A New York federal court refused a bid from Takeda Pharmaceuticals Co. to escape a long-running case accusing it of unlawfully delaying generic versions of its diabetes treatment Actos and scheduled a trial to start in July.

U.S. District Judge Ronnie Abrams issued an opinion and order on Monday denying Takeda’s motion for summary judgment while partially granting a summary judgment motion from the buyers.

The judge also issued a separate order Monday scheduling the case for trial starting on July 21, but said the trial could be adjourned if the Second Circuit has not yet ruled on a petition from Takeda seeking an immediate appeal.

The case traces back to 2013 and has already taken two trips to the appeals court. Certified classes of direct purchasers and end payors have accused Takeda of violating antitrust law by “misdescribing” its patent rights to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, delaying the launch of generic versions of Actos and causing inflated prices.

. . .

The end payors are represented by Hilliard Shadowen LLP, Miller Shah LLP, Wexler Boley & Elgersma LLP, Motley Rice LLC and Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC.

A California federal judge on Monday certified a class of thousands of hospitals alleging Intuitive Surgical monopolized the market for robotic surgical tools by blocking third-party repairs and tying services to robot purchases, finding the case raises common antitrust questions that can be resolved on a classwide basis.

In a 26-page order, U.S. District Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin of the Northern District of California certified a class of potentially thousands of entities that purchased Intuitive Surgical Inc.’s da Vinci service and its EndoWrist products in the U.S. from May 21, 2017, to Dec. 31, 2021, excluding hospitals run by the U.S. Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs.

The ruling is the latest development in antitrust litigation launched in May 2021 alleging that Intuitive Surgical’s purported anticompetitive contracts unlawfully inflated prices for thousands of healthcare providers nationwide. The suit at hand was brought by customers, while Intuitive Surgical’s rival, Surgical Instrument Service Co. Inc., filed its own parallel antitrust lawsuit against the company the same month asserting similar antitrust claims.

Intuitive Surgical makes the da Vinci surgical robot system for minimally invasive soft tissue surgery, along with surgical instruments called EndoWrists, which are attached to the da Vinci’s mechanical arms and use fine wire cables that thread through a complex pulley system, allowing the surgeon to move the surgical instruments with great precision.

But the hospitals allege in their suit that the company has held an illegal monopoly over the relevant market by implementing and enforcing agreements that require purchasers to use Intuitive Surgical as the sole service provider for all da Vinci systems and by prohibiting purchasers from either servicing the robot themselves or hiring an independent robot repair company, which is often cheaper.

The hospitals’ suit asserted antitrust claims of tying, exclusive dealing and monopolization for servicing the da Vinci robots in violation of Sections 1 and 2 of the Sherman Act. But after surviving multiple rounds of pleadings, the parties filed dueling summary judgment bids, seeking early wins on certain claims.

In March 2024, the judge granted the hospital plaintiffs partial summary judgment, finding that the da Vinci surgical robot and EndoWrist instruments are separate products, but the judge refused to rule on the market issues raised by the hospitals and denied the company’s dueling summary judgment motion.

. . .

The class is represented by Jeffrey J. Corrigan and Jeffrey L. Spector of Spector Roseman & Kodroff PC, by Gary I. Smith Jr., Samuel Maida and Reena A. Gambhir of Hausfeld LLP, by Benjamin D. Brown, Daniel McCuaig, Manuel J. Dominguez and Christopher J. Bateman of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC, and by Michael J. Boni, Joshua D. Snyder and John E. Sindoni of Boni Zack & Snyder LLC.

Muhammad Syafi’i remembers screaming in pain as hot cooking oil splashed across his stomach and dripped down his legs, his wet clothing sticking to his torched skin as it began to bubble and swell.

Like many poor Indonesian men, he had signed up to work abroad in the fishing industry, where wages are higher than back home. He was hired to work in 2021 as a cook on a ship which supplied fish to Bumble Bee Foods, one of the biggest tuna importers in the United States.

But when he got there, he says he was physically abused and forced to work in dangerous and demanding conditions. And when Syafi’i was seriously burned while working in the kitchen, he claims he was left writhing in pain on a bench and denied food, water and access to medical care.

Syafi’i’s account is detailed in a new landmark lawsuit filed by four Indonesian fishermen against Bumble Bee Foods. It alleges the tuna giant “knowingly benefitted” from forced labor, debt bondage and other forms of abuse in its supply chain.

In a statement provided to CNN, Bumble Bee Seafoods said it became aware of the filing last Wednesday and will not be commenting on pending litigation. The allegations have not been tested in court.

The four plaintiffs worked on three different fishing vessels which supplied tuna to Bumble Bee, according to the legal complaint, which was filed on March 12 in federal court in California. While at sea, the men say they were physically abused and held against their will.

This is the first known case of fishing boat slavery brought against a US seafood company, Agnieszka Fryszman, one of the attorneys for the plaintiffs, told CNN.

“Fishing vessels never really have to go port, so the men are really, really stuck. It makes it very easy to engage in forced labor and trafficking,” Fryszman said.

Human rights abuses in the fishing industry are well documented but accountability is rare. The industry is notoriously opaque because of its reliance on migrant workers, the complicated nature of global supply chains and the fact that the work occurs at sea, where workers are typically excluded from land-based labor laws.

. . .

Fryszman said the lawyers for the plaintiffs were able to link Bumble Bee’s canned tuna to the ships the men worked on through the company’s own “Trace My Catch” tool, which allows consumers to see which vessel their fish was caught by.

Retirees of gas and electric utility Southern Company Services Inc. urged the Eleventh Circuit to revive their proposed class action alleging that their employer’s outdated mortality tables lowered their pension payouts, arguing that a lower court wrongly tossed the dispute.

The proposed class of Southern Company pension plan participants, led by ex-workers William Drummond and Richard Odom, entered a reply brief with the appellate court on Thursday in the Employee Retirement Income Security Act suit, arguing a district court wrongly found that companies have the discretion to define for themselves what the term “actuarial equivalent” means under Section 1055(d) of ERISA.

According to the filing, ERISA requires that every married plan participant be offered a joint and survivor annuity that is the “actuarial equivalent of a single annuity for the life of the participant.” The text and purpose of that provision make clear that joint and survivor annuities must be at least equivalent to the single life annuity that a participant would have earned if they remained unmarried, Drummond and Odom argued, and in doing so, ensure that workers will not lose pension benefits on account of their marital status.

Yet, the retirees said, Southern Company Services Inc., the Southern Co. pension plan and its administrative committee argue — and the district court agreed — that ERISA allows them to write “any mortality table and interest rate into the plan.”

That cannot be right, the retirees contended, because it would allow companies to calculate joint and survivor annuity payments using any actuarial assumptions written into a plan document, including “centuries-old data or random numbers or based on the lifespan of anything from a housefly to a giant tortoise (or Tolkien elf).”

Though they acknowledged that Congress did not provide a statutory definition of “actuarial equivalent,” the retirees said that is no reason to “ignore the words that Congress did use.”

. . .

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

The Second Circuit on Thursday seemed to lean toward reviving a proposed class action alleging IBM shorted retirees on pension payments through the use of outdated mortality data, with two judges asking questions about possible summary judgment proceedings in the case.

During arguments in the appeal from International Business Machines Corp. employee pension plan participants, a three-judge panel zeroed in on whether a New York district court might need to rule on summary judgment in the Employee Retirement Income Security Act suit, which ended on a motion to dismiss. The IBM retirees appealed after U.S. District Judge Nelson Stephen Román dismissed the case in April, concluding that retirees’ claims were time-barred given that they were aware of how their pension benefits were calculated more than three years before they first brought suit in 2022.

. . .

The retirees are represented by Michelle C. Yau and Jacob T. Schutz of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC and by Rachana Pathak, Peter K. Stris and Colleen R. Smith of Stris & Maher LLP.

Participants in a plumbing subcontractor’s defunct employee stock ownership plan can proceed as a class in their lawsuit claiming the plan overpaid for company shares and later sold them at a deflated price, a California federal judge ruled, saying the workers leading the suit are adequate representatives.

U.S. District Judge Kenly Kiya Kato granted class certification Tuesday in the Employee Retirement Income Security Act case accusing Ampam Parks Mechanical Inc., several executives and ESOP trustee Ventura Trust Co. of mismanaging the plan. The class includes all participants in and beneficiaries of the Ampam plan on Aug. 6, 2023, when the ESOP sold the company’s shares and the plan was dissolved.

According to current Ampam employee Alfredo Ramirez and former employee Ramón Santos Castro, the ESOP paid $247 million in 2019 for the plumbing company’s stock, more than fair market value and without gaining any control over the company. Ramirez and Castro claimed the ESOP then sold the company’s stock back to its former owners, Ampam founders and brothers Charles E. Parks III and John D. Parks, in 2023 for a much lower price.

. . .

The workers are represented by Michelle C. Yau, Ryan A. Wheeler, Allison C. Pienta, Eleanor Frisch and Jacob T. Schutz of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC, and Shaun P. Martin of the University of San Diego School of Law.

JPMorgan Chase & Co. was sued by employees who say the company’s prescription drug plan, run by CVS Health Corp., agreed to pay exorbitant prices for medications, driving up expenses for workers.

The would-be class action is the latest lawsuit accusing a large employer of mismanaging health benefits. In one example, JPMorgan’s plan paid more than $6,000 for a multiple sclerosis drug that’s available for about $30 at retail pharmacies such as Rite Aid, according to a copy of the lawsuit reviewed by Bloomberg News. The language of the complaint couldn’t be immediately confirmed in court records. The plaintiffs include one current and two former employees of the bank.

JPMorgan representatives didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment. A spokesperson for CVS, which isn’t a party to the lawsuit, declined to comment.

Similar cases have been filed against Johnson & Johnson and Wells Fargo & Co. In January, a federal judge dismissed most of the claims against J&J. The lawsuits show intensifying scrutiny over the role employers play in rising US health-care costs and put the profits of pharmacy benefit managers like CVS in the spotlight.

. . .

Plaintiffs’ lawyers are making similar arguments that companies knowingly made bad deals with the companies they hire to run prescription plans, squandering money that’s supposed to benefit workers. Attorneys from Fairmark Partners LLP and Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC are litigating the cases.

Luxottica shuttered its appeal of a New York federal judge’s order that the company could not compel arbitration of a worker’s representative claims that it violated federal benefits law by using outdated mortality data to calculate pensions benefits.

The Second Circuit ended the challenge Monday after the eyewear company and Janet Duke notified the court they had agreed to end the appeal without prejudice as they conduct appellate mediation in the suit alleging violations of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act.

In a joint status report filed Tuesday with the lower court, the parties asked that the district court case remain on pause while they continue mediation through May, to determine whether they can reach a final deal or continue with the appeal.

. . .

Duke is represented by Kai H. Richter, Michelle C. Yau, Daniel J. Sutter and Ryan A. Wheeler of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll, by Todd Jackson and Nina Wasow of Feinberg Jackson Worthman & Wasow LLP, by Peter K. Stris, Rachana A. Pathak, Victor O’Connell, John Stokes and Dana Berkowitz of Stris & Maher LLP and by Shaun P. Martin of the University of San Diego Law School.

Bumble Bee Seafood was sued Wednesday by four Indonesian men who allege horrific treatment and forced labor aboard boats that supply the San Diego-based tuna company.

Citing violations of the federal Trafficking Victims Protection Act in 2000, the men seek unspecified monetary damages in San Diego federal court. The four are represented by lawyers led by Washington-based Cohen Milstein aided by Greenpeace and a San Diego attorney.

Their 48-page complaint, calling for a jury trial, also wants Bumble Bee to ensure pay and improved working conditions for fishers, including 10 minimum rest hours in any 24-hour period.

The suit also demands that each vessel provide “free, accessible and secure WiFi to allow fishers to access grievance mechanisms, authorities or other sources of assistance.”

. . .

Agnieszka Fryszman, partner at Cohen Milstein and chair of its Human Rights practice, said in a statement: “These men were looking for good jobs so they could provide for their families and build a future. Instead, they allege, they were trapped — isolated at sea, beaten with metal hooks, not getting enough food, working around the clock — and facing financial penalties if they tried to leave.

“The complaint outlines how each of them asked to be released, but were kept on board against their will — and in some cases didn’t take home a single penny for their labor.”

Fryszman added:

“As part of its effort to stamp out human trafficking and forced labor, U.S. law authorizes survivors to bring claims in the United States against the persons who benefitted from those abuses, recognizing that forced labor overseas harms U.S. companies that obey the law. Our clients are seeking justice not only for themselves but to implement changes that will protect other fishers, including men at sea right now on those same boats.”

. . .

Besides Fryszman and Nicholas Jacques of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll, other lawyers helping in the suit include Paul Hoffman and downtown San Diego attorney Helen Zeldes of Shonbrun Seplow Harris Hoffman & Zeldes LLP and Asia Arminio of Greenpeace Inc.

Lawyers representing four Indonesian fishermen who say they were beaten and trapped on vessels that were part of the global supply chain that provided tuna to Bumble Bee Seafoods filed a lawsuit Wednesday against the canned seafood giant.

It is believed to be the first such case of forced labor at sea brought against a U.S. seafood company, the men’s lawyer, Agnieszka Fryszman, said.

U.S. companies that benefit from forced labor and undercut other businesses need to be held accountable, Fryszman said.

“What you see is really devastating,” she said.

The lawsuit accuses the company headquartered in San Diego of violating the Trafficking Victims Protection Act. The law allows foreigners who suffered from human trafficking to sue U.S. businesses that knew or should have known that they were profiting from forced labor.

Bumble Bee said in an email to The Associated Press that it does not comment on pending litigation.

The fisherman are all from villages in Indonesia and worked for longline vessels owned by Chinese companies from which Bumble Bee sourced its albacore tuna, according to the lawsuit. They say they were beaten regularly by their captains.

One fisherman named Akhmad, who like many Indonesians uses only one name, said he was hit by a metal hook and forced to work even after being injured on the job by a load of fish that gashed open his leg to the bone. Another fisherman, Syafi’i, said he received no medical care for severe burns and was ordered to return to work to pay to eat. All the men said they asked to go home and even tried to go on strike on board, according to the lawsuit.

The boats stayed out at sea while supply ships provided provisions and collected the catch. The men were strapped with debt from food bills and other fees and the threat of fines if they quit, Fryszman said.

Bumble Bee had been warned of inhumane conditions in its supply chain over the years, Fryszman said. In 2020, accounts of abusive conditions and forced labor prompted the U.S. to halt imports from a Taiwan-based fishing vessel that reportedly supplied the global tuna trading company that acquired Bumble Bee Seafoods that same year. None of these fishermen worked on that vessel.