The church disputes that, and now a federal judge will decide if allegations of abuse will be heard by a panel of loyal Scientologists, not the courts.

Before Gawain and Laura Baxter could leave their posts as workers aboard the Church of Scientology’s religious ship in the Caribbean in 2012, the couple said they had no choice but to sign contracts they didn’t understand.

It was required before a security guard would hand over their passports, immigration records and identification, according to court records.

What they didn’t know, according to their declarations, is that they signed clauses agreeing to bring any future dispute before the church’s internal arbitration panel of loyal Scientologists, not the U.S. court system.

The Baxters and fellow Scientology worker Valeska Paris sued the church in April for trafficking, and now a Tampa federal judge is considering whether to grant the church’s request to punt the lawsuit into internal arbitration.

At a hearing on the motion Thursday, U.S. District Judge Thomas Barber asked both sides to explain whether the former Scientologists signed the contracts under duress. All three were members of the church’s military-style workforce called the Sea Org.

Cohen Milstein is honored to represent the plaintiffs in this case.

The largest U.S. producers of beef and pork illegally conspired to depress the wages of hundreds of thousands of meat plant workers since 2014, workers alleged in a proposed class action in Colorado federal court.

In their complaint filed Friday, a trio of beef and pork processing plant workers said a group of red meat producers including JBS USA, Cargill, Tyson Foods, Perdue Farms and others shared compensation data and collaborated with supposed competitors to ensure uniform, industrywide pay policies.

“Defendant processors engaged in the conspiracy to increase their profits by reducing labor costs,” the workers said. “The intended and actual effect of defendants’ conspiracy to fix compensation has been to reduce and suppress the wages, salaries and benefits paid to class members … to levels materially lower than they would have been in a competitive market.”

The workers said the companies, which collectively produce 80% of the red meat sold in the U.S. and employ roughly 150,000 workers, designed a compensation survey that gathered each company’s hourly wage rates, salaries and employment benefits data. That ostensibly nonpublic and confidential data, which was collected on behalf of the companies by consulting firm Webber Meng Sahl & Co., included nonpublic projections about future compensation policies, the plaintiffs claimed.

. . .

The workers are represented by Robert Carey, Shana Scarlett, Rio Pierce, Steve Berman, Breanna Van Engelen and Abigail Pershing of Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro LLP, William Anderson, Matthew Handley, Rachel Nadas, George Farah, Rebecca Chang, Nicholas Jackson and Martha Guarnieri of Handley Farah & Anderson PLLC and Brent Johnson, Benjamin Brown, Daniel Silverman, Alison Deich, Zachary Glubiak, Louis Katz and Zachary Krowitz of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC.

Two-year-old Zion Gastelum died just days after dentists performed root canals and put crowns on six baby teeth at a clinic affiliated with a private equity firm.

His parents sued the Kool Smiles dental clinic in Yuma, Arizona, and its private equity investor, FFL Partners. They argued the procedures were done needlessly, in keeping with a corporate strategy to maximize profits by overtreating kids from lower-income families enrolled in Medicaid. Zion died after being diagnosed with “brain damage caused by a lack of oxygen,” according to the lawsuit.

Kool Smiles “overtreats, underperforms and overbills,” the family alleged in the suit, which was settled last year under confidential terms. FFL Partners and Kool Smiles had no comment but denied liability in court filings.

Private equity is rapidly moving to reshape health care in America, coming off a banner year in 2021, when the deep-pocketed firms plowed $206 billion into more than 1,400 health care acquisitions, according to industry tracker PitchBook.

Seeking quick returns, these investors are buying into eye care clinics, dental management chains, physician practices, hospices, pet care providers, and thousands of other companies that render medical care nearly from cradle to grave. Private equity-backed groups have even set up special “obstetric emergency departments” at some hospitals, which can charge expectant mothers hundreds of dollars extra for routine perinatal care.

As private equity extends its reach into health care, evidence is mounting that the penetration has led to higher prices and diminished quality of care, a KHN investigation has found. KHN found that companies owned or managed by private equity firms have agreed to pay fines of more than $500 million since 2014 to settle at least 34 lawsuits filed under the False Claims Act, a federal law that punishes false billing submissions to the federal government with fines. Most of the time, the private equity owners have avoided liability.

New research by the University of California-Berkeley has identified “hot spots” where private equity firms have quietly moved from having a small foothold to controlling more than two-thirds of the market for physician services such as anesthesiology and gastroenterology in 2021. And KHN found that in San Antonio, more than two dozen gastroenterology offices are controlled by a private equity-backed group that billed a patient $1,100 for her share of a colonoscopy charge — about three times what she paid in another state.

. . .

‘Revenue Maximization’

Private equity firms often bring a “hands-on” approach to management, taking steps such as placing their representatives on a company’s board of directors and influencing the hiring and firing of key staffers.

“Private equity exercises immense control over the operations of health care companies it buys an interest in,” said Jeanne Markey, a Philadelphia whistleblower attorney.

Markey represented physician assistant Michelle O’Connor in a 2015 whistleblower lawsuit filed against National Spine and Pain Centers and its private equity owner, Sentinel Capital Partners.

In just a year under private equity guidance, National Spine’s patient load quadrupled as it grew into one of the nation’s largest pain management chains, treating more than 160,000 people in about 40 offices across five East Coast states, according to the suit.

O’Connor, who worked at two National Spine clinics in Virginia, said the mega-growth strategy sprang from a “corporate culture in which money trumps the provision of appropriate patient care,” according to the suit.

She cited a “revenue maximization” policy that mandated medical staffers see at least 25 patients a day, up from 16 to 18 before the takeover.

The pain clinics also overcharged Medicare by billing up to $1,100 for “unnecessary and often worthless” back braces and charging up to $1,800 each for urine drug tests that were “medically unnecessary and often worthless,” according to the suit.

In April 2019, National Spine paid the Justice Department $3.3 million to settle the whistleblower’s civil case without admitting wrongdoing.

Sentinel Capital Partners, which by that time had sold the pain management chain to another private equity firm, paid no part of National Spine’s settlement, court records show. Sentinel Capital Partners had no comment.

As the conveniences of electronic health records and data storage increase, so does the risk for personal information to be compromised and potentially used for nefarious means. According to the HIPAA Journal, between 2009 and 2021, “4,419 healthcare data breaches of 500 or more records” have occurred, “resulting in the loss, theft, exposure, or impermissible disclosure of 314,063,186 healthcare records.” This massive number is the equivalent of 95% of the 2021 United States population.

To find out what to do if your health data security has been breached, Patient Power asked attorney Douglas McNamara, a partner at Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll, a firm specializing in Cybersecurity and Data Breaches. He shared some key information and useful tips to consider.

What are the Possible Consequences of a Healthcare Data Breach?

“Data breaches can put you at risk for identity theft – where criminals use your information to open up loans in your name, apply for unemployment benefits, or file tax returns seeking your refund,” said McNamara.

In addition to financial losses, the very personal nature of the data disclosed in a healthcare breach can leave a patient at risk for extortion, insurance fraud, or even loss of access to important personal health information.

What Questions Should I Ask My Healthcare Provider?

According to McNamara, you should ask for a copy of any records that they think have been exposed. That way you can see exactly what sensitive information may now be in the wrong hands. For example, if your maiden name or child’s name is disclosed and you use either of these as part of any password information, then you have a better idea of what needs to be changed.

You should also ask if the data was encrypted or if they are offering any credit monitoring. “If they are, take it but don’t give up any rights. You should not have to release your rights to potential compensation if it turns out the healthcare provider was negligent or knew of the security incident earlier than they notified you,” McNamara said.

What is the First Thing I Should Do?

First and foremost, review all your financial accounts ASAP. There is a good chance that a cybercriminal will have access to your social security number and date of birth and could use this information to open bank accounts or loans in your name. Placing a credit freeze on your accounts and setting up fraud alerts through the major credit reporting agencies (Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion) is also important, noted McNamara.

If you have a health savings account (HSA) or a flexible spending account (FSA), be sure to change the passwords and monitor those accounts closely as well.

Also be on the lookout for any letters from the US post office verifying a change of address. If someone tries to file a change of address with your name, the post office will send out a letter of validation to confirm it was really you that initiated it.

What Steps Can I Take to Protect Myself?

Data breaches are unfortunately going to happen as hackers become more and more sophisticated. One of the best ways to protect yourself and your data, says McNamara, is to not reuse passwords and make sure you change them often. You should also be careful about giving out your social security number for use as a patient identifying number and remember to shred any medical bills you receive before throwing them away.

“Be proactive,” says McNamara. “If you have credit monitoring services through your credit card or another service (Equifax for example), take advantage of it.” You can get a free copy of your credit report once a year from each of the 3 credit reporting bureaus.

More Resources

McNamara pointed out that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) also offers a comprehensive checklist on their website that helps guide you on what to do if you’ve been the victim of a data breach.

Read What to Do if Your Healthcare Data is Breached

A prescription middleman on Friday confirmed that it has promised to pay Ohio $15 million to settle fraud claims against it. When the state announced the deal two days earlier, the company denied it had been finalized.

Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost on Wednesday announced that pharmacy benefit manager OptumRx had agreed to pay $15 million to settle a 2019 lawsuit accusing it of overbilling the Ohio Bureau of Workers’ Compensation between 2015 and 2018, in part by not providing contractually guaranteed discounts.

But late that afternoon, a spokesman for the company, Andrew Krejci, denied that was the case, saying, “We continue to dispute his allegations and are honored to have delivered access to more affordable prescription medications for the Ohio Bureau of Workers’ Compensation and Ohio taxpayers.”

Optum is part of UnitedHealth Group, the nation’s fifth-largest company and owner of the largest health insurer. As a pharmacy benefit manager, Optum has great sway over prescription-drug transactions, including deciding which drugs are covered, negotiating non-transparent rebates with drugmakers and determining how much to reimburse the pharmacies that dispense them.

Optum, CVS Caremark and Express Scripts control more than 70% of that marketplace. Critics allege that they use their size and a lack of transparency to inflate their profits and the ultimate cost of drugs.

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday rejected Turkey’s bid to shut down lawsuits in U.S. courts stemming from a violent brawl outside the Turkish ambassador’s residence in Washington more than five years ago that left anti-government protesters badly beaten.

The justices did not comment in turning away Turkey’s arguments that American law shields foreign countries from most lawsuits. Lower courts ruled that those protections did not extend to the events of May 16, 2017, when during a visit by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, “Turkish security forces violently clashed with a crowd of protesters,” as one judge described the situation.

The Supreme Court’s action allows the lawsuits to proceed. In the lawsuits, protesters claim they were brutally punched and kicked, cursed at and greeted with slurs and throat-slashing gestures. One woman slipped in and out of consciousness and has suffered seizures, and others reported post-traumatic stress, depression, concussions and nightmares, according to the complaints.

Facing a lawsuit and enrollment caps, a local senior-care company tries to make a comeback.

During InnovAge’s Sept. 13 earnings call, CEO Patrick Blair spoke like a man who was watching a family member recover from a serious illness. In this case, however, that family member was the Denver-based senior-care company that Blair runs.

In early March of 2021, InnovAge (Nasdaq: INNV) was a company drawing all sorts of positive attention. It had just gone public, garnered an enterprise value of $3.75 billion and come off a five-year period in which revenue grew by 143%.

But on March 10 of that year, the Colorado-born company that had started life as nonprofit Total Longterm Care received a letter from the Colorado Department of Health Care Policy and Financing saying it had gotten a complaint about its Thornton facility. The complaint alleged that clinical staffing at the center was “dangerously low,” caseloads were far too high and preventable acute medical issues had afflicted multiple patients at the facility.

A year and a half later, shares that once traded at $25.98 reached a nadir of $3.50. InnovAge patient enrollment is frozen in Colorado, where 47% of its business resides, as well as in Northern California, until it completes corrective action plans. And the company is the subject of a civil lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court of Colorado by three investor public pension funds that claims officials, including a departed CEO, made “materially false and misleading” statements about the company that caused investors to put their money into the firm only to lose millions of dollars as its value plummeted.

. . .

“I think what our complaint does show is there were systemic issues well before they did the IPO,” said Julie Goldsmith Reiser, a Washington, D.C., attorney who is leading the team seeking unspecified damages from the company, its current and former leaders and firms that aided it in going public. “My parents live across the country from me. I’m the type of person who could use this solution … To me, that’s why it’s important to get this story out.”

. . .

Reiser, who filed the lawsuit, said it aims to recover the money lost by investors who bought into “one of the five worst-performing IPOs in 2021” and suffered because of what she claims was “a materially inaccurate registration statement and prospectus.” But she believes that the people speaking out through her efforts will hold sway on the federal and local agencies seeking to get InnovAge to change its practices — and fulfill the promises it’s made to frail patients and their families.

“I believe when you have regulatory agencies as involved as we have here … the amount of pressure that shareholders can exert is less than those regulatory agencies,” she said. “InnovAge will have to address those regulatory concerns if it wants to be viable.”

The recent influx of migrants to the District has shined a renewed spotlight on the difficult immigration landscape of the past decade and beyond. Prior to and throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, immigrant children have been fleeing gang violence, governmental instability, lack of educational opportunity, and other traumatic conditions in their home countries and arriving in the United States without a legal parent or guardian. These unaccompanied children (UCs) are expected to navigate the incredibly complex U.S. immigration legal system alone, placed in removal proceedings in immigration court without the right to counsel, and often forced to defend themselves against highly skilled attorneys representing the government.

Central to their success is the need for zealous, high-quality legal representation, which could not be achieved without the involvement of pro bono attorneys. KIND (Kids in Need of Defense) partners with area law firms, companies, and solo practitioners to pair child clients with strong advocates to utilize child-friendly, trauma-informed practices and KIND’s holistic model of service to obtain legal relief and provide a better future for these UCs.  Christine Webber and Johanna Hickman of Cohen Milstein Sellers and Toll PLLC are two such stellar attorneys who have served as counsel for a KIND client since 2014.

Johanna, who has focused her legal career on representing entities rather than individual clients, recalls the first big wave of youths coming to the southern border in 2014, the largest number of UC arrivals to date at that point in time. She thought it was important that the legal profession step up to meet the need and felt a strong sense of obligation to help. In her view, the immigration system is already so complicated and remarkably limited for vulnerable populations to access, then adding in children to make their way through the process is not something they could possibly do without an attorney. This KIND case was not Christine’s first pro bono matter and not even her first immigration case. However, this was her first time working with a child client and she was excited to be among a group of several Cohen Milstein attorneys partnering with KIND to serve approximately 10 children. Christine comes to this pro bono work with a background in civil rights and employment class action suits. She has experience explaining the intricacies of the law to non-lawyers and individuals with all levels of education and legal acumen but shares that it is a whole other level when working with children.

Johanna and Christine recall how young their client was when the representation began: a combination of incredible resilience and strength who made the dangerous journey to the U.S. on his own, but still a young boy, who was excited about the hot chocolate machine the firm had in their office. They both were on the client’s case for the entirety.  They represented him through the required state court proceedings, his petition for Special Immigrant Juvenile Status (SIJS), and made the strategic decision to adjudicate his application for a green card in immigration court instead of the more administrative agency process. This decision led to more contingency planning, testimony preparation, and a willingness to be vulnerable, swallow their pride, and be ready for whatever might come their way in this unfamiliar venue.

Christine attributes a large amount of their success to Johanna’s dedication and how she dug into the law and made sure the team knew what needed to be done. Both attorneys also cite the vital contributions of excellent attorneys and other personnel at Cohen Milstein along the way, as well as the importance of the partnership the firm had with KIND.  In their words, KIND’s deep expertise, model documents, trainings, and the ability to call and chat to work through any issues, were all incredibly valuable. As Johanna put it, KIND has a 10,000-foot view that isn’t just specific to the case. KIND can see across hundreds of cases and give perspective on what can be expected, which helped to inform the team’s strategy.

Their case, like all legal matters, had its hurdles and its successes. In general, their young client was growing up as the proceedings went on. Christine and Johanna discovered that their representation was sometimes as much about helping their client navigate the process of growing up, getting through school, acclimating to life in the U.S., and supporting family, as it was about managing the legal aspects. Christine shared that representing a child was such a unique and interesting experience that required a holistic approach. Johanna found that while it was sometimes difficult to focus on what the child client wanted and not necessarily what might have been in the attorney’s determination of their best interests, it helped teach her to empower clients to understand the legal implications in their cases and to make decisions for themselves.

Both attorneys were surprised by the amount of time each step of the process took, and how clear it was that the immigration system is “pretty significantly broken.” Christine said that one important milestone was having the client’s removal proceedings administratively closed, to ensure there was no imminent risk of the child being deported. There were other wins that were celebrated, but until the green card approval, their client wasn’t able to feel secure and have the opportunities the team all wanted for him.

When asked about advice for other attorneys interested in pro bono cases, with KIND or otherwise, both Christine and Johanna stressed the importance of a strong team and partnership, especially when the case is not in your area of expertise, as most pro bono work is not. Whether working with an organization like KIND or with other law firm attorneys, Christine said ensuring that you are supported and operating effectively in the same way you would with paying clients is key. Johanna echoed this sentiment and highlighted that these cases bring opportunities for newer attorneys to take on leadership roles, gain experience in court, achieve professional development goals, and ensure that their practice aligns with their values.

Christine Webber and Johanna Hickman had a considerable impact on the life of a young man who is now able to prosper and plan for his future as a legal permanent resident in the U.S. KIND is thrilled to highlight these fierce advocates for Pro Bono Week 2022 in the hopes that other attorneys will be inspired to follow their lead in stepping out of their comfort zone to tackle pro bono challenges as Christine and Johanna have.

The lead plaintiffs in securities litigation involving Wells Fargo & Company filed a motion for class certification on Monday in the Southern District of New York. Specifically, the motion seeks class certification, appointment of the lead plaintiffs as class representatives, and appointment of Bernstein Litowitz and Cohen Milstein as class counsel.

The suit alleges that the defendants’ made “misstatements to investors concerning Wells Fargo’s purported compliance with three consent orders that the Bank was required to enter into… to rectify systemic and egregious corporate mismanagement and fraud.” The plaintiffs assert that the deceptive conduct committed by Wells Fargo harmed both them and the class, making class certification the best way to rectify the claims.

Constitutional law professors on Friday came out against former President Donald Trump’s bid to assert absolute immunity in three lawsuits seeking to hold him liable for the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, telling the D.C. Circuit Trump’s actions that day were more akin to a “disgruntled candidate” than president.

Six professors from Harvard Law School, the University of Michigan Law School, Ohio State University’s Moritz College of Law and elsewhere urged the appellate court in an amicus brief to reject Trump’s arguments that he is immune from allegations he incited the riot that left five dead, including a Capitol Police officer.

. . .

The separation of powers principle also mandates that the D.C. Circuit affirms Judge Mehta’s ruling against Trump because the only circumstance in which the Constitution allows the president to interfere with Congress is when the two chambers can’t agree on an adjournment time, the professors added.

The professors’ arguments echoed those made in a Sept. 23 joint brief filed by the lawmakers and police officers suing Trump, in which they argued Trump crossed a line with the speech he delivered ahead of the insurrection and attempted to improperly influence an act of Congress in which the president is deliberately excluded from participating by the Constitution.

. . .

The other lawmakers are represented by Joseph M. Sellers, Brian C. Corman and Allison Sarah Deich of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC, Janette McCarthy-Wallace, Anthony P. Ashton and Anna Kathryn Barnes of the NAACP and Robert B. McDuff of the Mississippi Center for Justice.

Read the complete article on Law360.