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.

A California federal judge has granted class certification to consumers suing GreenSky Inc. over alleged unlawful loan transaction fees, finding that expert analysis showed merchants likely passed these fees onto borrowers, but also granted summary judgment to the lending company on claims related to performance fees over the lack of evidence that consumers had to pay them.

U.S. District Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley issued an order last month that was made public on Monday. She granted class certification to all California-based individuals who secured a Greensky Consumer Program loan between Jan. 9, 2016, and the present, for which the loan principal amount was $500 or higher and the associated transaction fee was at least 1% of the loan principal amount.

The judge granted certification after finding that the proposed class met all the necessary requirements, including numerosity, typicality and adequacy.

. . .

The class is represented by David Stein, Amanda M. Karl, Delaney Brooks and Brian Johnson of Gibbs Law Group LLP, Geoffrey Graber, Madelyn Petersen and Mark Vandenberg of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC, Bryce Bell and Andrew R. Taylor of Bell Law LLC and Daniel T. LeBel of Consumer Law Practice of Daniel T. Lebel.

Complaint alleges systematic fraudulent billing of Medicare and Medicaid for unnecessary care at skilled nursing facilities in Massachusetts and Connecticut

BOSTON – The U.S. Attorney’s Office has filed a joint complaint with the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office under the federal and Massachusetts False Claims Acts against 19 skilled nursing facilities (SNFs) in Massachusetts and Connecticut and their present and former management companies, RegalCare Management Group, LLC and RegalCare Management 2.0 (together “RegalCare”); RegalCare’s owner, Eliyahu Mirlis and an executive, Hector Caraballo; and RegalCare’s therapy consultant, Stern Therapy Consultants (Stern). 

SNFs are inpatient facilities that provide transitional care to patients following a hospital stay. Federal healthcare programs, including Medicare and Medicaid, reimburse providers for medically reasonable and necessary services rendered to SNF patients. Both the federal and Massachusetts False Claims Acts prohibit individuals or entities from submitting, or causing the submission of, false claims for payment and false statements material to a claim for payment from the respective governments. 

The complaint alleges that, between 2017 and 2023, RegalCare – at the direction of Mirlis and Caraballo and aided by Stern – fraudulently caused the submission of claims to Medicare and Medicaid (via MassHealth and its managed care organizations) for medically unreasonable and unnecessary services to patients of RegalCare’s SNFs. The defendants’ scheme allegedly resulted in millions of dollars in damages to the Medicare and Medicaid programs. 

Specifically, the complaint alleges that RegalCare, at Mirlis’ direction, systematically caused Medicare to be billed for the highest level of skilled rehabilitation therapy services at RegalCare’s SNFs in Massachusetts and Connecticut, despite patients not clinically needing those services. Caraballo facilitated Mirlis’ plan by ensuring that RegalCare’s patient records supported billing for such services – including altering and amending records despite knowing he was not authorized to do so at his licensing level, without having assessed or spoken to the patients, and often without having spoken to clinicians about the changes he personally made. The United States also alleges that RegalCare, through Mirlis and Caraballo, improperly directed RegalCare’s third-party billing company to bill Medicare for the highest-level skilled rehabilitation therapy services before the underlying necessary clinical documentation was even complete.

The complaint further alleges that Stern, a New York long-term care consulting company, conspired with RegalCare to cause the submission of fraudulent claims to Medicare by scheduling therapists to provide unnecessary services, contrary to patients’ medical needs, to justify billing at the highest-level. When Stern therapists refused to provide services they deemed unnecessary or unreasonable, Stern managers threatened to take employment action against those therapists to pressure them to capitulate.

“As alleged, these defendants drained Medicare and Medicaid of millions of dollars and put vulnerable patients at risk – making them undergo unnecessary, and sometimes painful, services,” said United States Attorney Leah B. Foley. “When facilities prioritize profits over patient well-being, they endanger those in their care and undermine the integrity of our healthcare system. This office will continue to hold accountable those who exploit federal healthcare programs at the expense of patients and taxpayers alike.”

“I am proud of our team’s partnership with the USAO in this case, which advances elder justice and safeguards crucial nursing home funds,” said Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell. “My office will continue to work aggressively to protect our elders and hold companies accountable that seek to harm them or violate our false claim laws.”

“Taxpayers who fund the Medicare and Medicaid programs expect skilled nursing facilities to bill those programs honestly and accurately,” said Roberto Coviello, Special Agent in Charge of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Inspector General. “The integrity of our federal health care system is undermined when that expectation is not met, and we will continue to thoroughly pursue allegations of False Claims Act violations.”

Massachusetts contends that RegalCare, directed by Mirlis and Caraballo, submitted inflated claims to MassHealth for long-term care services performed for patients of RegalCare’s SNFs in Massachusetts. Between 2017 and 2023, RegalCare operated SNFs in Amesbury, Danvers, Greenfield, Harwich, Holyoke, Lowell, Quincy, Saugus, Taunton and Worcester.  The complaint alleges that RegalCare, Mirlis and Caraballo altered documentation to support billing for increased long term care services even though the patient did not clinically need the additional services. 

The governments filed their complaint in a lawsuit filed by a whistleblower under the qui tam provisions of the False Claims Acts. Under those laws, a private citizen can sue on behalf of the United Staes or Massachusetts and share in any recovery. The United States and Massachusetts also are entitled to intervene in the lawsuit, as they have done in this case, which is captioned United States and Commonwealth of Massachusetts ex rel. McCormick v. RegalCare Management 2.0, LLC, et al. 

U.S. Attorney Foley, AG Campbell and HHS-OIG SAC Coviello made the announcement today. This matter is being handled by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Steven Sharobem, Andrew Caffrey, Olivia Benjamin and Diane Seol of the U.S. Attorney’s Office’s Affirmative Civil Enforcement Unit and Assistant Attorney General Scott Grannemann of the Attorney General’s Office’s Medicaid Fraud Division. 

The claims in which the United States and Massachusetts have intervened are allegations only. There has been no determination of liability.

IBM Corp. and 16 former employees have resolved a lawsuit claiming the technology giant unlawfully fired older workers to make room for millennials, according to New York federal court filings.

The workers and IBM in a joint stipulation Friday asked the court to dismiss the Age Discrimination in Employment Act case, just under two months after counsel for the former employees told U.S. District Judge Vincent L. Briccetti that all 16 workers had signed written settlement agreements.

Terms of the agreements were not immediately available Monday.

. . .

The workers are represented by Joseph M. Sellers and Brian C. Corman of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC, David G. Webbert of Johnson & Webbert LLP and Steven M. Tindall and Ashleigh Alexa Musser of Gibbs Law Group LLP.

The competition team at Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC helped secure settlements worth hundreds of millions of dollars last year for groups of home sellers, mixed martial arts fighters, poultry plant workers and others, earning a spot among the 2024 Law360 Competition Groups of the Year.

Among other noteworthy work, Cohen Milstein’s competition group has helped a class of home sellers to win settlement awards totaling more than $1 billion with the National Association of Realtors and major brokerages over real estate industry rules governing broker commissions.

The largest of the deals was a $418 million settlement with the trade association inked in March 2024 and finalized in November.

The suit alleged that commission rules caused sellers to overpay by requiring them to pay the fees of brokers working for both the buyer and the seller on a deal. The National Association of Realtors settlement calls for rule changes that are meant to create more competition for buyer-side brokers and to make the process more transparent.

Benjamin D. Brown, co-chair of Cohen Milstein’s competition practice and the firm’s managing partner, told Law360 the case is important because the purchase or sale of a home is the largest transaction most people ever engage in.

“The opportunity to create a more competitive market for broker services is a chance to really make an impact on people’s lives,” Brown said.

. . .

Cohen Milstein is representing processing plant workers who accused the country’s largest chicken and turkey producers of fixing wages by exchanging competitively sensitive information, including through the data firm Agri Stats Inc. The workers have now settled with all the processors allegedly involved, including Pilgrim’s Pride Corp., Perdue Farms Inc. and Tyson Foods, for a total of around $398 million.

In another case, the firm is representing beef and pork plant workers accusing processing companies and Agri Stats of suppressing wages at red meat facilities. Workers have reached $200 million in settlements, including $127.2 million in deals with Tyson Foods and JBS USA Food Co. inked last year.

Brent W. Johnson, co-chair of Cohen Milstein’s competition group, told Law360 he loves doing antitrust work and getting consumers back money that has been essentially stolen by corporations breaking the rules. But, he said, representing the plant workers has also been rewarding in a different way.

“The greatest privilege that I’ve had practicing law is representing those workers, getting money back for folks that they should have been paid, especially when they’re in really, really difficult jobs,” Johnson said. “Our body of work over the last number of years in the antitrust labor area is second to none.”

Cohen Milstein is also representing mixed martial arts fighters who reached a $375 million settlement last year with the Ultimate Fighting Championship over allegations that it underpaid match participants. Brown said the average recovery is “going to be meaningful, in many instances life changing” for the fighters, making the outcome extremely rewarding.

“We’re dealing with a population of folks who work really hard,” he said. “In the case of UFC fighters, they literally took a beating doing their jobs, and because of antitrust violations, they were paid less than they would have in a competitive market.”

Brown said Cohen Milstein has played a seminal role in the rise of antitrust wage cases generally, noting past work on cases involving nurses and workers in the tech industry, and said the firm has long made it a priority to represent workers who have been shortchanged.

A California federal judge considering sanctions against Meta for deleting data in privacy litigation over a Facebook tool’s collection of patient health information said Wednesday that he’s not convinced Meta had “malintent,” but said, “I do think this information should have been preserved.”

The comments from U.S. District Judge William H. Orrick came at the conclusion of oral arguments on the healthcare consumers’ motion for sanctions against Meta Platforms Inc. over the destroyed data.

The missing information is what’s known as “click button” or “button click” data that the plaintiffs say Meta failed to save for several months after the case was filed in June 2022. At the heart of the case is Meta’s Pixel tool, which captures data about patient portal logins and the online scheduling of medical appointments by tracking when a patient clicks buttons on healthcare websites, according to the complaint. The plaintiffs say Meta is not allowed to have that information under state and federal law and its terms of service.

At the start of Wednesday’s hearing, held over Zoom, Judge Orrick said Meta had a duty to not delete the information and failed to take reasonable steps to preserve it, but he wasn’t sure that he could say at this stage of the case that there was prejudice.

. . .

A lawyer for the plaintiffs and the proposed class, Geoffrey Graber of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC, said the deleted data is relevant to the case.

“There was no excuse for the destruction of this data,” Graber told the court.

Further, Meta realized in January 2023 that the data hadn’t been saved, and didn’t immediately inform the court or the plaintiffs, the lawyer said.

“The destroyed button click records are proof of millions of privacy violations,” Graber said. “They’re gone.”

At the very least, the court should let Meta know that it can’t take advantage of the situation it created at the certification stage.

. . .

The healthcare plaintiffs and the proposed class are represented by Geoffrey Graber of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC, Jason “Jay” Barnes of Simmons Hanly Conroy LLC, Jeffrey A. Koncius of Kiesel Law LLP, Beth E. Terrell of Terrell Marshall Law Group PLLC and Andre M. Mura of Gibbs Law Group LLP.

Since 2005 and passage of the Class Action Fairness Act, scholars have bemoaned the ongoing attack on class action procedures. Much of this work has focused on judicial reinterpretations of Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23. Plaintiffs face new prerequisites to aggregating their claims such as: (1) stricter pleading standards; (2) the judicially created “ascertainability requirement”; and (3) earlier and more frequent Daubert motions, just to name a few. These increased procedural hurdles are already hampering private enforcement efforts. In 2022, the Eleventh Circuit lobbed a new challenge when it banned incentive awards for class representatives in Johnson v. NPAS Solutions, LLC. Alexander J. Noronha explores the decision—warts and all—in his student note (On Behalf of All Others Similarly Situated: Class Representatives & Equitable Compensation, 122 Mich. L. Rev. 733 (2024)).

. . .

Noronha argues that the Eleventh Circuit “overlooked crucial historical and legal context.” This dismantling of the Eleventh Circuit’s rationale represents the article’s biggest contribution. First, Greenough is the product of an anachronistic form of litigation, too distinguishable from the modern class action to warrant barring incentive awards. Relatedly, Greenough was an “equity receivership” suit, a form of litigation once commonplace but now obsolete. Thus, the decision proves a faulty foundation from which to render a blanket prohibition against class action incentive awards. As Noronha points out, equity receiverships are a closer analogue to Chapter 11 reorganizations than class actions.

. . .

By debunking the primary authority on which the Eleventh Circuit relied, Noronha provides other circuits ample justification to reach a contrary conclusion. Nonetheless, Noronha proposes additional solutions should Johnson spread. One novel idea reconceptualizes incentive awards as costs, moving them squarely within the purview of costs and fees recoverable under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 54(d). Unlike incentive awards, which lack statutory grounding, Rule 54 affords courts clear authority to permit discretionary cost awards to class representatives. Although attorneys have yet to rely on this rule to request incentive awards, Noronha convincingly argues how this approach is both historically and legally defensible.

On Behalf of All Others reminds us of the value of student notes in legal scholarship. Noronha’s article offers new insights, particularly regarding the history of incentive awards—limited as that history may be. When well done, as here, a note can illuminate corners of procedure heretofore

A New York federal judge has granted class certification to investors alleging that Credit Suisse manipulated the market for its XIV notes, while denying certification for those claiming losses from misrepresentations, finding that the suggested class failed to resolve previous deficiencies in its proposal.

The four lead plaintiffs — Set Capital LLC, Apollo Asset Ltd., Aleksandr Gamburg and Stefan Jager — intended to represent a Securities Act class, which has already been certified, as well as the misrepresentation and manipulation classes, according to the order signed Tuesday by U.S. District Judge Analisa Torres.

In their suit, the investors claimed that Credit Suisse plotted to trigger a liquidity crunch that caused the price of its exchange-traded notes to drop nearly 96% after the close of regular trading on Feb. 5, 2018. The crash caused an “acceleration event” that allowed Credit Suisse to redeem those notes at a cratered price, earning what investors said were $475 million to $542 million in profits.

Some investors were damaged by Credit Suisse’s misrepresentations, and others were damaged based on Credit Suisse’s market manipulation, the suit alleged.

The investors are represented by Michael B. Eisenkraft, Laura H. Posner, Steven J. Toll, Brendan Schneiderman and Carol V. Gilden of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC, Eduard Korsinsky, Nicholas I. Porritt, Adam M. Apton and Alexander Krot of Levi & Korsinsky LLP and Adam David Hollander and Kimberly Alice Grinberg of Slarskey LLC.

A Maryland federal judge gave her blessing to several settlements totaling approximately $180 million in a suit accusing a slew of poultry companies of conspiring to keep wages low at their plants, greenlighting what the workers called “a historic recovery.”

U.S. District Judge Stephanie A. Gallagher granted the workers’ motion for preliminary approval of the settlements Tuesday, saying the deals are “sufficiently fair, reasonable, and adequate to authorize dissemination of notice” to the settlement class.

The companies the workers reached the deals with are Allen Harim Foods LLC, Amick Farms LLC, Butterball LLC, Fieldale Farms Corp., Foster Poultry Farms, Jennie-O Turkey Store Inc., Koch Foods Inc., O.K. Foods Inc., Tyson Foods Inc. and Keystone Foods LLC.

The companies agreed to pay different amounts: Allen Harim Foods $5 million, Amick Farms $6.25 million, Butterball $8.5 million, Fieldale Farms $5.5 million, Foster Poultry Farms $13.3 million, Jennie-O Turkey Store $3.5 million, Koch Foods $18.5 million, O.K. Foods $4.75 million and Tyson and Keystone $115.5 million.

The settlement class includes all workers those companies, their subsidiaries and related entities employed at their poultry processing plants, poultry hatcheries, poultry feed mills and poultry complexes in the U.S. from Jan. 1, 2000, to July 20, 2021, according to the order.

Those settlements add up to other deals the workers have already reached and the court preliminarily approved, according to the workers’ December motion for preliminary approval.

All combined, the workers’ recovery is set at approximately $398 million, “the second-largest recovery ever in a labor antitrust class action,” the workers said in the motion.

. . .

Brent W. Johnson of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC, who is representing the workers, declined to comment Wednesday.

. . .

The workers are represented by Brent W. Johnson, Benjamin D. Brown, Daniel H. Silverman and Alison S. Deich of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC, Shana E. Scarlett, Rio R. Pierce, Steve W. Berman, Breanna Van Engelen and Elaine T. Byszewski of Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro LLP, Matthew K. Handley, Rachel E. Nadas, George F. Farah, Rebecca P. Chang and William Anderson of Handley Farah & Anderson PLLC, Brian D. Clark and Stephen J. Teti of Lockridge Grindal Nauen PLLP and Candice J. Ender and Julia R. McGrath of Berger Montague.

A New York federal judge kept alive a lawsuit brought by former participants in the Salvation Army’s work therapy program accusing the Christian nonprofit organization of failing to pay them minimum wage, and asked the Salvation Army to respond to the workers’ renewed complaint.

U.S. District Judge Jesse M. Furman in a two-page order Wednesday denied the Salvation Army’s motion to dismiss the Fair Labor Standards Act suit for failure to state a claim and directed it to file an answer to workers’ second amended complaint within the next 14 days.

. . .

The workers are represented by Christine Webber, Dennis M. Hancock, Joseph M. Sellers, Rebecca Ojserkis and Kalpana Kotagal of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC, Gay Grunfeld, Michael Freedman and Priyah Kaul of Rosen Bien Galvan & Grunfeld LLP and Jessica Lee Riggin of Rukin Hyland & Riggin LLP.