DoorDash will pay $18 million to resolve the city of Chicago’s suit in Illinois federal court alleging it fooled diners into paying higher prices, charged hidden fees, used tips to subsidize its own costs and took advantage of restaurants during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the city’s announcement Friday.
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson unveiled the settlement reached with the food delivery giant, which was accused of gaining massive market share and exploding in growth through deceptive business practices, namely during the COVID-19 public health emergency when government shutdown orders restricted dining and customer demand for deliveries skyrocketed.
Between 2014 and 2021, DoorDash Inc. misled diners by charging “service fees,” “small order fees” and a $1.50 “Chicago” fee along with delivery fees while hiding them from consumers by grouping them with taxes, suggesting they were imposed by the government, the city said.
DoorDash also failed to disclose that the food prices featured on its app might differ from those found on the restaurant’s own website or in-store menu, the city said. DoorDash also allegedly offered discounts that only applied if diners met a minimum order amount.
The city further accused DoorDash of offering free advertising and delivery services to eateries that have no contractual relationship with the platform and aren’t affiliated with DoorDash while using tips from diners to subsidize its payments to its delivery drivers.
The $18 million settlement DoorDash will pay will go to different entities: $3.25 million will go to restaurants that were listed on DoorDash without their consent and are still not listed on the app today. The company will provide instructions to those unaffiliated restaurants on how to enroll for settlement payment and in the future will not list those eateries without getting consent first.
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The city is represented by Rebecca Hirsch and Stephen J. Kane of the City of Chicago Department of Law’s Affirmative Litigation Division, and Brian E. Bowcut of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC.
Ultimate Fighting Championship fighters suing the mixed martial arts organization for wage suppression are accusing it in Nevada federal court of withholding a large amount of evidence key to the UFC’s bid to force their antitrust claims into arbitration.
The fighters, led by Kajan Johnson, argued in a brief filed Saturday that the discovery in their lawsuit, as well as in a related antitrust class action filed by professional MMA fighter Mikhail Cirkunovs, will likely reveal that the arbitration clauses of defendants Zuffa LLC, TKO Operating Co. LLC dba UFC, and Endeavor Group Holdings Inc. are unenforceable.
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The fighters are represented by Michael Dell’Angelo, Eric L. Cramer, Patrick F. Madden, Robert C. Maysey, Kyla Gibboney and Joshua P. Davis of Berger Montague, Michael J. Gayan of Kemp Jones LLP, Joseph R. Saveri, Kevin E. Rayhill and Christopher Young of the Joseph Saveri Law Firm LLP, Richard A. Koffman, Benjamin D. Brown and Daniel H. Silverman of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC and W. Joseph Bruckner, Kyle J. Pozan and Brian D. Clark of Lockridge Grindal Nauen PLLP.
Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC partner Christine E. Webber helped secure more than $65 million in settlements with major institutions over allegations of gender discrimination, earning her a spot as one of the 2025 Law360 Employment MVPs.
Christine Webber’s biggest accomplishment:
Webber, who co-chairs Cohen Milstein’s civil rights and employment practice, specializes in large, high-profile class actions, and recently played a leading role in the nearly $23 million resolution of a major case alleging the Federal Bureau of Investigation drove out female trainees by targeting them with unfair discipline.
The case was filed in mid-2019 by more than a dozen women who said they were systematically driven out of the FBI agent training program and subjected to sexist double standards.
After years of litigation, the two sides brokered a $22.6 million deal toward the end of 2024, including $19.4 million in back pay, interest, front pay, lost retirement savings and other damages for 34 class members, and up to $2.7 million in attorney fees, costs and expenses.
Under the terms of the pact, which secured final court approval in February, class members could also request reinstatement as FBI trainees. If they completed basic training, their pay grade would be adjusted to what it would have been if they had graduated with their original class.
Webber was co-lead counsel on the case, and she said she’s proud of both the financial and nonfinancial aspects of the deal they were able to negotiate.
“It was a substantial amount per person that really recognized the damage that was done to these women by being excluded from the FBI,” Webber said of the monetary relief.
She also said it was gratifying to see a class member take advantage of the pact’s reinstatement provision.
“We already had our first graduate from the FBI academy, a brand-new special agent who was a class member who is now getting to serve as a special agent,” she said. “That was very exciting to see. A really satisfying result in that case.”
Another notable case:
Webber also played a pivotal role in a $43.25 million settlement with Disney over allegations that the entertainment giant paid thousands of women in middle management less than their male colleagues.
In that state court case, which was also filed in 2019, current and former employees of various Disney-related entities said the company systematically paid female employees in California less than men for substantially similar jobs, regularly passed women over for promotion and loaded them with extra work without providing additional pay.
The settlement, covering over 15,000 female midlevel managers, was unveiled in November 2024, and received final court approval in September.
In addition to providing compensation to the class, Disney agreed to hire an industrial and organizational psychologist to provide training to compensation personnel and a labor economist to conduct a pay equity analysis for California employees over the next three years.
“That was something I’m very proud of,” Webber said of the pact.
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Why Christine is an employment attorney:
In the grocery store where Webber’s mother used to work, Webber recalls a clear dividing line between the male and female employees that helped fuel her interest in civil rights work.
Women were placed in certain positions, like at the registers or in the bakery, while men typically held other roles, including at the meat counter or in produce, Webber said. The positions traditionally given to the male employees had a stronger pipeline to managerial roles, Webber said.
“There seemed to be this really clear pattern of steering women into some jobs and men into other jobs,” Webber said.
This, among other experiences, is what made her want to become a civil rights lawyer, Webber said. Webber told Law360 she went to law school specifically to take on discrimination class actions.
“That struck me. We can’t let that keep happening,” Webber said. “That was one of my motivations for going to law school.”
Energizer and Walmart cannot escape a trio of class actions accusing the battery manufacturer of giving the big box chain almost complete control over the retail price its batteries are sold for and forbidding other retailers from undercutting them.
U.S. District Judge P. Casey Pitts on Friday spent 21 pages laying out exactly why he was refusing to toss the three proposed class actions against Energizer Holdings Inc. and Walmart Inc., ultimately saying that for now, they had more than met their burden for accusing the companies of violating Section 1 of the Sherman Act.
In doing so, Judge Pitts also lifted the stay on discovery he had ordered in the case back in September 2023.
The battery buyers sufficiently allege both that there was an agreement and that the behavior was unreasonable, Judge Pitts said, which was enough to support their allegations until summary judgment.
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Dan Copeland and the indirect purchaser class are represented by Daniel Silverman, Alison Deich, Richard Koffman and John Bracken of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC, and Sarah Grossman-Swenson and Kimberly Weber of McCracken Stemerman & Holsberry LLP.
Hartford HealthCare Corp. says it cannot be forced to reveal a confidential January antitrust settlement with another Connecticut hospital at the behest of a Teamsters health plan and a public transit agency separately accusing the consortium of creating a monopoly.
In a memorandum filed Monday in Connecticut federal court, Hartford HealthCare accused the Estuary Transit District and the Teamsters 671 Health Service and Insurance Plan of attempting to learn the cash amount, assuming one exists, in its deal with Saint Francis Hospital and Medical Center.
However, the settlement and the communications surrounding it do not contain admissible evidence about the underlying Saint Francis case that could bolster the Teamsters plan’s separate proposed class action, Hartford HealthCare said. Therefore, the settlement does not pass discovery limits established by Rule 26(b) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, it argued.
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The Estuary Transit District, the Teamsters plan and the proposed class are represented by Daniel J. Walker, Eric L. Cramer and Hope Brinn of Berger Montague, Michael B. Eisenkraft, Christopher J. Bateman, Silvie R. Saltzman, Brent W. Johnson and Nathaniel D. Regenold of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC, Douglas A. Millen, Michael E. Moskovitz, Robert J. Wozniak and Matthew W. Ruan of Freed Kanner London & Millen LLC, Frank R. Schirripa and Scott Jacobsen of Hach Rose Schirripa & Cheverie LLP and Jonathan M. Shapiro of Aeton Law Partners LLP.
Summary by Bloomberg AI
- Agri Stats Inc. agreed to stop sharing plant-level wage data in a settlement with workers in a long-running wage suppression suit.
- The lawsuit led to poultry processing giants paying a combined $398 million to resolve the claims, with Agri Stats being the last plaintiff to settle claims from low-wage poultry processing workers.
- Agri Stats will stop sharing plant-level wage data for workers involved in processing chicken and turkey, according to a settlement agreement filed Oct. 10 in the US District Court for the District of Maryland.
Agri Stats Inc. agreed to stop sharing plant-level wage data in a settlement with workers in a long-running wage suppression suit that saw some of the largest US poultry processors pay nearly $400 million.
Fort Wayne, Ind.-based Agri Stats is the last plaintiff to settle claims from low-wage poultry processing workers in class action litigation originally filed in 2019. The lawsuit led to poultry processing giants such as Perdue Farms Inc., Tyson Foods Inc., and Butterball LLC pay a combined $398 million to resolve the claims.
Agri Stats will stop sharing plant-level wage data for workers involved in processing chicken and turkey, according to a settlement agreement filed Oct. 10 in the US District Court for the District of Maryland.
Plaintiffs “believe that with the removal of these plant-level fields, recipients of future Agri Stats reports will be unable to reconstruct the labor fields that processor Defendants previously used to suppress their workers’ wages,” the settlement agreement said.
. . . The plaintiffs are represented by firms including Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro LLP, Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC, and Handley Farah & Anderson PLLC
A federal court gave its final approval Tuesday to a $167.5 million settlement between EQT Corp. and its shareholders, closing out a class action that claimed the company overstated the operational benefits of its $6.7 billion merger with Rice Energy in 2017.
U.S. District Judge Robert Colville signed off on the deal, noting that there had been no objections and only 10 opt-outs after the settlement administrator notified 121,654 potential shareholder class members.
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The plaintiffs’ counsel called the settlement fund “the largest securities class action recovery ever in the history of the Western District of Pennsylvania and the 14th largest in the history of the Third Circuit.”
“We are pleased that this hard-fought litigation has reached settlement,” S. Douglas Bunch of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC, co-lead counsel for the shareholders, said in a statement Wednesday. “It is a favorable result for investors as it provides an immediate cash recovery and resolves further litigation.”
The settlement covers individual and institutional shareholders who had purchased EQT stock between June 2017 and June 2019, held stock in EQT or Rice as of September 2017 and voted in either company’s November 2017 special shareholder meetings, and/or got shares of EQT stock in exchange for their Rice stock as part of the companies’ merger.
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The class is represented by Steven J. Toll, Daniel S. Sommers, S. Douglas Bunch, Christina D. Saler, Benjamin F. Jackson and Alexandra Gray of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC, Salvatore J. Graziano, Adam H. Wierzbowski, Jesse L. Jensen and Robert Kravetz of Bernstein Litowitz Berger & Grossmann LLP, and Michael A. Comber of Comber Miller LLC.
Summary by Bloomberg AI
- New York pension plans and other investors have called on the SEC to reverse a policy that lets companies push shareholders’ fraud claims into arbitration.
- The SEC’s action permits companies to insert clauses in their registration statements to force investors into arbitration instead of litigation to resolve securities fraud claims.
- Investor attorneys have slammed the move, saying “forced arbitration creates costly, uncertain, and inefficient proceedings that benefit no one” according to Michael D. Scott.
New York pension plans and other big investors have called on the SEC to reverse a new policy that lets companies push shareholders’ fraud claims into arbitration instead of litigation.
The Securities and Exchange Commission in September limited shareholders’ longstanding court access for a “costly, unproven, and unwieldy system of private arbitration,” New York city and state pension plans said in a Nov. 3 letter to SEC Chairman Paul Atkins. Chicago Teachers’ Pension Fund, Denver Employees Retirement Plan, and dozens of other institutional investors and advocates joined them in the letter.
The SEC’s action permits companies to insert clauses in their registration statements to force investors into arbitration instead of litigation to resolve securities fraud claims. The new policy isn’t binding on companies, but could “influence issuer behavior,” according to the Republican-led agency.
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“Forced arbitration creates costly, uncertain, and inefficient proceedings that benefit no one—not participants, not plan sponsors, and ultimately not the companies themselves,” Michael D. Scott, executive director of the National Coordinating Committee for Multiemployer Plans, said in a statement to Bloomberg Law on Wednesday. The pension plan advocate was among the signatories.
Investors claimed Bayer deceived investors about the merits of its $63 billion merger with Monsanto, given the unending litigation over Monsanto’s weed killer Roundup.
A federal judge granted final approval to a $38 million class action settlement in a case against Bayer over shareholders’ claims the German pharmaceutical giant didn’t conduct adequate due diligence before making a multibillion-dollar deal to acquire Monsanto.
Shareholders sued Bayer in 2020, claiming the company misled them about the litigation risk of purchasing the agrochemical company, whose signature weed killer product Roundup was found to have caused people to develop cancer in three bellwether jury trials.
Plaintiffs argued that Bayer forged ahead with the Monsanto acquisition while downplaying the litigation risk to investors and representing that glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup, is non-carcinogenic.
The $63 billion deal was struck in 2016 but was not made final until June 2018. Two months later, a San Francisco jury found Monsanto liable for $250 million in punitive damages in the case brought by a school groundskeeper with non-Hodgkin lymphoma.
By then, plaintiffs say, Monsanto had racked up thousands of additional personal injury lawsuits, and Bayer’s post-merger American depositary receipts plunged significantly.
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Carol Gilden of Cohen Milstein, an attorney for the plaintiffs, told Courthouse News she was pleased with the settlement, describing the case as a “hard-fought dispute.”
“This was an important securities class action that re-affirms ADR investor rights and the long arm of Uncle Sam to hold foreign companies accountable to U.S. securities laws,” she said.
The Fall 2025 issue of the Shareholder Advocate, our quarterly securities litigation and investor protection newsletter, featuring:
- Laura Posner and Christina Schiciano on the SEC’s endorsement of forced arbitration provisions in IPOs
- Richard Lorant on the proposal to ease companies’ financial reporting requirements
- S. Douglas Bunch on investors’ preliminarily approved settlement with EQT
- Jay Chaudhuri on the Trump and Biden Administrations’ differing approaches to regulating investment advisors’ AI use