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.

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

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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.

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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.

A Nevada federal judge granted final approval Thursday to a $375 million settlement in a more than a decade-long class action lawsuit in which fighters accused UFC of suppressing their wages, according to a lead attorney on the case.

The plaintiffs filed a memo Jan. 30 seeking final approval of the settlement for a class of more than 1,100 former UFC fighters. This deal resolves the antitrust lawsuit filed by fighter Cung Le in 2014, but leaves the organization facing down similar accusations in a lawsuit filed by Kajan Johnson in 2021.

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As part of the settlement, 35 fighters will get the highest payout of more than $1 million and around 100 will receive more than $500,000, Cramer said. The remaining fighters will net approximately $50,000 to more than $250,000.

The parties initially reached a $335 million settlement in March, which included both the Le and Johnson lawsuits, but it was rejected through a July 30 minute order. U.S. District Judge Richard F. Boulware II expressed doubts about the settlement during a hearing in June, conveying concern about the dollar figure and that it would resolve lawsuits at different points in the legal process. He said he wanted to see “life changing” money for the fighters, who have gone through 10 years of litigation.

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The fighters are represented by Eric L. Cramer, Michael Dell’Angelo, Ellen T. Noteware, Patrick F. Madden, Najah A. Jacobs and Joshua P. Davis of Berger Montague, Richard A. Koffman, Benjamin D. Brown, Daniel H. Silverman and Daniel Gifford of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC, Joseph R. Saveri, Kevin E. Rayhill, Christopher K.L. Young and Itak Moradi of Joseph Saveri Law Firm LLP, Don Springmeyer of Kemp Jones LLP, Robert C. Maysey and Jerome K. Elwell of Warner Angle Hallam Jackson & Formanek PLC, and Crane Pomerantz of Clark Hill PLC.

Investors in the Utah ‘unicorn’ say Pluralsight misled them.

Pluralsight will pay $20 million to a group of early investors to settle claims the Utah tech giant misrepresented its success to investors in its early days as a public company.

The settlement ends a nearly five-year and “very hard-fought” legal battle between Pluralsight, one of Silicon Slopes’ flagship tech companies, and a group of investors responsible for public employees’ retirement funds in the Midwest, said plaintiff’s lead attorney Carol Gilden at the final settlement hearing Tuesday morning.

The class action lawsuit, first filed in 2019 and revived in 2022, claimed Pluralsight and its founding executives knowingly misled investors about their company’s success, artificially inflated stock prices and cashed out before stock prices plummeted.

The lead plaintiffs in the case are two funds responsible for managing retirement and benefit accounts for public employees in Indiana and Chicago, Illinois. Each fund bought thousands of common stock shares when Pluralsight went public in 2018, according to court documents, and lost millions of dollars as a result.

A federal judge dismissed the claims initially, but an appeals court in Denver revived many of them in 2022. The revived case also names founder and then-CEO Aaron Skonnard, and former Chief Financial Officer James Budge, as defendants.

Pluralsight will pay $20 million to a group of early investors to settle claims the Utah tech giant misrepresented its success to investors in its early days as a public company.

The settlement ends a nearly five-year and “very hard-fought” legal battle between Pluralsight, one of Silicon Slopes’ flagship tech companies, and a group of investors responsible for public employees’ retirement funds in the Midwest, said plaintiff’s lead attorney Carol Gilden at the final settlement hearing Tuesday morning.

The class action lawsuit, first filed in 2019 and revived in 2022, claimed Pluralsight and its founding executives knowingly misled investors about their company’s success, artificially inflated stock prices and cashed out before stock prices plummeted.

The lead plaintiffs in the case are two funds responsible for managing retirement and benefit accounts for public employees in Indiana and Chicago, Illinois. Each fund bought thousands of common stock shares when Pluralsight went public in 2018, according to court documents, and lost millions of dollars as a result.

A federal judge dismissed the claims initially, but an appeals court in Denver revived many of them in 2022. The revived case also names founder and then-CEO Aaron Skonnard, and former Chief Financial Officer James Budge, as defendants.

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A Colorado federal judge on Friday certified an ERISA class action accusing a radiology company and its trustee of overcharging its employee stock ownership plan for purchase of company stock.

U.S. District Judge Charlotte N. Sweeney, in a 24-page order, granted a motion for class certification by former Envision Management Holding employees Robert Harrison and Grace Heath, who allege that their employee stock ownership plan, or ESOP, was up-charged more than $300 per share for nearly two-thirds of Envision stock.

Judge Sweeney found that the plaintiffs had met their burden of showing common questions among the proposed class, including whether the ESOP paid more than fair market value for company stock, whether each defendant breached fiduciary duties owed to the plan, and whether the plan suffered losses from those breaches, the order says.

The judge also determined that Harrison and Heath’s claims are typical of those of the proposed class members, which are based on the same underlying allegation that the ESOP paid an excessive price of $177 million for Envision stock, according to the order.

She certified a class of about 1,000 “participants in the Envision ESOP on or after September 1, 2017, who vested under the terms of the ESOP,” naming Harrison and Heath as class representatives, and appointing their attorneys at Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC as class counsel.

“The court finds that Plaintiffs and their counsel will vigorously prosecute this action on behalf of the class,” Judge Sweeney said.

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Harrison and Heath are represented by Michelle C. Yau, Caroline E. Bressman and Ryan Wheeler of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC.

The deal would resolve a consolidated class-action over two cyberattacks, one of which cost the resort operator $100 million

A federal court gave preliminary approval to a $45 million settlement in a consolidated class-action lawsuit brought against MGM Resorts International for data breaches in 2019 and 2023.

Hackers broke into the resort operator’s systems twice, according to the suit filed in the U.S. District Court of Nevada, which combined two class-action lawsuits over separate breaches into one complaint. In July 2019, a hacker stole data including sensitive information such as driver’s license numbers, passport numbers and customer addresses.

Then in September 2023, MGM was attacked again, this time with ransomware, in an incident that disabled the resort operator’s key systems for several days— including those to hotel rooms—as well as taking gaming machines offline. The suit claims the hackers gained access to customer information during the attack, estimating that around 37 million people were affected by both attacks.

The suit alleges MGM failed to implement data-security practices, resulting in the breaches. MGM declined to comment.

The 2023 attack effectively shut down some of the biggest casinos on the Las Vegas Strip at the height of the summer season, costing MGM about $100 million. The company said in an October 2023 filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission it expects insurance to cover the costs.

Apple must face a potential class action alleging that Apple had a policy of paying men higher salaries than women for similar work.

On Tuesday, California Superior Court Judge Ethan P. Schulman filed an order that largely denies Apple’s motions to strike the class allegations and suspend several class claims. This allows what one lawyer representing women suing, Joseph Sellers, said was “a very important case that impacts thousands of current and former female Apple employees.”

Perhaps most significantly, Apple tried and failed to argue that pay disparities for individual female workers suing were “justified” and that their circumstances were not common to the 12,000 female employees who could be owed backpay if the class action is certified and Apple loses.

But Schulman agreed with employees suing that there was a “reasonable possibility” that thousands of women in Apple’s California-based engineering, AppleCare, and marketing divisions experienced similar unequal pay and discrimination as alleged in the complaint.

Schulman said that workers suing sufficiently alleged that Apple “has implemented an unlawful wage rate scheme that is generally applicable” to the class and results in Apple underpaying female workers, compared to their male counterparts.

According to workers suing, Apple has three policies that seemingly perpetuate and widen gender pay gaps. Allegedly, Apple relies upon “prior pay and pay expectations to set starting salaries,” uses performance evaluations that “reward” men and “penalize” women “for the same behaviors,” and uses “talent” reviews to pay men more than women “with similar levels of talent.”

Schulman warned that accepting Apple’s argument that evidence of pay disparity to particular employees did not reflect a common pattern or policy would seemingly “mean that a class action could never be certified” under California’s Equal Pay Act.

“Plaintiffs sufficiently allege that Defendant’s salary decisions are made in a centralized location pursuant to an employment policy which appears facially neutral but ‘has had the effect of perpetuating past pay disparities and paying women less than men performing substantially similar work,'” Schulman wrote.

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The plaintiffs in this case are represented by Outten & Golden, Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll, and Altshuler Berzon. These law firms are known for brokering settlements with Goldman Sachs and Sterling Jewelers.

The plaintiff-side law firm Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC snagged over $78 million last year in settlements for workers who’d faced discrimination on the job, including big payouts from both the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the FBI, earning the firm a spot among the 2024 Law360 Employment Groups of the Year.

Cohen Milstein notched wins for classes of female employees at the two high-profile government agencies. They secured nearly $23 million for a class of FBI agent trainees who said they were tossed from its basic training program because of their sex; meanwhile a class of female U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents who said they were moved to light duty when they became pregnant was awarded $45 million.

Cohen Milstein partner Christine Webber, a member of the team that represented the class of 34 female FBI trainees who reached the settlement with the agency in September, said she was deeply impressed by that group of clients. She noted the bravery it took those who added their real names to the litigation, because decision-makers high in the government would know they had joined the case.

“This is a group of named plaintiffs that’s just among the most badass group of women I have had the privilege to represent,” she said. “They’re a very, very impressive group.”

The women in the class passed every objective test required to become an FBI agent: physical fitness, academics and firearms assessments. But all were dismissed at the stage of the so-called “suitability evaluation,” a subjective assessment conducted prior to graduation.

The explanations the women were given were “really inconsistent with how men who engaged in similar behaviors were treated,” Webber said.

For example, a male trainee who shot the wrong target during a practice exercise would be pulled aside and coached. Women who made the same mistake would be told they didn’t “have what it takes,” Webber said.

When the case was filed in 2019, it caught the attention of members of Congress who pushed for a separate investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice inspector general. That report confirmed the women’s allegations, Webber said.

“Basically, women were about 25% of the trainees and 50% of those who were dismissed on these suitability notations,” she said.

The $22.6 million settlement works out to an average of $570,000 per class member, which Webber explained is a reflection of the missed career opportunity, including the FBI’s generous pension.

The settlement also allows the class members to be reinstated as long as they pass basic training, though Webber said it’s too soon to say how many will go that route.

“We are hoping that some of the class members … will become FBI agents as a result of the settlement, and think that they will be bringing both great talent as agents, but also a great perspective for how the FBI needs to treat women better and therefore improving the agency,” Webber said.

Meanwhile, over at DHS’ Customs and Border Protection, Cohen Milstein scored a $45 million deal in August in a class action brought on behalf of 1,000 officers and agriculture specialists. The workers said they were shunted to light duty when they became pregnant, in violation of the Pregnancy Discrimination Act. Their suit was filed as an administrative case at the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in 2016.

“A number of them were referred to as liabilities, that this pregnancy is a liability. And it’s had a significant impact on their career paths, on their leave, on some of their opportunities to earn overtime, and other things that have materially compromised their earnings as well as making them feel like pariahs,” said Cohen Milstein partner Joseph Sellers, who worked on both the CBP and FBI cases.

The U.S. Supreme Court declined Monday to assess the certification of an enormous class of businesses that social media colossus Meta Platforms allegedly defrauded by inflating the reach of Facebook and Instagram advertisements, upping the odds of a major payout in the closely watched case.

In an order list, the high court said it won’t review a Ninth Circuit opinion that allowed a supersize cluster of companies to seek damages in what Meta has called “one of the largest fraud classes in the Ninth Circuit’s history, encompassing millions of diverse advertisers.”

Some advertisers contend Meta scammed them with bogus boasts about the “potential reach” of advertisements. Meta purported to quantify that reach by citing the number of individual users in an ad’s target audience, but the number it cited actually reflected accounts — a much larger category that includes duplicate or phony profiles, such as those for automated bots.

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The plaintiffs are represented by Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC and the Law Offices of Charles Reichmann.