S. Douglas Bunch ’02, J.D. ’06, has been appointed a representative of the United States to the 77th session of the General Assembly of the United Nations.
William & Mary alumnus and Board of Visitors member S. Douglas Bunch ’02, J.D. ’06, has been appointed a representative of the United States to the 77th session of the General Assembly of the United Nations, the White House announced today.
Bunch, a partner at Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC, will join the delegation as the General Assembly of the United Nations opens Sept. 13. The appointment was made by President Joe Biden.
“I am honored, humbled and deeply grateful for the president’s trust and confidence and look forward to joining my new colleagues at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations and at the Department of State in their vitally important work,” Bunch said.
Bunch was appointed to W&M’s Board of Visitors in 2016 and reappointed in 2020. He is currently a member of the Executive Committee and the Committee on Academic Affairs. He also chairs the Committee on Institutional Advancement.
While an undergraduate at the university, he studied government and classical studies. He was also a Monroe Scholar, President’s Aide and member of Omicron Delta Kappa and Mortar Board. When he graduated in 2002, he received the Ewell Award and the James Frederic Carr Memorial Cup.
In addition to his time on the Board of Visitors, Bunch has served William & Mary in multiple ways throughout the years. He has been a strong supporter of the W&M in Washington program as well as the Office of Community Engagement. He was a member of the search committees for the university’s 28th president (2017-2018) and its sixth provost (2018-2019). He has also served on or is a current ex officio member of W&M’s Student Engagement and Leadership Advisory Board and Washington Center Advisory Board.
“Service is one of our core values at William & Mary, and it is one that Doug Bunch has long embraced,” said President Katherine A. Rowe. “Mr. Bunch is fearless and level-headed in his commitment to improving the world. We see that commitment in his legal career, in his dedication to educational opportunity for underserved communities as the co-founder of Global Playground, and his devotion to alma mater. He is a broad thinker with a gift for human connection – exactly what is needed in global leadership. We are deeply proud of him.”
In his role at Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll, Bunch serves as a member of the Securities Litigation & Investor Protection practice group and co-chair of the Pro Bono Committee. According to the firm, he represents public and private pension fund investors in securities and shareholder class actions, and has recently acted as amicus curiae counsel to Equality Virginia, the Commonwealth’s leading advocacy organization for LGBTQ+ equality, in filing amicus briefs in support of transgender students in Virginia public schools.
Bunch is the co-founder and chairman of the nonprofit Global Playground, which funds educational opportunities for children in the underdeveloped and developing world. He is also a member of the board of directors of Ascanius: The Youth Classics Institute, which he founded as his Monroe project while a student at W&M, and has served on the board of directors of Virginia21.
After receiving a master’s degree from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education, Bunch returned to W&M for his law degree. When he graduated in 2006, he received the Law School’s Benjamin Rush medal.
Bunch has received multiple honors for his service, including W&M Law School’s inaugural W. Taylor Reveley III Award. For his work in law, Bunch has been named to Lawdragon’s “500 Leading Plaintiff Financial Lawyers,” Benchmark Litigation’s “40 & Under Hot List,” and Law360’s “Rising Stars – Securities,” honoring lawyers under the age of 40 whose professional accomplishments transcend their age.
An Illinois federal judge gave preliminary approval to a $6.25 million settlement between Boeing and shareholders who alleged in both federal court and the Delaware Court of Chancery that the company failed to properly disclose issues with its 737 Max jet.
U.S. District Judge Harry D. Leinenweber on Thursday signed off on the deal, pending further consideration at a final approval hearing later this year. In addition to the funds, the settlement would see Boeing modify its bylaws to allow federal derivative claims from stockholders to be brought in venues other than the Delaware Chancery Court.
The settlement must be approved in both Delaware and Illinois, and Boeing’s board of directors will have to amend its forum-selection bylaw to allow federal derivative claims in either the District of Delaware or the District of Virginia, where Boeing is moving its headquarters.
“The federal settlement is fair, reasonable, adequate and in the best interests of Boeing and its stockholders,” Judge Leinenweber wrote in his nine-page order.
According to the preliminary approval motion filed earlier this month, Boeing’s executive and board director insurance will pay the company $6.25 million if the settlement is finalized. Attorneys for the Seafarers Pension Plan, which sued on the company’s behalf, are seeking up to $4.25 million of that in fees and expenses.
A final federal court approval hearing for the deal is set for Dec. 14.
The 737 Max was involved in two fatal crashes in five months between October 2018 and March 2019, which led to an unprecedented 20-month global grounding of the jets, multiple investigations and scores of lawsuits accusing Boeing of shortcutting safety in its pursuit of profits. The Federal Aviation Administration cleared the 737 Max to return to service in November 2020.
Seafarers alleged in its Illinois suit, filed in December 2019, that the company board never implemented a system to ensure that the products in its commercial airline business complied with federal and international laws. That failure exposed Boeing to an undue amount of risk the company “repeatedly concealed” in its annual proxy statements, which deprived stockholders of information they should have received before voting on significant issues such as director reelections and executive compensation, according to the suit.
. . .
Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC, the firm representing Seafarers, said in a statement to Law360 that a critical part of the proposed settlement is that federal derivative claims can be brought in Delaware federal court as well as where Boeing is headquartered, an analogy other courts may rely on.
“The bylaw change in Boeing that the Seafarers has achieved through this proposed settlement is an important milestone for shareholder rights and corporate governance,” Cohen Milstein said.
A spokesperson for Boeing declined to comment.
Seafarers Pension Plan is represented by Carol V. Gilden, Steven J. Toll, Richard A. Speirs and Amy Miller of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC.
A Utah judge dismissed a 2019 lawsuit filed by stockholders, but a federals appeals court has now revived some of their case.
Without any profits to promote, Pluralsight instead urged investors to watch how its billings to customers were growing, stockholders allege — as executives credited the size and productivity of their salesforce.
But after its billings slowed, the Draper-based company revealed in a July 31, 2019, filing that it had been “slower in hiring additional sales representatives than planned” to market its subscriptions to training software and online classes.
The next day, its share price dropped nearly 40% — and two large investment funds sued, arguing Pluralsight made misleading statements about its sales staff. The company denied the allegations, and a Utah federal judge later dismissed the lawsuit.
Now, the 10th U.S. Circuit of Appeals in Denver has revived some of the claims. Here is what’s still at stake, as investors return to court to try to prove their case.
How were investors allegedly misled?
In the past, Pluralsight had “about 80 quota-bearing [representatives] and little infrastructure around our sales reps,” then-Chief Financial Officer James Budge allegedly told investors at 2019 conference.
The number of “quota-bearing reps went from about 80 at that time to today we have about 250,” he explained on Jan. 16, 2019, according to the lawsuit.
Six months later, Pluralsight revealed in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing that its billings had grown by 23% in the second quarter of 2019 — a significant drop from the growth in the five previous quarters.
On an earnings call with CEO Aaron Skonnard on the same day as that filing, Budge blamed delays in hiring sales reps.
“We’re about 250 quota-bearing reps right now. And that’s about the number of bodies we wanted to have at this time in the year, but they didn’t come into the year early enough,” he said, according to the lawsuit’s transcription of the call. “…[W]e’re a few months behind there, that’s been the big impact.”
An analyst asked, “Why didn’t we hear this on last quarter’s call?” and Budge replied, “Well, we were still hitting our numbers,” referring to billings, the lawsuit alleges.
The next day, Pluralsight’s stock dropped from $30.69 to $18.56 a share, the lawsuit said.
And at the investors conference a year later, in January 2020, Budge allegedly said Pluralsight “came out of 2018 going into 2019 with about 200 quota-bearing sales reps. … We just didn’t have enough reps.”
That statement, the court said, “strongly suggests Pluralsight could not have had ‘about 250′ quota-bearing sales representatives on January 16, 2019.”
“This would have required Pluralsight to ramp up an additional 50 sales representatives in just two weeks, an unlikely scenario,” Judge Veronica Rossman wrote, “given that Pluralsight’s stated goal was to have 300 quota-bearing sales representatives by the end of the year.”
The allegations “support a reasonable belief” that Budge’s statement on Jan. 16, 2019, was false or misleading, Rossman wrote.
The ruling allows the two funds that sued to return to the trial court with that claim, and with two related claims: that Skonnard and Budge are liable under securities laws, and that they engaged in illegal insider trading.
The two groups — the Indiana Public Retirement System and Public School Teachers’ Pension and Retirement Fund of Chicago — also alleged Pluralsight, Skonnard and Budge made 17 other misleading statements.
Pluralsight had become public in 2018, and had its second offering of stock in March 2019. The two investment groups alleged those misleading statements could have inflated its stock price during the offering.
But the appellate court said the other 17 statements were either accurate “or expressions of corporate optimism that would not mislead reasonable investors.”
A Georgia jury’s $1.7 billion punitive damages verdict against Ford Motor Co. over a fatal rollover collision shines a light on an alleged defect that previously has resulted in confidential settlements. But the award may not stick, attorneys told Law360, especially if a Georgia law prompts a post-trial settlement.
Elderly couple Voncile and Melvin Hill were killed in 2014 when the Ford Super Duty F-250 pickup truck they were driving rolled over on a rural Georgia road. Their sons, Kim and Adam Hill, sued Ford, alleging that the company knew the roof of its Super Duty trucks was dangerously weak yet kept it on the market.
On Aug. 18, a Gwinnett County, Georgia, jury found Ford mostly to blame for the Hills’ accident, awarding the couple’s sons $24 million in compensatory damages. The jury added $1.7 billion in punitive damages the following day.
…
Leslie Mitchell Kroeger of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC, who has represented plaintiffs in truck roof crush cases against Ford, told Law360 in an email that her cases also have ended in confidential settlements with Ford.
These roof crush crashes “traditionally result in catastrophic injury or deaths,” she said.
For instance, Cohen Milstein client Carlos Paz-Orjales reached a confidential settlement in 2018 with Ford over the same defect alleged by the Hill family.
Paz-Orjales had been a fully seat-belted passenger in a 2005 Ford F350 Super Duty King Ranch truck when the driver lost control of the vehicle and the truck rolled over, according to Cohen Milstein’s summary of the case.
The firm said the truck’s roof caved in and crushed Paz-Orjales, severely injuring his spine and permanently rendering him a quadriplegic.
WHAT TO KNOW:
- Board also agrees to retool controversial forum bylaw
- Settlement will be paid by insurers into company’s coffers
Boeing Co.’s board will pay $6.25 million and amend a controversial company bylaw to end litigation in two courts challenging the aerospace manufacturer’s requirement that certain shareholder lawsuits be heard in Delaware, according to federal court filings in Chicago.
Judge Harry D. Leinenweber signed off tentatively on the deal Thursday, about seven months after an appeals court revived federal derivative claims filed against Boeing’s board in Chicago by a pension fund. The appellate ruling overturned Leinenweber’s novel 2020 decision sending the dispute to Delaware.
The judge scheduled a final settlement hearing for Dec. 14. The agreement will go to a judge in Delaware’s Chancery Court after the conclusion of approval proceedings in the US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, according to the pension fund’s court filings.
The lawsuit, filed in 2019, emerged from shareholder derivative litigation over two high-profile crashes of Boeing’s 737 Max 8 jetliner that killed a combined 346 people. The investor suits accused Boeing’s board of ignoring safety issues before the crashes, which together cost the company more than $20 billion.
. . .
The new settlement would amend Boeing’s forum bylaw to clarify that shareholder derivative suits can be heard by federal district courts in Delaware or the Eastern District of Virginia if Delaware’s state courts lack jurisdiction because they assert only federal claims.
“The Boeing bylaw change extends beyond claims arising under the Securities and Exchange Act of 1934 and allows federal derivative claims under any federal statutory scheme with exclusive jurisdiction to be brought in federal court,” Carol Gilden, lead counsel for the investors and partner at Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC, said in a Friday statement. “Plus, those claims are not restricted to Delaware federal court and can be brought where Boeing is headquartered, which is an analogy other courts may rely on.”
The $6.25 million settlement amount would also be paid by the board’s insurers, according to the court filings.
. . .
Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC are counsel for the pension fund. Boeing and its board are represented by Sullivan & Cromwell LLP and Kirkland & Ellis LLP.
- Investors allege salesforce size inflated
- Utah district court dismissed litigation in 2021
Pluralsight failed to convince the Tenth Circuit to affirm the complete dismissal of an investor lawsuit claiming executives made false claims about the size and productivity of the online education site’s salesforce.
The allegations brought by a couple of public employee retirement funds “strongly support the inference” that Pluralsight’s then-CFO knew he overstated the salesforce’s size at a 2019 conference and there was a risk of misleading investors, the US Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit said in a unanimous decision Tuesday.
The allegations also support the inference the former CFO had a “financial motive for making the misleading representation,” the appeals court said
The investor funds—Indiana Public Retirement System and Public School Teachers’ Pension and Retirement Fund of Chicago—sued Pluralsight in 2019 , alleging false or misleading statements about the company’s salesforce artificially inflated Pluralsight’s stock price, including during a 2019 secondary public offering.
They appealed to the Tenth Circuit after the U.S. District Court for the District of Utah dismissed the suit in March 2021.
. . .
Indiana Public Retirement System and Public School Teachers’ Pension and Retirement Fund of Chicago are represented by Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll and Clyde Snow & Sessions. Pluralsight is represented by Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati and Fabian VanCott.
Read the article on Bloomberg Law (subscription required.).
Washington state and the federal government will receive $33 million from health care giant Centene Corp. to resolve a lawsuit alleging it overcharged the state’s Medicaid program — a deal that amounts to the second-largest fraud recovery in the state’s history.
Washington’s Office of the Attorney General announced the deal Wednesday, saying Centene will pay about $19 million to the state and about $13 million to the federal government to toss allegations that the company overcharged for pharmacy benefit management services.
“Medicaid dollars are a precious resource meant to fund care for the most vulnerable among us,” Washington state Attorney General Bob Ferguson said in a news release. “My office works to ensure that these dollars go where they are intended — not toward fraud.”
Washington sued Centene in July 2022, alleging the company and one of its subsidiaries, Coordinated Care of Washington, violated the Washington Medicaid False Claims Act. Coordinated Care of Washington contracts with Washington’s Health Care Authority to manage its Medicaid program, which is called Apple Health, according to the release.
WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW:
- Deal said to be among largest derivative recoveries
- Judge not confident higher recovery “realistic”
Shareholders of FirstEnergy Corp. won court approval of a $180 million settlement in their derivative litigation against the utility company’s directors.
The shareholders have said the settlement is “among the largest derivative recoveries ever achieved” in the US, noted Judge Algenon Marbley of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio, who granted final approval Tuesday.
The Akron, Ohio-based company had been embroiled in a bribery scandal tied to nuclear subsidies, admitting in mid-2021, as part of a deal with federal prosecutors, that it conspired with public officials and others to pay millions of dollars in bribes.
According to settlement terms, the defendants’ insurers will pay $180 million to FirstEnergy, less legal fees. FirstEnergy will also commit to a series of internal governance reforms, including the departure of six directors.
. . .
Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC represents additional plaintiff Massachusetts Laborers Pension Fund.
Workers for an animal feed manufacturer asked a California federal judge for class status in their suit alleging they were charged an inflated $244 million for their employer’s stock just before its value plummeted because of a feed contamination scandal.
Three workers filed their request for class certification Thursday in the suit lodged against Kevin Kruse, owner of feed manufacturer Western Milling, and GreatBanc Trust Co., trustee of the employee stock ownership plan. The workers requested that their memorandum expressing the grounds for class certification be filed under seal.
In their motion, they said the class should include all workers and their beneficiaries who participated in the Western Milling employee stock ownership plan from Nov. 4, 2015. According to the initial complaint, nearly 400 workers are eligible for the suit.
The request stems from the February 2019 lawsuit Armando Zavala filed against Kruse, who operates the parent company of Western Milling, Kruse-Western Inc. Most of the claims survived a dismissal bid in December 2021.
Zavala, a former employee, said that the company violated the Employee Retirement Income Security Act when it sold the Kruse-Western stock to the newly established Western Milling employee stock ownership plan in 2015 for an inflated price of $244 million, which resulted in the loss of “tens of millions” for the stock ownership plan.
. . .
The workers are represented by Daniel Feinberg, Nina Wasow and Andrea Obando of Feinberg Jackson Worthman & Wasow LLP and by Michelle C. Yau and Kai Richter of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC.
Read the article on Law360.
US judge dismisses oil and gas giant’s arguments for avoiding trial over alleged human rights abuses in Indonesia.
A United States judge cleared the way for 11 Indonesian villagers to sue ExxonMobil for alleged human rights abuses after finding the majority of the gas and oil giant’s arguments to be “entirely meritless”.
In a searing 85-page opinion, US District Court Judge Royce Lamberth concluded that both witness testimony and ExxonMobil’s internal documents would potentially allow a reasonable jury to find that security personnel hired by the firm had abused villagers in Aceh province during the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Lamberth said the US multinational’s arguments about Indonesian law and other evidence in the case were repeatedly found to be “wrong” or “simply wrong”.
The reasoning, which was previously under seal, was publicly released on Tuesday after Lamberth last month ruled that the villagers’ lawsuit could go to trial after languishing in the US courts system since 2001.
The villagers allege that they or their loved ones were assaulted, tortured, abused and, in some cases, killed, by Indonesian soldiers who were contracted to ExxonMobil to provide security at the Arun gas field during fighting between separatist fighters and the military.
“We are gratified that the court was moved by the evidence we presented from more than a dozen eyewitnesses and agreed that this important human rights case against ExxonMobil should move forward to trial,” Agnieszka Fryszman, lawyer for the plaintiffs and chair of Cohen Milstein’s Human Rights Practice, said in a statement.
“This case has been up and down to the Supreme Court and tied up in pretrial litigation for over 20 years. This is a big turning point for our clients who have stuck it out for so long in the hopes of obtaining justice. We look forward to presenting our evidence to a jury.”