Consumer groups pursuing price-fixing allegations against the nation’s leading frozen potato product producers and certain others have urged an Illinois federal judge to let their claims proceed, arguing they’ve plausibly outlined a “classic antitrust story” that should be allowed to enter the evidence-gathering stage. 

The plaintiff groups argued Wednesday that they’ve alleged more than enough circumstantial evidence for U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Cummings to infer that the companies commanding 98% of the nation’s frozen potato product market illegally raised their prices during economic hard times, kept them high once those struggles eased and shared sensitive information to help facilitate their scheme.

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The indirect purchasing consumers are represented by Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC and Hagens Berman Sobol & Shapiro LLP.  

The Winter 2026 edition of the Shareholder Advocate, our quarterly securities litigation and investor protection newsletter, is now available. This issue features:

• Richard Lorant on investors’ $34 million preliminary settlement with Deloitte over audits of a nuclear energy project
• Benjamin Jackson and Kay Jewler on investors’ lawsuit against Block, parent company of Square and Cash App
• Suzanne Dugan on how pension plan fiduciaries can rededicate themselves the best practices in the new year
• A team profile of Benjamin Brown, Cohen Milstein’s Managing Partner

The Second Circuit on Thursday backed a lower court’s refusal to compel individual arbitration of a former Luxottica worker’s proposed class action alleging pension underpayments, finding she had standing to sue for plan reformation but couldn’t seek monetary payments on the plan’s behalf.

A three-judge panel in a published opinion reversed in part and affirmed in part a New York federal judge’s decision from 2024, saying the trial court was correct to hold that Employee Retirement Income Security Act claims ex-Luxottica worker Janet Duke had brought as a representative of other pension plan participants couldn’t be forced into individual arbitration.

The panel said that, under the appellate court’s 2024 decision in Cedeno v. Sasson, Duke wasn’t compelled to individually arbitrate claims against the eyewear company that were brought under Section 502(a)(2) of ERISA, which authorizes individual benefit plan participants to sue for breaches of fiduciary duty. 

Kai Richter, an attorney for Duke and the proposed class, told Law360 they were “pleased with the court’s decision holding that Ms. Duke has standing to pursue her claim for reformation of the plan under Section 502(a)(2) and that the claim is not subject to individual arbitration. This was a clear victory, and we look forward to pursuing the litigation in the district court.”

The U.S. Department of Labor’s new proposal to require pharmacy benefit managers to give employer-provided health plans detailed information on fees and compensation is a welcome development, benefits attorneys on both sides of the bar say.

The DOL’s Employee Benefits Security Administration on Friday proposed a rule on fee disclosure targeting PBMs — which are intermediaries between drugmakers, insurers and pharmacies — as well as other affiliated providers of brokerage and consulting services that recommend their services.

If finalized, PBMs would be required to give comprehensive disclosures to managers of self-insured employer-provided group health plans regulated by the Employee Retirement Income Security Act. PBMs would also have to update that information twice a year and upon plan sponsors’ request, and submit to plan audits.

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The proposed rule earned praise from both sides of the employee benefits bar, including attorneys representing workers who point out how retirement plans have benefited from greater sunlight into their service providers’ fees for more than a decade.

“It looks like a positive development, and frankly, one that’s long overdue,” said Kai Richter, a plaintiff-side benefits attorney and of counsel at Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC.

Richter said the proposed rule, if finalized, could help fiduciaries of employer-provided health plans monitor the fees they pay health plan service providers.

Even without any policy changes, ERISA plan fiduciaries could ask for some of the information subject to the proposed disclosure requirements contemplated by EBSA’s proposal in contract negotiations, Richter said, including requiring that a PBM must submit to an audit.

“Even under existing law, even before the regulations, it’s abundantly clear that plan fiduciaries have a duty to monitor their PBMs and the compensation they receive, and are subject to liability under ERISA if they fail to do that,” he said.

Even still, the proposal contains some significant exemptions, including by carving out fully insured group health plans, where employers buy coverage through a commercial insurer that pays the claims. The DOL noted in its proposal that they were reserving disclosure obligations for those plans for future action.

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s decision to erase, rather than modify, detailed harassment guidance increases uncertainty by creating a compliance gap that the agency’s Republican leadership isn’t likely to fill, experts say. 

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Pulling the whole thing down was a “stunning” decision, said Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC partner Joseph M. Sellers, founder and co-chair of the worker-side firm’s civil rights and employment practice.  

“It seemed precipitous for them to remove the entirety of the harassment guidance, which had been built on prior harassment guidance that had been in place for decades, now leaving the commission with no guidance with respect to workplace harassment,” Sellers said.  

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That positioning suggests new Title VII harassment guidance isn’t likely on its way. Sellers of Cohen Milstein said their wholesale rejection of the harassment document makes him “seriously question whether they have any intention of replacing it with anything else.” 

The law remains unchanged, and Title VII still protects against workplace harassment. However, a dearth of EEOC-endorsed materials on the subject creates uncertainty for employers and workers. 

A maker of software for insurance brokers has further escalated its dispute with rival Applied Systems Inc., lodging a new lawsuit in Illinois federal court over an alleged campaign to eliminate a competitor it was unable to acquire.

Ardent Labs Inc., which does business as Comulate, filed a new lawsuit Monday accusing Applied Systems of using its control over 80% of the market for enterprise-level insurance agency management systems to eliminate a competitor in a new, related market for automated insurance accounting software.

The suit alleges that Applied employed sham litigation, false allegations of intellectual property theft and threats of lost access to discourage customers from continuing to use Comulate’s products.

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Comulate is represented by Zachary Freeman and Brian Kerwin of Miller Shakman Levine & Feldman LLP, Rollo C. Baker, Silpa Maruri, Jared Ruocco and Brian Campbell of Elsberg Baker & Maruri PLLC, and Michael Eisenkraft and Nathaniel Regenold of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision not to review a standard the Seventh Circuit recently established for issuing notice in collective actions left intact a landscape in which there are now four different approaches.

The denial of a certiorari petition on Monday in Eli Lilly and Co. et al. v. Monica Richards means Seventh Circuit courts will be able to keep using a flexible approach toward certification in wage and hour litigation. That approach departs from the longstanding two-step process most circuit courts have used for decades, as well as from tests the Fifth and Sixth circuits introduced in 2021 and 2023, respectively.

There is still a chance for the justices to weigh in, as there is a pending certiorari petition in Andrew Harrington et al. v. Cracker Barrel Old Country Store Inc . Cracker Barrel is challenging the Ninth Circuit’s upholding of the two-step approach.

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Under this approach, a court first grants conditional certification for notice purposes based on a “modest factual showing” that the plaintiff is similarly situated to others. Later, after more discovery, the court considers whether to issue final certification, or weighs a defendant’s bid for decertification.

Rebecca Ojserkis of worker-side firm Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC said enabling workers to opt in to a collective action earlier is important because the statute of limitations does not toll until each worker submits an opt-in form, and because earlier notice helps with discovery.

“Those workers themselves may have important information to share in determining whether or not they are similarly situated to the named plaintiffs,” she said. “So, if that analysis is being conducted without opt-in plaintiffs, whose contact information is typically known to defendants but not plaintiff’s counsel, you’re missing out on the exact discovery that’s needed to prove that ‘similarly situated’ question.”

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But Ojserkis said the recent Ninth Circuit ruling in Cracker Barrel “takes the wind out of any accusations of forum shopping.”

Besides upholding the two-step approach, the panel in that case also held that each opt-in plaintiff needs to establish personal jurisdiction, following the view some other circuits have also taken.

“Any collective action involving workers beyond a single state will inevitably be brought where the employer is at home,” Ojserkis said. “It’s not the case that plaintiffs are going to be able to file nationwide collective actions anywhere they want.”

Second Circuit judges sounded sympathetic Tuesday to the idea that a former Luxottica employee has standing to pursue changes to its defined benefit pension plan, expressing skepticism at the company’s notion that her case is barred because she is seeking unavailable remedies.

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Duke is represented by Peter K. Stris, Rachana Pathak and Jeff Hahn of Stris & Maher LLP and Michelle C. Yau, Ryan A. Wheeler and Kai Richter of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC.

Block & Leviton LLP, Hach Rose Schirripa & Cheverie LLP, Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein LLP and Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC make this week’s list after a California federal judge ruled Tuesday that Block Inc. — the parent company of Square and Cash App — must face claims of compliance failures in a class action and separate derivative suit.

U.S. District Judge Noel Wise ruled that the derivative suit adequately pled that Block’s board failed to properly oversee the company’s compliance program. The judge also declined to dismiss the parallel class action, disagreeing with Block and its executives that the challenged statements in the complaint were not misleading.

The investors in the derivative suit are represented by Jason Leviton, Nathan Abelman, Jacob Walker and Lindsay Faccenda of Block & Leviton, and Daniel Rehns, Scott Jacobsen and John Baylet of Hach Rose.

The investors in the class action are represented by Richard Heimann, Katherine Lubin Benson, Courtney Liss, Steven Fineman, Daniel Chiplock, Nicholas Diamand and Gabriel Panek of Lieff Cabraser, and Julie Goldsmith Reiser, Claire Marsden, Michael Eisenkraft and Benjamin Jackson of Cohen Milstein.

A California federal judge has ruled that the parent company of Square and Cash App, Block Inc., and its officers and directors must face claims of compliance failures in a class action and separate derivative suit, finding, among other things, that the derivative suit adequately pleads that Block’s board failed to properly oversee the company’s compliance program.

U.S. District Judge Noel Wise issued two orders on Tuesday denying dismissal motions from Block and the company’s top brass, including Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey.

The derivative suit, filed in February 2025, claims that Block’s executives and board members breached their fiduciary duties to investors by concealing Block’s allegedly lax customer due diligence practices, leaving the company vulnerable to regulatory scrutiny and litigation.

By failing to put adequate safeguards in place, investors said, Block “allowed the company to become a haven for unlawful activities” such as money laundering, trafficking of people and drugs, and terrorism financing, among other things.

In declining to dismiss the suit on Tuesday, Judge Wise agreed with investors that demand upon Block’s board before the suit’s filing would have been futile because a majority of the board members were not independent and faced a substantial likelihood of liability for the allegations in the complaint.

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The investors in the class action are represented by Richard M. Heimann, Katherine Lubin Benson, Courtney J. Liss, Steven E. Fineman, Daniel P. Chiplock, Nicholas Diamand and Gabriel A. Panek of Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein LLP and Julie Goldsmith Reiser, Claire Marsden, Michael B. Eisenkraft and Benjamin F. Jackson of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC.