Bayer AG shareholders have asked a California federal judge to give final approval of its $38 million settlement with the German multinational to end claims it downplayed litigation risks related to the weedkiller Roundup, saying the deal, which seeks over $10 million in attorney fees, is fair.

A hearing for the motions is set for Oct. 30. The parties notified the court that they had reached a settlement in the case in February, and the deal was preliminarily approved in June, according to the suit’s docket.

U.S. District Judge Richard Seeborg said the deal appeared to be “fair, reasonable and adequate” when initially approving the deal in June.

In a motion requesting 27% of the settlement fund in attorney fees, lead counsel said the nearly $10.3 million payment would represent “a reasonable and justifiable upward adjustment from the 25% benchmark” used in the Ninth Circuit. Among other things, the attorneys noted they had dedicated nearly 15,000 hours of professional time to the case.

The attorneys also called their request for almost $3.3 million in expenses “reasonable both in scope and magnitude.”

If granted final approval, the settlement would put an end to five years of litigation.

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The investors are represented by Carol V. Gilden, Steven J. Toll, Christopher Lometti and Benjamin F. Jackson of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC and Nicole Lavallee and Alexander S. Vahdat of Berman Tabacco.

Former shareholders in utility said Big Four firm failed to spot red flags and allowed management to hide mounting issues

Deloitte has agreed to pay $34mn to investors who blamed the auditor for losses stemming from the collapse of one of the country’s largest nuclear power projects, a rare legal settlement by a Big Four firm.

Former shareholders in the South Carolina utility Scana said Deloitte failed to spot red flags and allowed management to hide mounting problems with the construction of two nuclear reactors a decade ago.

Scana shares tumbled when it eventually abandoned work on the reactors in 2017, leading to its cut-price sale to a rival utility and jail time for its former chief executive, who pleaded guilty to misleading regulators. The fiasco also pushed construction company Westinghouse into bankruptcy.

Lawyers for Scana shareholders claimed Deloitte should pay a portion of losses estimated at $800mn, because the firm repeatedly signed off on financial statements in which Scana indicated the project would be finished on time.

A judge will need to approve the settlement, which was filed in South Carolina federal court on Friday, but plaintiff lawyers called it an “excellent result” for shareholders. It comes on top of a $192.5mn settlement from Scana and its officers in 2020.

“The $34 million recovery from Deloitte is one of the largest securities class action settlements against an auditing firm in the last decade,” the lawyers wrote.

“The settlement was also reached after extensive litigation, at a time when the parties were fully aware of the strengths and weaknesses of their respective positions, and was the culmination of extensive arm’s length negotiations overseen by a well-respected mediator.”

Investors face a high legal bar for implicating auditors in the securities frauds of their clients, as audits are meant to provide only “reasonable assurance” that financial statements are free of error. In the largest recent settlement, PwC paid$65mn in 2015 over claims related to the collapse of the brokerage MF Global.

The Saranac Lake Central School has announced the 2025 Distinguished Alumni Awards. This year’s recipients are Suzanne Dugan and Richard Meyer. There will be a dinner to honor them on Nov. 8 at the Hotel Saranac. The dinner will also feature a silent auction to benefit the community schools initiative.

Suzanne Dugan was born in Saranac Lake to Kathy and Bill Dugan. She is the youngest of five siblings and attended Saranac Lake public schools from kindergarten through 12th grade. Graduating in 1982, Dugan went on to attend Siena College, from which she graduated magna cum laude. She earned her J.D. cum laude from Albany Law School of Union University in 1989.

Dugan began her career as a judicial clerk with the Appellate Division of the New York State Supreme Court. She joined the firm of Cohen Milstein in 2011 after more than 20 years of service in government, including as special counsel for ethics for the Office of the New York State Comptroller where she created and oversaw a vigorous and dynamic ethics program for 2,500 employees and provided advice and counsel to the state comptroller, acting as the sole trustee of the third largest public pension plan in the country. She also previously served as counsel and acting executive director of the New York State Ethics Commission.

Dugan currently serves as special counsel to Cohen Milstein, where she leads the firm’s ethics and fiduciary counseling practice, which she helped found. She serves as fiduciary counsel for public pension plans from coast to coast, including some of the largest institutional investors in the country, and provides guidance on fiduciary responsibility, ethical duties, strategic governance and compliance issues. She consults with governmental entities and other clients on design and implementation of comprehensive ethics programs and provides fiduciary and ethics training to boards of trustees of pension plans and government entities. She assists in conducting investigations and structuring recommendations, providing an additional layer of oversight and accountability. Dugan also serves as an outside ethics officer to municipalities across the country, evaluating and investigating complaints of unethical conduct, providing objective and independent guidance, and working to ensure a culture of ethical leadership.

Dugan is the president of the National Association of Public Pension Attorneys. She is also a member of the Board of the Clifton-Park-Halfmoon Public Library for which she has dedicated over a decade of service.

Two settlements can move forward in a suit brought by workers at red meat processing plants who alleged that Agri Beef Co., Indiana Packers Corp. and Washington Beef LLC engaged in a conspiracy to suppress wages, a Colorado federal judge ruled, finding the deals totaling $2.5 million are fair.

In an order Thursday, U.S. District Judge Philip A. Brimmer preliminarily approved a $1.4 million settlement with Agri Beef and Washington Beef and a $1.1 million settlement with Indiana Packers.

The deals bring the total of settlements the workers snagged to around $200 million as part of their 2022 suit alleging that beginning in 2014, the nation’s leading red meat processors — companies that produce nearly 80% of the country’s red meat — hired two consulting companies in an attempt to suppress workers’ pay in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act.

New Jersey’s attorney general slapped Amazon with a suit Wednesday claiming the online retail giant makes it nearly impossible for pregnant or disabled employees to get workplace accommodations, putting workers on unpaid leave if they seek adjustments such as lifting limits or extra breaks.

The state’s complaint alleged that Amazon.com Services LLC has systemically failed to provide accommodations to pregnant workers and those with disabilities across dozens of package-sorting warehouses it operates in the state in violation of the New Jersey Law Against Discrimination and the state’s Pregnant Workers Fairness Act.

“The largest company in the world, a company that can deliver anything to your door in hours, is doing everything it can to avoid providing basic protections to the people who make those packages get to you on time,” New Jersey Attorney General Matthew J. Platkin said in a Wednesday news conference announcing the suit.

The suit claimed that Amazon, which is New Jersey’s largest private employer, implements “arduous and ineffective” accommodation policies and procedures that are designed to prevent workers from securing work adjustments. When workers filed accommodation requests — seeking more bathroom breaks, lifting restrictions or other adjustments — the state said Amazon would often automatically place the employee on unpaid leave while their request was pending, a practice prohibited by the NJLAD.

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The state is represented by Christina Brandt-Young, Farng-Yi Foo and Maryanne Abdelmesih of the New Jersey attorney general’s office and Christina D. Saler, Diane Kee, Emmy L. Levens, Harini Srinivasan and Phoebe Wolfe of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC.

A Third Circuit ruling that the Fair Labor Standards Act’s collective action opt-in mechanism is silent about the release of unasserted claims by opt-out class action members will make it easier to settle cases containing claims under both federal and state wage and hour laws, attorneys said.

Thursday’s panel ruling in Graham Lundeen v. 10 West Ferry Street Operations LLC, a conditionally certified collective action and proposed class action alleging tipped wages violations, addressed whether a settlement can release the claims of not only FLSA opt-in collective members but also opt-out state law class members. The panel departed from a lower court by finding that the FLSA doesn’t necessarily restrict settlement of opt-out members’ claims.

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Rebecca Ojserkis of worker-side firm Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC said the ruling embraces hybrid actions involving parallel federal and state law claims.

“The ruling boils down to the idea that workers can bring parallel FLSA and state wage and hour law claims, and they can settle them both at the same time,” she said.

Generally, had the Third Circuit panel reached the opposite conclusion, an “employer would not be getting final closure,” she said.

“My guess is their willingness to settle or the amounts for which they might settle might look very different if they weren’t getting a global release,” she said. “A contrary decision might have discouraged filing hybrid actions.”

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Ojserkis also said settlement approval still isn’t guaranteed, but in this particular case, it is likely.

The Third Circuit’s direction, she said, is “not quite a blank check” to the district court.

A recent Eleventh Circuit decision opens up a route for overturning the appellate court’s strictest-in-the-nation precedent requiring administrative exhaustion of all claims brought under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act, attorneys say, given that two judges in a panel concurrence advocated for such action following en banc review.

A three-judge panel in a unanimous published opinion on Wednesday backed a lower court’s decision to toss a proposed class action ERISA suit against Inland Fresh Seafood Corp. of America Inc. and its executives alleging mismanagement of an employee stock ownership plan.

In an opinion written by U.S. District Judge Federico A. Moreno, sitting by designation from the Southern District of Florida, the panel said it was bound to affirm because workers hadn’t first administratively exhausted their claims, as required by the Eleventh Circuit’s strict rule set in 1985 in Mason v. Continental Group Inc.  In that decision, the Eleventh Circuit rejected worker-side arguments that administrative exhaustion requirements didn’t apply to fiduciary breach claims under ERISA.

But a concurrence written by U.S. Circuit Judge Adalberto Jordan and joined by U.S. Circuit Judge Jill A. Pryor is grabbing attorneys’ attention because it advises the full Eleventh Circuit to take action that would ultimately undo that ruling, by repealing the circuit’s ERISA administrative exhaustion rule. In addition to a possible overturn of precedent by the en banc appellate court, practitioners predict the U.S. Supreme Court could eventually get involved.

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Kai Richter, of counsel at Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC, said a move by the Eleventh Circuit to eliminate its ERISA administrative exhaustion rule “would bring the Eleventh Circuit back in line with circuit precedent elsewhere.”

Richter said he thought the most significant aspect of the decision was the en banc suggestion in the appellate judges’ concurrence.

“I think the real headline is that two of the three judges on the panel appeared to indicate that no administrative exhaustion requirement should apply in the Eleventh Circuit,” Richter said.

A California federal judge gave the initial OK to a $2.25 million settlement that aims to shutter a former lighting company worker’s class action claiming the business mismanaged a $25 million asset ownership sale that established its employee stock ownership plan.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Stanley A. Boone handed preliminary approval Thursday to a deal reached by named plaintiff Linna Chea, B-K Lighting Inc., the Lite Star Employee Stock Ownership Plan and the plan’s trustee Prudent Fiduciary Services LLC.

The deal, announced to the court in June, derives its value from a $1.5 million payment to ESOP participants, as well as a $750,000 bump to the lighting company’s stock through the reduction of a loan that helped pay for the transaction at issue in the case.

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Chea is represented by Caroline E. Bressman and Michelle C. Yau of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC and Daniel M. Feinberg of Feinberg Jackson Worthman & Wason LLP.

The state of Oregon has pushed back against Coinbase’s objections to a federal judge’s findings and recommendation that the state’s case against the cryptocurrency platform be sent back to state court, saying the judge “properly concluded that no basis for federal jurisdiction exists.”

The state of Oregon responded last week to objections raised by Coinbase regarding U.S. Magistrate Judge Jolie A. Russo’s findings and recommendation, issued in September, that the suit accusing Coinbase of putting Oregonians at financial risk through the operation of an unregistered securities platform be remanded to Multnomah County Circuit Court.

The state says Judge Russo “thoroughly addressed and rightly rejected Coinbase’s fanciful arguments,” and “faithfully applied the proper legal standards and relied on long-settled precedent to determine that Coinbase’s removal effort fails under either of its asserted jurisdictional theories.”

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The state of Oregon is represented by Brian A. DeHaan of the Oregon Department of Justice, Keil M. Mueller, Jennifer S. Wagner, Yoona Park and Norjmoo Battulga of Keller Rohrback LLP, Julie G. Reiser, Margaret (Emmy) Wydman and Christopher J. Bateman of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC.

Attorneys general of the District of Columbia and three states told a Tennessee federal court Wednesday that they have concerns about a combined $141.8 million worth of class settlements for antitrust claims against several multifamily landlords that allegedly used property management software company RealPage Inc.’s technology for rent price-fixing.

In their court notice, the attorneys general for Washington, D.C., Maryland, Washington and New Jersey said that they want to file a statement of interest in the proposed class action, which accused the landlords of conspiring to use RealPage’s revenue management software to set rents in ways that didn’t compete with one another.

The proposed class is currently seeking preliminary approval for 26 settlements worth $141.8 million. The 26 settlements don’t include RealPage itself.

But, according to the attorneys general, these proposed settlement agreements “could impact the state AGs’ ongoing enforcement actions currently pending in other courts.”

“For example, some of the releases in the proposed settlement agreements define released claims to include claims for ‘penalties,’ which often may be sought exclusively by government actors such as state AGs,” they claimed. “The state AGs would be prejudiced if they were not permitted to raise these issues with this court before preliminary approval and notice is issued to the class.”

The attorneys general also argued that the Class Action Fairness Act requires notices to be sent to relevant state officials for proposed settlements within 10 days of disclosure. Additionally, according to the attorneys general, the CAFA notices allow them to assess the settlements because the notices tell them about how many residents can get paid by settlements.

“To date, however, there has not been sufficient time to confirm whether the appropriate notice has been disseminated; for example, Washington has no record of receiving a CAFA notice,” they alleged. “Allowing the state AGs an opportunity to review the proposed settlements and submit a statement in response would be consistent with the role CAFA envisions for the states in protecting their economies and their residents’ interests.”

Also, the attorneys general claimed that they could provide their own “useful perspective” about the litigation because of related “pre- and post-filing investigations.”

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Washington, D.C., is represented by attorneys at Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC, Spragens Law PLC, and Adam Gitlin, Mehreen Imtiaz and Ashley Walters of the Office of the Attorney General for the District of Columbia, Public Advocacy Division.

Maryland is represented by Schonette J. Walker and Melissa L. English of the Office of the Attorney General of Maryland and attorneys at Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC.

New Jersey is represented by Brian F. McDonough, David Reichenberg, Jesse J. Sierant and Douglas T. Post of the New Jersey Office of the Attorney General and attorneys at Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC.