Category: In the News - Page 50

A trio of Australian residents have launched legal action against organizations connected to the Church of Scientology over allegations of child trafficking, covering up multiple sexual assaults, and forced labor.

Read the complete article at The Saturday Paper.

Cohen Milstein’s Theodore J. Leopold, Manuel J. Dominguez, and Brendan Schneiderman are representing three individuals in a human trafficking and forced labor lawsuit against the Church of Scientology and five Scientology-affiliated corporations for violations of the United States Code Chapter 77 of Title 18 and the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act. Read the complete case study for more information on Baxter, et. al. v. Church of Scientology International.

Ranbaxy Pharmaceuticals drug purchasers nabbed initial approval of a $485 million global settlement struck in March over claims the drugmaker manipulated the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s generic-drug approval process to box out competitors.

U.S. District Court Judge Nathanial M. Gorton preliminary approved the two deals on Thursday in Massachusetts federal court and signed off on a proposed order laid out by the parties. Under the terms of the deals, $340 million is designated to direct purchasers and $145 million will go to end-payors such as health care plans.

In the multidistrict litigation, the end-payors asserted that Ranbaxy erroneously acquired exclusivity periods for certain drugs, which set back the launch of generic versions and maintained inflated prices. The drug wholesalers said they then fell victim to the high prices as a result of the alleged scheme.

The claims asserted by the parties came after the FDA and the U.S. Department of Justice initiated investigations into Ranbaxy, which culminated in guilty pleas and a $500 million fine in 2013 for lying to regulators and selling drugs that didn’t meet federal safety standards.

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The direct purchasers are represented by Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro LLP, Hilliard Shadowen LLP, Radice Law Firm PC, Sperling & Slater PC, Kessler Topaz Meltzer & Check LLP, Wexler Wallace LLP, Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC and Nussbaum Law Group PC.

Click through the link to access the complete Law360 article, “Ranbaxy Buyers’ $485M Deal in Generics MDL Gets Initial Nod.”

Three former workers for the Church of Scientology have accused the organization of indoctrinating them as kids, making it physically and psychologically impossible for them to leave what they described as a human trafficking situation. In a lawsuit filed in Florida, the plaintiffs say they were raised within the organization and worked on its Freewinds ship after signing a standard-issue billion-year contract to provide free or underpaid labor. Aboard the ship for over a decade, the trio alleges they were prisoners in “a world filled with abuse, violence, intimidation and fear,” working for up to 18 hours at a time.

A federal lawsuit in Tampa accuses Scientology leader David Miscavige and the church of forcing child staffers to work in Clearwater.

Gawain Baxter was 6 years old when he signed a contract agreeing to work for the Church of Scientology for 1 billion years.

He said he spent his childhood doing manual labor at Scientology’s Flag Land Base in Clearwater, and getting no education beyond basic reading, writing and math.

At 15, Baxter attempted to leave by writing a letter to a superior about constant abuse and intolerable living conditions. Instead, he said, church officials sent him to Scientology’s Freewinds ship in the Caribbean, where he worked for little or no wages for 14 years.

See the Tampa Bay Times for the full story.

Three Australian residents have accused Scientology of child trafficking, covering up multiple sexual assaults, forced labor and other abuses in a significant legal claim lodged in a Florida court overnight.

The plaintiffs, Australian Gawain Baxter and residents Laura Baxter and Valeska Paris, are seeking significant “compensatory and punitive damages” against Scientology leader David Miscavige and five Church-related organizations for alleged human trafficking.

Remote work challenges the framework of class and collective actions, raising tactical questions about jurisdiction and whether a work-from-home employee’s geographical location may affect their participation in such suits, attorneys say.

Many remote workers now do their jobs in a different state from the one they used to work in, having abandoned daily commutes to their offices in New York City, Washington, D.C., or Boston to stay at home in surrounding states.

The rising prevalence of remote work raises logistical questions for wage and hour class and collective actions, attorneys say.

This situation may amplify the jurisdictional questions raised by the 2017 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. v. Superior Court where the justices said individuals outside of California who claimed they were injured by a drugmaker’s product could not join a class action filed in the Golden State because they had no connection to that jurisdiction.

In August, the Sixth and Eighth Circuits ruled that individuals may not join a collective action filed in one state by adding their own allegations concerning a defendant’s violations in a different state.

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Shifting Jurisdictional Strategy

As long as remote workers maintain a connection to their particular office, they will be in a better position when it comes to specific jurisdiction in a collective action, said Christine Webber, a partner and co-chair of the civil rights and employment practice group with worker-side firm Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC.

“I think that the people working remotely who still have a connection to a particular office have a pretty good argument that there’s still jurisdiction over their [Fair Labor Standards Act] violations,” she said. “It’s not illegal that somebody worked over 40 hours a week. It’s illegal not to pay them overtime for it and that payroll processing and everything was happening at the office where they used to go in physically, presumably.”

Not every aspect of a claim needs to have happened in the same physical location, she said.

A Class-Collective Divide

The differences between class and collective action mechanisms may also shape group litigation involving remote workers, attorneys said.

FLSA collective actions require members to affirmatively join the suit under 29 U.S.C. § 216(b).

By contrast, for class actions brought under Rule 23 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, class members must opt out, and the named plaintiffs are typically viewed as the parties to the suit.

That distinction may come into play in courts that say they must have personal jurisdiction over opt-in plaintiffs to a collective action, Webber said.

“Then, I would point out … courts have tended to go differently for Rule 23, where you’re looking at the jurisdiction over the named plaintiff, not every individual class member,” she said.

Similarly Situated at Home

Webber said she has no doubt that you can have workers who are similarly situated who are not all in the same physical space because she has represented workers such as visiting nurses who do home health care visits.

The nurses may check in in the morning to get their assignments at the same office, but then they go from patient residence to patient residence, Webber said. It’s the same with drivers for ride-hailing services and Amazon drivers, she said.

“You can still show they’re subject to the same terms and conditions, same work rules, same policies and practices and same job duties, etc., such that a class action is appropriate,” she said. “I don’t think that is or should be a concern at all in terms of class certification or collective action certification.”

A D.C. federal judge shot down an attempt by the Justice Department to throw out the bulk of a proposed class action by more than a dozen women alleging they were systematically driven out of the FBI agent training program and subjected to sexist double standards.

In a one-page order filed Friday, U.S. District Judge Jia M. Cobb denied the federal government’s motion for partial dismissal of a proposed class action alleging the law enforcement agency allowed rampant bias in its trainee program in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.

The 17 plaintiffs, some proceeding pseudonymously, had claimed that the bureau cracked down on female trainees but let men off the hook for mistakes it cited to block most of them from becoming full agents.

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The current and former FBI employees are represented by Joseph M. Sellers and Christine E. Webber of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC and by David J. Shaffer.

A proposal from the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council to block state pension funds from selecting investments based on environmental, social and governance factors is being closely watched by benefits attorneys who say it echoes Trump-era regulations that evinced antipathy toward ESG investing.

The model policy, unveiled Wednesday, could give state legislatures a template for implementing similar restrictions on ESG investments that were proposed under the Trump administration in late 2020, though ALEC envisions restricting state-run retirement plans instead of employer sponsored ones. President Joe Biden’s Department of Labor has since backed off those rules.

The proposal’s main focus, and a major idea behind the Trump-era DOL rule, has to do with requiring fiduciaries of a retirement plan to explain why they’re choosing ESG-based investments over other comparable options.

In particular, the proposal would restrict investment by specifying that an option’s performance — not its environmental or social impact — should be the focus when a retirement plan manager is deciding whether it is right for a plan. That was the same process suggested by the Trump-era DOL.

And the ALEC proposal would go even further than Trump’s rule by, for example, expanding the definition of what constitutes a material financial risk to exclude uncertain events far in the future — which might include climate change.

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“To the extent this debate provides any guidance into the best thinking about the pecuniary benefits provided by ESG-type investments, I think, could have some tag-along effects about providing or dissuading fiduciaries from using those types of investments in plans,” said Daniel Sutter, an attorney at Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll LLP.

“It may just reveal the best thinking on the ESG investment thesis and whether or not, you know, the individuals that spend a lot of their time studying the economic benefits of ESG, whether there’s a strong case that there’s a long-term pecuniary benefit,” he added.

As part of a settlement signed today with the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Air Quality (DAQ), Chemours has agreed to further limit GenX emissions, conduct additional testing and pay the penalty assessed last year by DAQ.

The agreement will require Chemours to reduce GenX emissions from the Carbon Adsorber Unit in the Vinyl Ethers North manufacturing area to no more than an average of 1.0 pound per month between May and September 2022. Fugitive emissions from the Vinyl Ethers North area are primarily controlled by the Carbon Adsorber Unit which is a separate system from the onsite Thermal Oxidizer. Chemours’ facility-wide emissions are limited to 23.027 pounds per year under the current air permit.

Cohen Milstein is Interim Co-Lead Counsel in this consolidated environmental toxic tort class action against E.I. DuPont de Nemours Company, and its former wholly-owned subsidiary, The Chemours Company.

Cohen Milstein’s team is led by Theodore J. Leopold, and includes S. Douglas Bunch, and Alison Deich.

Wells Fargo & Co. will pay $32.5 million to resolve litigation by workers who say the banking giant favored its own funds in their 401(k) plan over cheaper and better performing alternatives, settlement papers filed in Minnesota federal court show.

The deal is expected to benefit more than 400,000 people who invested in Wells Fargo target date funds through the company’s $40 billion 401(k) plan. The settlement amount represents 40% of the plan participants’ estimated damages, according to the filing.

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The Wells Fargo plan participants are represented by Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC, Zimmerman Reed LLP, and Keller Rohrback LLP. Wells Fargo is represented by Proskauer Rose LLP and Dorsey & Whitney LLP.

Read Wells Fargo Inks $32.5 Million Deal Over Affiliated 401(k) Funds.