General Motors can’t rely on an arbitration clause contained in a purchase agreement between a plaintiff customer and a dealership to arbitrate his claims alleging GM made cars with a defective transmission, after a Michigan federal judge ruled Friday the clause doesn’t cover GM, which wasn’t a party to the contract.
In a 13-page order, U.S. District Judge David M. Lawson of the Eastern District of Michigan issued an order denying in part GM’s motion to compel arbitration against Kenneth Wilkinson, one of several plaintiffs in a proposed class action accusing the automotive giant of knowingly selling cars with defective automatic transmissions.
The plaintiffs alleged GM never told existing customers about the issue and only addressed it if they came in and complained about the problem within the warranty, so many drivers had to pay out of pocket for repairs.
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“We welcome Judge Lawson’s well reasoned order. Despite GM’s multiple efforts to derail this litigation, we look forward to a jury hearing the overwhelming evidence about issues related to GM’s 8 speed transmissions,” plaintiffs’ co-counsel Ted Leopold of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll told Law360 in an emailed statement Friday afternoon.
The proposed class is represented by Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC, Gordon & Partners P.A., Berger Montague PC, Capstone Law APC, The Miller Law Firm PC, Kessler Topaz Meltzer & Check LLP, Keller Rohrback LLP and Pitt McGee Palmer and Rivers PC.
A California-based lighting company and the managers of its employee stock ownership plan agreed to resolve a proposed class action claiming they mismanaged the $25 million sale of company stock that established the plan, according to a filing in federal court.
Linna Chea, B-K Lighting Inc., company executives, the Lite Star ESOP Committee and the plan’s trustee, Prudent Fiduciary Services LLC, said in a notice Tuesday that they’d reached a settlement agreement following a June 3 mediation session. The parties asked the court to give them 45 days to finalize the pact and file a motion for preliminary approval.
Chea filed her Employee Retirement Income Security Act lawsuit against the company and its ESOP managers in April 2023, claiming B-K Lighting’s founder, Douglas W. Hagen, set up the Lite Star ESOP in 2017 to cash out his stake in the company. Hagen died in 2021, and Chea’s lawsuit names as defendants his estate and his wife and son, both of whom worked for B-K Lighting.
According to Chea, B-K Lighting, Prudent Fiduciary and its owner, Miguel Paredes, structured a sale of all of Hagen’s stock, valued at about $25.27 million, using a loan to the ESOP to cover the amount. In addition to saddling the plan with immense debt, this inflated price failed to account for B-K Lighting’s declining sales and market share, caused by its failure to adapt to changes in the industry and adopt a digital marketing strategy, Chea claimed.
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Chea and the proposed class are represented by Daniel Feinberg of Feinberg Jackson Worthman & Wasow LLP, and by Michelle C. Yau and Caroline Bressman of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC.
Business groups want the justices to put a stop to overly broad class actions that include people without injuries. But a group of scholars have identified a procedural flaw that could derail a ruling in the case currently set to be heard this month.
The U.S. Supreme Court is set to consider a case that business groups are hoping will stem the tide of class actions they say are swamping corporate defendants in recent years. But a group of scholars have identified a messy procedural flaw in the case that could derail any ruling by the justices.
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But the plaintiffs and a group of federal court scholars say the Supreme Court should never have taken the case in the first place and are urging the justices to dismiss Labcorp v. Davis as “improvidently granted” without issuing a ruling on the merits.
“There is only one way for the Court to avoid issuing an advisory opinion in this case: dismiss the writ of certiorari as improvidently granted or for lack of jurisdiction,” wrote a group of law professors who specialize in issues of federal jurisdiction, including Berkeley Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky, Marin Levy of Duke University School of Law, and Cardozo Law School professor Alexander Reinert
Inherent in the case is a “tangle of jurisdictional, prudential, and factual issues that leave no viable path to the question presented,” the scholars wrote.
The Supreme Court has already dismissed two other class action cases this term as improvidently granted involving securities fraud claims against Facebook and Nvidia.
The scholars and plaintiffs have identified what they consider to be two fundamental flaws in the Labcorp case.
The first is that the question before the justices-whether a court can certify a class that includes uninjured plaintiffs-does not apply to the facts of the case because the Ninth Circuit affirmed that the class included only injured plaintiffs.
“There is nothing to reverse,” the plaintiffs wrote. “Neither the district court nor the Ninth Circuit had any occasion to decide the question presented at all because neither found that there were any uninjured members to begin with.”
That is because Labcorp, the scholars wrote, appealed the wrong class definition.
Labcorp only filed its appeal over the district court’s original May 2022 definition of the covered class, which includes all legally blind individuals who were “denied full and equal enjoyment” of Labcorp’s services.
After Labcorp objected to that definition as an improper “fail-safe” class, the district court later amended the class definition to cover those “who, due to their disability, were unable to use the Labcorp Express” kiosks.
Ironically, Labcorp had originally objected to the May class definition as a “fail-safe class” that “jettison[ed] all ‘uninjured’ plaintiffs.” Labcorp argued that fail-safe classes are unfair because they tie membership in the class to the outcome of the merits of the litigation.
Now, Labcorp is largely making the opposite argument about the subsequent August definition; that it impermissibly includes uninjured plaintiffs in violation of Article Ill standing requirements, the scholars wrote.
The plaintiffs and scholars say the company failed to appeal that definition and instead only filed a notice of appeal from the original May class definition that has since been supplanted by the district court as a result of Labcorp’s own litigation decisions.
“Labcorp makes no argument that the May class definition fails Rule 23, much less that it presents the question this Court granted certiorari to resolve,” the scholars wrote. “To the contrary, Labcorp argued below that the May class definition does not implicate the question presented because it includes only individuals who were injured. In Labcorp’s own view, then, answering the question presented here would be a purely advisory exercise.”
Added the scholars: “Because of these fundamental, unavoidable, and intractable problems, the Court should dismiss the writ as improvidently granted or for lack of jurisdiction.” The brief was filed by Joseph Marc Sellers of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll.
A Maryland federal judge granted final approval Thursday to settlements worth nearly $400 million for poultry processing workers who claimed that the nation’s biggest chicken producers conspired to suppress their wages.
In an order, U.S. District Judge Stephanie A. Gallagher of the District of Maryland said there were no objections to the various settlement agreements, though more than 3,300 exclusion requests had been submitted by class members.
“The settlement agreements are fair, reasonable and adequate settlements for the settlement classes within the meaning of Federal Rules of Civil Procedure 23 and in accordance with the factors identified by the Fourth Circuit,” Judge Gallagher wrote.
Judge Gallagher also gave final sign-off to over $132.6 million in attorney fees for the three lead class counsel firms in the case: Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC, Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro LLP and Handley Farah & Anderson PLLC That figure represents 33.3% of the total $398 million settlement fund.
“Without the initiative, skill, experience and hard work of plaintiffs’ counsel, this case would never have been filed, let alone succeed,” the workers wrote in their attorney fees request last month. “No government enforcer was investigating these claims. No other firms were. The conspiracy was carefully hidden from the workers. Only plaintiffs’ counsel’s dogged nine-month investigation revealed the poultry industry’s conspiracy to suppress compensation.”
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The workers are represented by Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC, Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro LLP, Handley Farah & Anderson PLLC, Lockridge Grindal Nauen PLLP and Berger Montague.
InnovAge Holding Corp. and a class of stockholders have agreed to a $27 million settlement to resolve claims that the senior-health care company made misleading statements in an initial public offering that later caused stock prices to tank after a government audit exposed the falsehoods.
Lead plaintiffs — the El Paso Firemen & Policemen’s Pension Fund, San Antonio Fire & Police Pension Fund and Indiana Public Retirement System — filed a motion for preliminary approval on Monday, stating they reached a deal after arm’s length negotiations and three years of litigation.
According to shareholders, the settlement will provide class members with a “substantial percentage of the maximum realistically recoverable damages that could be established at trial,” and it is a meaningful and immediate recovery when considered against the risks of continued litigation.
“There were many risks to continued litigation, including hurdles to proving falsity, scienter and loss causation,” the motion states.
The motion also says class counsel from Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC will seek an award of attorney fees of no more than 20% of the settlement fund, or roughly $5.4 million, as well as $800,000 in litigation costs and service awards for the lead plaintiffs.
The deal comes after a Colorado federal judge granted class certification in January to any person or entity who purchased or acquired InnovAge stock between May 11, 2021, and Dec. 22, 2021, or who acquired stock “in or traceable to” the company’s initial public offering.
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The shareholders are represented by Julie G. Reiser, Molly Bowen, Jan E. Messerschmidt, Brendan R. Schneiderman, Carol V. Gilden and Manuel J. Dominguez of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC and Cecil E. Morris and Adrian P. Castro of Fairfield & Woods PC.
Capital One Financial Corp. cannot ditch all of a proposed class action alleging its coupon-search browser extension steals commissions from social media creators who drive customers to affiliated merchants, a Virginia federal judge ruled, saying the plaintiffs plausibly alleged Capital One knew it was diverting their “rightfully earned” commissions.
In an order Monday, U.S. District Judge Anthony J. Trenga partially denied Capital One’s motion to dismiss an amended consolidated class complaint led by five content creators who say the Capital One Shopping browsing extension — which allows consumers to search for online coupon codes, compare prices and earn gift card rewards — is interfering with clicks on their affiliate links to steal their commissions.
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The plaintiffs in the instant suit are represented by Steven T. Webster of Webster Book LLP, Norman E. Siegel of Stueve Siegel Hanson LLP, E. Michelle Drake of Berger Montague PC, Douglas J. McNamara of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC, and James J. Pizzirusso of Hausfeld LLP.
William C. Smith & Co. will be stepping out of litigation accusing the company of using property management platform RealPage to conspire with other landlords and fix the price of rentals in the D.C. area, after agreeing to reform its business practices and shell out over $1 million.
D.C. Attorney General Brian L. Schwalb unveiled the settlement Monday, calling it a clear win and commending W.C. Smith for “putting an end to its anticompetitive practices and cooperating with my office to reach this agreement.”
The settlement does three main things. First, it obligates W.C. Smith to pay $1,050,000 to the D.C. government, which will go toward civil penalties, money to affected residents and legal fees. W.C. Smith must also change its rent-pricing practices to ban the use of software that “relies on any nonpublic or confidential data from other companies” and refrain from encouraging anyone else to use software like RealPage to set rent prices.
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The District of Columbia is represented in-house by Brian L. Schwalb, Will Stephens, Adam Gitlin, Mehreen Imtiaz and Ashley Walters of the D.C. Office of the Attorney General, and by Emmy L. Levens, Robert A. Braun, Zachary Krowitz, Laura K. Follansbee, Alexander J. Noronha and Aaron J. Marks of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC.
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.