Zillow (ZG.O), the largest U.S. online real estate portal, is facing a new proposed class action accusing the company of deceptively using property listings to steer home buyers to its network of affiliated agents.

The lawsuit, filed on Friday in Seattle, claims Zillow is misleading prospective buyers into contacting agents working with Zillow and not the agent who listed the home for sale.

The plaintiff, an Oregon resident, alleged Zillow’s practices violate a Washington state consumer protection law and a federal real estate law.

. . .

The plaintiff seeks to represent at least tens of thousands of home buyers who used Zillow-affiliated agents since 2021.

According to the lawsuit, Zillow takes 40% of the commission from some of its agents, a cut that is hidden from the buyer and seller. The complaint said the alleged arrangement incentivizes agents to prioritize their commissions at all costs.

“Zillow’s scheme has the intent and the effect of unlawfully maintaining high and inflexible commissions that drive up the prices that buyers must pay,” the lawsuit said.

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For plaintiff: Steve Berman and Jerrod Patterson of Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro, and Douglas McNamara and Theodore Leopold of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll

Investors of failed, cryptocurrency-focused Silvergate Bank secured a California federal judge’s final approval Wednesday for their $37.5 million settlement of claims alleging the bank misrepresented its safeguards against onboarding customers like the collapsed, fraud-ridden crypto exchange FTX.

U.S. District Judge James E. Simmons Jr. granted final approval of the deal in an order, finding it, “in all respects, fair, reasonable and adequate to the settlement class” and dismissing the claims with prejudice.

. . .

In an email, Carol Gilden, an attorney for the investors, told Law360 that “In light of Silvergate Capital’s bankruptcy, the settlement is a highly favorable resolution that ensures an immediate recovery for impacted investors.”

“We are proud that the pension and union funds we represented had the resolve to step forward on behalf of investors and demand accountability from Silvergate Capital,” she added.

The investors are represented by Carol V. Gilden, Steven J. Toll, S. Douglas Bunch, Jan Messerschmidt, Brendan Schneiderman and Christina D. Saler of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC and Jonathan D. Uslaner, Lauren M. Cruz, John J. Rizio-Hamilton and Shane D. Avidan of Bernstein Litowitz Berger & Grossmann LLP.

The Eleventh Circuit on Wednesday seemed open to reviving a proposed class action from married energy company retirees who claim outdated life expectancy data caused them to lose out on benefits, with judges questioning the lower court’s holding that actuarial assumptions don’t have to be reasonable.

A three-judge panel heard arguments in the appeal from married Southern Company Services Inc. retirees seeking to revive allegations that their pension annuity benefits were lowballed due to outdated mortality tables used in conversions, violating the Employee Retirement Income Security Act. The proposed class of Southern Company pension plan participants, led by ex-workers William Drummond and Richard Odom, appealed after U.S. District Judge Steve C. Jones in July 2024 dismissed the suit for failure to state a claim against Southern Company, its pension plan and its benefits administration committee.

During the proceedings, judges on the panel focused their questions on whether the lower court correctly held that ERISA allowed any actuarial assumptions to be used to convert single-life annuities to joint-and-survivor annuity form, as long as the process was spelled out in the plan terms.

. . .

The retirees are represented by Michelle C. Yau and Daniel R. Sutter of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC, by Peter K. Stris, Radha (Rachana) Pathak and Douglas Geyser of Stris & Maher LLP and by John T. Sparks Sr. of Austin & Sparks PC.

A maritime jobs recruitment company has settled claims it participated in an illegal no-poach conspiracy to suppress wages among some of the country’s biggest warship makers and naval engineering consultants, court records show.

U.K.-based Faststream Recruitment Ltd. negotiated a deal to end its involvement in the proposed class action brought by former naval engineers, according to a notice filed Monday in Virginia federal court. The notice followed a judge’s order seeking clarification as to the status of the settlement.

In the order, which was also filed Monday, U.S. District Judge Anthony J. Trenga noted Faststream and the naval engineers first mentioned a settlement in March 2024. But the deal was rendered moot after the case was tossed for being time-barred in April 2024.

. . .

Scharpf and D’Armiento are represented by Brent W. Johnson, Zachary R. Glubiak, Steven J. Toll, Robert W. Cobbs, Alison S. Deich and Sabrina S. Merold of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC, Shana E. Scarlett, Rio S. Pierce, Steve W. Berman and Elaine T. Byszewski of Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro LLP, George F. Farah, Nicholas J. Jackson and Simon Wiener of Handley Farah & Anderson PLLC, Candice J. Enders and Julia R. McGrath of Berger Montague PC and Brian D. Clark, Arielle S. Wagner and Stephen J. Teti of Lockridge Grindal Nauen PLLP.

Cohen Milstein has once again been recognized as a leader in advancing women in the legal profession. In Law360’s 2025 Women in Law Report, the firm is ranked among the top for the number of female attorneys and for its strong representation of female equity partners. 

Ceiling Smashers Recognition: For the ninth time since the inaugural report was released in 2014, Cohen Milstein earned the distinction of “Ceiling Smasher,” ranking 3rd among firms with 101 – 250 attorneys for the highest percentage of female equity partners. 

Overall Ranking: Cohen Milstein ranked 15th among firms of its size for the overall percentage of female attorneys. The stats include: 

  • 46.7% of all equity partners are women 
  • 35% of all partners are women 
  • 23.3% of all non-equity partners are women 
  • 55% of all associates are women 
  • 55% of all other lawyers, including of counsel, discovery counsel, and staff attorneys are women 

These rankings underscore our firm’s long-standing commitment to fostering equity, opportunity, and leadership for women in law. 

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A California judge granted final approval Monday of Disney’s $43.25 million class action settlement with over 15,000 female midlevel managers over allegations the entertainment giant paid them less than their male colleagues.

At a morning hearing, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Elihu M. Berle read aloud an order granting final approval of the settlement, which stems from a 2019 suit alleging that the company systematically paid female employees in California less than men for substantially similar jobs, regularly passed women over for promotion and loaded them with extra work without providing additional pay.

The class size is 15,241, according to the motion for final approval submitted by the class. 

. . .

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.

UBS’ investment banking division can’t shed claims that it manipulated trading prices for a software company by means of spoofing, or placing trades it later canceled, though a Manhattan federal judge on Friday tossed the software company’s allegations relating to the alleged scheme’s long-term effect on its trading prices.

In a partial dismissal order, U.S. District Judge Dale E. Ho of the Southern District of New York found that the company, Phunware Inc., had failed to show in the latest version of its complaint that the alleged trading price manipulation had what Phunware described as “a long-term adverse effect on the market price of [Phunware] stock.”

“Phunware’s allegations with respect to such purported long-term effects … are too conclusory to suffice on a motion to dismiss,” Judge Ho said Friday.

However, he noted that certain claims about the short-term effect of the spoofing, “when viewed in the light most favorable to the plaintiff, are sufficient at this stage.”

. . .

Phunware is represented by Laura H. Posner, Michael B. Eisenkraft and Raymond M. Sarola of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC.

One month after the U.S. Supreme Court hindered judges’ power to universally pause federal policies, hundreds of public interest lawyers took a crash course on using class actions to sue the president.

The June decision in Trump v. CASA had found courts could only grant relief to named parties in a case, but suggested that policies could still be paused on a nationwide basis through class action litigation — a procedurally complex process by which representative plaintiffs can sue on behalf of all similarly situated people.

And so in July, the advocacy group Democracy 2025 held a training for its coalition of more than 500 organizations that call themselves the “united legal frontline” in challenging President Donald Trump’s controversial policies in court.

Joe Sellers of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC — who has worked as a class action litigator for four decades and sits on the Judicial Conference of the United States’ Advisory Committee on Civil Rules — led a webinar on Rule 23 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, which governs the class action process.

Sellers says he prepared an hourlong program on class actions after he was told that many policy litigators “know a lot about a lot of areas, but they’re not very familiar with this [type of litigation].” He explained to them the requirements of Rule 23’s various subsections, what the CASA decision did and did not decide, and how to avoid the yearslong delay typical of the class approval process.

“Here, where you’re challenging a discrete governmental action that has an imminent effect on a group of people … the pursuit of class claims can be framed in a way that is very lean,” he told Law360. “You convey to the court an interest in moving as quickly as possible to get a class certified, along with the relief that you’re seeking.”

Class actions involving public policy are nothing new. They hearken to the modern origins of Rule 23 — revisions made in 1966 with the Civil Rights Movement in mind. And even before the CASA opinion altered the litigation landscape, class actions played a growing role in lawsuits seeking to stop Trump’s policies. But now that the high court has pointed to class actions as a vehicle for such claims, the administration might seek new ways to block class certification.

. . .

Class actions do seem like the simplest way to replicate the relief provided by universal injunctions, Sellers said, and “on the face of it, this doesn’t sound like a major change. But class action litigation is itself very significant, protracted and expensive,” he said. “It potentially interposes an initial step in the process of obtaining relief.”

Certification, which is often required to pause federal policies, often takes time and requires discovery. But not always.

A Nevada federal judge has rejected Ultimate Fighting Championship’s motion seeking to deny class certification for fighters suing it over alleged suppressed wages, saying the request is premature.

UFC argued that the plaintiffs — Kajan Johnson, Clarence Dollaway and Tristan Connelly — cannot serve as class representatives because they did not sign the arbitration agreements or class action waivers that the majority of fighters in the proposed class have signed.

“But plaintiffs are currently challenging these provisions as unconscionable,” U.S. District Judge Richard F. Boulware said in a Friday minute order. “Were the court to agree, Zuffa’s objection would be moot.”

. . .

The fighters and proposed class are represented by Eric L. Cramer, Michael Dell’Angelo, Patrick F. Madden, Robert Maysey and Joshua P. Davis of Berger Montague, Joseph R. Saveri, Kevin E. Rayhill and Chris Young of the Joseph Saveri Law Firm LLP, Richard A. Koffman, Benjamin D. Brown and Daniel H. Silverman of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC, and W. Joseph Bruckner, Kyle Pozan and Brian Clark of Lockridge Grindal Nauen PLLP.

Max Miller never applied to college using early decision, unlike some of his wealthier classmates who were more certain about their first-choice school and able to pay full tuition. Instead, the 21-year-old Californian applied the traditional way, hoping to compare financial aid offers from multiple schools.

Except none came. Miller has a full tuition bill at Washington University in St. Louis—more than $60,000 annually—where he enrolled in 2022.

Miller believes his tuition is artificially high due to colleges’ collusion.

“I’ve clearly been on the unfair end of the admissions process,” said Miller, a named plaintiff in a suit this month that accuses elite colleges of using early decision to raise student costs.

The schools are accused of using early decision to lock in wealthy students who can pay more, giving the schools power to raise tuition and harm more price-sensitive students, such as Miller. Early decision allows applicants to apply early but requires a commitment to attend if accepted.

Universities are grappling with antitrust pressure from private plaintiffs such as Miller, who have accused them of conspiring to raise tuition and limit financial aid. The schools face treble damages and demands for injunctive relief from plaintiffs who claim the schools illegally shared information, inflating tuition.

. . .

Through binding early decision, schools secure a large chunk of students who are less likely to need financial assistance, which in turn leads to less pressure on colleges to compete on top-line tuition prices, said Benjamin D. Brown, co-chair of the antitrust practice at Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC, which represents the plaintiffs.

“If you know that half your class will pay whatever price you set, and then the rest of your class has some price sensitivity, you will set your price higher—i.e., full tuition rate—than it would be if everyone was somewhat price sensitive,” Brown said.

. . .

Brown, also Cohen Milstein’s managing partner, stands by the case’s theory, saying colleges haven’t been viewing their collective action through an antitrust lens.

“One consequence of that is a willingness to make broad agreements or understandings with multiple competing entities,” he said.