The debates over who qualifies for a transportation worker exemption to federal arbitration requirements and whether two steps should be used for collective action certification are some of the wage and hour issues on employment law attorneys’ minds as 2025 winds down.
Meanwhile, in federal courts, questions of whether wage and hour claims brought alongside allegations of sexual assault or harassment are exempt from arbitration and the proper standard for reimbursing pizza delivery drivers are also playing out.
Here, Law360 explores five wage and hour legal questions that are developing.
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What standard should apply for collective action certification?
Two federal circuit courts in recent months have weighed in on whether the widely used twostep process for collective action certification is the proper standard, and parties in both of those cases have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review.
In Andrew Harrington et al. v. Cracker Barrel Old Country Store Inc., a Ninth Circuit panel in July held on to the two-step process, in which a court first grants conditional certification for the purpose of distributing notice based on a “modest factual showing” and later addresses final certification or decertification.
Then in August, a Seventh Circuit panel in Monica Richards v. Eli Lilly & Co. et al. introduced a flexible approach that could involve either one or two steps.
The certiorari petitions that are now pending contain slightly different questions. In one, Eli Lilly and Co. is asking the justices to revisit Hoffmann-La Roche v. Sperling, the 1989 high court decision that gave courts the discretion to give notice to potential plaintiffs.
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The two steps come from a New Jersey federal court’s 1987 decision in Lusardi v. Xerox Corp. In 2021, a Fifth Circuit panel in Swales v. KLLM Transport Services LLC tossed the two steps in favor of a single, more rigorous step, and a Sixth Circuit panel in 2023 in Clark v. A&L Homecare and Training Center LLC established an intermediate test.
There hasn’t been much movement on the issue in the lower courts since this summer’s decisions, said Rebecca Ojserkis of worker-side firm Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC. “For the most part, this just hasn’t really percolated enough to see how courts are going to respond to the Seventh Circuit decision,” she said.
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The employment tests that we’re working with from the past nearly 100 years, from when the
FLSA was enacted, don’t necessarily contemplate how work is performed today,” said Cohen Milstein’s Ojserkis, whose firm has represented incarcerated workers in wage litigation. “I
think that revisiting across courts and an appreciation for work being performed in all settings
is warranted.
Summary by Bloomberg AI
- Courts are scattered on whether US law applies to certain American depositary receipts, with recent rulings and a settlement showing divergent outcomes.
- The categorization of ADRs as foreign or domestic under US law becomes tricky when an investment fund has new ADRs created from stock purchased abroad.
- There is a circuit split on whether courts can decline to apply US law even when a domestic transaction took place, if the overall dispute is predominantly foreign.
In just a matter of months, three rulings and a one settlement showed just how scattered courts are on whether US law reaches some American depositary receipts, stand-ins for stock traded on foreign exchanges.
The securities fraud cases, which involve Bayer AG, Toshiba Corp., and other companies, illustrate the complexities and difficult policy choices facing courts assessing whether purchases of new ADRs qualify as foreign or domestic under US law when the issuer didn’t arrange for their appearance in the US market. The divergent outcomes likely herald a US Supreme Court revisit and resolution.
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Season of Developments
The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in August said a pension fund couldn’t sue over ADRs converted from Toshiba stock purchased in Japan because the conversion in the US didn’t make the stock domestic. That non-precedential opinion is in tension with an earlier Ninth Circuit ruling in that case, as read in 2023 by a Northern District of California judge whose class certification order paved the way for investors to wrest $38 million from Bayer AG in a settlement finalized in October.
The appeals court’s 2018 opinion in Stoyas v. Toshiba Corp. adopted a test with three alternative ways to find a domestic transaction in circumstances where the trade wasn’t on an exchange. And, in granting class status in Bayer, Chief Judge Richard Seeborg said even though the investors’ brokers purchased shares in Germany, other parts of the process occurred in the US.
The Bayer investors’ expert showed title passing in the US from the depository institution that issued the ADRs to a broker, and from the broker to the investors. That’s “sufficient to establish that these transactions are domestic,” said Carol Gilden of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC, who represented the plaintiffs.
But in the recent Toshiba memorandum opinion, the key factor was the agents’ purchase in Japan. The Ninth Circuit called the conversion to ADRs in the US “irrelevant.”
Gilden said the new Toshiba decision “has no precedential value and is limited to the facts in that case.” Further, the facts “were different than in Bayer where we had a very well-developed record, probably better than the record in Toshiba,” she said.
Meanwhile, the Second Circuit in November certified a class of Credit Suisse bondholders on the strength of their “standardized” method for showing which purchases were domestic, as Seeborg did in Bayer.
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Policy Tug-of-War
Underlying most of the suits are claims the foreign issuer misled the market, usually through conduct in its own country. That’s where policy considerations animating courts’ guidelines come in.
For Gilden, anti-fraud imperatives go hand-in-hand with the sale of stock. “Foreign companies come to the US markets because they can raise a tremendous amount of capital from investors here, which includes overseas investors who invest in the US markets—all of whom rely on the integrity of our markets and the accountability that the federal securities laws provide,” she said.
“Our markets give a premium—that is established by academic studies,” she said. “That’s why companies like to raise capital in the US markets and investors like to invest here.”
Nielsen faces new antitrust litigation that, if successful, would invalidate its contracts with networks, agencies and advertisers industrywide.
In the antitrust action, filed Monday, Nielsen rival TVision seeks damages but also asks the U.S. District Court for Delaware to enjoin a wide range of industrywide Nielsen contract practices as violations of the Sherman Antitrust Act. Those practices, according to the filing, include Nielsen’s insistence on multi-year deals; staggering contracts with big networks so they won’t come up for renewal simultaneously; preventing customers from using Nielsen data they’ve already paid for if they don’t renew deals; and withholding data from networks to agencies and advertisers if deals aren’t renewed.
According to the filing, those contract terms illegally restrain trade with TVision both directly and indirectly through their effect on other Nielsen rivals such as VideoAmp, which uses TVision’s panel data in its products.
Simultaneously, TVision withdrew a motion to dismiss the patent lawsuit that was originally filed against it by Nielsen, opting instead to pursue the antitrust allegations as part of the litigation.
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Yan Liu, TVision’s CEO, said in an interview that the company has expanded its antitrust scope and strategy by recently adding a new law firm, Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll, which has a track record in major antitrust litigation, to its legal team. The firm has won antitrust settlements against the National Association of Realtors and UFC, among others, in recent years.
“We believe they really have the expertise, not only about the patent side but also about the entire Nielsen go-to-market and business model, and how the business model really damaged our industry, preventing the industry from innovating,” Liu said.
TVision’s counterclaim alleges that Nielsen’s dominance, via its estimated 90% share of TV currency transactions, lets it charge as much as four times more and generate five times higher profit margins in the U.S. compared to global markets with greater competition.
A former naval engineer accusing shipbuilders of conspiring to suppress industry wages has told the U.S. Supreme Court that their petition for review of a Fourth Circuit decision reviving her proposed class action rests on a rule the panel never adopted.
Susan Scharpf said in a brief Friday that although General Dynamics, Huntington Ingalls and other shipbuilders argued the panel adopted a rule under which Scharpf’s mere claim that their alleged no-poach deal is unwritten is enough to establish fraudulent concealment and delay the statute of limitations, the Fourth Circuit didn’t do so.
“Instead, it applied a factbound, consensus standard under which: (a) affirmative acts to cover up an antitrust conspiracy can be sufficient to allege fraudulent concealment; and (b) a wide range of conduct can be evidence of an affirmative cover up, including efforts to conceal evidence and avoid a paper trail,” Scharpf said.
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The case stems from a proposed class action by former naval engineers and architects, Scharpf and Anthony D’Armiento, who accuse General Dynamics, Huntington Ingalls and 18 other companies of suppressing industry wages by illegally scheming for decades to not actively recruit, or poach, each other’s employees. The suit, filed in Virginia federal court in 2023, aims to represent a class of people employed by the companies as naval architects, marine engineers, or both, from Jan. 1, 2000.
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The proposed class is represented by Brent W. Johnson, Steven J. Toll, Robert W. Cobbs, Alison S. Deich, Zachary R. Glubiak, Sabrina S. Merold and Callie C. Bruzzone of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC, Deepak Gupta and Thomas Scott-Railton of Gupta Wessler LLP, Shana E. Scarlett, Rio S. Pierce, Steve W. Berman, Kevin K. Green and Elaine T. Byszewski of Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro LLP, George F. Farah, Nicholas J. Jackson and Simon A. Wiener of Handley Farah & Anderson PLLC, Candice J. Enders and Julia R. McGrath of Berger Montague, and Brian D. Clark, Stephen J. Teti, Arielle S. Wagner and Eura Chang of Lockridge Grindal Nauen PLLP.
Friday Q and A: Under Chairman Paul Atkins, the SEC has been aggressively pursuing corporate governance reforms that could fundamentally alter the balance of power between public companies and their investors. Despite the broad reach of the initiatives, which take aim at shareholder proposals, securities class action lawsuits and financial reporting requirements, they haven’t provoked much of an outcry.
In recent weeks, however, that’s been changing. This week, we sat down with one of the leaders of the growing and increasingly vocal opposition movement. Laura Posner is a partner in the securities litigation and investor protection practice at Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll, one of the largest plaintiffs law firms in the country. She’s also a former state securities regulator.
Unsurprisingly, Posner has strong opinions about what’s going on at the SEC during what she calls “the most anti-investor administration” ever. Read on for her take on the commission’s recently adopted policy statement that frees up companies to use mandatory arbitration clauses, as well as its controversial decision this week to largely stop reviewing shareholder resolutions this proxy season. She also discusses the benefits of class actions – even for the firms being sued. And corporate leaders, she argues, are also worried about Atkins’ efforts. What follows is our (lightly edited and condensed) conversation.
Capitol Account: What’s your background?
Laura Posner: I have been doing securities litigation and investor protection work my entire career. I’ve been at a number of private firms, but also was appointed by the New Jersey attorney general to be the [state] securities regulator for three years, between 2014 and 2017.
CA: What’s your broad take on the revamp of corporate governance that’s taking place at the SEC?
LP: It’s fair to say that this has been the most anti-investor administration that certainly I’ve seen in my lifetime, and I think it’s probably fair to say ever. We’re seeing that materialize in a lot of different ways.
CA: That’s quite a statement. Why hasn’t there been more of an uproar?
LP: There are dozens of public pension funds and a multitude of investor advocacy organizations…that are quite attuned to what’s going on right now…They are extremely concerned about the various edicts that are coming out.
CA: What about individual investors? These are somewhat arcane issues.
LP: You are correct that the average retail investor is certainly not understanding or really even aware of a lot of these things. Some of the topics have broken through in the public press, like, for example, [Donald] Trump’s desire, and what sounds like Chair Atkins’ desire, to move from quarterly reporting to semi-annual reporting. But some of these other things…it’s taking a little bit longer to break through.
CA: Is part of the reason that many of these changes are being conveyed in guidance, policy statements or even speeches?
LP: I think that’s very intentional because the SEC knows that if they actually issue rules, they have to open them up to public comment. And the overwhelming majority of comments are going to be negative. Not just from investors, by the way, [but] from corporations, from [directors and officers] insurers, from underwriters and accountants. There are a lot of folks who would view these proposals as really problematic.
CA: What do you think of Atkins’ contention that this effort is necessary to spur IPOs and make being a public company `cool again’?
LP: These changes are going to have the exact opposite reaction. I think you’re less likely to see IPOs. You’re going to see less investment in U.S.-based companies. People want to be able to vindicate their rights. They want to be able to get timely information to make smart investment decisions. And if we’re no longer having those rights available to us, or that information available to us in a disclosure-based regime, why invest in a U.S. company?
CA: The most controversial of these reforms might be the commission’s new policy statement that assures companies going public that they can include a mandatory arbitration clause in their bylaws. At least for now, though, the impact seems pretty limited. Do you agree?
LP: How big a deal it is depends on how many issuers take advantage of it.
CA: Will they?
LP: Companies don’t think these provisions are in their best interest. And when you think about the practical side of things, that’s self-evident.
CA: What’s the advantage for a corporation to face a class action in federal court as opposed to a private arbitration?
LP: More than 50 percent of securities cases are dismissed at the motion to dismiss stage. That is higher than any other kind of claim you could possibly bring in the United States. They also get the benefit under the [law] of no discovery obligations until a motion to dismiss is decided against them. You don’t get those benefits if you are in front of an unsophisticated arbitrator.
CA: Would there be fewer claims though?
LP: [Institutional] investors have fiduciary obligations to their members. They are going to have to bring arbitrations. We’re not talking about one litigation or five litigations or 10 litigations. We are talking, in certain circumstances, likely hundreds of separate arbitrations. The defendants in these cases are the CEO, the CFO – the senior executives are the witnesses. So you’re going to have your CEO deposed 200 times? That is not a manageable way to conduct business.
CA: Why are class actions good for investors?
LP: They benefit from not having to be an active participant [in the litigation]. The vast bulk of investors are absent class members who get to recover as part of any settlement or judgment without having to do anything. Part of the problem of arbitration is that all of those pension funds, all of those investors who don’t bring litigation…they’re going to have to file in arbitration.
CA: And if they don’t?
LP: They are going to lose out on the money that they would otherwise obtain through the class process.
CA: There’s also an argument that class actions serve as a complement to government enforcement. Was that your experience?
LP: As a former regulator, I really believe in the importance of regulators, both the SEC and state. They play a critical role. But in terms of actually providing financial recovery to investors, it’s not even close. The overwhelming majority of successful securities cases, the SEC never brings [and] no state regulator brings. So absent a class action, those claims are not brought. Even when there is a pending SEC action or state action, the amount recovered by the private bar on behalf of investors is seven, 10, sometimes 20 times more. Even in the most egregious of frauds.
CA: Government overseers also have limited budgets.
LP: I saw that firsthand. There’s no question that we did not have the resources necessary to police the markets by ourselves, and that the private bar played an absolutely crucial role in helping deter fraud and then recover money for investors.
CA: Why do you think the SEC’s majority took this step? Republicans have long complained about the trial bar bringing frivolous cases.
LP: That’s a good question. You might have to ask them.…We’ve recovered hundreds of billions of dollars for investors. These are not frivolous cases.
CA: What do you make of Atkins’ efforts to discourage, or perhaps do away with, shareholder proposals?
LP: Like a lot of things with this administration, it seems to be a remedy in search of a problem. I don’t think that companies are overwhelmed by shareholder proposals.
CA: How so?
LP: A lot of companies welcome – and find value in – hearing from their investors about ways in which they could properly manage or disclose things. Various funds have really made an effort behind the scenes to encourage companies to take certain actions. And companies [may say], `We weren’t focused on that issue, but you’re right.’ They affirmatively change their policies or their practices or their disclosures because they recognize these things are problematic.
Read the article in full, courtesy of Capitol Account.
Leading human rights lawyer Agnieszka Fryszman, L’96, joined students, alumni and members of the Georgetown Law community on Nov. 13 to deliver the Human Rights Institute’s annual Drinan Lecture on Human Rights.
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In her address, “Against the Headwinds: Human Rights Lawyering in a Fractured World,” Fryszman discussed the role of lawyers in advocating for survivors of human rights violations amid rising authoritarianism and challenges to the rule of law. “All of you, you can do this,” she urged the students in the audience. “You can represent clients and change the trajectory of their lives.”
“You need to find a law that fits,” said Fryszman, who in the spring semester will teach a course on human rights litigation in U.S. courts. “It might be negligence law, it might be foreign law, [it] might be international law.”
Fryszman also noted the importance of avenues beyond legal advocacy, including electoral politics and public policy, in helping uphold human dignity and the rule of law.
“Even though it’s never been perfect or fair, that promise of the rule of law, of justice in our courts, is worth fighting for,” she said. “With a little bit of legal creativity, a little bit of luck and a lot of tenaciousness, I think it’s possible to hold onto and expand that promise.”
The University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School was honored to host Agnieszka Fryszman, chair of the Human Rights practice at Cohen Milstein, as the Honorary Fellow for Public Interest Week.
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During her visit, we had the privilege of interviewing Fryszman about her work as a renowned human rights litigator, the inflection points that propelled her career forward, and how she sustains her career.
Q: When you look back on your career up to this point, were there any inflection points that changed your trajectory or inspired you to take an action you hadn’t considered until that moment?
Fryszman: So, in some ways, no, because I always wanted to do human rights law. I was a huge nerd as a kid. Everybody else wanted to be a firefighter or a ballerina, and I always drew myself surrounded by books. I majored in international relations in college, but then my life took a whole lot of twists and turns. I worked on political campaigns. I worked on the Hill and went to law school relatively late. I started out as an antitrust lawyer.
And, in some ways, yes, there were inflection points. When I was an antitrust lawyer, I volunteered to work on this case involving victims of the Holocaust. After we settled those cases, I persuaded the firm to invest the cost recovery and to start a practice devoted to human rights. So, I guess that case was an inflection point.
Q: When you volunteered for that case, did you have any inkling that this would grow into a new practice and a focus of the rest of your career?
Fryszman: No. I volunteered for a series of things that grew together to be what my career is today. It’s really important for young lawyers to volunteer for opportunities. That is often where my career took leaps and leaps and bounds forward.
I volunteered to work on that first case, and then we got another case on behalf of the Comfort women against the government of Japan. My colleagues on that case were interested in bringing human trafficking and forced labor litigation. One of them—Martina Vandenberg—founded the Human Trafficking Legal Center. I argued that case with Jenny Martinez, who is now the Provost at Stanford.
Then I volunteered for Alexander v. Oklahoma, a case representing the victims of the Tulsa race riot of 1921. I learned an enormous amount from incredibly talented lawyers: Charles Ogletree, Johnnie Cochran, and Michele Roberts. At some point, I started to pick my own cases and litigate and staff them. Twenty-five years later, I’m still at it.
Q: What do you know now about being a lawyer and chairing the human rights practice, about litigating on behalf of victims and survivors of human rights violations, that you wish you knew as a student?
Fryszman: I think that if I knew then when I know now, I wouldn’t have had the success that I did. A lot of it came from overconfidence, and a lot of it was that I wasn’t deterred by the obstacles and risks. I was less risk averse, and that was probably a good thing. You can’t succeed if you’re not willing to take risks.
Q: Can you share an example of a risk that you took that could have gone poorly but didn’t?
Fryszman: If you focus on all the risks, all the reasons you can lose, you’re never going to get anywhere.
For example, when I represented Paul Rusesabagina, one of the challenges was serving the generals and ministers who were responsible for Mr. Rusesabagina’s kidnapping, imprisonment, and torture. One of the ministers was in England, and under the Hague Convention, you can serve by mail. So, we did just that. Of course, it was returned to us, but the family had opened it and written “send this back!” before mailing it back to us. The court found that the minister had evaded service, and if we hadn’t taken that commonsense step, we would not have been granted the immunity ruling.
There are always bigger, more complex examples: how are you going to get jurisdiction? How are you going to prove this? How are you going to do that? If you believe in a case, I think you can make it work. Often, all those obstacles you anticipate don’t materialize. If you don’t try, you’re not going to win.
Q: What sustains you and your work?
Fryszman: People’s lives really are changed with this work. Sure, it’s great to make new law. I recently had two big precedent-setting sovereign immunity cases. The more meaningful thing, for me, is how people’s lives and communities have changed.
That’s why I like representing people who have been wronged. You’re representing people and whole communities that were victims of human trafficking and forced labor, as well as ended up destitute and don’t have enough food. It’s great to win those cases and send that money back to the families and community so that their kids can go to school and have enough to eat; people have jobs and are happy.
I went back to Nepal and visited some of our old clients. One of my clients bought a sock factory and gave me this big bag of socks. When I first met him, they were destitute. We went to depositions where he was grilled by the defense counsel. But he persevered, and we went to court and got a settlement. His factory, today, employs 14 people, and his son is studying computer science. So, the whole trajectory of that family’s life has changed for the better.
Q: Are there any emerging shifts in human rights lawyering that you think will change the trajectory of that work? If so, how might law students prepare themselves to respond to these?
Fryszman: One of the emerging shifts I’m seeing is more extraterritorial capacity and more rule of law capacity.
Recently in the United States, there has been a shift where our highest courts are saying that U.S. laws are not extraterritorial. Other countries are going in a different direction and are permitting these suits. For example, there are currently great cases in England, Korea, Spain, and France that hold parent companies responsible for actions of their subsidiaries in other countries.
Lawyers will need to be more agile to respond to this kind of shift. For example, we use foreign law in a lot of our cases: Iraqi law, Indonesian law, and international law in our own courts. Lawyers will need to look to other sources of law and be creative in both how they bring cases and how they work with lawyers in other countries and in other legal systems.
Q: What advice would you give to new lawyers who are starting their careers in human rights law?
Fryszman: A really important thing to keep in mind is that it’s the client who is taking all the risk. You’ll go on to your next case, and you’ll be at your house in America, safe and sound with your laptop. But, the person is taking all the risk—perhaps putting their life at risk—to be your client. You’re representing them. You’re not the savior; it’s their case. You’re representing that person and their goals, and you need to be faithful to that.
Secondly, just look for opportunities where you can grow your skills and become more effective by learning from people who are good at what they do. Find those people and learn from them. You’ll often find that, a lot of time, people are really, really generous. Don’t be shy. If someone really fantastic and brilliant is doing an important oral argument, go watch how they prepare for court, how they answer questions, and how they practice.
Finally, I think the last advice is to just try. There’s always going to be someone telling you why you can’t do something or why there’s no jurisdiction. But if you don’t try, you’re never going to succeed. It’s worth trying; these cases are worth fighting for.
Delaware Chancellor Kathaleen St. J. McCormick granted final approval Thursday to a pair of settlements totaling more than $33 million, including more than $1.8 million in fees and expenses, resolving years of shareholder litigation tied to Nikola Corp.’s fraud-shadowed SPAC merger.
Chancellor McCormick noted that the court faced unusual pressure to act quickly because the settlement was woven into Nikola’s Chapter 11 process and required prompt approval. As counsel summarized the terms, Chancellor McCormick responded that the settlement was “far more than fair” as she granted approval.
The settlements resolve overlapping derivative and class actions filed after Nikola’s 2020 merger with special purpose acquisition company VectoIQ Acquisition Corp. Investors alleged that insiders allowed founder and former chairman of Nikola Trevor Milton to mislead investors about the company’s prospects and ability to build zero-emission trucks, artificially inflating the company’s valuation to as high as $28.77 billion in an “old-fashioned ‘pump and dump’ scheme,” according to one version of the Chancery Court derivative suit, filed in 2022.
. . .
Richard A. Speirs of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC, representing the plaintiffs, said the deal was the product of years of litigation, “over 2 million pages” of discovery, extensive mediation, and coordination with Nikola’s bankruptcy estate. Chancellor McCormick credited the multiparty negotiations.
Speirs said more than 4,900 hours were devoted to the Nikola litigation, spanning years of investigation, motion practice, discovery and mediation.
. . .
The plaintiffs are represented by Peter B. Andrews, Craig J. Springer and David M. Sborz of Andrews & Springer LLC, Blake A. Bennett of Cooch & Taylor PA, Julie Goldsmith Reiser, Richard A. Speirs and Benjamin F. Jackson of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC, Frank J. Johnson, Brett M. Middleton and Jonathan M. Scott of Johnson Fistel LLP and Gregory E. Del Gaizo of Robbins LLP.
A federal judge signed off Tuesday on a $34 million legal settlement between former owners of stock in South Carolina’s now-defunct SCANA Corp. and the auditing firm tasked with monitoring the utility company’s books amid the V.C. Summer nuclear expansion.
The deal, which comes more than eight years after SCANA and state-owned utility company Santee Copper abandoned the project in rural Fairfield County, holds accounting giant Deloitte & Touche LLP responsible for its failure to alert shareholders to the fraud associated with the multibillion-dollar project’s failure.
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The total number of shareholders in line for a share of the funds is still unknown, according to Laura Posner, the court-appointed attorney from the firm Cohen Milstein who represented shareholders. She expects the number of beneficiaries to be largely the same in both cases.
Investors accused the accounting firm of shirking its duties as a gatekeeper and issuing misleading audit reports about the progress of the nuclear project, which never came to fruition.
By giving the company’s books a “clean” bill of health, Deloitte led investors to believe SCANA would complete the project in time to qualify for $1.4 billion in nuclear tax credits.
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Posner also pointed to a memo from a Deloitte employee, penned after a SCANA accountant had sounded the alarm on cost overruns and delays, saying Deloitte should have done more to investigate the whistleblower’s claims.
Had Deloitte alerted investors, they “would not have purchased their SCANA shares, and certainly not at the prices they paid,” according to a statement from Cohen Milstein.
Bumble Bee asked San Diego federal judge to dismiss case, but judge ruled claims by Indonesian fishermen plaintiffs were sufficient at this point to move toward trial
A San Diego federal judge on Wednesday declined to dismiss a lawsuit that alleged human trafficking and forced labor violations by Bumble Bee Seafoods, the San Diego-based canned tuna giant, instead ruling the first-of-its-kind case brought by four Indonesian mariners can move forward toward trial.
“This is a historic moment and an incredible victory for the fishers and the ocean,” Sari Heidenreich, senior human rights advisor with Greenpeace USA, which is helping to represent the plaintiffs, said in a statement. “… We celebrate that the fishers will be allowed their day in court, recognizing this is monumental not only for these four men, who are brave enough to stand up to to a giant U.S. corporation, but for hundreds of thousands of fishers globally.”
The four plaintiffs, all men from rural Indonesian villages, sued Bumble Bee in March in U.S. District Court in San Diego, alleging that they were subjected to severe physical abuse and debt bondage on long-line tuna boats that are part of Bumble Bee’s “trusted fleet.” The lawsuit alleged that Bumble Bee had known for years that the fishing vessels in its supply fleet used forced labor but failed to stop the practice.
The suit was believed to be the first to accuse an American seafood companyof of forced labor at sea.
. . .
“This gives me hope for justice for me and my fellow plaintiffs as we struggle for justice and change for the better,” plaintiff Muhammad Syafi’i said in a statement, adding that he was “actually in tears” and overwhelmed by the ruling. “Our fight and sacrifice are not in vain in order to get justice for all of the the fishers. I remain steadfast, strong, and enthusiastic.”
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“This is an important step towards making one of the world’s most dangerous jobs safer and more fair for the fishers who work so hard to put food on American consumers’ plates and who should not be subject to forced labor,” said Agnieszka Fryszman, a prominent human rights attorney from the firm Cohen Milstein who is the lead attorney for the plaintiffs. “… These men endured horrific physical abuse, hunger, and debt bondage while working aboard Bumble Bee’s so-called ‘trusted fleet’ tuna vessels … We look forward to holding Bumble Bee fully accountable under the law.”