A Michigan judge said Monday it would be premature to free the state from liability for two dams’ collapse before further discovery, telling government lawyers he would be reversed “in a nanosecond” if he ended the suit so soon.
The state had filed the motion amid the discovery phase of consolidated mass tort and class actions seeking compensation for disastrous flooding as a result of the dam failures, but Michigan Court of Claims Judge James R. Redford rebuffed the state’s timing.
“I respectfully believe that we need to have discovery,” Judge Redford said during a hearing.
The Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy had asked the judge in an Aug. 22 motion to toss the case and save both sides the time and expense of exchanging expert reports, arguing that it was already clear from the available evidence that the state did not cause the dam collapses.
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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, Cozen O’Connor PC, Stern Law PLLC and Fegan Scott LLC.
A partner at Cohen Milstein, Posner has recovered billions on behalf of defrauded investors. Her cases include six of the top 100 securities fraud class action settlements of all time.
A courtroom sketch from In re Walt Disney Co. Derivative Litigation hangs on the wall in Laura Posner’s office in lower Manhattan.
The work, drawn by Andrea and Shirley Sheperd in the Delaware Court of Chancery nearly 20 years ago, was Posner’s first-ever case—and trial.
Posner, representing the plaintiffs, alleged that a $140 million severance payout to outgoing Disney president Michael Ovitz was a waste of assets and constituted various breaches of contractual and fiduciary duties.
“It was an extremely difficult trial,” Posner recalled. “It was a veritable who’s who of Big Law in the courthouse for the defendants every single day.”
While the defense had dozens of bold-faced legal names, Posner said her team typically had two people at bat daily, switching off to prep the witnesses for the next day.
Posner recounted the case to the New York Law Journal in response to a question about her first win in the courtroom. But she didn’t win that case.
“I think it was a 70-page decision,” she said. “If you read 69 of those pages,…you would have thought we won. And then you get to the last page, and we lost.”
“It was a very hard blow,” she explained. “It’s never fun to lose, but it was a hard blow because I firmly believe that what the Disney company did was not appropriate, that it was corporate waste and that it should have been the kind of behavior that corporations are not supposed to engage in to the detriment of their investors and shareholders.”
Impact Litigation
But in the decades since, Posner has recovered billions on behalf of defrauded investors. Her cases include six of the top 100 securities fraud class action settlements of all time. Last year, she settled In Re Wells Fargo for a historic $1 billion.
But those who know her have made clear she’s driven not by money or rankings, but by true passion to affect meaningful outcomes for the greater good.
Prior to joining Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll in 2017 as a partner, Posner served as the Bureau Chief for New Jersey’s Bureau of Securities—the top securities enforcer and regulator in the state.
Chad Johnson, now a partner at Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd, worked with Posner at Bernstein Litowitz Berger & Grossman. He also served as her counterpart in New York during the same period Posner was securities regulator for NJ.
“She knows the law and the cases cold,” Johnson said. “But beyond that, she brings to all these cases a level of passion and commitment that is something unique. She’s always looking for new ways to advance cases in the interest of the public.”
“And in the private sector you just don’t see that everyday,” he added.
Posner grew up in the Bay Area, completing her undergraduate degree at UCLA (magna cum laude) and then earning her J.D. from Harvard Law School.
She then moved to New York, and still lives in Manhattan with her husband, who works in education, and their young son.
Posner went to law school thinking she would go into civil rights litigation at the Department of Justice.
But when it came time, the DOJ under the then-new George W. Bush administration wasn’t prioritizing that kind of work, Posner recalled. She tried non-profits, but found that a lot of the job was not as legal as she might have hoped. For example, fixing a broken copier.
“I had a professor who introduced me to the world of plaintiffs class action firms,” she said, referencing Harvard Law’s Jon D. Hanson. “I was really interested in the kind of impact litigation, a lot of which was getting farmed out on the nonprofit stage, to other firms to litigate.”
She began as a summer associate at Millberg, later returning as an associate. And there she discovered the impact of shareholder derivative litigation.
“Along the way I came to a kind of realization that ensuring that people have a financial ability that withstands the ups and downs of life, they have to have a secure retirement,” Posner shared. “That people having the money to pay for everyday necessities was absolutely as crucial to ensuring everyone had equal rights in this country as anything else.”
Capt. Sean Coffey is now general counsel for the U.S. Navy, but he clearly recalls when Posner arrived at Bernstein Litowitz in the early 2000s. A senior partner then, Coffey said it was clear that the new hire “was a future leader of the plaintiffs bar.”
“She had a great sense of humor and a really great bullshit detector,” he said. “She didn’t put up with nonsense, in a good way.”
“She had outstanding judgment, just smart as a whip,” Coffey continued. “She plays well with others, she’s a very good leader. People gravitate toward her when she offers an opinion. We’re talking 20 years ago now, the smartest people in the room would stop and listen when she contributed.”
These days, Coffey said he’d be loath to go toe-to-toe with Posner.
Casino Queen’s parent company agreed to settle a proposed class action by workers claiming it cost them tens of millions when their employee stock ownership plan bought $170 million of the company’s stock in an overinflated deal, according to an Illinois federal court filing Thursday.
U.S. District Judge David W. Dugan approved the parties’ joint request Tuesday that the case remain paused while the workers and CQ Holding Co. Inc.’s board of directors work out a final deal to be brought before the court. The parties said the agreement also aims to resolve an appeal pending before the Seventh Circuit filed by the casino, challenging the district court’s decision to keep the case out of arbitration.
The judge directed the parties to file a motion for preliminary approval by Nov. 12.
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The workers are represented by Michelle C. Yau and Ryan A. Wheeler of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC and by Shaun Martin of Stris & Maher LLP.
A Maryland federal judge has preliminarily approved a nearly $2.2 million settlement ending a class action that alleged Bowl America’s board of directors acted in bad faith when approving a merger with Bowlero Corp.
According to U.S. District Judge Stephanie A. Gallagher’s order issued Friday, a fairness hearing is scheduled for Oct. 31.
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The plaintiffs are represented by Daniel Sommers and Richard Speirs of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC and Brett Krantz of Kohrman Jackson & Krantz LLP.
Medical billing software firm Arietis Health LLC has agreed to pay $2.8 million to settle out of a multidistrict litigation brought by a class of victims of a 2023 data breach involving Progress Software’s MOVEit file transfer tool.
The deal, announced Thursday, would resolve allegations that Arietis had inadequate data security before its computer systems were breached along with those of hundreds of other businesses.
A motion for preliminary approval of the settlement from the class said the agreement came after the parties were not able to reach a settlement after a round of mediation.
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The MDL plaintiffs are represented by Kristen A. Johnson of Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro LLP, E. Michelle Drake of Berger Montague, 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.
General Motors (GM) was ordered by a federal appeals court to face a class action claiming it violated laws of 26 U.S. states by knowingly selling several hundred thousand cars, trucks and SUVs with faulty transmissions.
The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said a lower court judge had discretion to let drivers sue in groups over Cadillac, Chevrolet and GMC vehicles equipped with 8L45 or 8L90 eight-speed automatic transmissions, and sold in the 2015 through 2019 model years.
Drivers said the vehicles shudder and shake in higher gears, and hesitate and lurch in lower gears, even after repair attempts. They also accused GM of telling dealers to provide assurance that harsh shifts were “normal.”
The GM litigation covers about 800,000 vehicles, including 514,000 in the certified classes.
Vehicles include the Cadillac CTS, CT6 and Escalade; Chevrolet Camaro, Colorado, Corvette and Silverado; and GMC Canyon, Sierra and Yukon, among others.
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“We look forward to holding GM accountable before a Michigan jury,” Ted Leopold, a Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll partner representing the drivers, said in a statement.
Merck cannot strike class claims in antitrust litigation over its rotavirus vaccine, a Pennsylvania federal judge ruled Wednesday, while also allowing the city of Baltimore to eliminate redundancies in its complaint.
U.S. District Judge Gerald A. McHugh disagreed with Merck’s position that there was no way to feasibly identify class members and that continued class certification proceedings would be burdensome. In the same decision, he approved Baltimore’s request to change the proposed class definition and withdraw its demand for a jury trial.
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Baltimore’s mayor and city council and the proposed class are represented by Daniel Silverman, Leonardo Chingcuanco and Sharon Robertson of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC, Daniel Walker, Eric Cramer, Russell Paul and David Langer of Berger Montague PC, and Ebony Thompson and Jane Lewis of the Baltimore Solicitor’s Office.
Bowl America board members have agreed to pay nearly $2.2 million to settle a class action that alleged the company’s board of directors acted in bad faith when it approved a merger with Bowlero Corp., according to a proposal submitted to a Maryland federal court.
The settlement comes more than three years after Bowlero Corp. announced it would acquire Bowl America. Co-counsel for the class and lead plaintiffs on Tuesday filed a settlement agreement for court approval, with Bowl America defendant directors agreeing to pay $2.18 million to the certified class of investors.
The settlement, the plaintiffs said, will bring to a close an “intense and hard-fought litigation” that has included motions to dismiss, expert and class discovery, and mediation. The plaintiffs said the settlement is a product of “vigorous good-faith, arm’s-length negotiations between experienced counsel” and mediation efforts by U.S. Magistrate Judge Adam B. Abelson.
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The plaintiffs are represented by Daniel Sommers and Richard Spiers of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC and Brett Krantz of Kohrman Jackson & Krantz LLP.
End-payor plaintiffs asked a New Jersey federal judge Tuesday to give final approval of a $35 million settlement resolving their antitrust claims against Pfizer over the cholesterol medication Lipitor.
The proposed settlement will put an end to claims from the end payors, which represent a class of third-party payors and a class of consumers who purchased, paid, and/or reimbursed for branded Lipitor or generic Lipitor in 24 states and the District of Columbia, that Pfizer conspired with Ranbaxy Laboratories Ltd. to delay the release of a generic Lipitor to monopolize the market.
U.S. District Judge Peter G. Sheridan gave preliminary approval to the settlement on June 3.
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The end payors are represented by Lisa J. Rodriguez of Dilworth Paxson LLP, Sharon Robertson of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC, Kenneth A. Wexler of Wexler Boley & Elgersma LLP, Michael Buchman of Motley Rice LLC and Robert G. Eisler of Grant & Eisenhofer PA.
As new rules went into effect this month following a March settlement between home sellers and the National Association of Realtors, two legal experts have differing opinions on the real estate market’s outlook as changes come to standard contracts for representation and commission payments.
The recent $418 million joint agreement sought to resolve two antitrust cases in which the plaintiffs brought claim against the NAR over its compensation rules with the Multiple Listing Service cooperative compensation model rule. In Moehrl v. National Association of Realtors, the plaintiffs, home sellers who listed their homes on MLSs, accused NAR and others of allegedly conspiring to use the mandatory buyer broker commission rule. The plaintiffs claimed these long-standing practices have inflated the cost of broker commissions, which have largely been nonnegotiable and to be paid by the home seller.
Although the agreement is still awaiting approval by the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, new rules went into effect Aug. 17, which aim to allow buyers and sellers more freedom to negotiate commission costs.
Some of the biggest changes require homebuyers to enter into a buyer representation agreement with their potential realtor before showings happen. Another change is a shift in who foots the bill for the commission fees. Historically, the sellers have paid about 6% of the home’s sale price, with 3% going to the seller’s agent and 3% going to the buyer’s agent. With the rule changes, the compensation amounts are no longer listed in an MLS, and it’s up to the home seller and buyer to determine who pays those fees.
Robert Braun, a partner at Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll in Washington, D.C., helped lead the plaintiffs to the settlement with the NAR. He told Law.com that he remains hopeful that the settlement will provide more transparency to a market that has been notoriously riddled with requirements and restrictions.
“We continue to be very pleased by the settlement agreement,” Braun said. “We think that it’s important, and includes really significant reforms to the residential real estate brokerage market that should bring relief to sellers and homebuyers.”
Braun also said that he thinks the new landscape could lead to innovative ideas being generated in the real estate brokerage industry, whereas parties were previously stuck with a traditional process in which compensation was fixed on a MLS listing.
“Our hope and expectation is that the settlement agreement will lower transaction costs for sellers and buyers, and will create opportunities in the residential real estate brokerage space for new business models that didn’t exist before, are more efficient than what existed in the past, and are cheaper for buyers and sellers,” he said.
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Braun cautioned that while some may be worried about confusing language in the agreements, the updated requirements are buyer-friendly and work to bring clarity to prospective homeowners.
“I do think there are people who have an interest in instilling confusion, but one of its requirements is that buyer-brokers have to disclose at the beginning of the relationship exactly what they’re charging to buyers, and get buyers permission on that pricing,” Braun said. “We think that’s important and will result in increased transparency to buyers, and that it will empower buyers to negotiate a commission that they’re being required to pay.”
Braun added that, ultimately, the decision of whether to use an agent lies with the sellers or buyers, which he said is consistent with the results of the NAR settlement.
“It should be up to individual sellers and buyers and their circumstances to decide whether a real estate agent could help them, or whether they want to save money by forgoing an agent,” Braun said. “Different people have different circumstances and our belief is that this settlement gives consumers better choices about who they hire, and how much they want to pay.”