Benjamin D. Brown of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC helped cement his reputation as a respected thought leader in his field last year when he wrapped up multiple career-defining cases, including a landmark $375 million settlement in a wage suppression class action brought against Ultimate Fighting Championship, earning him a place among Law360’s 2025 Titans of the Plaintiffs Bar.
Brown, who stepped up as his firm’s managing partner in 2024, served as co-lead class counsel in the case against UFC that secured settlement funds for mixed martial arts, or MMA, fighters.
During the case, which dates back more than a decade, Brown and others tried to show that the UFC unlawfully monopolized the professional MMA bout market.
“Last year, it was an amazing year for me in a lot of ways. I’ve been working on a number of different big cases for many years, and then they all came to a head in different ways in 2024,” Brown said.
“At the same time I was getting some resolution in a lot of my big cases, I also took on these new responsibilities and got a chance to see my firm from a new vantage point as the managing partner,” he added. “All that coming together in one year was a bit of a whirlwind but also just incredibly gratifying on a professional level in so many different ways.”
The class that Brown represented said the UFC engaged fighters in exclusive contracts that unlawfully eliminated MMA competition through acquisitions and suppressed fighter compensation.
Because of the organization’s tactics, the UFC became the only option for MMA fighters to earn a viable living in the profession. They further alleged that, as a result of the UFC’s conduct, the organization received about 90% of all revenue generated by MMA events in the U.S., all the while paying the fighter a fraction of what they would earn in a competitive market.
Eric Cramer of Berger Montague, who served as co-counsel in the UFC case, said Brown was an integral part in getting the case off the ground all those years ago when not a lot of law firms wanted to take it up.
“Ben was one of the prime movers of his firm to get the case organized and started on behalf of the fighters and then Ben was important as we prepared to try the case. He thought through a lot of the complicated issues as we headed towards trial and participated in all the trial preparations. As someone … who has a lot of trial experience, it was very important to have him involved in a leadership role as we headed towards trial,” Cramer said.
Before approving the settlement in February 2024, the court asked tough questions about whether the amount was enough so that individual recoveries would be meaningful to the fighters, Brown said.
“We got a whole bunch of declarations from people, these retired fighters talking about what this settlement would mean for them personally, and — to use both the phrase the court used, and a lot of the plaintiffs use — how it was life changing. It was a real insight into how a recovery from a class action can really make a difference for a plaintiff,” he said.
Results like that of the UFC case are why Brown enjoys class action cases. That motivation evolved over the years because, at first, he was focused on having a major impact on corporate behavior.
“It was the thrill of the big case and the big impact that attracted me initially to class action litigation. But I will say, in the last few years, I’ve really realized what an impact some of these cases can make on people’s lives,” Brown said.
Brown saw the effects of his work when members in another one of his class actions that wrapped up in 2024 sent postcards. He served as co-counsel to help a nationwide class of home sellers secure more than $1 billion in total settlements in an antitrust lawsuit.
“It’s always really impactful when you reach through the complex litigation veneer, and get to see how these cases are changing people’s lives, or at least, if not changing their lives, impacting them,” Brown said
In that case, Moehrl v. National Association of Realtors , homeowners alleged that the National Association of Realtors and several massive residential real estate brokerage companies adopted anticompetitive rules requiring home sellers to pay the buyer’s broker fees at an inflated rate in addition to their own brokers’ commissions, Cohen Milstein said.
The settlement against the National Association of Realtors includes industry reforms that should increase transparency and fairness toward buyer broker commissions, as well as eliminate seller requirements to offer their home on multiple listing services and pay buyer brokers’ commissions, the firm said.
“I found that my trigger was pushed when I had an opportunity to get into a case and argue about the propriety of conduct that was distorting the market. It sounds very academic, but really you realize that, when you have functioning markets, it’s better for everybody, and society functions better. Consumers get better products, but also at better prices, and that gives them the space to enjoy their lives,” Brown said.
As someone who worked with Brown on a case for the past decade, Cramer has had a front-row seat to Brown’s successes. He said Brown is respected across the plaintiffs bar and antitrust community as a thought leader.
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How Brown chooses his cases: “When I look at a new case, I’m very much thinking about the effect that the conduct we’re looking at is having on the classes that we’ll eventually represent. Is this the kind of case that’s going to make a difference? Is this the kind of case that’s going to keep us motivated and eventually going to persuade a jury to award damages?”
At least some fired feds can pursue their case through a class action, administrative judge says.
At least one agency’s staff impacted by the mass dismissals of probationary workers can pursue their reinstatements as a class, the panel that hears federal employees’ challenges to firings has for the first time ruled, creating a new path for sweeping reversals of those terminations.
Hundreds of recently hired and subsequently fired employees at the Homeland Security Department will be part of a class action alleging their dismissals were unlawful after a Merit Systems Protection Board administrative judge granted the request. The DHS ruling was the first to come down after a consortium of lawyers filed similar challenges on behalf of fired probationary employees at 20 federal agencies.
“I find that a class appeal is the fairest and most efficient way to adjudicate the appeal and that the putative class counsel and named appellants will adequately represent the interests of the parties,” said Sara Snyder, the chief administrative judge for MSPB’s western regional office.
DHS fired around 370 employees in February after the Office of Personnel Management instructed agencies across government to begin dismissing their probationary staff, typically those hired or promoted in the previous one or two years. The class does not include employees who were actually fired due to individual performance issues, those not in their probationary period or those who enrolled in the deferred resignation or other separation incentive program.
The Lawdragon Legends are our most prestigious group of lawyers, having been honored in our flagship Lawdragon 500 Leading Lawyers in America over 10 times. So, we always take notice when there’s a concentration of several Legends in one firm, especially a small or mid-sized one.
That’s the case with the four Legends at Washington, D.C.-based Cohen Milstein. With practices ranging from human rights and employee discrimination to securities litigation and investor protection, these Legends form a bright constellation of justice-seeking advocacy of the highest order.
Over a career spanning more than four decades, Joseph Sellers, founder and co-chair of Cohen Milstein’s Civil Rights & Employment practice, has helped draft legislation such as the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, the Civil Rights Act of 1991, and the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Restoration Act of 2009. He has litigated more than 75 class and collective actions, challenging, for example, gender discrimination at the largest chain of jewelry stores in the country and the largest U.S. law enforcement agency, race discrimination in staffing agencies, the denial of access to credit to Native Americans by the USDA, and the failure to pay for all time worked by large chicken processing companies and large restaurant chains. He became a Lawdragon Legend in 2016.
Agnieszka Fryszman joined Cohen Milstein in 1998 after serving as a U.S. House of Representatives committee counsel. As chair and founder of Cohen Milstein’s Human Rights practice, she has represented victims of torture, human trafficking, forced and slave labor, and other violations of international law. She has taken on corporate giants such as Exxon over alleged human rights violations in Indonesia and Chiquita Brands over alleged violations in Colombia. She became a Lawdragon Legend in 2019.
Steven Toll, the former managing partner of Cohen Milstein for 26 years and current co-chair of the Securities Litigation & Investor Protection practice, joined the firm in 1979. He has led or co-led some of the nation’s highest-profile stock fraud lawsuits in the past 30 years. Recent wins include a landmark $1 billion settlement against Wells Fargo and an appeals court ruling limiting safe harbor protections for forward-looking statements in a lawsuit against electronics maker Harman International Industries. He became a Legend in 2019 as well.
Julie Reiser, co-chair of Cohen Milstein’s Securities Litigation & Investor Protection practice, was inducted as a Lawdragon Legend this year, after these interviews were conducted. Reiser is a highly accomplished securities litigator, perhaps best known for her landmark $310 million settlement against Alphabet in a shareholder derivative action that held the corporate board accountable for claims of sexual harassment, discrimination, and retaliation.
The common thread between these very accomplished Legends is a devotion to advocacy and their consistent ability to garner positive, impactful results for their clients and bring about corporate reforms. We were fortunate to chat with Fryszman, Toll, and Sellers about their stand-out practices and some of their most memorable cases.
A Massachusetts federal judge has granted final approval to National Student Clearinghouse’s proposed $9.95 million settlement resolving allegations that the student data company’s lax security practices exposed Social Security numbers and personal information in the hack of Progress Software’s MOVEit file transfer tool.
U.S. District Judge Allison D. Burroughs certified a nationwide settlement class of all individuals whose Social Security number was exposed in the 2023 incident. The deal allows National Student Clearinghouse to exit sprawling multidistrict litigation over the breach and creates a $9.95 million fund that pays class members for two years of credit monitoring. Class members can also recoup losses from the breach of up to $12,500 or a cash payment of $100, which could be increased or decreased depending on the number of claims made.
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The plaintiffs are represented by Kristen A. Johnson of Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro LLP, E. Michelle Drake of Berger Montague PC, Gary F. Lynch of Lynch Carpenter LLP, Douglas J. McNamara of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC, Karen H. Riebel of Lockridge Grindal Nauen PLLP and Charles E. Schaffer of Levin Sedran & Berman LLP.
Flood victims can press forward with litigation against Michigan over the collapse of a hydroelectric dam, a claims court judge ruled Monday, finding that questions remain about the state’s role in the disaster.
Michigan Court of Claims Judge James R. Redford delivered the ruling denying the state’s motion for summary disposition from the bench, saying the flooding victims had presented enough evidence to proceed to trial.
Judge Redford said there was evidence in the record that arguably could show state regulators at the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy were aware the Edenville Dam was at risk of failing, yet pushed to maintain lake levels on the reservoir impounded by the dam out of concern for freshwater mussels.
The Edenville Dam was owned and operated by now-bankrupt Boyce Hydro LLC, which lost its Federal Energy Regulatory Commission license to produce electricity in 2018 after repeated safety and compliance violations.
The flooding victims’ briefings “clearly create factual questions as to whether or not EGLE knew that the Edenville Dam presented a safety risk through the [FERC] order revoking the license, as well as the Spicer Group report,” Judge Redford said. “And if they knew this, did their actions result in the denial of Boyce’s request for a winter drawdown in 2019 and the subsequent either actual commencement of litigation or communication that litigation would be commenced because of the drawdown impact the water that the level was retained at?”
The Spicer Group report is an engineering report that stated the dam did not meet state safety standards because it did not have adequate capacity to pass floodwater. The report classified the dam as a high hazard potential because of the communities downstream that would be affected if it failed.
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The plaintiffs are represented by Denenberg Tuffley PLLC, Johnson Law PLC, Dubin Law PLLC, Pitt McGehee Palmer Bonanni & Rivers PC, Fieger Law, Sommers Schwartz PC, The Miller Law Firm PC, Buckfire Law Firm, Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC, McAlpine PC, Olsman MacKenzie Peacock & Wallace, Giroux Trial Attorneys PC, The Rasor Law Firm PLLC, Gruel Mills Nims & Pylman PLLC, Behm & Behm, Turfe Law PLLC, Cozen O’Connor, Stern Law PLLC and Fegan Scott LLC.
A California judge said Friday he intends to grant preliminary approval of a $43.25 million class action settlement in a suit alleging Disney paid thousands of women in middle management less than their male colleagues.
During a morning hearing, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Elihu M. Berle read aloud a draft of a ruling that would grant a motion for preliminary approval of the settlement after counsel in the case make minor adjustments and resubmit it.
Counsel for both sides were present either in the courtroom or remotely, but no oral arguments occurred before or after the judge read the draft order, which took about 20 minutes.
“Based on the evidence submitted, [the court] intends to grant the motion approving the class action settlement,” he said.
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The workers are represented by Lori Andrus of Andrus Anderson LLP, Joseph M. Sellers, Christine E. Webber and Phoebe Wolfe of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC and James Kan and Stephanie E. Tilden of Dadrian Ho Kan & Lee.
A split Fourth Circuit panel Friday revived a putative class action accusing major shipbuilders and naval engineering consultants of an illegal “no-poach” conspiracy, with the majority holding that just because the alleged conspirators never formalized their purported agreements in writing, it doesn’t mean the conspiracy can’t be unlawful.
The 2-1 panel decision reversed a lower court ruling from last year finding that the plaintiffs’ fraudulent concealment argument for tolling the four-year Sherman Act statute of limitations didn’t pass muster. On the contrary, the circuit majority held that the two naval engineers who brought the case had adequately pled that they were kept in the dark about the alleged conspiracy within the statutory period because the employers were deliberately trying to conceal it.
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The plaintiffs are represented by Brent W. Johnson, Steven J. Toll, Robert W. Cobbs, Alison S. Deich, Zachary R. Glubiak, and Sabrina S. Merold of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC, Shana E. Scarlett, Rio S. Pierce, Steve W. Berman, Kevin K. Green and Elaine T. Byszewski of Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro LLP, George F. Farah, Nicholas Jackson and Simon Wiener of Handley Farah & Anderson PLLC, Candice J. Enders and Julia R. McGrath of Berger Montague, and Brian D. Clark, Stephen J. Teti and Arielle S. Wagner of Lockridge Grindal Nauen PLLP.
Despite a growing body of case law laying out a blueprint for determining whether incarcerated workers are employees — which would legally entitle them to minimum wage and other protections — there is no definitive way to classify workers behind bars.
Disputes over classification are common in employment law, where the question is often whether a worker is an employee or an independent contractor. Employees qualify for more rights and protections under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act and state laws, including minimum wage, overtime and meal breaks. But determining whether an incarcerated worker is an employee is a relatively newer challenge, and courts have a different set of facts and questions to consider.
Generally, at the heart of courts’ analyses mulling incarcerated workers’ classification under the FLSA and state wage laws is conviction status and the work’s purpose and location. But other questions are still open, including whether the facility’s ownership as public or private carries any weight.
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Here, Law360 looks at the patchwork of guidelines courts have laid out when considering incarcerated workers’ employment classification.
Different Conviction Status, Different Classification
There is one factor that courts have focused on more than others when determining if an incarcerated worker has rights under the FLSA: conviction status.
D. Michael Hancock of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC, who represented a group of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainees in a wage case that landed in the Fourth Circuit, explained that people convicted of a crime who work within a prison’s walls are considered exempt from wage laws.
That’s because “the work that they perform is considered to be a form of punishment that is permissible” under the 13th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, Hancock said.
The 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery after the Civil War, includes a so-called exception clause that allows for slavery and involuntary servitude as a punishment for a crime.
Hancock explained that courts have looked at civil detainees who have not been convicted of a crime, including ICE detainees, through a different lens and have taken a textual approach to the FLSA and state laws.
In a case in which Washington state sued private-prison colossus GEO Group and snagged a $23.2 million win for ICE detainees who received $1 per day for their service in a voluntary work program, the Ninth Circuit ruled that state minimum wage law didn’t have an exemption for “residents, inmates or patients in federally operated institutions.”
In a statement to Law360, GEO Group disputed the idea that its voluntary work program would lead to considering the detainees as employees, saying that “participation in the voluntary work program is, as the name states — strictly voluntary.”
“This program has been in place for decades and became part of the ICE performance-based standards under President Obama’s administration,” GEO said. “The wage rates associated with this federally mandated program are set by the United States Congress. As a service provider to the federal government, GEO is required to abide by these federally mandated standards and congressionally established guidelines.”
Courts are tackling cases similarly under the FLSA, which Hancock said is “riddled with specific exemptions” but doesn’t have a carveout “that says you are a civil detainee, therefore you don’t need to be paid.”
“So I think we’d lose the humanity sometimes that these are people. They’ve been convicted of nothing, and so they deserve the same kind of dignity and protection that we tend to almost every other worker in this country and need their work to be respected and to be properly acknowledged and paid,” Hancock said.
However, in one specific example involving pretrial detainees working at a California county jail, both the Ninth Circuit and the California Supreme Court added an extra wrinkle in the state when they ruled that the workers weren’t entitled to minimum wage and overtime because Penal Code Section 4019.3 applied.
Under that provision, the county was allowed to pay inmates a maximum of $2 for eight hours of labor in jail, and it should be interpreted broadly regardless of conviction status, the California justices said.
Work Location and Purpose Could Move the Needle
Two other factors courts look at to determine detainees’ classification is where the work is performed, and for what reason, Hancock said.
The Fourth Circuit, for instance, ruled in Scott that individuals in county detention could fall under the FLSA based on the purpose of their work. It also highlighted the fact that the work was done “outside the prison walls,” raising “the risk of unfair competition to other businesses.”
A Florida state appellate court on Wednesday reinstated a proposed class action alleging negligence against the city of Miramar and a consultant over improperly treated tap water that led to damaged pipes in homes, saying the complaint sufficiently claimed the city assumed a duty to make sure water wasn’t corrosive.
A three-judge Fourth District Court of Appeal panel issued a per curiam opinion, reversing dismissal of residents’ claims alleging negligence against Miramar and consultant Kimley-Horn & Associates Inc. and remanding the case to the Seventeenth Judicial Circuit.
Additionally, the panel reversed the dismissal of a professional malpractice claim against Kimley-Horn, but it affirmed the dismissal of a negligent misrepresentation claim against the consultant, saying the residents “insufficiently alleged justifiable reliance on material misrepresentations.” The panel also affirmed the dismissal of breach of implied warranty and strict liability claims against Miramar.
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Leslie Kroeger of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC, representing the residents, said in a prepared statement emailed to Law360 on Wednesday that the panel’s ruling “represents significant progress for Miramar residents who have suffered substantial plumbing and property damage.”
“Many homeowners faced expenses in the tens of thousands of dollars, with some forced to completely re-pipe their homes,” Kroeger said. “They shouldn’t bear the financial burden of the city’s failure to properly treat their water supply.”
Reached by email on Wednesday, Kroeger told Law360 she expects the case to be re-assigned to another judge in the lower court’s complex division and proceed to a status conference to determine a case schedule and possible trial date.
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The residents are represented by Jeffrey V. Mansell and Bard D. Rockenbach of Burlington & Rockenbach PA, Leslie M. Kroeger and Diana L. Martin of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC, and J. Eric Romano of Romano Law Group.
Veterans Guardian says it’s fighting to give veterans a choice. Critics say they’re guardians of greed.
It started in 2017 with a group of friends and colleagues—the first 40 clients whom U.S. Army veterans Scott Greenblatt and Bill Taylor signed up to help.
They had come home from combat zones weary and weakened by illness and injury, with a promise of monthly disability payments from the country they served. But first, they had to navigate the lumbering bureaucracy of the Department of Veterans Affairs.
Soon, those 40 veterans grew to 275 a month. Then 275 soared to 500. Last year, Taylor and Greenblatt’s company Veterans Guardian assisted about 30,000 veterans with benefits claims, according to Taylor. “We have your back,” the company’s website says. “Together we can uncover all the benefits you deserve.”
The one problem with their success story: Veterans Guardian’s business model runs afoul of the law, say lawmakers and attorneys general from across the country. But nobody has been able to stop them.
With no accreditation, the company is charging veterans thousands of dollars for guidance that veterans service organizations and other nonprofits advise vets on for free.
A whistleblower lawsuit from one of Veterans Guardian’s former employees claims the firm’s business practices are “permeated with fraud and deceit” and cheating the federal government out of millions of dollars. A lawsuit filed by veterans alleges the company “preys on disabled veterans by unfairly and deceptively taking tens of millions of dollars of their disability benefits in violation of federal law.”
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A Former Employee Blows the Whistle
Leslie Carico had been working as a document control specialist at Veterans Guardian for about five months in May 2019 when she began discussing concerns with a coworker. It wasn’t long before “disloyalty” cost her the job, according to a whistleblower lawsuit she filed in 2020.
Her dramatic claims emerged last year when the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina unsealed the case. In a complaint that spans more than 60 pages, she detailed how Veterans Guardian “hijacks the application process, wresting control of it from the veteran” with a “singular focus”: a 100% disability rating for the maximum VA benefit possible so the company can charge the largest commission.
Among the alleged tactics, according to the lawsuit:
- Claims strategists with no medical background interviewed veterans and quickly assessed which health issues should be listed on their forms.
- The company referred veterans to the same psychologist for remote exams— sometimes conducted by the psychologist’s family members—and mental health forms were auto-populated with identical checkmarks.
- Employees changed scores on depression self-evaluations if they felt the score was too low, sometimes without the veterans’ knowledge.
- Applicants were coached to look “tired and shabby” for appointments with VA medical examiners. They were advised not to shave, told to use a cane or wheelchair if they had one, and to use buzz words such as “depressed,” “sad,” and “no motivation.”
- Veterans Guardian employees routinely tacked on secondary conditions like erectile dysfunction and headaches to a veteran’s diagnosis if resubmitting an application was necessary.
- Employees were instructed to tell prospective customers that VA “could not be trusted to deal with veterans fairly. Misrepresentations may have to be made.”
The reason that the company went to these lengths, Carico’s lawsuit said, was simple: money. The company charged a one-time fee of five times the amount of a veteran’s monthly disability benefit increase. For a veteran going from a 0 to 100% rating, this could amount to up to $4,500 a month—a payout of more than $22,000 for Veterans Guardian. The company charged nothing to a veteran who received no benefit rating increase—but this was rare. In interviews with The War Horse, three former employees said the company “cherry-picked” who to help, turning away veterans who did not have a strong case.
Carico’s lawyers did not make her available for an interview with The War Horse. But two current and four former Veterans Guardian employees said in interviews they had seen many of Carico’s claims firsthand.
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In an emailed statement to The War Horse, Carico’s lawyers called the allegation baseless, “designed to discredit a whistleblower revealing serious fraud,” and “a familiar tactic used against women who speak truth to power.”