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Legal News Report 2-7-2017
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Russian Executive Sues BuzzFeed Over Unverified Trump Dossier
Feb 4, 2017 | New York Times
By Eli Rosenberg
A Russian technology executive is filing a defamation suit against BuzzFeed News after being named in a dossier that contained unverified allegations that connected President Trump with the Russian government. resident Trump and the Russian government -
Lawsuit: MetLife failed to pay workers $50M in overtime
Feb 7, 2017 | Associated Press
By Associated Press
A class actions suit has been filed against the insurance giant MetLife Inc. in response to the company allegedly not paying $50 million in overtime pay. -
Tech Firms Challenge Trump Administration Travel Ban
Feb 4, 2017 | The Wall Street Journal
By Steve Rosenbush
A group of nearly 100 technology companies--including top firms like Apple Inc., Facebook, and Microsoft--have filed a brief challenging Trump's executive order temporarily restricting certain immigration, citing that the travel ban is discriminatory and hinders their collective ability to recruit talent. -
Mylan agreed to pay $96.5 mln in Provigil antitrust class action
Feb 6, 2017 | Reuters
By Brendan Pierson
Although purportedly not an indication of guilt, the pharmaceutical company Mylan has agreed to settle antitrust class action suit filed against them. -
Tyson reveals SEC inquiry, likely tied to price-fixing suits
Feb 7, 2017 | Associated Press
By Candice Choi
Tyson Foods has revealed that it is the target of a SEC investigation, likely in connection with the company's alleged participation in price-fixing activities.
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Russian Executive Sues BuzzFeed Over Unverified Trump Dossier
Feb 4, 2017 | New York Times
By Eli Rosenberg
A Russian technology executive who was named in a dossier containing unverified allegations about connections between President Trump and the Russian government has sued BuzzFeed News, which published the information.
The defamation suit was filed in court on Friday in Broward County, Fla., according to lawyers for the executive, Aleksej Gubarev, the chief of XBT, a technology company based in Luxembourg. The suit focuses on allegations, made near the end of the dossier, that Mr. Gubarev and his company were involved in hacking operations against the leadership of the Democratic Party.
In the complaint, Mr. Gubarev’s lawyers say that BuzzFeed acted recklessly; that none of the statements have any basis in fact; and that Mr. Gubarev’s association with the dossier has left his reputation “in tatters,” compromised his family’s security and damaged his company’s business prospects. It called BuzzFeed’s decision “perhaps one of the most reckless and irresponsible moments in modern ‘journalism.’”
The publishing of the dossier was one of the most startling moments of the weeks before Mr. Trump’s inauguration.Continue reading the main story
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Compiled by a former British intelligence operative who was hired by Mr. Trump’s Republican rivals and later by supporters of Hillary Clinton, the document had circulated for months among high-ranking government officials and journalists. The veracity of its claims had been investigated but never proved.
But after CNN reported last month that intelligence officials had presented a summary of the allegations to Mr. Trump and President Barack Obama, BuzzFeed decided to publish the document in full, saying that “Americans can make up their own minds about allegations about the president-elect that have circulated at the highest levels of the U.S. government.”
When it published the dossier, BuzzFeed noted that it contained errors and that its claims had not been verified. The publication’s editor in chief, Ben Smith, later wrote that its reporters in the United States and Europe spent weeks investigating the report.
BuzzFeed ignited a debate over both the claims in the report as well as the outlet’s decision to break from typical journalistic practices in publishing it. Mr. Trump denounced the unproven claims as a Nazi-esque smear, and called BuzzFeed a “failing pile of garbage” during a heated news conference on Jan. 11.
Mr. Gubarev’s lawsuit claims that while more than 30 publications tried to contact him after the dossier’s publication, he was not contacted by BuzzFeed for his response to the allegations.
Mr. Gubarev, 36, lives in Cyprus with his wife and three children. He founded the site Webzilla — which is also identified in the report, the complaint notes — and built it into an international business, XBT, with more than 300 employees around the world.
The lawsuit was filed in Florida, where Webzilla is registered.
A federal lawsuit over the publishing of a sex tape featuring the wrestler Hulk Hogan that led the website Gawker to file for bankruptcy and eventually shut down was also filed in the state. That case, over invasion of privacy, remains a cautionary tale in the media world.
After learning of the lawsuit on Friday, BuzzFeed removed the names of Mr. Gubarev and his company from the dossier. “We have redacted Mr. Gubarev’s name from the published dossier, and apologize for including it,” the company said in an emailed statement to The New York Times.
A spokesman for BuzzFeed said it had redacted other names in the document and should have redacted Mr. Gubarev’s, but the spokesman defended the company’s decision to publish the dossier.
Mr. Gubarev’s lawyers have also filed a lawsuit in Britain against the former intelligence agent who compiled the report and his consulting company.
The lawsuit against BuzzFeed comes at a tense moment for the news media. Mr. Trump’s administration has castigated journalists for challenging unverified or false claims presented by the White House as fact, and the president’s chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, has labeled the news media “the opposition party.”
Floyd Abrams, a First Amendment scholar and lawyer, said the lawsuit was a “difficult situation for BuzzFeed to be confronted with.”
“It seems inevitable that BuzzFeed will say in some fashion that subjecting it to crippling damages for publishing the dossier would, in the end, imperil the public’s right to know just what misconduct an American president” is suspected of, he said. He added that he could foresee lawyers arguing to move the case to federal court or to a court outside Florida. In the complaint, Mr. Gubarev’s lawyers argue that he is not a public figure. But if the court disagrees, Mr. Gubarev’s lawyers would have to prove that BuzzFeed acted not only negligently, but also maliciously.
One potential argument for defense lawyers is a principle called neutral reportage, which defends the publishing of some defamatory material if it is a matter of public interest and “does it in a fair and disinterested manner, without endorsing a defamatory charge,” Mr. Abrams said. The principle has been rejected by some courts, however, and has not been tested widely, he added.
“I would think that wherever this case is heard, an absolutely central issue will be whether a court would adopt the neutral reportage principle and say basically precisely what the editor of BuzzFeed has been saying — that this is an enormous matter of public interest, we reported it fairly, we did not endorse it, we made very clear that these were simply charges that were well known to everyone but the American public,” he said.
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Lawsuit: MetLife failed to pay workers $50M in overtime
Feb 7, 2017 | Associated Press
By Associated Press
ARTFORD, Conn. — A lawsuit alleges MetLife Inc. failed to pay $50 million in overtime to claim specialists across the country for the past three years.
The complaint was filed Tuesday in federal court in Hartford, Connecticut, by former claim specialist Stephanie McKinney, of Charleston, South Carolina. She previously worked at the insurance company’s offices in Bloomfield, Connecticut.
The lawsuit seeks class-action status on behalf of claim specialists nationwide who worked on long-term disability insurance claims for MetLife and two subsidiaries.
A spokesman for New York-based MetLife says company officials haven’t seen the lawsuit so they cannot comment.
McKinney alleges she and other specialists worked up to 60 hours a week without overtime pay and often had to gather claims information outside of office hours.
Copyright 2017 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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Tech Firms Challenge Trump Administration Travel Ban
Feb 4, 2017 | The Wall Street Journal
By Steve Rosenbush
Good morning. A group of nearly 100 technology companies have filed a brief with the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, challenging President Donald Trump‘s executive order temporarily restricting citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the U.S. The Trump administration says the ban is necessary to keep terrorists out.
The companies include Apple Inc., Alphabet‘s Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Intel, Uber Technologies Inc., eBay Inc., and others, and reflect the heightened level of political outspokenness in the tech sector, where immigration matters are highly consequential in the battle to hire and retain talent. “The order inflicts significant harm on American business, innovation, and growth,” the companies state, according to a copy of the brief reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. “The order effects a sudden shift in the rules governing entry into the United States, and is inflicting substantial harm on U.S. companies.”
The federal appeals court in San Francisco is reviewing an appeal by the administration after a federal judge in Seattle put a temporary hold on the restrictions late last week, as the Journal’s Greg Benzinger reports. Over the weekend, Mr. Trump criticized U.S. District Judge James Robart’s ruling to issue a restraining order against enforcement of the travel ban.
The companies charge the executive order violates the Constitution, is discriminatory and hinders their ability to recruit talent, the Journal reports. Beyond the travel ban, the tech sector is focused on the potential for new restrictions on the number of visas for skilled foreign workers.
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Mylan agreed to pay $96.5 mln in Provigil antitrust class action
Feb 6, 2017 | Reuters
By Brendan Pierson
n" style="transform: translate3d(0px, 0px, 0px);">Mylan NV has agreed to pay $96.5 million to settle claims by drug purchasers that it delayed launching a generic version of Cephalon Inc's narcolepsy drug Provigil in exchange for payment from Cephalon.
The settlement was disclosed in a filing by the drug purchasers in Pennsylvania federal court on Friday, and must still be approved by the court.
The money will go to purchasers that bought brand-name Provigil from Cephalon directly, like wholesalers and distributors.
Mylan spokeswoman Nina Devlin said in an emailed statement that the settlement was not an admission of wrongdoing.
"Mylan believes the proposed settlement is in the best interests of the company and is an important step in moving forward," she said.
Shares of Mylan were up 2 percent at $40 in early afternoon trade on the Nasdaq.
A group of direct purchasers sued Mylan, Cephalon and two other companies - Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd and Ranbaxy Laboratories Ltd - in 2006. They brought their case on behalf of a nationwide class of direct purchasers.
The purchasers said Cephalon reached settlements in patent lawsuits it brought against Teva, Mylan and Ranbaxy in which it paid them to keep generic versions of Provigil off the market until 2012. The lawsuit said the settlements, reached in 2005 and 2006, violated federal antitrust law.
Teva bought Cephalon in 2011. In April 2015, it settled with the direct purchasers for $512 million.
In May 2015, it agreed to pay $1.2 billion to settle similar claims by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, which had separately sued Cephalon over the Provigil settlements.
The agency has long criticized so-called "pay-for-delay" settlements in which brand-name drugmakers pay their generic counterparts to keep drugs off the market.
Ranbaxy is not a party to the settlement announced on Friday.
The case is King Drug Company of Florence Inc, on behalf of itself and all others similarly situated, v. Cephalon Inc et al, U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Pennsylvania, No. 2:06-cv-01797.
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Tyson reveals SEC inquiry, likely tied to price-fixing suits
Feb 7, 2017 | Associated Press
By Candice Choi
NEW YORK (AP) — Tyson Foods says it's being investigated by the Securities and Exchange Commission, likely in connection with lawsuits alleging that the poultry company and others engaged in price-fixing activities.
The Springdale, Arkansas-based company says in a regulatory filing that it received a subpoena from the SEC on Jan. 20. It says it is cooperating with the investigation, which is in an "early stage."
Tyson says it believes the investigation is related to allegations that it violated antitrust laws. In September, a class-action lawsuit had said Tyson, Pilgrim's Pride and other poultry producers conspired to "fix, raise, maintain and stabilize" the price of broiler chickens since at least 2008. It said the primary method to do so was "limiting their production."
Late last month, Tyson, Pilgrim's Pride, Sanderson Farms and the other chicken companies named in the suit filed a motion to dismiss the actions. The motion said production of broiler chickens grew during the period named in the lawsuit.
The suit by New York-based Maplevale Farms had said the limiting of production by the companies included an "unprecedented" destruction of breeder hens in 2008, and a second wave of "coordinated production cuts" in 2011 and 2012. It said the consequences of those cuts "continue to reverberate."
In addition, the suit said the companies exchanged competitively sensitive, non-public information about prices, sales volume and demand.
Subsequently, another lawsuit by a Tyson shareholder said the company's regulatory filings were misleading and did not make proper disclosures, repeating the allegations of collusion in the previous suit.
Tyson and Sanderson Farms declined to comment beyond their public filings. A representative for Pilgrim's Pride did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
A representative for the Securities and Exchange Commission declined to comment. The agency investigates potential violations of securities laws, such as whether companies are complying with disclosure rules. A representative for the Justice Department, which investigates civil and criminal antitrust violations, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
William Sawyer, executive director of animal protein research at Rabobank, said that the prices consumers pay at supermarkets is often tied to price indexes provided by third parties such as Urner Barry and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The indexes are determined by factoring in data from buyers, traders, distributors and suppliers such as Tyson and Pilgrim's Pride.
Historically, Sawyer said the chicken industry has been cyclical. Since 2012, however, Sawyer said the industry has been profitable and that margins reached historic highs in 2015. Rabobank provides financial services to the food and agriculture companies, including chicken companies.
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