The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s pending requirement that companies report their use of so-called forever chemicals could impose a tough burden on businesses across many industry sectors, and environmental attorneys say it’s crucial that companies act now to prepare.

The proposed new rule, currently being finalized by the Biden administration, would require businesses that have manufactured, processed or imported per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, to submit a comprehensive report detailing all of those uses for a 10-year period. It contains few exceptions like those often found in other chemical data reporting requirements under the Toxic Substances Control Act and will apply to both major corporations and small businesses.

The broad scope of the proposed rule is intended to help the agency better understand the potential risks and scope of the chemicals. The rule would be a one-time requirement, but the reporting could pose significant challenges for clients that haven’t kept detailed records of their past decade of using PFAS, experts say.

Thousands of businesses that may have never interacted with the TSCA may now suddenly find themselves needing to navigate its complex reporting framework. Attorneys are counseling their clients to prepare now to submit the required documentation or be able to establish they deployed their best efforts to pull it together.

…

And as PFAS-related litigation becomes more commonplace, reporting rules for the chemicals could provide an important tool for plaintiffs, especially in communities impacted by industrial processes, said Ted Leopold of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC.

Leopold is a co-lead counsel in one of the most prominent PFAS-related suits to date, targeting the alleged failure of DuPont Co. and Chemours Co. to stop toxic chemicals like PFAS from being dumped into the Cape Fear River in North Carolina. He said the transparency of the reporting requirement will help everyone from affected communities to regulators to better understand what the impacts of PFAS are.

“These chemicals are so highly toxic and dangerous for surrounding communities. Whoever is using these chemicals needs to act appropriately, put into place proper safeguards and document it appropriately,” he said. “That’s whether it’s DuPont, Chemours or a local company.”

A federal judge on Thursday rejected Wells Fargo & Co’s (WFC.N) bid to dismiss a lawsuit claiming it defrauded shareholders about its ability to rebound from five years of scandals over its treatment of customers.

The fourth-largest U.S. bank has operated since 2018 under consent orders from the Federal Reserve and two other U.S. financial regulators to improve governance and oversight, with the Fed also capping Wells Fargo’s assets.

Shareholders said bank officials falsely claimed in TV interviews, analyst calls and congressional testimony that the bank was mending its ways, when regulators actually viewed its progress as “deficient” and “unacceptable.”

U.S. District Judge Gregory Woods in Manhattan said the shareholders plausibly alleged that some statements by various bank officials, including former Chief Executive Tim Sloan, were “deliberately or recklessly false or misleading.”

According to shareholders, San Francisco-based Wells Fargo lost more than $54 billion of market value as the truth was gradually revealed over a two-year period ending in March 2020.

. . .

The shareholders are led by the state of Rhode Island, and pension funds in Louisiana, Mississippi and Sweden.

Their lawyer Steven Toll said he was pleased they can sue over the “vast majority of the alleged fraudulent statements.”

Read Wells Fargo Must Face Shareholder Fraud Claims over Its Recovery from Scandals.

For many law firms, efforts to close the gender gap in their top ranks have made only modest progress. But a number of firms are working to shake up that reality and forging a path to progress.

Law firms have consistently pledged to improve gender parity in their ranks. But significant change for female attorneys in a male-dominated profession — particularly at the top — remains largely elusive. The ranks of equity partners at law firms in the U.S. remain overwhelmingly male.

Our latest survey reveals that while nearly 40% of all attorneys at law firms in the U.S. are women, less than a quarter of equity partners are women, results that are essentially unchanged from last year’s report.

Those numbers stand in stark contrast to the numbers of women who have chosen to pursue a legal education. Women have made up at least 40% of law school students for decades and now make up more than half, according to data collected by the American Bar Association.

Still, some firms have been able to make marked progress, and demonstrate the potential and possibilities of law firm efforts to work towards parity.

The firms on our Ceiling Smashers list have found ways to at least begin to improve the representation of women in the most coveted posts at law firms.

. . .

With women making up 44.4% of its partnership, Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC ranked No. 3 among firms with 101 to 250 attorneys.

Complete survey results can be viewed here.

Two Performance Sports Group executives and investors led by the Plumbers & Pipefitters National Pension Fund reached a settlement in a proposed class action accusing the execs of misleading shareholders about sketchy sales tactics that bankrupted the sports gear manufacturer, the fund told a New York federal judge Tuesday.

The agreement was reached out of court, and details of the settlement were not publicly available, but counsel for the fund informed the court in a letter they are “working together to prepare the documentation necessary to effectuate the settlement” and requesting a stay in all deadlines in the case.

Carol V. Gilden of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC, who represents the fund, told Law360 in an email that “[t]his has been a hard fought case by both sides. We are pleased to have reached a settlement in principle to resolve the litigation.”

Counsel for the other parties did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

PSG was formed in 2014 after the well-known hockey brand Bauer purchased the similarly iconic baseball gear maker Easton for $330 million. PSG held an initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange in 2015 and went bankrupt roughly two years later.

The fund claimed in its 2016 suit against PSG and the executives that from the beginning of the roughly 2½-year tenure of PSG’s ex-CEO Kevin Davis and former Chief Financial Officer Amir Rosenthal, the pair set out to juice the company’s quarterly profits by employing shortsighted sales and accounting tactics that ultimately blew up in their faces.

Led by the Plumbers & Pipefitters National Pension Fund, the investors alleged that under Davis and Rosenthal, PSG’s sales departments made a habit of forcing customers — mostly large retail chains — to increase the size of their orders by threatening to revoke steep wholesale discounts and that this strategy led to a buildup of unused inventory that the executives should have known would eat into future sales.

. . .

Plumbers & Pipefitters National Pension Fund is represented by Carol V. Gilden, S. Douglas Bunch, and Steven J. Toll of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC.

The Seventh Circuit rejected a St. Louis manufacturing company’s push to send a would-be class action from workers who say they were overcharged for company stock to individual arbitration, saying a “rare” exception to federal law applied.

The three-judge panel issued a unanimous opinion Friday backing a district court’s decision not to send the Triad Manufacturing Co. workers’ suit into arbitration, citing an exception to the Federal Arbitration Act that permits a court to overrule an arbitration agreement if it blocks a party from being able to bring claims under federal law.

. . .

The proposed class of current and former Triad workers led by James Smith had accused the company’s board of directors and three board members in April 2020 of violating the Employee Retirement Income Security Act by selling Triad stock to the company’s employee stock ownership plan, or ESOP, at an inflated price, giving board members “a hefty profit at their employees’ expense.”

In Friday’s decision, the Seventh Circuit cited the 1985 Supreme Court case Mitsubishi v. Soler Chrysler-Plymouth  , which first presented the “effective vindication” exception in the opinion as a side observation, as well as the 2013 high court case American Express Co. v. Italian Colors Restaurant  .

While the Supreme Court decided against invalidating the arbitration agreements at the heart of both cases, the Seventh Circuit panel noted that the court in Italian Colors left the door open for the exception in cases where an arbitration provision prevented a party from exercising a statutory right.

The appeals court judges concluded Friday that ERISA suits in general could be sent to arbitration, but the arbitration provision in question was not valid under the effective vindication doctrine because it prevents plan participants from being able to seek relief and obtain remedies under ERISA.

. . .

Counsel for the proposed class told Law360 on Monday that they are “thrilled with the 7th Circuit decision recognizing that ERISA allows our client to seek remedies on behalf of all participants in his retirement plan.”

“The decision confirmed that certain plan-wide remedies cannot be taken away through an arbitration clause. We look forward to prosecuting this case in district court,” the statement continued.

. . .

The proposed class is represented by Karen L. Handorf, Michelle C. Yau and Jamie L. Bowers of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC and Peter K. Stris, Radha A. Pathak, Douglas D. Geyser and John Stokes of Stris & Maher LLP.

The survey’s launch comes days after the city filed lawsuits against DoorDash and Grubhub

Last week, the city of Chicago made headlines by filing twin lawsuits against Grubhub and DoorDash in accusing the food delivery companies of deceptive business practices. Now, the city is looking for anecdotes about restaurants and third-party couriers. The city has launched an online survey that asks hospitality workers “about your experiences with meal delivery companies, including but not limited to: DoorDash, Grubhub, Uber Eats, Postmates, and their affiliates.”

Last week, the city filed lawsuits against Grubhub and DoorDash claiming the third-party couriers employed a variety of deceptive practice to bilk restaurants out of money. The allegations include inaccurate menus, being deceptive about fees, and in DoorDash’s case, not properly paying driver tips. Both companies denied all allegations.

While the city has singled out Grubhub and DoorDash, attorneys continue to explore lawsuits against other companies, including Uber Eats and the others listed in the survey. The survey asks respondents for complaints and suggestions on how the companies could improve service. Uber Eats did not respond to a request for comment.

Imagine that you own a neighborhood restaurant with a loyal base of customers.

It’s likely that you started offering delivery during the pandemic, when the state of Illinois required indoor dining to close, but maybe you chose to maintain your own website and hire your own trusted drivers so you could control the quality of the food arriving at your customers’ doors.

Fair enough, surely? Is not the right of a small-business owner to choose with whom to partner, and whom to avoid, a fundamental tenet of a free American marketplace?

Not in the dining and takeout business, apparently.

The notorious dining apps Grubhub and DoorDash, which also owns Caviar, not only sucked globs of revenue from struggling local restaurateurs during the pandemic, but they also targeted those who chose not to work with them by creating their own facsimiles of their menus and websites and delivering food from those restaurants anyway, raising the prices along the way for their own benefit.

Guess who got hurt if the order was wrong or the food was cold and diners complained?

Here’s a hint. Not the apps. The victims were the restaurants that had been slowly building their reputations for years, only for Big Tech to come in and ruin them in an instant.

History teaches us that Big Tech quickly moves on to the next fun thing to disrupt. Local businesses tend to stick with their communities.

Here in Chicago, we have long experience with protection rackets.

Take away the Silicon Valley-speak, and this one smells like a high-tech version of what the mobsters did here during the lucrative Prohibition era, when they created a whole variety of unsavory ways to ensure that everyone with whom they wanted to do business was willing to return the favor. On suitable terms. Suitable for one party.

The dining apps need ethical reform. For that reason alone, the city of Chicago was right to sue DoorDash and Grubhub on Friday in Cook County Circuit Court, with two separate lawsuits seeking “greater transparency and other key conduct modifications, restitution for restaurants and consumers hurt by these predatory tactics, and civil penalties for violations of the law.”

Mayor Lori Lightfoot was reportedly incensed at their behavior. We say, for good reason. And it’s right that a well-fed city that famously loves its takeout and delivery is leading the charge, especially since federal authorities have been slow to understand what has transpired.

The forced cooperation tactic is but one example of egregious behavior. The suit alleges that another novel scam — and let’s be frank here — involves Grubhub creating a fake phone number for a restaurant, manipulating search results so that the bogus phone number ranks higher than the eatery’s actual phone number, tempting people to call that number instead. Oh, they got through, since the line actually was forwarded on to the real McCoy. But when they did? The restaurant got dinged for fees, even though the customer likely intended to deal directly with their local business. They thought they were avoiding the apps, but the apps got them anyway.

We could go on. Anyone who has used DoorDash has seen that shameless “City of Chicago fee” on their bills. It was designed to look like a tax. In fact, it was the company’s response to the city’s attempt to limit fees. It simply thumbed its nose at the effort and made the impact on the customer even worse.

We’re well aware that this pernicious fee creep is not limited to dining apps. Anyone who has rented a car recently has marveled at the difference between the quoted daily rate and the final total, where many of those revenue-padding fees pretend to be mandatory charges. And, of course, the same usually applies to tickets for concerts and sporting events. Sometimes, this is a way to circumvent taxation, but mostly it’s all designed to make it harder for consumers to compare apples to apples in a free marketplace.

This issue of fee creep might not be new, but it’s gotten much worse over the last few months, especially as businesses under inflationary pressure look to raise prices without killing demand. It’s a consequence of the ever-increasing ease of comparative digital searching, and it’s designed to confound transparency.

San Francisco Superior Court Judge Anne-Christine Massullo granted final approval of Sutter Health’s $575 million antitrust settlement Aug. 27.

Four things to know:

1. The settlement was initially reached in December 2019 by Sutter and the parties that sued the Sacramento, Calif.-based system, including then-California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, unions and other employers. Ms. Massullo granted preliminary approval of the settlement March 9.

2. The settlement resolves allegations that Sutter Health violated state antitrust laws by using its market dominance in Northern California to overcharge patients and employer-funded health plans. The lawsuit claimed that Sutter Health’s higher prices led to $756 million in overcharges.

3. In addition to the payment, the settlement requires Sutter to have its business operations monitored for a decade and mandates that the health system provide pricing, quality and cost information previously kept secret to insurers, employers and self-funded plans. The health system must also limit what it charges patients for out-of-network services to ensure those visiting out-of-network facilities don’t face surprise medical bills, among other requirements.

4. This is a groundbreaking settlement and a win for Californians,” said California Attorney General Robert Andres. “Sutter will no longer have free rein to engage in anticompetitive practices that force patients to pay more for health services. Under the terms of our agreement, Sutter’s transparency must increase, and practices that decrease the accessibility and affordability of healthcare must end. A competitive healthcare market is essential to ensuring patients and families aren’t bearing the brunt of healthcare costs while one company dominates the market.”

A federal judge has granted final approval for a $575 million settlement with Northern California-based hospital system Sutter Health that settles allegations of price gouging.

The settlement judgment, announced late Friday, requires Sutter to not only pay $575 million but also to adopt several reforms aimed at curbing anti-competitive practices.

“Sutter will no longer have free rein to engage in anticompetitive practices that force patients to pay more for health services,” said California Attorney General Rob Bonta in a statement. “Under the terms of our agreement, Sutter’s transparency must increase, and practices that decrease the accessibility and affordability of healthcare must end.”

The settlement deal was originally announced in 2019 and comes after a 2014 class-action lawsuit led by several unions that alleged Sutter engaged in tactics that raised prices for patients, including charging much more for certain inpatient procedures compared to the lower part of the state.

The money from the settlement will go toward workers in the unions, employers and state government that were part of the class-action lawsuit.

Sutter tried to delay payment of the settlement in July 2020, arguing that the COVID-19 pandemic created major financial strain on the system.

A part of the settlement is that the system had to cap out-of-network services, but Sutter argued last year that it may need to raise its prices to address the financial impact of the virus.

A federal judge disagreed with Sutter’s reasoning, saying a future inability to comply with the settlement’s rate caps doesn’t justify a delay in preliminary approval of the settlement and that the rate caps can be modified if need be. The judge also noted that proceedings had been delayed several times because of COVID-19.

The complete article can be viewed here.

FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. — North Carolina cited Chemours on Thursday for multiple state air pollution violations, saying the company has been exceeding its GenX air pollution limits for much of 2021.

In its letter to Chemours, environmental officials warned the company that the state is preparing an enforcement report against the chemical makers for its multiple violations, according to the notice of violation letter.

State officials said in the letter that Chemours could be facing up to a $25,000 fine per day for its current violations or any future indiscretion of North Carolina’s air quality rules.

For more than three decades Chemours, and before it DuPont, polluted the air, groundwater and Cape Fear River with PFAS, or per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances. PFAS are a group of chemical compounds used for various commercial purposes, but are generally considered harmful to humans.

The company’s Fayetteville Works plant is in Bladen County between the river and NC 87, near the Cumberland County line.

EPA officials are studying the toxicity of the compound being emitted from the Chemours plant that has contaminated water wells in Gray’s Creek area.

After the StarNews brought the decades-long contamination to light in 2017, the state, Cape Fear River Watch and Chemours entered into a consent order in 2019. Part of that consent order required Chemours to reduce its air emissions of GenX compounds by more than 99%.

“In March 2021, excess GenX emissions resulted in noncompliance with the rolling 12-month totals for March, April, May and June of 2021,” according to a press release from the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality.