Are the technologies that power online advertising all part of one giant market, or are there distinct markets within the multibillion-dollar industry?
The answer is critical to Google’s defense in an antitrust case brought by the US Justice Department that went to trial on Monday in a packed Alexandria, Va., courtroom.
“Market definition, not just in this case, but in most antitrust cases, has potential to be outcome determinative,” said former DOJ antitrust attorney Dan McCuaig, who is now a partner with Cohen Milstein.
The highly anticipated trial comes on the heels of Google’s defeat in August an antitrust case where a Washington, D.C., judge ruled the tech giant illegally monopolized the market for online search engines.
For Google (GOOG), the broader the market, the more likely it can overcome federal prosecutors’ claims that it illegally monopolized markets for online advertising technology in violation of antitrust laws.
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“I think it’s a clever play by Google,” McCuaig said. “I don’t think it ultimately carries the day.”
McCuaig said Google may have relied too strongly on a Supreme Court case involving American Express, in which the high court ruled that credit card networks were one market with two sides.
Meat industry giants Cargill, National Beef Packing and Hormel Foods have agreed to pay a combined $57.4 million to exit a proposed class action accusing them of suppressing workers’ pay at processing plants.
Lawyers for the workers asked, opens new tab a U.S. judge in Colorado to preliminarily approve the three deals, which would push total settlements to more than $200 million since the lawsuit was filed in 2022.
The settlements cover claims from tens of thousands of red meat processing workers at 140 plants alleging a years-long conspiracy among leading processors to keep wages low.
The workers claim the processors and two consulting companies violated antitrust law by sharing confidential compensation data though industry surveys and other means.
Cargill said it will pay $29.75 million, National Beef Packing agreed to pay $14.2 million and Hormel Foods will pay $13.5 million, according to the new settlements.
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For plaintiffs: Shana Scarlett of Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro; Brent Johnson of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll; and George Farah of Handley Farah & Anderson
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.