Paul Rusesabagina, depicted in the 2004 film about genocide in his country, was reunited with his family last week. It took years of pressure to get him out of Rwanda, where he was convicted on terrorism charges.
Rwanda’s leader was in combative form last December when, on a visit to Washington, he was asked about his country’s most famous political prisoner, and his personal foe.
No amount of U.S. pressure could “bully” Rwanda, President Paul Kagame said, into releasing Paul Rusesabagina, the hotelier whose heroism during the 1994 genocide inspired the movie “Hotel Rwanda.”
“Maybe make an invasion and overrun the country — you can do that,” he added tartly, at an event during the Biden administration’s U.S.-Africa Summit for leaders from around the continent.
Nevertheless, early the next morning, one of Mr. Kagame’s top aides met quietly with President Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, to discuss the terms of a potential release.
It was a key step in a complex, secretive effort to free Mr. Rusesabagina, which culminated on Wednesday in his return to the United States, where he was reunited with his tearful family at a U.S. Army base in Texas.
“All of us crumbled when we saw him,” his daughter, Anaïse Kanimba, 31, said in an interview.
The freeing of Mr. Rusesabagina, a 68-year-old dissident and permanent U.S. resident, was not only a triumph for quiet, patient diplomacy. It resolved a growing burden in Washington’s relationship with a small yet important African ally that punches above its weight on the continent, and is accused of stoking a conflict in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo that could explode into a regional war.
Mr. Rusesabagina’s plight also presented a delicate challenge for the United States as it seeks to reset its relations with African countries to counter surging Chinese and Russian influence on the continent.
That has meant shoring up ties with leaders like Mr. Kagame, a prickly authoritarian whose achievements in rebuilding Rwanda after the genocide have been overshadowed by a repressive rule that brooks no dissent — a trend that Mr. Rusesabagina’s case has come to symbolize.
Read the complete story on The New York Times.
Cohen Milstein is honored to have played an instrumental role in the litigation leading up to the release of Mr. Rusesabagina.
A Maryland federal judge on Monday gave her preliminary blessing to Perdue Farms’ $60.7 million settlement with workers who claim the company conspired to keep wages low at its poultry processing plants, certifying a nationwide settlement class of past and present Perdue poultry workers.
U.S. District Judge Stephanie A. Gallagher granted preliminary approval to the deal, finding that it is “sufficiently fair, reasonable and adequate” to resolve the dispute. Judge Gallagher certified a settlement class of all persons employed by Perdue, its subsidiaries or related entities at poultry facilities across the continental United States from 2000 until July 2021.
The class excludes managers, human resources managers, office staff, salesmen and watchmen at those facilities, the judge noted.
Under the deal, Perdue will make a total cash payment of $60,650,000.
Judge Gallagher also appointed Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro LLP, Handley Farah & Anderson PLLC and Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC as settlement class counsel. And she appointed named plaintiffs Judy Jien, Kieo Jibidi, Elaisa Clement, Glenda Robinson, Emily Earnest and Kevin West as class representatives, according to the decision.
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The workers are represented by Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro LLP, Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC and Handley Farah & Anderson PLLC.
Read the complete story on Law360 (subscription required).
A judge ruled that the Moehrl suit would now cover all sellers who paid commissions to named companies over a 5-year period, plus “current and future” sellers.
Key points:
- The Moehrl suit lists top brokerages and MLSs as defendants and seeks damages of more than $13 billion.
- The ruling “is a blow” to the defendants as it “essentially guarantees” a trial, said industry observer Russ Cofano.
- The plaintiffs allege that requiring sellers to pay commissions to buyer brokers is a violation of federal antitrust laws.
A lawsuit that could change the way agents and brokers get paid has been declared a class action, a decision that dramatically increases its scope and potential impact.
Plaintiffs in the Moehrl vs. the National Association of Realtors, et al., case are seeking more than $13 billion in damages because they paid a cost — the buyer’s agent commission — that would have been paid by homebuyers in a competitive market.
U.S. District Judge Andrea R. Wood ruled Wednesday that in addition to the handful of people who sued in 2019, the outcome of the lawsuit will cover thousands of home sellers “who paid a commission between March 6, 2015, and December 31, 2020′ to specified companies and MLSs as well as “current and future” sellers engaged with those entities.
“With this class certification, we are pleased to be one step closer to a trial that will bring a competitive market to millions of Americans buying or selling real estate,” said Benjamin D. Brown, co-lead counsel for the certified classes of home sellers, partner at Cohen Milstein and co-chair of its antitrust practice.
Read the complete article on Real Estate News.
An Illinois federal judge certified two classes of home sellers accusing the National Association of Realtors and several real estate brokerage firms of conspiring to charge “inflated” commission rates for buyer-brokers who sold homes, ruling on Wednesday that the suit’s claims meet several class certification requirements.
In her ruling, U.S. District Judge Andrea R. Wood certified the suit’s damages and injunctive relief classes after determining that there was commonality due to a “central, common question” of whether there was an antitrust conspiracy for inflating commission rates by using the National Association of Realtors rules, described as “challenged restraints.” The presiding judge also ruled that the home sellers listing their homes on multiple listing services, or MLS, that differed from those used by other class members didn’t negate typicality.
“That some class members listed their homes on different MLSs than plaintiffs does not create a typicality issue because all covered MLSs implemented the challenged restraints,” Judge Wood wrote. “As a result, plaintiffs’ claims share the same essential characteristics as the rest of the class and typicality is established.”
Judge Wood further ruled that the damages class has met the predominance requirement of class certification, which requires the “common question” of the suit to “predominate” individual claims. According to the ruling, the defendants had argued that the claims of the home sellers were so individualized that predominance was precluded.
“First, defendants improperly conflate the existence of individualized proof as to each defendant’s conduct with the need for individualized inquiries,” the judge ruled. “While the evidence might vary as to the nature of each defendant’s participation in the conspiracy, the same evidence will be relied upon by plaintiffs and members of the class.”
The judge added that the defendants’ arguments dealt with the merits of the class action, and those arguments are “inapplicable at the class certification stage.”
Additionally, Judge Wood ruled that the two expert opinions that supported the suit’s claims sufficiently showed that the alleged antitrust conspiracy affected the home sellers. One area where the defendants attacked the expert opinions was on the experts’ use of “steering theory.”
The experts for the home sellers found that the alleged conspiracy made buyer-brokers “steer” their clients away from using multiple listing services that offered commission rates lower than the “inflated” rates, according to the ruling. But the defendants argued that, even without the alleged conspiracy, buyer-brokers would still try to get paid as much as possible for home sales and that home sellers would offer “similar” commission rates to get their homes sold.
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The home sellers are represented by Susman Godfrey LLP, Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro LLP, Handley Farah & Anderson PLLC, Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC, Justice Catalyst Law and Teske Katz PLLP.
The complete story can be read on Law360 (subscription required).
Federal lawmakers and police officers seeking to hold former President Donald Trump responsible for inciting the deadly Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol have told the D.C. Circuit that the U.S. Department of Justice’s suggested ruling in the case would be too narrow.
Eleven members of the U.S. House of Representatives and two U.S. Capitol Police officers have criticized the DOJ’s amicus brief filed earlier this month, in which the department encouraged the appellate court to issue a ruling that only applies to Trump’s immunity related to a trio of lawsuits accusing him of inciting the insurrection during his speech at the Ellipse near the White House earlier in the day.
Such a ruling would be too narrow, the lawmakers and police officers contended in a March 23 brief, and it would replace a standard established by the U.S. Supreme Court more than 50 years ago with “an amorphous, malleable appeal to the ever-evolving traditions of the presidency.”
Instead, the D.C. Circuit should issue a ruling establishing that an action taken by a president that isn’t tied to a constitutional or statutory responsibility, and that encourages the obstruction of another branch’s duties, is not covered by the president’s broad immunity.
“Urging private citizens to use any means that obstruct Congress from carrying out its constitutional duty to certify a presidential election — a procedure the framers expressly placed beyond presidential reach — bears no connection to any presidential responsibility,” the lawmakers and police officers said.
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The plaintiffs are represented by Joseph M. Sellers, Brian Corman and Alison S. Deich of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC, Janette McCarthy-Wallace, Anthony P. Ashton and Anna Kathryn Barnes of the NAACP, Robert B. McDuff of the Mississippi Center for Justice, Patrick A. Malone, Daniel Scialpi and Heather J. Kelly of Patrick Malone & Associates PC, Philip Andonian and Joseph Caleb of Caleb Andonian PLLC, Matthew Kaiser and Sarah R. Fink of KaiserDillon PLLC, Donald B. Verrilli Jr., Ginger D. Anders, Elaine J. Goldberg and Sarah E. Weiner of Munger Tolles & Olson LLP, and Cameron Kistler, Erica Newland, Kristy L. Parker, Jacek Pruski, Anne Tindall, John Paredes, Genevieve C. Nadeau, Benjamin L. Berwick and Helen E. White of United to Protect Democracy.
Read on the complete story on Law360. (Subscription required.)
A Michigan federal judge has sent a proposed class’s claims that they purchased General Motor vehicles with a defective transmission to arbitration, agreeing with the auto giant that the buyers signed paperwork that included an arbitration clause.
U.S. District Judge David M. Lawson said Tuesday that the plaintiffs in the proposed class action signed agreements, and those agreements have enforceable arbitration clauses.
“The arbitration clause is enforceable, and the plaintiffs’ objections to its application do not alter that conclusion,” Judge Lawson wrote.
The 2021 case is similar to another class action, Speerly v. GM, that Judge Lawson certified on Monday. That suit, which came from several class actions consolidated in 2019, alleges GM vehicles had eight-speed automatic transmissions that slipped, kicked back and caused the vehicles to jerk. Some drivers said they were nervous about driving the vehicles because they had “alarming difficulties” stopping when a “hard shift” would cause the vehicles to surge forward, causing some to almost hit other vehicles or pedestrians.
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Doug McNamara of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC, representing the plaintiffs, said he thinks GM’s argument will fail at arbitration.
“We believe the underlying legal argument attempted by GM — to invoke a dealer agreement arbitration clause to cover a manufacturer who sold defectively designed vehicles — will fail before the arbitrator or when back in front of Judge Lawson. The underlying factual issues regarding the defective 8L transmissions will be sorted out by the jury hearing the Speerly class action,” McNamara said.
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Harper and Ulrich are represented by Theodore Leopold, Douglas J. McNamara and Karina G. Puttieva of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC, Russell D. Paul and Amy J. Park of Berger Montague and Emily E. Hughes and Sharon S. Almonrode of The Miller Law Firm PC.
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A Michigan state judge has signed off on the historic $626 million settlement between Flint residents and government officials, marking the latest step in resolving sprawling litigation over lead contamination in the city’s drinking water.
Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel announced the Monday approval from Genesee County Judge David J. Newblatt, nearly three years after the settlement was first announced and well over a year after the federal judge who oversees consolidated state and federal Flint litigation approved it in a November 2021 order.
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A Friday Sixth Circuit ruling upheld a decision to award $202 million from the settlement fund to attorneys for five years’ worth of work that led up to the settlement with most of the defendants.
The Sixth Circuit rejected objectors’ bid to get detailed billing records from the firms in their attempt to challenge the lawyers’ cut of the settlement fund, finding the objectors didn’t have the right to obtain detailed discovery from the law firms.
The remainder of the $600 million settlement fund will be divided among class members and individual claimants, with the bulk of the funds, 80%, set aside for children and heavily weighted toward children who were exposed to lead at age 6 or younger. Another 15% of the funds will be distributed among adult claimants, 3% for property damage claims and 0.5% for businesses, with the remaining 2% designated for local school districts to provide special education services to affected students.
About 43,000 people filed claims before a 2022 deadline to join the settlement, and the claims are under review by a court-appointed administrator, Archer Systems LLC, and additional firms Wolf Garretson LLC and Alvarez & Marsal Disputes and Investigations LLC, brought on in February to assist with the claims processing.
The settlement does not include the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which is a defendant in some of the suits, or two engineering firms that declined to join the settlement.
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The Flint water plaintiffs are represented by co-lead class counsel Theodore J. Leopold of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC and Michael L. Pitt of Pitt McGehee Palmer Bonanni & Rivers PC and co-liaison counsel for individual plaintiffs Hunter Shkolnik of Napoli Shkolnik PLLC and Corey M. Stern of Levy Konigsberg LLP.
Read the article on Law360. (Subscription required.)
A Michigan federal judge on Monday certified 26 statewide classes of drivers who claim General Motors sold vehicles with faulty transmissions that caused shudders and hard shifts that made the vehicles difficult to stop and sometimes made it feel as if they had been rear-ended.
U.S. District Court Judge David M. Lawson also appointed Theodore Leopold of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll as lead counsel and about 30 named plaintiffs to serve as class representatives.
The certified class includes purchasers of GM vehicles with one of two models of an eight-speed automatic transmission – including Chevy Silverado, Chevrolet Colorado, Chevrolet Corvette, Chevrolet Camaro, Cadillac Escalade and other models with the 8L transmission – that were manufactured between 2015 and March 1, 2019, and who bought the vehicle from an authorized GM dealer before March 1, 2019.
Several class actions were consolidated in September 2019. The class alleges the two transmission models caused significant shaking and shuddering when changing gears. Some drivers said they were nervous to drive the vehicles because they had “alarming difficulties” stopping when a “hard shift” would cause the vehicles to surge forward, causing some to almost hit other vehicles or pedestrians.
Leopold told Law360 he was pleased by Judge Lawson’s order.
“As our lawsuit continues, now certified as a class action, we look forward to demonstrating that General Motors knew before the first car left GMs manufacturing facilities that their 8-speed transmissions were defective yet continuously made the business decision to still sell their cars knowing full well of the vehicle defects and safety concerns,” Leopold said in a statement.
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The class is represented by Theodore Leopold, Doug McNamara and Karina Puttieva of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll, Russel D. Paul of Berger Montague PC, Melissa L. Troutner of Kessler Topaz Meltzer & Check LLP, Tarek Zohdy of Capstone Law PAC, E. Powell Miller of the Miller Law Firm, Steven Calamusa of Gorden & Partners PA and Gretchen Freeman Cappio of Keller Rohrback LLP.
Read on Law360. (Subscription required.)
- Common Issues Dominate; Classwide Damages Method Shown
- Affected models include Camaro, Escalade, Silverado, Yukon
General Motors LLC must faces class actions by drivers in 26 states who allege flawed transmissions made their vehicles “slip, buck, kick, jerk and harshly engage.”
At issue are certain 2015-2019 GM cars and trucks equipped with Hydra-Matic 8L90 and 8L45 transmissions. Five separate suits were combined before Judge David M. Lawson of the US District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, who granted certification on Monday for statewide classes including Florida, New York, and Texas.
Affected vehicles include Chevrolet Silverado, Colorado, Corvette, and Camaro models; Cadillac Escalade, Escalade ESV ATS, ATS-V, CTS, CT6, and CTS-V models; and GMC Sierra, Yukon, Yukon XL, Yukon Denali XL, and Canyon models.
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Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC was appointed lead class counsel. Bush Seyferth PLLC and Kirkland & Ellis LLP represent GM.
Read the complete article on Bloomberg Law. (Subscription required.)
U.S. District Judge Kenneth Marra of the Southern District of Florida ordered the banana company to stand trial in January 2024 for allegedly financing paramilitary death squads in Colombia.
Seventeen families suing U.S.-based banana grower Chiquita Brands International for its alleged role in funding paramilitary death squads in Colombia will get their day in court next January.
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Chiquita pleaded guilty in 2007 to financing a designated global terrorist group in a U.S. criminal case, and agreed to pay a $25 million fine.
Subsequently, thousands of victims represented by various groups of lawyers filed suit against Chiquita in federal courts across the U.S. Those suits were consolidated and are being heard in federal district court for the Southern District of Florida in West Palm Beach.
The case is proceeding with a handful of bellwether cases that are to be tried first.
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“Our clients have been waiting decades for justice, so we are gratified that the court has set a trial date and look forward to presenting our evidence to a jury,” said Agnieszka Fryszman, chair of the Human Rights Practice Group at Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll, who also represents plaintiffs in the bellwether cases.
“Our clients allege that the deaths and injuries at the heart of this case were a direct and foreseeable result of Chiquita’s financial support of the AUC—a paramilitary group designated by the United States as a foreign terrorist organization—payments that should never have been made,” Fryszman said.
In addition to EarthRights and Cohen Milstein, counsel for the plaintiffs include Paul L. Hoffman of Schonbrun Seplow Harris Hoffman & Zeldes and Judith Brown Chomsky, Anthony DiCaprio and Arturo Carrillo.
Read the article on DBR (subscription required).