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.

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.

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.

Sutter Health is $575 million poorer — and now must operate under new rules designed to curb its ability to dictate the price of health care in Sacramento and Northern California.

A judge late Friday approved a landmark antitrust settlement agreement between the Sacramento-based hospital chain, the state of California and a group of health insurers and big employers.

The final approval by Judge Anne-Christine Massullo, in San Francisco Superior Court, came nearly two years after Sutter tentatively agreed to the deal – and seven years after a health insurance plan run by the United Food and Commercial Workers union sued the health care giant. The state joined the case in 2018.

The case, which drew national attention, focused on Sutter’s business practices. The state and others said Sutter – with 24 main hospitals, 12,000 doctors and $13 billion in annual revenue – used its market power to strong-arm employers and insurers into lopsided contract terms that inflated prices for a wide range of services.

Because of an “umbrella effect,” Sutter’s high prices allowed its competitors to raise their rates, too, critics said. State officials frequently cited various studies showing the high cost of medical care in Northern California, including a 2016 report showing that cesarean births cost about $27,000 on average in Sacramento, nearly twice the cost of Los Angeles.

Among other things, Sutter agreed to end “all-or-nothing” contracts that critics said were forcing insurers and big employers to cover services at Sutter hospitals and clinics they didn’t necessarily want. Sutter will be under a court-approved independent monitor’s supervision for 10 years. In addition, Sutter agreed to pay $575 million in damages to the employers and insurers.

“This is a groundbreaking settlement and a win for Californians,” said Attorney General Rob Bonta in a prepared statement. “Sutter will no longer have free rein to engage in anticompetitive practices that force patients to pay more for health services.”

This article also appeared in the Merced Sun-Star, The Fresno Bee, and The Modesto Bee.

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.

The lawsuits have been universally celebrated by restaurant owners who feel the companies have gaslit them throughout the pandemic

The city of Chicago has filed separate lawsuits against Grubhub and DoorDash alleging the third-party delivery companies “engaged in deceptive practices to prey on its affiliated restaurants.” The lawsuits, filed today, August 27, in Cook County circuit court, contain a multitude of allegations, including that the companies use bait-and-switch tactics to fool customers into thinking they’ll be paying lower fees compared to what they’re ultimately charged.

The DoorDash lawsuit also alleges that the company “used consumer tips to pay itself rather than its drivers.” There’s also the question of the Chicago Fee, the charge DoorDash added to compensate for the city’s pandemic-era fee cap. The city says DoorDash tried to make it seem like the Chicago Fee was being administered by the city, and even included a customer’s tweet from January in the lawsuit: “one thing about Chicago, they gon tax your ass LMAO.”

A DoorDash spokesperson says drivers get 100 percent of tips but had no comment on the Chicago Fee. Tipping was also the subject of a $2.5 million settlement after the Washington, D.C. attorney general investigated DoorDash in November 2020. At one point, DoorDash was using tips to subsidized wages for drivers, meaning employees wouldn’t earn more than their locked-in wages. DoorDash has since ended this practice.

Attorneys for the city listed many issues relevant to restaurant owners in the lawsuits, including adding restaurants to the platform without the owner’s knowledge or consent, using telephone routing numbers to charge commission on phone calls that didn’t result in orders, and even creating fake restaurant websites to redirect customers to the delivery platform. Many owners have raised concerns that the city hasn’t done enough to help them, although the city did institute a 15 percent fee cap on third parties first instituted in November 2020. DoorDash and Grubhub are suing San Francisco over its decision to implement a permanent fee cap on third-party delivery companies; New York is now looking to enact the same policy.

These are the first lawsuits of their kind of America. Other municipalities have sued the companies, honing in one a single issue. For example, Massachusetts’ attorney general sued Grubhub in July, accusing it of violating a fee cap. Chicago’s lawsuit is the first to combine a variety of issues in one filing; city officials say one lawsuit is more efficient.

On Friday afternoon, Chicago’s restaurants cheered the city’s filings. Many of them — including Medici’s on 57th Street, Bianca’s Burgers, Parachute — were mentioned in the lawsuit, citing social media posts and media coverage of the alleged mistreatment. One example came from Taqueria La Chaquita in Lawndale, with a DoorDash menu pulled on August 26 showing a selection of seafood tacos. Mariscos are great, however, the restaurant does not serve seafood.

The city of Chicago is suing Door Dash and Grubhub, alleging the food delivery services engaged in deceptive business practices during the pandemic, misleading consumers and harming restaurants.

The lawsuits, filed separately Friday in Cook County Circuit Court, allege that as restaurants struggled and closed for indoor dining, DoorDash and Grubhub leveraged soaring demand for delivery by engaging in a “bait-and-switch” on advertised fees, marking up menu items and violating the city’s 15% emergency cap on food delivery commissions.

In addition, the city alleges Door Dash used customer tips intended for delivery drivers to subsidize their pay and imposed a $1.50 “Chicago Fee” on every order within the city limits in response to the November 2020 emergency cap on commissions it was allowed to collect.

“As we stared down a global pandemic that shuttered businesses and drove people indoors, the defendants’ meal delivery service apps became a primacy way for – people to feed themselves and their families, as well as support local restaurants,” Mayor Lori Lightfoot said in a news release. “It is deeply concerning and unfortunate that these companies broke the law during these incredibly difficult times, using unfair and deceptive tactics to take advantage of restaurants and consumers who were struggling to stay afloat.”

The complaints allege both services advertised delivery from unaffiliated restaurants without their consent, lured consumers with deceptively low delivery fees upfront that increased up to sixfold at the end of the transaction, and priced menu items up to 25% higher on Grubhub and up to 58% higher on Door Dash.

Last year, approximately half of Chicago’s 7,500 restaurants closed either temporarily or permanently during the pandemic, the city said. But food delivery services thrived as customers under statewide stay-at-home orders ordered in. The city alleges Door Dash and Grubhub ramped up their “predatory tactics” during the pandemic.

Chicago-based Grubhub, a food delivery pioneer when it launched in 2004, was acquired in June by Amsterdam-based Just Eat Takeaway in a $7.3 billion all-stock transaction. The lawsuit alleges Grubhub “exploited restaurants and the goodwill of consumers” during the pandemic through promotional campaigns such as “Supper for Support,” which billed itself as a bid to save local restaurants but forced restaurants to foot the bill for a $10 off coupon.

“Grubhub deceptively portrayed Supper for Support as a win-win proposition for consumers and the restaurant,” the lawsuit alleges. “As the math makes clear, Supper for Support resulted in extraordinary support for Grubhub but not for struggling local restaurants.”

The lawsuit also alleges Grubhub violated the city’s emergency cap of 15% on restaurant commissions during the pandemic.

Stocks fall as Grubhub’s hometown city accuses food-delivery companies of experiencing ‘tremendous growth on the backs of restaurants and consumers’ during pandemic

The city of Chicago filed a wide-ranging lawsuit against DoorDash Inc. and Grubhub Inc. on Friday, accusing the meal-delivery platforms of engaging in deceptive and predatory business practices.

The lawsuit alleges the companies’ practices harm consumers, delivery workers and restaurants. The city claims DoorDash DASH, -1.60% and Grubhub GRUB, -7.40% deceive consumers by advertising a lower upfront cost for delivery and sometimes misrepresenting the cost of items at restaurants, which the city calls a “bait and switch” because in most cases consumers are too invested in an order to back out when they see additional fees at the end of a transaction.

For example, according to the suit, “During the ordering process, DoorDash and Caviar withhold the existence and amount of the Service Fee, Small Order Fee, and Chicago Fee on the Platforms until the checkout screen.”

The $1.50-per-order “Chicago Fee” isn’t imposed by the city, but rather a reaction by some delivery companies to an earlier attempt by Chicago to rein in the apps’ fees. The lawsuit says DoorDash is trying to recoup some of the money it lost from a 15% commission cap imposed by the city, which like other cities around the nation has tried to limit what huge companies like DoorDash were collecting from struggling restaurants during the coronavirus pandemic.

“DoorDash has experienced tremendous growth on the backs of restaurants and consumers,” the lawsuit states, noting that DoorDash, including its Caviar division, grew its market share in Chicago during the pandemic from 38% to 57%.

The suit — which comes after a yearlong investigation into the companies’ practices — calls for a jury trial, fines of up to thousands of dollars for each misrepresentation and unfair act and practice, and asks the court to order the companies to change their practices. DoorDash shares fell 1.6% to $187.94 in Friday’s trading session, while shares in Just Eat Takeaway NV, the owner of Grubhub, fell 7.4%.

Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf’s administration announced on Tuesday that it has settled a fraud lawsuit accusing IBM of racking up tens of millions in cost overruns while failing to deliver under a $110 million contract to create a new integrated computer system for handling the state’s unemployment compensation program.

The Pennsylvania Department of Labor & Industry said in a statement that it resolved the lawsuit with International Business Machines Corp., but did not provide any further details of the settlement.

“Following an extensive discovery period and exchange of expert reports and opinions, the parties engaged in a lengthy negotiation and the settlement was reached,” the statement said.

IBM has not admitted any liability or wrongdoing and both parties are keen on skirting further litigation costs, the statement added.

Representatives for IBM and for the Pennsylvania department declined to comment beyond the statement, the latter citing the settlement as a factor.

The announcement marks an end to the lawsuit filed in March 2017 by Wolf’s administration over a project that sought to upgrade the state’s outdated unemployment compensation computer system.

The lawsuit said a sweeping computer upgrade the state contracted IBM to complete back in June 2006 fell three years behind schedule, went $60 million over budget, and ultimately never came to fruition.

According to a complaint in the Dauphin County Court of Common Pleas, the upgrade was meant to integrate disparate computer systems that the department relied on to process data regarding tax payments submitted by employers and benefit claims submitted by unemployed workers.

After a three-year bidding process, the complaint said that the state chose IBM for the project based on its representations that it was the only vendor with the type of proprietary databases capable of providing a totally integrated computer system.

But the state said that IBM never came through on its promises.

. . .

The commonwealth is represented by Duane Morris LLP and Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC.