Agri Stats Inc. reached settlements Friday with groups of buyers in separate cases over alleged price fixing in the chicken, pork and turkey industries, ending several sets of claims targeting use of its benchmarking reports by protein processors.
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The chicken consumers are represented by Shana E. Scarlett, Steve W. Berman, Breanna Van Engelen and Rio R. Pierce of Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro LLP and Brent W. Johnson, Benjamin D. Brown, Daniel H. Silverman, Alison Deich, Zachary Glubiak and Zachary Krowitz of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC.
Summary by Bloomberg AI
- Abbott Laboratories will invest $40 million over five years into its Michigan plant to resolve stockholder allegations against executives and board members over its infant formula safety.
- The derivative settlement seeks to ensure Abbott maintains sanitation and environmental monitoring programs in line with the health-care company’s food safety principles across all of its US powdered infant formula facilities.
- The deal proposed by shareholders would require Abbott to extend a consent decree’s monitoring plans and have a third party review any enhancements to those, among other oversight measures.
Abbott Laboratories will invest $40 million over five years into its highly-scrutinized Michigan plant to resolve stockholder allegations against executives and board members over its infant formula safety.
The derivative settlement seeks to ensure Abbott maintains sanitation and environmental monitoring programs in line with the health-care company’s food safety principles across all of its US powdered infant formula facilities, shareholders said in a proposed brief to the US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. All $40 million at the Sturgis, Mich., plant will be spent on “core operations, food safety, or quality assurance.”
The investors Tuesday sought preliminary approval of the deal, inching Abbott’s current and former officers and directors toward the end of more than three years of litigation tied to the Sturgis plant, which was temporarily shut down in 2022 amid bacterial contamination concerns.
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Scott & Scott Attorneys at Law LLP and Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC are lead counsel for the shareholders leading the settlement, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters Local No. 710 Pension Fund and Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority. Scott & Scott Attorneys at Law LLP didn’t immediately respond to an email seeking comment. Cohen Milstein declined to comment.
A New York federal judge pared claims Monday against JPMorgan Chase & Co. in a suit from workers who alleged they paid too much for prescription drugs, but opened discovery on allegations that the bank’s contract with its pharmacy benefit manager caused transactions prohibited by federal benefits law.
U.S. District Judge Jennifer L. Rochon entered an opinion and order granting in part and denying in part a motion to dismiss the Employee Retirement Income Security Act suit, which JPMorgan workers filed in March 2025. The proposed class alleged JPMorgan breached its fiduciary duties of loyalty and caused prohibited transactions by failing to rein in the excessive prescription drug costs in its employee health plan that were imposed by its PBM, CVS Caremark. Caremark isn’t named as a defendant in the case.
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Kai Richter, an attorney for the proposed class, said Monday, “We are pleased with the court’s common-sense ruling that paying more for prescription drugs constitutes an injury-in-fact and look forward to litigating plaintiffs’ prohibited transaction claims that the court properly held may go forward.”
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The proposed class is represented by Michael Eisenkraft, Michelle Yau, Daniel Sutter and Kai Richter of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC and by Tamar Katz and Michael Lieberman of Fairmark Partners LLP.
A New York-based barbecue chain’s executives and the caretaker of the company’s employee stock ownership plan have agreed to settle a class action from workers alleging ESOP mismanagement, the parties told a New York federal court Monday.
U.S. District Judge Denise L. Cote endorsed the joint notice of settlement and request for a stay later on Monday in the Employee Retirement Income Security Act suit. A certified class of participants in the W BBQ Holdings Inc. ESOP filed the notice jointly with defendants Argent Trust Co., as well as Herbert Wetanson and Gregor Wetanson, the president and vice president of W BBQ Holdings Inc. The notice said that following mediation, the parties had “reached an agreement in principle to settle the … matter on a class basis.”
Workers for W BBQ Holdings Inc. filed suit in 2022, accusing Argent and the Wetansons of violating federal benefits law and costing workers millions in retirement savings by letting them pay too much for their employer’s stock in a $99 million deal in 2016. W BBQ is a holding company for Dallas BBQ, a chain of restaurants in New York City.
Judge Cote’s endorsed order gave the parties until March 13 to provide the court with an executed settlement agreement or “place the terms of the settlement on the record” on March 16.
The case had been set for trial beginning March 16, court records showed, with the class requesting assurance from the court in February that a $15 million deal between the DOL, Argent and the Wetansons in a separate enforcement case wouldn’t affect proceedings in the class action.
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Michelle C. Yau, an attorney for the class, told Law360: “The settlement represents an excellent recovery for Dallas BBQ ESOP participants, and we commend the class representatives for their persistence and dedication to the class.”
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The class is represented by Michelle C. Yau, Kai H. Richter, Daniel R. Sutter, Caroline E. Bressman, Ryan A. Wheeler, Elizabeth McDermott and Michael Eisenkraft of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC.
Aetna must reconsider whether two transgender women can receive coverage for their gender-affirming facial reconstruction surgeries, a Connecticut federal judge ruled, finding that a policy categorically excluding coverage for the procedure was likely discriminatory.
In a ruling issued Sunday, U.S. District Judge Victor A. Bolden rejected Aetna Life Insurance Co.’s motion to dismiss a proposed class action brought by transgender women challenging the policy under the Affordable Care Act’s antidiscrimination provision. The judge also granted a preliminary injunction requiring the company to reassess denied claims for two of the women, finding that the policy continues to aggravate their gender dysphoria symptoms.
“The lack of access to medically necessary gender-affirming care and the attendant health risks meet the standard for irreparable harm,” the judge said.
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The women are represented by Christine E. Webber, Aniko R. Schwarcz and Harini Srinivasan of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC, by Joseph J. Wardenski of Wardenski PC and by Gabriel Arkles, Ezra Cukor and Sydney Duncan of the Advocates for Trans Equality Education Fund.
The Securities and Exchange Commission’s September 2025 policy shift on mandatory arbitration clauses has not gained in popularity.
Investor advocates continue to warn that the Securities and Exchange Commission’s September 2025 policy statement allowing companies to compel shareholders into private arbitration will negatively impact markets, including hurting stock valuations and investor confidence.
The policy, which reflects President Donald Trump’s goal of making it easier for companies to conduct initial stock offerings, was swiftly met with criticism from institutional investors, who insisted the move would hinder transparency.
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Part of Trump’s agenda has focused on rooting out “frivolous litigation.”
According to Laura Posner, a partner in the securities litigation and investor protection practice of law firm Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC, over the past 30 years, courts have shown that the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, which increased the pleading standards plaintiffs must meet to initiate a suit, is working as intended: Roughly half of securities cases are dismissed at the motion-to-dismiss stage, meaning frivolous or weak claims are filtered out early, while credible ones are allowed to move forward.
Posner says the risk to company valuations will deter companies from seeking forced arbitration provisions.
“The reason we haven’t seen companies adopt such a provision—in addition to upsetting their investor base, which they should be responsive to—is that [forced arbitrations] are going to increase the cost of litigation pretty exponentially,” Posner says. “Instead of having one, maybe two, cases that are class action, you’re then dealing with hundreds or thousands of cases” in arbitration.
Two Johnson & Johnson units have agreed to pay $65 million to settle a proposed antitrust class action by health plans and others claiming they were overcharged for the pulmonary hypertension drug Tracleer.
The plaintiffs, including the Government Employees Health Association and other entities that paid or provided reimbursement for their members’ use of Tracleer, alleged in their lawsuit that the drugmakers delayed competition for a generic version of the medication.
Sharon Robertson, a lead attorney for the plaintiffs, said the settlement will provide “meaningful relief” for the class of so-called third-party payors that purchased Tracleer and its generic version over the span of nearly a decade.
The settlement covers Tracleer purchases in 31 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico between December 2015 and September 2024.
For plaintiffs: Sharon Robertson of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll; and Thomas Sobol of Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro
A family-owned Nebraska bank has agreed to pay $2.4 million to resolve its part in a MOVEit software security incident affecting customers’ personal data, according to a consumer’s bid for preliminary approval of a proposed class action settlement in Massachusetts federal court.
Settlement class representative Paul F. Bender moved Tuesday for an order granting preliminary approval of the proposed class action settlement agreement between himself and Union Bank and Trust Co., headquartered in Lincoln, Nebraska, in the multidistrict litigation over the May 2023 cyberattack on Progress Software Corp.’s MOVEit file-transfer software.
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The plaintiffs are represented by Kristen A. Johnson of Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro LLP, E. Michelle Drake of Berger Montague PC, Gary F. Lynch of Lynch Carpenter LLP, Douglas J. McNamara of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC, Karen H. Riebel of Lockridge Grindal Nauen PLLP, and Charles E. Schaffer of Levin Sedran & Berman LLP.
Cushman & Wakefield mismanaged its employee retirement plan by ignoring “glaring red flags” in its selection of an underperforming fund that exposed investors to climate-related risks, according to what the plaintiff’s counsel called a “first-of-its-kind” class action that accuses the commercial estate firm of violating the Employee Retirement Income Security Act.
Cushman breached its duties as a fiduciary when it selected the Westwood Quality SmallCap Fund “in spite of numerous glaring red flags, including chronic underperformance, [and] dangerous aggregation of climate change-related financial risk,” resulting in losses to employee retirement savings, according to the complaint filed Tuesday in Seattle federal court by 401(k) participant Renee Kvek.
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Michelle C. Yau, chair of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC’s ERISA and employee benefits practice and counsel for Kvek, said the suit is a “first-of-its-kind legal challenge under ERISA” that “will hopefully show 401(k) plans that the financial risks associated with climate cannot be ignored.”
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Kvek and the proposed class are represented by Jay Rossiter, Kimberly Blake and Benjamin Segal of Client Earth USA Inc. and Michelle C. Yau, Daniel R. Sutter and Ryan A. Wheeler of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC.
Deloitte & Touche LLP‘s $34 million class settlement with Scana Corp. investors who sued to hold the auditor liable for nuclear reactor project losses is fair, a federal court said in granting final approval.
Judge Jacquelyn D. Austin of the US District Court for the District of South Carolina also approved a more than $6 million fee for the investors’ attorneys, one-third of the settlement amount. Austin’s orders Monday bring an end to the six-year-old litigation in which Deloitte sought review of class certification at the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and reached a settlement while the appeal was pending.
Laura Posner, who represents the investors and is a partner at Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC, hailed the settlement as particularly important in the context of the Securities and Exchange Commission “scaling back” the power of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board. The case, and its settlement, show “the power institutional investors wield in holding auditors accountable and safeguarding our capital markets,” she said.
“In addition to being one of the top five auditor settlements in the last decade and ever in the District of South Carolina, this case sets important legal precedent for establishing liability against auditors,” Posner said. “It is rare for auditor cases to withstand motions to dismiss, let alone achieve class certification.”
The case even went to a full briefing for summary judgment, she said.
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Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC is lead counsel for the investors. Milbank LLP and Moore & Van Allen PLLC represent Deloitte LLP and Deloitte & Touche.