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.
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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.
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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.
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Black employees claiming an industrial baker and the staffing firm it contracted with illegally denied them work have asked an Illinois federal judge for an initial sign-off on a $1 million deal resolving their class action lawsuit after roughly nine years of litigation.
The workers alleged that Gold Standard Baking Inc. and staffing firm Personnel Staffing Group LLC, which operates as Most Valuable Personnel, violated civil rights law by steering Black workers away from GSB to please a client. On Friday, named plaintiffs James Zollicoffer and Norman Green said in their motion for preliminary approval that the defendants’ cash flow problems were a primary reason the parties engaged in mediation, which led to a tentative settlement.
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The workers are represented by Joseph Sellers and Harini Srinivasan of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC; Christopher J. Wilmes and Caryn Lederer of Hughes Socol Piers Resnick & Dym and Christopher Williams of National Legal Advocacy Network.
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Firm to file class action E.R.I.S.A. lawsuit to hold Pinnacle West and fiduciaries accountable
Washington, DC – Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC, a premier plaintiffs’ class action law firm, is investigating the Pinnacle West Capital Corporation Retirement Plan in anticipation of a potential class action lawsuit. The investigation concerns whether the pension plan is shortchanging married retirees (and their surviving spouses) in violation of the actuarial equivalence requirements of a federal law—the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA). Retirees of Pinnacle West subsidiaries Arizona Public Service Company and Bright Canyon Energy may be affected.
Pinnacle West Capital Corporation Retirement Plan’s filings with the Department of Labor appear to reflect the plan’s use of mortality tables from 1971.
Cohen Milstein currently represents married retirees in five other class action lawsuits actions alleging that large corporations are illegally shortchanging married retirees (and their surviving spouses) in their monthly pension checks, including against AT&T, CITGO Petroleum, and Luxottica.
“We are educating retirees that numerous federal courts have confirmed that ERISA requires married retirees to get the same value for their pensions as unmarried retirees. The lawsuits we have filed challenge the practice of shortchanging married retirees on their monthly pension checks.” said Michelle Yau, chair of Cohen Milstein’s Employee Benefits/ERISA practice. To read more about ERISA’s actuarial equivalence requirements, see “Is Your Retirement Plan Imposing a Marriage Penalty? What You Need to Know.”
Impacted Individuals: Cohen Milstein is actively speaking to married retirees (or their surviving spouses) from Pinnacle West, Arizona Public Service, or Bright Canyon Energy who retired on or after October 1, 2016.
Next Steps: If Pinnacle West, Arizona Public Service, or Bright Canyon Energy retirees (or surviving spouses) believe they are a potentially impacted individual, they should contact their legal counsel or contact: Michelle C. Yau, Partner (email) or at 202.408.4600.
Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC is a premier class action law firm, handling high-profile and often precedent-setting cases on behalf of plaintiffs. We have more than 100 attorneys practicing out of six offices across the United States. In 2020 and 2021, Cohen Milstein was named Law360’s “Employee Benefits/ERISA Practice Group of the Year.”
Michelle C. Yau, chair of the Cohen Milstein’s Employee Benefits/ERISA practice is licensed to practice in Massachusetts and Washington, D.C. Her practice is limited to federal legal matters, such as the federal pension laws that pertain to the Pinnacle West Plan. Ms. Yau’s experience of protecting retirement assets and insight into complex financial transactions and actuarial issues is informed by her Wall Street and Department of Labor experience. In 2021, she was named Law360’s “Employee Benefits MVP – Benefits.”
For additional information, please visit https://www.cohenmilstein.com or call (202) 408-4600.
Contact:
Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC
1100 New York Avenue, N.W., Suite 500
Washington, D.C. 20005
Telephone: 888-240-0775 (Toll Free) or 202-408-4600
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A Maryland federal judge gave her preliminary stamp of approval to three settlements collectively valued at nearly $85 million over allegations that Cargill Meat Solutions, Sanderson Farms and Wayne Farms conspired to depress workers’ wages.
U.S. District Judge Stephanie A. Gallagher found Tuesday that the deals between the meat producers and three classes of poultry plant employees were fair and reasonable returns on claims that the companies participated in an industrywide, anti-competitive conspiracy.
“The court finds that the proposed settlements … have been negotiated at arm’s length and are sufficiently fair, reasonable and adequate to authorize dissemination of notice of the settlement agreements to the settlement class,” Judge Gallagher said.
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The workers are represented by Steve W. Berman, Shana E. Scarlett, Rio S. Pierce, Breanna Van Engelen and Abigail D. Pershing of Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro LLP; by Benjamin D. Brown, Brent W. Johnson, Daniel Silverman and Alison S. Deich of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC; and by George F. Farah, Rebecca P. Chang, Matthew K. Handley and Stephen Pearson of Handley Farah & Anderson PLLC.
Former President Donald Trump acted outside his presidential duties when he spoke to supporters ahead of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol and is not immune from three lawsuits seeking to hold him liable for the attack, lawmakers and police officers have told the D.C. Circuit.
In a joint brief filed Friday, 11 Democratic members of Congress and two U.S. Capitol Police officers sharply criticized Trump’s assertion of absolute immunity from claims he incited the riot that left five dead, including a Capitol Police officer. Trump is appealing a D.C. federal judge’s February ruling that found he must face the three lawsuits, which have been consolidated on appeal.
Trump has argued that the speech he delivered near the White House ahead of the riot was well within the “outer perimeter” of his presidential duties because it focused on matters of public concern, such as election integrity. But the Democratic lawmakers and police officers contend he crossed a line and attempted to influence an act of Congress in which the president is deliberately excluded from participating by the U.S. Constitution.
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Joe Sellers of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC, who represents the 10 other Democratic lawmakers suing Trump, added that the Constitution clearly states what presidential acts are considered permissible and impermissible.
“The facts [of the case] demonstrate that Trump acted way outside any permissible duties that could be prescribed to the presidency and, as a result, that he should be held accountable through civil action,” Sellers said.
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Scientology leader David Miscavige has avoided being served with a summons on at least 14 occasions, a US court has been told, as part of a human-trafficking case brought by three Australian residents.
The allegations emerged in a Florida civil case brought by Australian Gawain Baxter and residents Laura Baxter and Valeska Paris who have claimed they endured horrendous emotional, physical and psychological abuse while in Scientology.
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The lawsuit, backed by US class-action law firms, is regarded as one of the most significant in decades against Scientology, considered by some critics as a dangerous, money-focused cult.
“David Miscavige knows that, in filing this lawsuit, our clients are reclaiming their power and right to fight for full and complete justice,” plaintiff lawyers Ted Leopold of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll and Neil Glazer of Kohn Swift said in a joint statement.
“After enduring alleged unspeakable mistreatment at his hands, we intend to hold Mr. Miscavige and others involved fully responsible.”
Families suing banana grower Chiquita Brands International for its alleged role in funding paramilitary death squads in Colombia will be able to proceed with their case after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit in Atlanta last week unanimously reversed a Florida district court summary judgment and reinstated the historic claims.
U.S. District Judge Kenneth Marra of the Southern District of Florida in West Palm Beach had denied class status and dismissed a handful of individual plaintiffs’ cases in 2019.
“As to the merits, we hold that most of the bellwether plaintiffs presented sufficient evidence to withstand summary judgment with respect to whether the AUC was responsible for the deaths of their decedents,” wrote Eleventh Circuit Judge Adalberto Jordan, referring to the United Self-Defenses of Colombia (Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia).
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EarthRights’ co-counsel includes Paul L. Hoffman of Schonbrun Seplow Harris Hoffman & Zeldes, who argued the appeal; Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll; and attorneys Judith Brown Chomsky, Anthony DiCaprio and Arturo Carrillo.
Agnieszka Fryszman, plaintiffs’ counsel at Cohen Milstein, said in a statement: “This is a very important case for corporate accountability. Chiquita has already admitted it paid over a million dollars to the AUC, a paramilitary group designated as a foreign terrorist organization by the United States.”
A federal appellate court resurrected a major lawsuit Tuesday against banana company Chiquita Brands International for allegedly supporting a Colombian terrorist group that kidnapped, tortured, and murdered plaintiffs’ family members during a civil war. A panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit found that the trial court “got some right and some wrong” on its evidentiary calls, and that the plaintiffs had put forth enough evidence for the case to survive to the next phase of litigation.
The lawsuit has been going on since 2008, when a large group of plaintiffs brought claims against New Jersey-based Chiquita under Torture Victim Protection Act. Their civil lawsuits came just after Chiquita pleaded guilty and agreed to pay a $25 million fine for having made years of payments to the violent, right-wing terrorist organization known as Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (AUC). The claims of 14 plaintiffs were chosen as “bellwether cases,” a common technique used in mass torts to assist groups of litigants in predicting case outcomes.
The district court dismissed the bellwether plaintiffs’ claims at the summary judgment phase on the basis that plaintiffs had not presented enough admissible evidence to prove that AUC was involved in the death of their family members. Much of the evidence the plaintiffs hoped to submit was ruled inadmissible hearsay, and the evidence that was admissible was deemed “circumstantial” and “too speculative” by the trial court.
In a 104-page ruling, a three-judge panel of the 11th Circuit sifted through dozens of the trial judge’s evidentiary rulings. The judges — Adalberto Jordan, a Barack Obama appointee, Kevin Newsom, a Donald Trump appointee, and Senior U.S. Circuit Judge Ed Carnes, a George H.W. Bush appointee — examined the factual underpinnings of each proffered piece of evidence. Ultimately, the panel affirmed the trial court’s rulings on some of the evidence, but reversed on others.
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Agnieszka Fryszman, plaintiffs’ counsel at Cohen Milstein, said that the ruling is “important for corporate accountability”:
“We are very pleased that the Eleventh Circuit carefully and thoroughly evaluated the district court’s approach to Plaintiffs evidence – in 104 pages – and unanimously reversed the lower court’s summary judgment decision. This is a very important case for corporate accountability. Chiquita has already admitted it paid over a million dollars to the AUC, a paramilitary group designated as a foreign terrorist organization by the United States. The Eleventh Circuit has now found that the Plaintiffs presented sufficient admissible evidence to show that the AUC killed their loved ones. After years of briefing these issues, we look forward to presenting our evidence to a jury and seeking justice for our clients.”
The Eleventh Circuit has revived a bunch of bellwether cases in a massive multidistrict litigation alleging Chiquita Brands International funded a Colombian paramilitary group that killed thousands of people, ruling on Tuesday that a Florida district court wrongly precluded the cases from going to trial.
In a 104-page unanimous published opinion, the court reversed much of a summary judgment ruling from September 2019 in favor of Chiquita Brands International Inc. and a handful of its executives in 12 bellwether cases in the Southern District of Florida.
Writing for a three-judge panel, Eleventh Circuit Judge Adalberto Jordan said U.S. District Judge Kenneth A. Marra wrongly rejected some of the plaintiffs’ evidence that the Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia, or AUC, was responsible for the deaths of their loved ones. The AUC received more than $1.7 million from Chiquita between 1997 and 2004, when Colombia was in the midst of a civil war, case records show.
“We hold that most of the bellwether plaintiffs presented sufficient evidence to withstand summary judgment with respect to whether the AUC was responsible for the deaths of their decedents,” the court said.
It is a tremendous victory for the bellwether plaintiffs whose cases have been revived and the thousands of other plaintiffs in the MDL whose cases hinge on the success of the cases that could now proceed to trial, attorneys for the plaintiffs say.
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The court reversed the summary judgment ruling in respect of eight bellwether cases, vacated it in two cases for further consideration of evidence on remand, and affirmed in one. It also dismissed the plaintiff appeal in one case and affirmed the lower court’s denial of motions by the defendants to dismiss certain claims, including those against Chiquita executives under the Torture Victim Protection Act.
Chiquita pled guilty in 2007 to a charge by the federal government over its funding of the AUC, case records show. That admission sparked a flurry of civil cases against the Florida-headquartered fruit producer and distributor by the relatives of people allegedly murdered by the AUC.
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The plaintiffs are represented by Paul D. Wolf of the Law Offices of Paul David Wolf, Paul L. Hoffman and John C. Washington of Schonbrun Seplow Harris Hoffman & Zeldes LLP, Agnieszka M. Fryszman, Benjamin D. Brown, Theodore J. Leopold, Leslie M. Kroeger and Diana L. Martin of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC, Marco Simons, Richard Herz and Marissa Vahlsing of EarthRights International, Judith Brown Chomsky of the Law Offices of Judith Brown Chomsky, John de Leon of the Law Offices of Chavez & De Leon PA, John Scarola of Searcy Denney Scarola Barnhart & Shipley PA, James K. Green of James K. Green PA, Terrence P. Collingsworth of International Rights Advocates, Jonathan C. Reiter of the Law Firm of Jonathan C. Reiter, Stephen J. Golembe of Stephen J. Golembe & Associates PA and William J. Wichmann of the Law Offices of William J. Wichmann PA.
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Plaintiffs and defense firms alike are bracing for a new wave of environmental litigation centering on “forever chemicals,” after the EPA has signaled to set new regulatory standards classifying these substances as “Superfunds.”
The defense and plaintiffs bars rarely agree—but they both see the writing on the wall this time: PFAS and PFOA litigation—environmental claims involving “forever chemicals”—will be expanding at a rapid pace over the weeks and months to come.
“I see this as a snowball rolling downhill, and it’s just getting bigger and faster as it proceeds,” Cohen Milstein partner Theodore J. Leopold said. His firm has been involved in PFAS litigation for several months, including against chemical manufacturer DuPont for allegedly contaminating Cape Fear river in North Carolina. “We are just scratching the surface,” he added referring to the total amount of damages that has occurred to water systems by the use of these toxic chemicals.