The companies Chemours, DuPont and Corteva announced on Friday they have agreed to pay more than $1 billion to settle claims that “forever chemicals” contaminated public US water systems.
The companies Chemours, DuPont and Corteva announced on Friday they have agreed to pay more than $1 billion to settle claims that “forever chemicals” contaminated public US water systems.
The family of ubiquitous synthetic chemicals – per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, also known as PFAS – linger in the environment and the human body, where they can cause serious health problems, and are found in everyday products including fast-food wrappers, makeup and carpeting.
In June, based on the latest science, the EPA issued health advisories that said the chemicals are much more hazardous to human health than scientists originally thought and are probably more dangerous even at levels thousands of times lower than previously believed.
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Chemours, Dupot and Corteva, who deny the allegations, will still the pay the settlements, but the North Carolina lawsuits are still ongoing.
“I think clearly it’s a recognition when a company or companies pay this kind of money,” said Ted Leopold, co-lead counsel in the Cape Fear PFAS toxic tort class action lawsuit against Dupont and Chemours. “That’s a real problem in terms of what their conduct has done by way of affecting the environment.
Read Three Companies Agree to Pay More Than $1 Billion to Settle ‘Forever Chemical’ Claims.
- Plaintiffs firms Cohen Milstein, Lowey and Korein Tillery also on leadership team
- Syngenta, Corteva deny allegations
A U.S. judge has appointed a group of four plaintiffs’ firms to lead multidistrict litigation in North Carolina accusing the world’s largest seed and pesticide manufacturers of participating in a conspiracy with distributors to squelch competition.
In his order on Sunday, Chief U.S. District Judge Thomas Schroeder in Winston-Salem named Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll, Korein Tillery, Lowey Dannenberg and Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan to lead farmers’ claims against defendants including pesticide manufacturers Syngenta Corp and Corteva Inc (CTVA.N).
The judge’s order resolved six competing motions from firms seeking interim leadership over multidistrict litigation involving 29 lawsuits and 52 plaintiffs.
Firms in major U.S. class actions often vie for such roles, which gives them a chance to steer cases and potentially argue for attorneys’ fees at the end of litigation.
The private lawsuits, filed after the Federal Trade Commission in September brought its own case, seek unspecified damages for farmers’ costs.
Read Quinn Emanuel Among Law Firms Picked to Lead Pesticide Antitrust Litigation.
Companies should be bracing for the potential of increased litigation as the Environmental Protection Agency mulls regulations that would limit the amount of chemicals in drinking water, sources tell Agenda.
The EPA proposal comes as directors are eagerly awaiting the adoption of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s climate disclosure rule, which has put greenhouse gas emissions disclosures and reduction plans at the top of boards’ priorities. But with the EPA’s newly proposed regulations, experts say companies could soon be pressed to disclose how they plan to reduce or cut out the use of certain chemicals, as well.
Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances, or PFAS, are man-made chemicals used to make nonstick cookware, water-repellent clothing and firefighting foams, among other products, and feature in the supply chain of everything from cosmetics to semiconductors. According to the EPA, peer-reviewed studies have shown that these chemicals can impact reproductive health by causing decreased fertility, lead to developmental effects in children and increase the risk of prostate, kidney and testicular cancer. They are known as “forever chemicals” because they don’t break down in the body and take thousands of years to break down in the environment.
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The EPA’s proposed limits “would significantly curtail future PFAS contamination compared to current and past regulations,” according to Ted Leopold, co-chair of the complex tort litigation and consumer protection practice at plaintiffs’ law firm Cohen Milstein.
He also said that the limits would make it easier to bring legal claims against companies if they are in violation of the more stringent standards.
“There’s certainly going to be more opportunity in the future for litigation if these companies don’t start meeting the lower threshold standards,” he said by email.
In addition to federal regulatory enforcement, companies could see lawsuits arising from property-related matters and contamination issues, which are also referred to as trespass, according to Leopold. Trespass occurs when contaminated water causes damage to someone’s property.
“There could also be an uptick in mass actions, which are filed by many people alleging their injuries, including cancer and other health issues, as the result of PFAS contamination. This will be a big battleground moving forward as the public becomes more aware of the dangers of PFAS,” he said, adding that chemical manufacturers were aware of certain harms associated with PFAS for decades, which could heighten this risk.
Read Directors Should Be Discussing Chemicals After EPA’s PFAS Proposal.
The families of prisoners will get another shot at seeking damages on their racketeering claim against three companies accused of conspiring to inflate the cost of calls made from U.S. prisons, after the Fourth Circuit ruled Thursday that the claims alleged direct injury to thousands of families as well as the government.
The unanimous published opinion will allow the families to move forward on their Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act claims against Securus Technologies LLC, Global Tel*Link Corp. and 3Cinteractive Corp. after the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland trimmed the complaint to only focus on antitrust violations in September 2021.
The three-judge panel determined that the district court erred when it held that the families’ RICO claim couldn’t establish that they were a “more direct victim” as it was contingent on harm suffered by the contracting governments.
Even though the companies’ alleged conspiracy to charge prisons higher rates for calls happened before it impacted the families, “this doesn’t make the governments more direct victims,” U.S. Circuit Judge Albert Diaz wrote in the opinion.
“As plaintiffs point out, the governments’ injuries could be cured if defendants paid higher site commissions — even if plaintiffs paid the same inflated price,” Judge Diaz said. “So plaintiffs’ injuries aren’t derivative of those suffered by the governments. Rather, plaintiffs and the governments are both direct victims.”
The families launched the proposed class action in June 2020, accusing mobile marketing company 3CI and inmate calling companies Securus and GTL of scheming to hike the price of collect calls from prisons by thwarting the competition.
The scheme impacted thousands of overcharged families, the underlying complaint alleges.
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The plaintiffs are represented by George F. Farah of Handley Farah & Anderson PLLC and Benjamin D. Brown and Robert A. Braun of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC.
Read 4th Circ. Revives Prison Phone Price-Fixing RICO Claims.
- Investors alleged failure to perform due diligence
- Bayer allegedly lost $12.87 billion in market capitalization
Two pension funds can represent a class of investors in a lawsuit alleging Bayer AG didn’t adequately vet Roundup herbicide maker Monsanto Co. before buying it and didn’t warn them about cancer litigation risks.
The lead plaintiffs cleared a big hurdle with Chief Judge Richard Seeborg‘s May 19 decision to certify a class, since such a ruling typically sets the stage for settlement. Seeborg oversees the case in the US District Court for the Northern District of California.
The stakes are high. Bayer securities lost 26% of their value, and Bayer lost $12.87 billion in market capitalization, as a result of the company’s due diligence failures, the pension funds alleged in the third version of their complaint. Bayer has said it would set aside up to $16 billion to settle tens of thousands of Roundup injury claims if the US Supreme Court rejected its bid for a shield. The Supreme Court rejected that appeal in June 2022.
Bayer said in an emailed statement Monday that it “respectfully disagrees with the Court’s decision to grant class certification and is considering its legal options.”
Carol Gilden, an attorney for the investors, called the ruling carefully reasoned and “a total victory” for her clients. Gilden is with Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC in Chicago.
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Gilden said Seeborg correctly explained that “a securities transaction is domestic when either the buyer or seller incurs irrevocable liability in the United States or title passes here.”
“This is an important holding for investors,” she said in an email Tuesday.
The investors “met this test and established that their transactions took place domestically,” Gilden said. They also showed “that a common methodology exists to establish other class members purchased their Bayer ADRs domestically,” Gilden said.
Seeborg appointed Cohen Milstein as class counsel. Morrison & Foerster LLP and Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz represent Bayer.
Read Bayer Investors Get Class Status in Monsanto Deal Risk Suit.
Plaintiffs lawyers at Bernstein Litowitz Berger & Grossmann and Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll reached a $1 billion settlement with Wells Fargo & Co. in what’s poised to be one of the 20 largest shareholder settlements of all-time if approved.
First up are lawyers at Bernstein Litowitz Berger & Grossmann and Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll, the co-lead counsel in shareholder litigation against Wells Fargo & Co. claiming the bank misled investors about reforms after its 2016 fake accounts scandal. The bank this week agreed to pay $1 billion, which would be one of the 20 largest shareholder settlements of all-time if approved. The deal got preliminary sign-off from U.S. District Judge Gregory Woods in Manhattan within 24 hours of filing. The Bernstein Litowitz team includes Max Berger, who led settlement negotiations, John Browne, Jeroen van Kwawegen, Hannah Ross, Jonathan Uslaner and senior associate Lauren Cruz. The Cohen Milstein team includes Steven Toll, Laura Posner and Molly Bowen.
Read the complete article on Law.com.
The 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act continues to be a bulwark against worker exploitation, but several pillars of the statute and its regulations — from subminimum wages to collective action certification — need refreshing to meet today’s workforce, attorneys said.
Employment law practitioners often bemoan how the FLSA does not jibe well with the contemporary economy. While this is true in some respects, the FLSA still serves its underlying purpose of protecting workers, said D. Michael Hancock, of counsel with worker-side firm Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC and former assistant administrator for the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division.
“I may be the only one that believes this,” he said, “But I think fundamentally it has continued to serve an important role in this society, in this economy.”
But there are key provisions that need to be tweaked, he said.
Here, Law360 explores four aspects of the FLSA that merit reconsideration and reformulation.
Subminimum Wages
The FLSA permits employers to pay certain categories of workers below the federal minimum wage of $7.25.
One such allowance is the tipped minimum wage, where employers can take a so-called tip credit and pay gratuities-earning workers as little as $2.13 per hour as long as tips carry the worker to the standard federal minimum wage of $7.25.
The tipped credit “has no place in a modern economy,” said Sarah Arendt, a partner with Werman Salas PC.
“It’s ridiculous that employees who make up a large portion of the economy are paid subminimum wages,” she said.
The precarity of low-wage work came into sharp relief amid the pandemic when many such employees were lauded as essential workers.
Hancock said he was struck by how farmworkers were identified as essential workers even though the FLSA excludes agricultural workers from its overtime protections.
Experts say this exclusion is rooted in racism because when Congress enacted the FLSA, lawmakers largely cut out agricultural, domestic and hospitality sectors, fields dominated by Black workers.
“A farmworker can work 60, 70 hours a week doing grueling work, under really harsh conditions, and they’re denied overtime,” he said. “And there’s just no rational reason why.”
Employers can also pay people with cognitive or physical disabilities less than the minimum wage if the employer secures certificates from the U.S. Department of Labor under Section 14(c) of the FLSA.
That is another “gross injustice,” Hancock said.
“We’ve learned enough that we now know that most of the people who are labeled Section 14 workers are very productive, are perfectly capable of doing productive work,” he said. “It’s signaling to them that we value them less and that they’re not as good as others, and I just think it’s morally wrong.”
ExxonMobil has settled a long-running lawsuit brought by villagers who alleged soldiers the oil giant hired to guard a natural gas facility in the Indonesian province of Aceh committed murder and torture.
The two sides agreed to resolve “all matters”, according to a joint filing on Monday.
Agnieszka Fryszman, a lawyer for the villagers, said the terms were confidential.
A spokesperson for Exxon Mobil said the settlement “brings closure for all parties”.
Filed in 2001, the case was brought by 11 villagers in Aceh who alleged they were victims of human rights abuses committed by Indonesian soldiers brought in to guard the oil and gas plant in the city of Lhoksukon between 1999 and 2003. The allegations included sexual assault, battery and unlawful detention.
A trial to decide whether the company was negligent in contracting the Indonesian soldiers had been scheduled to start in Washington, DC on May 24. ExxonMobil had denied being aware of any human rights violations and said the company could not be held responsible for any abuses that did occur as it did not order or authorise them.
The alleged abuses took place at a time when the Indonesian military had deployed thousands of troops in the province to crush a long-running rebellion by pro-independence fighters. A peace agreement came only after the Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004 killed at least 170,000 people in Aceh, on the northern tip of Sumatra island.
“Our clients … bravely took on one of the largest and most profitable corporations in the world and stuck with the fight for more than 20 years,” said Fryszman, a lawyer at Cohen Milstein.
“We are so pleased that now, on the eve of trial, we were able to secure a measure of justice for them and their families.”
The plaintiffs, who broke down in tears at the settlement, have remained anonymous “in the face of grave threats to themselves and their fellow villagers”, the law firm said in a news release.
A group of shareholders had claimed that the bank misled investors about its progress in cleaning up after a sham accounts scandal a decade ago.
Wells Fargo has agreed to pay $1 billion to settle a class-action lawsuit accusing the bank of overstating how much progress it had made in fixing the unlawful practices that regulators said had hurt millions of customers.
The agreement, detailed in court filings on Monday, is the latest in a succession of settlements and penalties the bank has paid stemming from a fraud scandal that came to light nearly a decade ago. From 2002 to 2016, bank employees, facing unrealistic sales goals imposed by their bosses, opened millions of accounts in customers’ names without their knowledge.
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“If approved, this settlement will help compensate hundreds of thousands of investors — state employees, nurses, teachers, police, firefighters and others — whose critical retirement savings were impacted by Wells Fargo’s fraudulent business practices,” Steven J. Toll, managing partner at Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll, which represented the investors in the suit, said in a statement.
The complete article can be read on The New York Times.
Several pension funds had accused the bank of misleading investors about the extent of its reform efforts after the 2016 fake-accounts scandal
Wells Fargo has agreed to pay $1 billion to settle a class-action lawsuit brought on by shareholders who had accused the lender of overstating the progress of reforms initiated after the 2016 fake-accounts scandal.
The settlement was filed late Monday in federal court in Manhattan, where litigation had been in progress for three years. If it secures the judge’s approval, it would be among the 20 largest securities class-action deals on record, according to plaintiffs.
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The class-action lawsuit was led by pension administrators in Rhode Island and Mississippi, who said their holdings were affected by the bank’s misleading statements.
“The pension fund lost money because of their lies, so we’re holding them accountable,” Rhode Island General Treasurer James Diossa said in an interview Tuesday.
He added that he hoped the settlement would cause the bank to be more careful about future statements to investors.
“I strongly believe that this is an important case historically, too, because it’s going to help shape the next years to come for Wells Fargo and their behavior,” Diossa said.
Laura Posner, an attorney with the law firm Cohen Milstein, which represented the plaintiffs, called the settlement “quite impressive” in terms of what the plaintiffs thought realistic damages were. “More broadly, it is hopefully a way of deterring … other companies from engaging in fraud,” Posner said.
Read Wells Fargo Agrees to $1 Billion Shareholder Settlement.