Attorneys representing the families of 10 men killed during Colombia’s civil war told a Florida federal jury Tuesday that the Chiquita banana company is liable for their deaths, saying it knowingly funded a right-wing narcoterrorist group that committed atrocities against its workers as the fruit corporation expanded its business.

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The trial is expected to last at least four weeks.

The plaintiffs are represented by John Scarola, Victoria Mesa-Estrada and Mariano Garcia of Searcy Denney Scarola Barnhart & Shipley PA, James K. Green of James K. Green PA, Rick Herz, Maryum Jordan, Marissa Vahlsing and Marco Simons of EarthRights International, William J. Wichmann of the Law Offices of William J. Wichmann PA, William R. Scherer of Conrad & Scherer LLP, Leslie M. Kroeger and Agnieszka Fryszman of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC, Jonathan C. Reiter of the Jonathan C. Reiter Law Firm PLLC, Terrence Collingsworth of International Rights Advocates and Gabriela Paola Valentin Diaz.

“The changes SafeRent has agreed to make are key to ensuring the original intention of the nation’s voucher programs, helping to erase historic discrimination in the housing markets,” said Brian Corman, a partner at Cohen Milstein who leads the firm’s fair housing litigation efforts and helped negotiate the settlement.

What You Need to Know

• A lawsuit against SafeRent Solutions reached a settlement Thursday, pending final approval.
• The settlement came after a federal judge allowed a $2.28 million settlement on behalf of Massachusetts housing voucher recipients to move forward.
• The lawsuit claimed that SafeRent’s algorithmic tenant screening program disproportionately harmed housing voucher recipients, including Black and Hispanic individuals, under federal and Massachusetts law.

Rental applicants in Massachusetts recently reached a $2.28 million settlement agreement against a tenant screening service, SafeRent Solutions, after alleging the company’s algorithmic screen program disproportionately harmed Black and Hispanic rental applicants using federally funded housing choice vouchers.

U.S. District Judge Angel Kelley for the District of Massachusetts certified the two settlement classes and ordered SafeRent, formerly known as CoreLogic Rental Property Solutions, to provide names and other identifying information to send settlement notices, according to an order filed April 25.

A settlement approval hearing will be held in November and, if approved, will resolve the litigation against SafeRent which claimed that its algorithm assigns disproportionately lower scores to Black and Hispanic rental applicants compared with white rental applicants.

Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll, Greater Boston Legal Services and the National Consumer Law Center represent the plaintiffs and will act as settlement class counsel. The plaintiffs brought the complaint against SafeRent under the Fair Housing Act and Massachusetts discrimination laws in May 2022, and the judge denied the defendant’s motion to dismiss in July 2023.

“Federal and state housing voucher programs were established to give recipients, who are disproportionately Black and Hispanic renters, more choice in where they live,” said Brian Corman, a partner at Cohen Milstein who leads the firm’s fair housing litigation efforts and helped negotiate the settlement. “The changes SafeRent has agreed to make are key to ensuring the original intention of the nation’s voucher programs, helping to erase historic discrimination in the housing markets.”

Christine E. Webber, co-chair of Cohen Milstein’s civil rights and employment practice, said in a statement that the court’s decision is a case of first impression for the home rental and property management industries.

“Decision-making algorithms, such as the ones at issue here, are often opaque,” Webber said. “Vendors who develop these algorithms are not willing to disclose all the data they consider or how the data is weighted in score modeling. This is gravely concerning to fair housing, employment, and civil rights advocates as potentially discriminatory bias can be easily coded into automated decision-making platforms. The ability to hold such vendors accountable is essential for full enforcement of the civil rights laws.”

Joining Webber and Corman in representing the plaintiffs were Todd S. Kaplan, of Greater Boston Legal Services, and Ariel C. Nelson, Shennan A. Kavanagh and Stuart T. Rossman, of the National Consumer Law Center in Boston.

ReNew Health Group LLC has agreed to pay the federal government and California $7 million to settle whistleblower allegations that the healthcare provider misused a COVID-19 waiver intended to free up hospital beds by submitting fraudulent claims for nursing home residents, the U.S. Department of Justice announced Friday.

Under the deal, ReNew Health Group, ReNew Health Consulting Services LLC and two executives, Crystal Solorzano and Chaim Kolodny, will pay approximately $6.8 million to the United States and $242,273 to California to settle allegations that they violated the False Claims Act. The whistleblower, Bay Area Whistleblower Partners, will receive approximately $1.2 million after the government has received the settlement money, according to the announcement.

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The plaintiff, represented by Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC, Senior Justice Law Firm and Zimmerman Reed LLP, alleged that ReNew Health was misusing a waiver program implemented by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Specifically, to increase the availability of hospital beds, the CMS waived the requirement that a person must have stayed in the hospital for three days before receiving skilled care in a nursing home.

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The whistleblowers’ co-lead counsel, Ray Sarola of Cohen Milstein, echoed that sentiment and said it was unfortunate that some companies tried to manipulate COVID-19 programs for their own profit.

“We are proud to represent whistleblowers who helped protect our healthcare system so that the government’s resources are available for those patients who need them,” Sarola added.

The whistleblowers are represented by Raymond M. Sarola and Gary L. Azorsky of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC, David Brevda of Senior Justice Law Firm, and Chuck Toomajian of Zimmerman Reed LLP.

Real-estate industry has now agreed to pay nearly $1 billion to settle anticompetitive allegations

A real-estate brokerage firm that is part of Warren Buffett’s conglomerate has reached a settlement in the landmark antitrust case against the industry, though the amount was a fraction of what the plaintiffs have aimed to recover.

HomeServices of America reached a nationwide $250 million settlement, the company said Friday. That figure is higher than what any other individual brokerage has agreed to pay to settle claims that the real-estate industry used a commission structure that kept fees for agents artificially high.

Since the residential broker is a subsidiary of Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, the plaintiffs hoped to collect a payout many times that amount. They had tried in court filings to tie the brokerage to its parent company, Berkshire Hathaway Energy. 

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Benjamin Brown, a plaintiff attorney at Cohen Milstein, said plaintiffs can continue to pursue claims against Berkshire Hathaway Energy. “We don’t accept that none of the Berkshire Hathaway entities have liability here,” Brown said.

HomeServices was the last remaining defendant in the antitrust case against the National Association of Realtors trade organization and four major brokerage firms. With this latest settlement, real-estate firms and NAR have agreed to pay more than $940 million to resolve the antitrust claims.

In October, plaintiffs won a $1.8 billion verdict in Missouri after alleging that NAR and residential brokerages used a commission structure that kept fees for Missouri agents artificially high. A judge could have tripled that amount to more than $5 billion.

A real estate company owned by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway has agreed to pay $250 million to settle lawsuits nationwide claiming that longstanding practices by real estate brokerages forced U.S. homeowners to pay artificially inflated broker commissions when they sold their homes.

HomeServices of America said Friday that the proposed settlement would shield its 51 brands, nearly 70,000 real estate agents and over 300 franchisees from similar litigation.

The real estate company had been a major holdout after several other big brokerage operators, including Keller Williams Realty, Re/Max, Compass and Anywhere Real Estate, agreed to settle. Last month, the National Association of Realtors agreed to pay $418 million.

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Including HomeServices’ proposed payout, the real estate industry has now agreed to pay more than $943 million to make the lawsuits go away.

“This is another significant settlement for American home sellers who have been saddled with paying billions in unnecessary commission costs,” Benjamin Brown, managing partner at one of the law firms that represented plaintiffs in a case filed in Illinois, said in a statement.

General Motors LLC was hit with a new proposed class action alleging it concealed two transmission defects that caused shuddering and poor shift quality in 18 Chevrolet and GMC models.

The complaint filed Wednesday in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan alleges GM knew about the defects in 2014, but actively concealed information about them so customers wouldn’t learn about the problems until their warranty periods elapsed.

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The plaintiffs say that as a result of GM’s active concealment, they didn’t know about the alleged defects until Speerly’s class certification motion. The complaint cited the order’s rebuke of GM’s attempts to keep seal documents that could show the company’s knowledge of the defects.

GM “repeatedly argued in its motions to seal that hundreds of pages of reports produced by GM covering engineering investigations of the transmission problems and compilations of warranty service data were its ‘confidential information,’” Judge David M. Lawson said in the Speerly class certification order. GM’s “determined efforts to maintain the ‘confidentiality’ of the information defies any suggestion that any of the relevant information previously was disclosed by GM or its dealers to any buyers of class vehicles,” Lawson added.

The plaintiffs in this case say GM still hasn’t fully admitted what it knew about the defects and when.

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The plaintiffs are represented by Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC, Gordon & Partners PA, Berger Montague PC, Capstone Law APC, The Miller Law Firm PC, Kessler Topaz Meltzer & Check LLP, Keller Rohrback LLP, and Pitt McGehee Palmer and Rivers PC.

Trump argued that allowing the civil case to proceed while his still-paused criminal trial is pending could force him to reveal potential defenses and incriminate himself.

A federal judge on Thursday denied former President Donald Trump’s motion to pause proceedings in a civil personal injury suit brought by Democratic lawmakers over the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot, rejecting his argument it should only resume after his related criminal case has concluded.

U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta acknowledged that some of Trump’s concerns that by defending this case first he could reveal his defense strategy in the criminal matter as valid, but do not show a pressing need for such an indefinite stay.

The Barack Obama appointee wrote in his opinion that Trump’s assertion that there is “substantial overlap” between the lawmakers’ allegations and special counsel Jack Smith’s allegations in his still-paused election subversion case is “true in a sense.”

“But defendant overstates the significance of that factual overlap in the present posture of these matters,” Mehta said.

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Trump’s criminal case has been paused since December, as his presidential immunity claim has made its way through the D.C. Circuit and is now before the Supreme Court, who is set to hear arguments on the issue on April 25.

If the high court rejects his argument, a trial would likely resume sometime in the fall and could potentially run up to and through the November election.

Mehta, citing the D.C. Circuit’s decision in Blassingame v. Trump that opened the former president up to civil litigation for his nonofficial acts surrounding Jan. 6, found little concern of a Fifth Amendment violation.

He said that the sole purpose of discovery in the civil case will be to determine whether Trump’s actions “can reasonably be understood as the official actions of an officeholder rather than the unofficial actions of an office-seeker.”

The case will merely center on the question of immunity and would not require Trump — who would not be required to attend in person like his current criminal case in Manhattan — to admit to any of the conduct he’s accused of in Smith’s case.

The plaintiffs, congressional Democrats like Eric Swalwell, Bennie Thompson, Karen Bass, Pramila Jayapal, Maxine Waters and more, have also conceded they are not asking for Trump to be deposed and testify under oath.

A proposed class of 45,000 Flint, Michigan, property owners, businesses and adult residents on Friday urged a Michigan federal court to give the go-ahead to a $25 million settlement with Veolia North America, the last remaining engineering defendant in sprawling litigation over the city’s water crisis.

In a memorandum filed in support of the motion for preliminary approval, the proposed class said the deal had been reached through arm’s-length mediation by counsel well-versed in the case after eight years of litigation.

The proposed class added that while they are confident they would succeed at court, they’re not certain, and the settlement is fair and preferable to the potential pitfalls of continuing the litigation, such as adverse rulings and extended appeals of favorable ones.

“This settlement is an important step to bringing some closure to the Flint community,” Ted Leopold of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC, representing the class, said in a statement Friday. “We hope the court will swiftly approve the unopposed motion for settlement against VNA, so the community can put the Flint water crisis behind them and move forward and rebuild their lives.”

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Leopold added in an email Friday, “We look forward to moving the approval process along as quickly as we can in order to help bring closure to this sad chapter in the life of the Flint community.”

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The class is represented by Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC, Pitt McGehee Palmer Bonanni & Rivers PC, Weitz & Luxenberg PC, Susman Godfrey LLP, Motley Rice LLC, the Law Offices of Teresa A. Bingman PLLC, Bronstein Gewirtz & Grossman LLC, the Law Offices of Deborah A. LaBelle, the NAACP, Goodman Hurwitz & James PC, Trachelle C. Young & Associates PLLC, Dedendum Group LLC, McKeen & Associates PC, the Law Office of Cirilo Martinez PLLC, Shea Aiello PLLC, Cynthia M. Lindsey & Associates PLLC, McAlpine PC, and the Abood Law Firm.

A proposed class of car buyers has filed a new lawsuit alleging that General Motors LLC knowingly sold vehicles with defective transmissions, this one involving state law claims not included in a separate action that achieved class certification last year.

In a complaint filed in Michigan federal court Wednesday, the car buyers, led by Cole Ulrich, said a combination of two defects causes 2015-2019 vehicles equipped with GM’s eight-speed transmission system to lurch, shudder and experience delays in acceleration and deceleration on the road.

According to the complaint, GM knew about the issue and even developed a way to fix it in 2018 through a transmission flush, but the company made a business decision not to recall the 2 million affected vehicles and instead limit the flush to unsold Cadillacs and vehicles in certain states it expected customers would complain within the warranty.

The automaker never told existing customers about the issue, and only addressed it if a customer came in and complained about the problem within the warranty, according to the suit, so many vehicle owners had to pay out of pocket for the repairs.

“GM has breached the trust of millions of Americans by selling defective eight-speed transmission vehicles which they knew to be defective for years, putting profit first and safety last,” Ted Leopold of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC, representing the car buyers, said in a statement Wednesday. “GM marketed and sold these eight-speed automatic transmission vehicles as having ‘world-class performance,’ lightning-fast and smooth shifting, along with improved fuel efficiency, and instead sold defective vehicles.”

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The car buyers are represented by attorneys with Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll, Gordon & Partners PA and Berger Montague PC, among others.

A recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling that corporate silence isn’t enough to form the basis of a securities fraud suit pointedly declined to wade into the question of what counts as a “half-truth,” leaving it to lower courts to wrestle with which corporate statements are blurry enough to sustain a shareholder class action.

The high court issued a unanimous decision Friday vacating and remanding a Second Circuit ruling in favor of shareholder Moab Partners LP, which hopes to lead a class of Macquarie Infrastructure Corp. investors who were allegedly left in the dark about the impact that an anticipated global ban on high-sulfur fuels would have on its fuel storage business.

The justices ruled that the omission of information a business must disclose could not alone form the basis of a lawsuit under the anti-fraud regulation known as U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Rule 10b–5(b). Instead, such an omission would have to be coupled with an affirmative statement that converts the silence into a “half-truth,” the justices said.

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Laura Posner of investor-side law firm Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC said that corporations might try to use the Macquarie opinion to get shareholder lawsuits thrown out, but she doesn’t think they’ll be successful.

“I think from a practical standpoint, the decision is going to be very limited,” Posner said. “It is extremely rare for us to bring a claim that doesn’t allege in some way a half-truth or just straight misstatements.”

She said she believes corporations that use the Macquarie defense will run into the same problems they’ve faced trying to combat shareholder class actions by referencing the high court’s 2021 decision in Goldman Sachs v. Arkansas Teacher Retirement System.

That decision requires courts to examine whether allegedly misleading statements are too generic to form the basis of class certification, but few courts have applied the ruling thus far.

The only circuit court to apply the Goldman decision to date is the Second Circuit, which last year decertified the very same Goldman class at the center of the Supreme Court challenge.

“Goldman has been almost uniformly, if not uniformly, unsuccessful for defendants,” Posner said. “They’re just not getting the wide interpretation of the rule that they were hoping for, and they’re not getting the language by the Supreme Court that would allow them to do so.”

The court could have, for example, waded into the half-truth debate, but noted in a footnote to Friday’s opinion that it wasn’t going to go there, Posner pointed out.