling, killing 11 crew members and injuring 17 others.
The rig – located 80km (50 miles) off the south-east coast of Louisiana – sank and about 5m barrels of oil escaped into the Gulf of Mexico over the next 87 days, coating hundreds of miles of shoreline with oil which caused severe damage to marine life, coral reefs and birds.
The oil reached Mexican shores on 30 April. Hundreds of communities which rely on fishing and tourism in the worst-affected states of Tamaulipas, Veracruz, Tabasco, Campeche, Yucatán and Quintana Roo have seen their livelihoods plummet. The damage is ongoing, according to the claim.
Five years on, Mexican authorities have failed to act against the company. Nor have individuals or communities directly affected by the spill so far taken any legal action.
This case is brought by Sinaloa Class Actions – a non-governmental organisation (NGO) composed of lawyers specialising in environmental disasters. It launched the legal challenge against four BP subsidiaries – two headquartered in Texas, two in Mexico – at a federal court in Mexico City on Monday.
Unlike in the US, class actions in Mexico are rare and not widely known about, as they were only introduced as a legal remedy in 2010.
The law permits class actions to be brought by NGOs in cases of serious rights violations, such as in environmental disasters.
“BP has accepted it is responsible and is paying for the damage in the US. The damage is ongoing here,” Luis Manuel Pérez de Acha, a lawyer bringing the case told the Guardian.
“The federal prosecutors could have and should have brought this case. We are only bringing it because they didn’t. Perhaps they don’t have confidence in class actions because we are still in the process of constructing case law in this area.”
Numerous US scientific studies into the impacts of the disaster have found widespread and catastrophic damage to plant and animal species in all parts of the food chain across the affected zones.
This body of evidence will be used by the federal judge to determine the merit of the claim.
The petition asks for the federal prosecutor’s office for the protection of the environment (Profepa) to release its unpublished studies to the court, and for expert witnesses to be called in order to determine the extent and value of the damage in Mexican territory.
If successful, the settlement would be managed by a special body of the country’s supreme court.
Lawyers say the case should be resolved by the end of 2016.
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Uber tries to limit size in class-action lawsuit with new driver contract
Dec 11, 2015 | LA Times
By Tracey Lien
If there ever was a time for Uber drivers to carefully read their contracts, it’s now.
The on-demand transportation company issued a new driver partner agreement to Uber drivers Friday containing a revised arbitration clause that would exclude anyone who signs it from participating in current or future class-action lawsuits.
Drivers have to accept the agreement to continue driving on the Uber platform, but they can opt out of the arbitration provision by emailing optout@uber.com stating their name and that they want to opt out of the provision.
Drivers have 30 days to opt out after they sign the new agreement.
The move comes only days after U.S. District Judge Edward Chen ruled that Uber’s existing arbitration provisions were unenforceable, and a high-profile class-action lawsuit the company faces over worker misclassification could expand to include the majority of Uber drivers in California.Judge expands class in Uber driver lawsuit
The attorney representing the plaintiffs in the class-action lawsuit, Shannon Liss-Riordan, said the new agreement was clearly an attempt by Uber to limit the class size. Her firm is working on a motion to ask the court to block the new agreement.
“We believe this is an illegal attempt by Uber to usurp the court’s role now in overseeing the process of who is included in the class,” she said.
An Uber spokesman said the company informed Judge Chen of its decision to send a new arbitration agreement, which he said the judge approved.
“We believe strongly that our agreements are valid, but we are making some changes and clarifications to remove uncertainty for drivers and for us as we work through our multiple appeals on this issue,” the spokesman said.Uber worker ruling highlights the legal troubles of a 'sharing economy'
The spokesman added that the company does not intend to enforce the new arbitration provisions for drivers who are part of any certified class, such as the high-profile O’Connor vs. Uber Technologies class action.
But the language in the new agreement suggests otherwise.
Employment law experts said the wording in the new contract clearly excludes retroactively and prospectively anybody who may be a part of the cases that have already been filed, said Todd Scherwin, managing partner of the Los Angeles office of law firm Fisher and Phillips.
“From Uber’s perspective, if it limits [the size of the class] at all — say it knocks out 1,000 people, or 5,000 people, or 10,000 people — it will be worth it.”
This kind of action is uncommon in class actions, Scherwin said, but it does happen. And in nonlegal parlance, Uber’s move isn’t as sneaky as it sounds.
“The section about the arbitration provision and the ongoing lawsuits is big and bold and underlined, so I don’t think there’s a lot of sneakiness to it,” he said. “If that part had been hidden, or if there wasn’t an opt-out provision, then you’d say this is their way to try to hide it.”
The provision can be found on page 15 of the 21-page contract.
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Lawsuit Against Class-Action Firm Offers Unusual Detail On How It Finds Plaintiffs
Dec 11, 2015 | Forbes
By Daniel Fisher
It is hardly a secret that plaintiff lawyers often decide who they’re going to file a class action against and then try to find a plaintiff to represent the class. But a recently filed lawsuit against a prolific San Diego firm claims lawyers there crossed the line by repeatedly paying people to serve in the vital role as plaintiff, as well as inducing them to present false testimony.
The lawsuit by Natural Immunogenics accuses Newport Trial Group of paying Andrew Nilon, a debt-laden Arizona State University graduate, $900 to lend his name to a case accusing the manufacturer of silver-based homeopathic remedies of false advertising and unfair competition. Nilon belonged to a loose group of fellow graduates who served as plaintiffs in a number of Newport suits, Natural Immunogenics says, as part of what it calls a large-scale fraud that contributed to $300 million in settlements over the years.
The lawsuit represents an aggressive attempt to recover the costs of one failed class action, as well as an unusually detailed picture of how Newport allegedly assembled other cases and recruited plaintiffs to serve in them. According to the lawsuit, Newport induced plaintiffs to call companies so they could file “Section 632.7” complaints under California’s law requiring notice of recorded calls, in at least one case from a phone traced across the state line to Nevada.
Newport’s lead partner Scott Ferrell didn’t return a phone call seeking comment. Natural Immunogenics’ lawyer, Peter Arhangelsky with Emord & Associates in Chandler, Az., referred me to the court record. Making undisclosed payments to plaintiffs in class actions can be illegal; Bill Lerach and Mel Weiss, once kings of the securities class-action business, went to jail for paying kickbacks to their plaintiffs.
Newport is a somewhat unorthodox class-action firm because it also frequently defends companies facing such suits. That’s caused friction with other plaintiff lawyers, sources in Southern California told me. In at least one case lawyers at a rival plaintiff firm accused Newport of colluding with a class-action firm to engineer a lowball settlement for its client, a marketer of weight-loss pills, thus cutting the other firm out of the case. One of the biggest conflicts in class-action law is the defendant is frequently the most valuable “client” in the case: In exchange for paying a fee to the class-action lawyer, the defendant gets a release from all further litigation over the underlying claim.
In the Natural Immunogenics case, the company says Nilon’s group learned of the opportunity to serve as plaintiffs from one of their girlfriends, who said “she knew of a law firm that paid cash for easy work.” The girlfriend put them in contact with a Newport investigator, the lawsuit says, who told them about cases that were already in progress. They’d need to sign some papers and possibly buy the product, he told them.Recommended by ForbesMOST POPULARPhotos: The World's Highest-Paid Musicians of 2015+148,037 VIEWSAstronomers Find New Object, Possible Super-Earth In Our Solar SystemMOST POPULARPhotos: The 10 Most Underemployed College Majors Right NowMOST POPULARMartin Shkreli: 'I Would've Raised Prices Higher'
Newport is accused of paying Nilon to sign legal documents including affidavits Nilon “has admitted in written communications” were false. Nilon didn’t respond to an email to his firm, which sells electronica-themed clothing.
After Nilon repeatedly failed to show up for depositions, Newport Trial Group swapped in another plaintiff, Giovanni Sandoval, an Arizona resident and convicted criminal who allegedly lied about living in California so he could represent the class of California consumers. In a deposition, he admitted he’d never shopped before at the store where he claimed to buy the product, didn’t keep a receipt, had never purchased any nutritional supplements before, and couldn’t explain why he picked that particular product off the shelf.
A federal judge dismissed the class action in 2013, saying Sandoval was an inappropriate plaintiff and Newport’s lawyers should have known that. Natural Immunogenics sought Rule 11 sanctions against Newport but a federal magistrate denied them on Oct. 28, saying the company waited too long to challenge Newport’s tactics.
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Texas Retirement Funds Federal Lawsuit Targets Dole Food Buyout
Dec 11, 2015 | CBS Local
Two Texas public employee retirement funds have filed a shareholder lawsuit in Delaware challenging a deal in which Dole Food chairman and CEO David Murdock took the company private.
The proposed class action suit filed this week in federal court in Wilmington claims that Dole, Murdock and former company president C. Michael Carter misled investors about Dole’s operations and finances so that Murdock could buy the fruit and vegetable business on the cheap.
Murdock bought Dole for about $1.6 billion, or $13.50 a share, in 2013.
In August, a Delaware state court judge ordered that Murdock and Carter pay $148 million in damages for misleading directors and shareholders in the deal.
A spokeswoman for Dole did not immediately return an emailmessage seeking comment.
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