Nearly 16,000 Amazon drivers filed arbitration claims against the e-commerce giant with the American Arbitration Association this week seeking unpaid wages and compensation for work-related expenses because of their misclassification as independent contractors.
About 15,860 Amazon.com Flex drivers in California, Illinois and Massachusetts submitted arbitration claims Tuesday, where 453 similar cases are already being litigated, according to a news release from Cohen Milstein, one of the firms representing the workers.
Of the cases already being litigated, nine drivers’ claims have gone to a final arbitration hearing, where the average recovery has been around $9,000 in damages, Steve Tindall of Gibbs Law Group, who is representing the drivers, told Law360 Wednesday.
Drivers are recovering unpaid wages and damages proportional to the length of time they’ve been driving for Amazon Flex, so some of those workers recovered over $20,000 while others less than the $9,000 average, Tindall said.
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Tindall and Joseph Sellers of Cohen Milstein have been gathering the claims for the last three or four years, Tindall said, and added that he hopes they’ll be able to resolve them promptly.
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The workers are represented by Joseph Sellers of Cohen Milstein and Steven Tindall of Gibbs Law Group.
- First-of-its kind verdict followed two decades of litigation
- Victim families relied on ancient English theory to bring case
A landmark $38.3 million jury verdict against Chiquita—the first in an American court to hold a US corporation liable over international human rights violations—raises the specter of billions of dollars in liability for the company and a broader warning for global business titans, attorneys for the plaintiffs say.
“It shows US courts remain open to vindicating human rights,” said Agnieszka Fryszman, a partner at Cohen Milstein and one of the lawyers for the winning Colombian plaintiffs. “There is no law-free zone you can take advantage of.”
A West Palm Beach, Fla., jury on Monday found Chiquita responsible for the deaths of eight Colombians murdered by Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia more than two decades ago. Chiquita paid the paramilitary organization—designated a terrorist organization by US officials—more than $1.7 million during a time when the group murdered thousands of locals around one of Chiquita’s most profitable operations.
Attorneys involved with the litigation portrayed the verdict as both a unique landmark in international litigation as well as a momentum-shift in the massive multidistrict litigation against the agriculture firm. It’s the only case of its kind against a US company to get a winning verdict for plaintiffs, and this first bellwether trial involved just nine of the roughly 4,500 plaintiffs suing the company.
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Despite hurdles, such as needing to file dozens of expert reports on various facets of Colombian law, the general principles of negligence and hazardous activity are universal, she said, and that’s why children and spouses of people killed in Colombia were awarded up to $2.7 million for their loss.
“People and corporations that operate in places with less rule of law and access to courts and history of corruption will look to this verdict and see you’ll be held accountable in American court,” Fryszman said. “You can’t simply roll the dice and hope you’ll not get caught.”
An Illinois federal judge greenlighted class status to retired Citgo employees who accused the company of shortchanging them by using outdated metrics to calculate early retirement payouts, saying the former employees properly winnowed down the class definition.
In an order Friday, U.S. District Judge Matthew F. Kennelly signed off on an amended class of Citgo retirees in their Employee Retirement Income Security Act suit against the company, its benefits committee and its retirement plans.
When Citgo converted retirees’ benefits from a single life annuity, or SLA, to a joint and survivor annuity, or JSA — which provides benefits to a retiree’s spouse in the event of the retiree’s death — it relied on mortality tables from the 1970s to make those calculations, the former Citgo employees alleged in their August 2021 lawsuit.
The Citgo retirees leading the suit — Leslie Urlaub, Mark Pellegrini and Mark Ferry — said that faulty math led them and other former employees to receive a smaller payout than they were owed.
Judge Kennelly granted conditional class certification in May, but said the former workers needed to narrow the suit to exclude about 30 individuals whose benefits weren’t calculated based on the 1971 mortality table and 8% interest rate.
The retirees did so, adding a line stating that the class does not include individuals whose benefits were calculated by the “tabular factors” — for example, by assumptions other than the 1971 mortality table and 8% interest rate. The class also does not include individuals who received a subsidized preretirement survivor annuity, the former workers’ class definition said.
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The class is represented by Todd F. Jackson and Nina Wasow of Feinberg Jackson Worthman and Wasow LLP, by John R. Stokes, Peter K. Stris, Rachana A. Pathak and Victor A. O’Connell of Stris & Maher LLP, by Carol V. Gilden, Ryan Wheeler and Michelle C. Yau of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC and by Shaun P. Martin of University of San Diego Law School.
Thousands of delivery drivers filed legal claims against Amazon on Tuesday, alleging the company’s classification of them as independent contractors instead of employees has led to unpaid wages and other financial losses.
Two law firms spearheading the action said about 15,860 Amazon Flex drivers have submitted arbitration claims with the American Arbitration Association, where 453 similar cases are already being litigated.
Amazon’s Flex program, which was founded in 2015, signs up drivers to deliver packages with their own cars and a special app.
The company pitches the work as a flexible, part-time opportunity that allows people to earn extra income during the hours they choose. Most drivers earn $18-25 per hour, according to Amazon, though how much they get paid can depend on other factors, such as their location and how long it takes to complete deliveries.
The arbitration claims submitted Tuesday were made by drivers in California, Illinois and Massachusetts, all of which have rules that limit the amount of control companies can exert over independent contractors. The claims, collected over a span of four years by attorneys Joseph Sellers and Steven Tindall, maintain the drivers should be classified as Amazon employees instead of independent contractors, based on current laws in the three states.
That change would allow Flex drivers to collect unpaid wages because Amazon only pays them for a pre-determined number of hours regardless of how long it takes to complete deliveries, according to the lawyers. It would also allow Flex drivers to receive overtime pay if they work more than 40 hours a week and get reimbursements for work-related expenses, such as gas costs and vehicle wear and tear.
Gas and other vehicle costs are a “huge expense to our clients,” Tindall said during an interview. He also said one client represented in the claims worked 7-day weeks making deliveries for Amazon during a holiday period and never was paid overtime.
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Tindall and Sellers say they have so far succeeded in seven of the eight arbitration claims against Amazon they took to trial. The drivers they represented in those cases were awarded an average of $9,000 in damages.
A South Florida jury found the company liable for killings committed by a paramilitary group that was on the banana producer’s payroll.
The jury on Monday ordered the multinational banana producer to pay $38.3 million to 16 family members of farmers and other civilians who were killed in separate episodes by the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia — a right-wing paramilitary group that Chiquita bankrolled from 1997 to 2004.
The company has faced hundreds of similar suits in U.S. courts filed by the families of other victims of violence by the paramilitary group in Colombia, but the verdict in Florida represents the first time Chiquita has been found culpable.
The decision, which the company said it planned to appeal, could influence the outcome in other suits, legal experts said.
The verdict in favor of the victims is a rare instance — in Colombia and elsewhere — in which a private corporation is held accountable to victims for its operation in regions with widespread violence or social unrest, legal experts said.
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Agnieszka Fryszman, another lawyer who represented the plaintiffs, said, “The verdict does not bring back the husbands and sons who were killed, but it sets the record straight and places accountability for funding terrorism where it belongs: at Chiquita’s doorstep.”
The jurors reached their decision after two days of deliberation and six weeks of trial in U.S. District Court in West Palm Beach, in which lawyers argued over the motivation for payments that Chiquita executives admitted making to the paramilitary group.
The State Department designated the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia as a foreign terrorist organization in 2001.
Chiquita, as part of a plea deal with the Department of Justice to settle charges of doing business with a terrorist group, admitted in 2007 to having paid the paramilitaries $1.7 million, as an investigation revealed.
The United Self-Defense Forces were a product of Colombia’s brutal civil war, which erupted in the 1960s and killed at least 220,000 people.
They formed in 1997 as a coalition of heavily armed far-right groups that drug traffickers and businesspeople turned to for protection from leftist guerrilla groups.
The war ended in 2016 when the government and the main leftist group, which was also responsible for killing civilians, signed a peace deal.
Lawyers representing the families in the South Florida trial argued that Chiquita’s operations benefited from the company’s relationship with the paramilitary group, which sowed fear across a 7,000-square-mile fertile farming region connecting Panama and Colombia until it disbanded in 2006.
They said the group killed or forced out farmers, allowing Chiquita to buy land at depressed values and expand its operations by converting plantain farms to more profitable banana farms.
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Some victims who were part of the lawsuit were killed in front of their family members, lawyers for the plaintiffs said.
In one case, an unidentified girl was traveling to a farm by taxi with her mother and stepfather when they were stopped by gunmen, the lawyers said during the trial. The men executed the stepfather and then fatally shot the mother as she tried to run away. They then gave the girl the equivalent of 65 cents to take a bus back to town.
A court in the United States has found multinational fruit company Chiquita Brands International liable for financing a Colombian paramilitary group.
The group, the United Self-Defence Forces of Colombia (AUC), was designated by the US as a terrorist organisation at the time.
The AUC engaged in widespread human rights abuses, including murdering people it suspected of links with left-wing rebels.
Following a civil case brought by eight Colombian families whose relatives were killed by the AUC, Chiquita has been ordered to pay $38.3m (£30m) in damages to the families.
The jury in the case, which was heard in a federal court in South Florida, found Chiquita responsible for the wrongful deaths of eight men murdered by the AUC.
The victims ranged from trade unionists to banana workers.
The case was brought by the families after Chiquita pleaded guilty in 2007 to making payments to the AUC.
During the 2007 trial, it was revealed that Chiquita had made payments amounting to more than $1.7m to the AUC in the six years from 1997 to 2004.
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But the plaintiffs argued that the company formed “an unholy alliance with the AUC” at a time when Chiquita was expanding its presence in regions controlled by the AUC.
The regular payments continued even after the AUC was designated by the US as a foreign terrorist organisation in 2001.
While the AUC claimed to have been created to defend landowners from attacks and extortion attempts by left-wing rebels, the paramilitary group more often acted as a death squad for drug traffickers.
At its height, it had an estimated 30,000 members who engaged in intimidation, drug trafficking, extortion, forced displacement and killings.
It also launched brutal attacks on villagers they suspected of supporting left-wing rebels.
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Agnieszka Fryszman, one of the leading lawyers for the plaintiffs, praised the families she represented, saying that they had “risked their lives to come forward to hold Chiquita to account, putting their faith in the United States justice system”.
She added that “the verdict does not bring back the husbands and sons who were killed, but it sets the record straight and places accountability for funding terrorism where it belongs: at Chiquita’s doorstep”.
Another lawyer for the Colombian families, Leslie Kroeger, said that “after a long 17 years against a well-funded defence, justice was finally served”.
A second case against Chiquita brought by another group of plaintiffs is due to start on 15 July.
A Michigan federal judge on Thursday gave initial approval for a $25 million settlement between a class of Flint adults and businesses and a water engineering company accused of prolonging the town’s water crisis, calling the deal fair and an opportunity to avoid years of “exhausting” litigation.
U.S. District Judge Judith E. Levy said Veolia North America’s settlement with a Flint class of about 45,000 Flint, Michigan, property owners, businesses and adult residents was adequate and in the public’s interest to bring some closure to residents who have been involved in the litigation for nearly a decade. The judge also certified the settlement class.
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Ted Leopold of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC, representing the class, also said the agreement helps residents see relief faster than continuing litigation, which could potentially not reach a resolution until “years down the road.” He said the class felt it was important to bring “closure” to the case.
“We felt this was a very strong resolution of the case based on totality of circumstances we’d be up against,” Leopold told Judge Levy Thursday.
Drinking water for at least 2.5 million North Carolinians is contaminated with the toxic “forever chemicals” known as PFAS at levels exceeding new federal standards, according to an analysis by the Environmental Working Group. EWG’s analysis is based on averaged drinking water testing results from 2022 reported by North Carolina, and information from the EPA’s Fifth Unregulated Contaminant Monitoring Rule, also known as the UCMR 5.
WRAL reports that some of the largest utilities in the state are dealing with PFAS levels above the EPA’s new standards including Piedmont Triad Regional Water Authority, City of Durham, City of Greensboro, Fayetteville Public Works Commission, and Brunswick County Public Utilities.
“I don’t want everyday people to have to bear the burden of this when we know that there are companies that have put these pollutants in the water and we know we’ve got to clean it up,” Governor Roy Cooper said.
“Now’s the time to make sure that all of these water systems have the filters and technology that they need to make sure that people have clean water,” Cooper said. “And now it’s time to make the polluters pay,” he added.
This week marks the seventh anniversary of when the public learned that forever chemicals, including GenX, had been dumped into the Cape Fear River from the Chemours Fayetteville works chemical plant.
A split Second Circuit panel backed workers — and joined three other circuits — when it rejected an attempt to force a proposed class action Employee Retirement Income Security Act lawsuit into individual arbitration, but employers are seizing on a dissent from the recent ruling to try to turn the tide.
The 2-1 decision the Second Circuit published May 1 upheld the denial of a motion to compel arbitration from debt relief company Strategic Financial Solutions LLC and Argent Trust Co., the trustee to Strategic’s employee stock ownership plan. Strategic, Argent and other Strategic employees and companies named in the suit sought to force former Strategic worker Ramon Dejesus Cedeno to individually arbitrate claims he first brought in New York federal court in November 2020 and block any claims he brought on behalf of the ESOP.
The panel majority said an arbitration provision in plan documents was invalid because it blocked Cedeno from vindicating rights under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act.
Plaintiff-side attorney Michelle Yau, chair of the benefits practice group at Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC, called the decision “a clear victory.”
“Now it’s four circuits that have held pretty much the exact same thing on the effective vindication doctrine,” Yau said. Yau added that the decision was “pretty critical for employees who need to be able to vindicate their rights in court.”
The Second Circuit decision was quickly cited in cases nationwide both at the district level and on appeal involving motions to compel arbitration of ERISA claims. The Second Circuit’s dissent even became the subject of debate at panel arguments before the Sixth Circuit in an employer-side appeal seeking to compel arbitration of a 401(k) fee suit and prompted an additional round of briefing.
The first attempts to regulate artificial intelligence programs that play a hidden role in hiring, housing and medical decisions for millions of Americans are facing pressure from all sides and floundering in statehouses nationwide.
Only one of seven bills aimed at preventing AI’s penchant to discriminate when making consequential decisions — including who gets hired, money for a home or medical care — has passed. Colorado Gov. Jared Polis hesitantly signed the bill on Friday.
Colorado’s bill and those that faltered in Washington, Connecticut and elsewhere faced battles on many fronts, including between civil rights groups and the tech industry, and lawmakers wary of wading into a technology few yet understand and governors worried about being the odd-state-out and spooking AI startups.
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While anti-discrimination laws are already on the books, those who study AI discrimination say it’s a different beast, which the U.S. is already behind in regulating.
“The computers are making biased decisions at scale,” said Christine Webber, a civil rights attorney who has worked on class action lawsuits over discrimination including against Boeing and Tyson Foods. Now, Webber is nearing final approval on one of the first-in-the-nation settlements in a class action over AI discrimination.
“Not, I should say, that the old systems were perfectly free from bias either,” said Webber. But “any one person could only look at so many resumes in the day. So you could only make so many biased decisions in one day and the computer can do it rapidly across large numbers of people.”
When you apply for a job, an apartment or a home loan, there’s a good chance AI is assessing your application: sending it up the line, assigning it a score or filtering it out. It’s estimated as many as 83% of employers use algorithms to help in hiring, according to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
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Webber’s class action lawsuit alleges that an AI system that scores rental applications disproportionately assigned lower scores to Black or Hispanic applicants. A study found that an AI system built to assess medical needs passed over Black patients for special care.
Studies and lawsuits have allowed a glimpse under the hood of AI systems, but most algorithms remain veiled. Americans are largely unaware that these tools are being used, polling from Pew Research shows. Companies generally aren’t required to explicitly disclose that an AI was used.
“Just pulling back the curtain so that we can see who’s really doing the assessing and what tool is being used is a huge, huge first step,” said Webber. “The existing laws don’t work if we can’t get at least some basic information.”
That’s what Colorado’s bill, along with another surviving bill in California, are trying to change. The bills, including a flagship proposal in Connecticut that was killed under opposition from the governor, are largely similar.
Colorado’s bill will require companies using AI to help make consequential decisions for Americans to annually assess their AI for potential bias; implement an oversight program within the company; tell the state attorney general if discrimination was found; and inform to customers when an AI was used to help make a decision for them, including an option to appeal.