The University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School was honored to host Agnieszka Fryszman, chair of the Human Rights practice at Cohen Milstein, as the Honorary Fellow for Public Interest Week.
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During her visit, we had the privilege of interviewing Fryszman about her work as a renowned human rights litigator, the inflection points that propelled her career forward, and how she sustains her career.
Q: When you look back on your career up to this point, were there any inflection points that changed your trajectory or inspired you to take an action you hadn’t considered until that moment?
Fryszman: So, in some ways, no, because I always wanted to do human rights law. I was a huge nerd as a kid. Everybody else wanted to be a firefighter or a ballerina, and I always drew myself surrounded by books. I majored in international relations in college, but then my life took a whole lot of twists and turns. I worked on political campaigns. I worked on the Hill and went to law school relatively late. I started out as an antitrust lawyer.
And, in some ways, yes, there were inflection points. When I was an antitrust lawyer, I volunteered to work on this case involving victims of the Holocaust. After we settled those cases, I persuaded the firm to invest the cost recovery and to start a practice devoted to human rights. So, I guess that case was an inflection point.
Q: When you volunteered for that case, did you have any inkling that this would grow into a new practice and a focus of the rest of your career?
Fryszman: No. I volunteered for a series of things that grew together to be what my career is today. It’s really important for young lawyers to volunteer for opportunities. That is often where my career took leaps and leaps and bounds forward.
I volunteered to work on that first case, and then we got another case on behalf of the Comfort women against the government of Japan. My colleagues on that case were interested in bringing human trafficking and forced labor litigation. One of them—Martina Vandenberg—founded the Human Trafficking Legal Center. I argued that case with Jenny Martinez, who is now the Provost at Stanford.
Then I volunteered for Alexander v. Oklahoma, a case representing the victims of the Tulsa race riot of 1921. I learned an enormous amount from incredibly talented lawyers: Charles Ogletree, Johnnie Cochran, and Michele Roberts. At some point, I started to pick my own cases and litigate and staff them. Twenty-five years later, I’m still at it.
Q: What do you know now about being a lawyer and chairing the human rights practice, about litigating on behalf of victims and survivors of human rights violations, that you wish you knew as a student?
Fryszman: I think that if I knew then when I know now, I wouldn’t have had the success that I did. A lot of it came from overconfidence, and a lot of it was that I wasn’t deterred by the obstacles and risks. I was less risk averse, and that was probably a good thing. You can’t succeed if you’re not willing to take risks.
Q: Can you share an example of a risk that you took that could have gone poorly but didn’t?
Fryszman: If you focus on all the risks, all the reasons you can lose, you’re never going to get anywhere.
For example, when I represented Paul Rusesabagina, one of the challenges was serving the generals and ministers who were responsible for Mr. Rusesabagina’s kidnapping, imprisonment, and torture. One of the ministers was in England, and under the Hague Convention, you can serve by mail. So, we did just that. Of course, it was returned to us, but the family had opened it and written “send this back!” before mailing it back to us. The court found that the minister had evaded service, and if we hadn’t taken that commonsense step, we would not have been granted the immunity ruling.
There are always bigger, more complex examples: how are you going to get jurisdiction? How are you going to prove this? How are you going to do that? If you believe in a case, I think you can make it work. Often, all those obstacles you anticipate don’t materialize. If you don’t try, you’re not going to win.
Q: What sustains you and your work?
Fryszman: People’s lives really are changed with this work. Sure, it’s great to make new law. I recently had two big precedent-setting sovereign immunity cases. The more meaningful thing, for me, is how people’s lives and communities have changed.
That’s why I like representing people who have been wronged. You’re representing people and whole communities that were victims of human trafficking and forced labor, as well as ended up destitute and don’t have enough food. It’s great to win those cases and send that money back to the families and community so that their kids can go to school and have enough to eat; people have jobs and are happy.
I went back to Nepal and visited some of our old clients. One of my clients bought a sock factory and gave me this big bag of socks. When I first met him, they were destitute. We went to depositions where he was grilled by the defense counsel. But he persevered, and we went to court and got a settlement. His factory, today, employs 14 people, and his son is studying computer science. So, the whole trajectory of that family’s life has changed for the better.
Q: Are there any emerging shifts in human rights lawyering that you think will change the trajectory of that work? If so, how might law students prepare themselves to respond to these?
Fryszman: One of the emerging shifts I’m seeing is more extraterritorial capacity and more rule of law capacity.
Recently in the United States, there has been a shift where our highest courts are saying that U.S. laws are not extraterritorial. Other countries are going in a different direction and are permitting these suits. For example, there are currently great cases in England, Korea, Spain, and France that hold parent companies responsible for actions of their subsidiaries in other countries.
Lawyers will need to be more agile to respond to this kind of shift. For example, we use foreign law in a lot of our cases: Iraqi law, Indonesian law, and international law in our own courts. Lawyers will need to look to other sources of law and be creative in both how they bring cases and how they work with lawyers in other countries and in other legal systems.
Q: What advice would you give to new lawyers who are starting their careers in human rights law?
Fryszman: A really important thing to keep in mind is that it’s the client who is taking all the risk. You’ll go on to your next case, and you’ll be at your house in America, safe and sound with your laptop. But, the person is taking all the risk—perhaps putting their life at risk—to be your client. You’re representing them. You’re not the savior; it’s their case. You’re representing that person and their goals, and you need to be faithful to that.
Secondly, just look for opportunities where you can grow your skills and become more effective by learning from people who are good at what they do. Find those people and learn from them. You’ll often find that, a lot of time, people are really, really generous. Don’t be shy. If someone really fantastic and brilliant is doing an important oral argument, go watch how they prepare for court, how they answer questions, and how they practice.
Finally, I think the last advice is to just try. There’s always going to be someone telling you why you can’t do something or why there’s no jurisdiction. But if you don’t try, you’re never going to succeed. It’s worth trying; these cases are worth fighting for.
Delaware Chancellor Kathaleen St. J. McCormick granted final approval Thursday to a pair of settlements totaling more than $33 million, including more than $1.8 million in fees and expenses, resolving years of shareholder litigation tied to Nikola Corp.’s fraud-shadowed SPAC merger.
Chancellor McCormick noted that the court faced unusual pressure to act quickly because the settlement was woven into Nikola’s Chapter 11 process and required prompt approval. As counsel summarized the terms, Chancellor McCormick responded that the settlement was “far more than fair” as she granted approval.
The settlements resolve overlapping derivative and class actions filed after Nikola’s 2020 merger with special purpose acquisition company VectoIQ Acquisition Corp. Investors alleged that insiders allowed founder and former chairman of Nikola Trevor Milton to mislead investors about the company’s prospects and ability to build zero-emission trucks, artificially inflating the company’s valuation to as high as $28.77 billion in an “old-fashioned ‘pump and dump’ scheme,” according to one version of the Chancery Court derivative suit, filed in 2022.
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Richard A. Speirs of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC, representing the plaintiffs, said the deal was the product of years of litigation, “over 2 million pages” of discovery, extensive mediation, and coordination with Nikola’s bankruptcy estate. Chancellor McCormick credited the multiparty negotiations.
Speirs said more than 4,900 hours were devoted to the Nikola litigation, spanning years of investigation, motion practice, discovery and mediation.
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The plaintiffs are represented by Peter B. Andrews, Craig J. Springer and David M. Sborz of Andrews & Springer LLC, Blake A. Bennett of Cooch & Taylor PA, Julie Goldsmith Reiser, Richard A. Speirs and Benjamin F. Jackson of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC, Frank J. Johnson, Brett M. Middleton and Jonathan M. Scott of Johnson Fistel LLP and Gregory E. Del Gaizo of Robbins LLP.
A federal judge signed off Tuesday on a $34 million legal settlement between former owners of stock in South Carolina’s now-defunct SCANA Corp. and the auditing firm tasked with monitoring the utility company’s books amid the V.C. Summer nuclear expansion.
The deal, which comes more than eight years after SCANA and state-owned utility company Santee Copper abandoned the project in rural Fairfield County, holds accounting giant Deloitte & Touche LLP responsible for its failure to alert shareholders to the fraud associated with the multibillion-dollar project’s failure.
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The total number of shareholders in line for a share of the funds is still unknown, according to Laura Posner, the court-appointed attorney from the firm Cohen Milstein who represented shareholders. She expects the number of beneficiaries to be largely the same in both cases.
Investors accused the accounting firm of shirking its duties as a gatekeeper and issuing misleading audit reports about the progress of the nuclear project, which never came to fruition.
By giving the company’s books a “clean” bill of health, Deloitte led investors to believe SCANA would complete the project in time to qualify for $1.4 billion in nuclear tax credits.
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Posner also pointed to a memo from a Deloitte employee, penned after a SCANA accountant had sounded the alarm on cost overruns and delays, saying Deloitte should have done more to investigate the whistleblower’s claims.
Had Deloitte alerted investors, they “would not have purchased their SCANA shares, and certainly not at the prices they paid,” according to a statement from Cohen Milstein.
Bumble Bee asked San Diego federal judge to dismiss case, but judge ruled claims by Indonesian fishermen plaintiffs were sufficient at this point to move toward trial
A San Diego federal judge on Wednesday declined to dismiss a lawsuit that alleged human trafficking and forced labor violations by Bumble Bee Seafoods, the San Diego-based canned tuna giant, instead ruling the first-of-its-kind case brought by four Indonesian mariners can move forward toward trial.
“This is a historic moment and an incredible victory for the fishers and the ocean,” Sari Heidenreich, senior human rights advisor with Greenpeace USA, which is helping to represent the plaintiffs, said in a statement. “… We celebrate that the fishers will be allowed their day in court, recognizing this is monumental not only for these four men, who are brave enough to stand up to to a giant U.S. corporation, but for hundreds of thousands of fishers globally.”
The four plaintiffs, all men from rural Indonesian villages, sued Bumble Bee in March in U.S. District Court in San Diego, alleging that they were subjected to severe physical abuse and debt bondage on long-line tuna boats that are part of Bumble Bee’s “trusted fleet.” The lawsuit alleged that Bumble Bee had known for years that the fishing vessels in its supply fleet used forced labor but failed to stop the practice.
The suit was believed to be the first to accuse an American seafood companyof of forced labor at sea.
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“This gives me hope for justice for me and my fellow plaintiffs as we struggle for justice and change for the better,” plaintiff Muhammad Syafi’i said in a statement, adding that he was “actually in tears” and overwhelmed by the ruling. “Our fight and sacrifice are not in vain in order to get justice for all of the the fishers. I remain steadfast, strong, and enthusiastic.”
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“This is an important step towards making one of the world’s most dangerous jobs safer and more fair for the fishers who work so hard to put food on American consumers’ plates and who should not be subject to forced labor,” said Agnieszka Fryszman, a prominent human rights attorney from the firm Cohen Milstein who is the lead attorney for the plaintiffs. “… These men endured horrific physical abuse, hunger, and debt bondage while working aboard Bumble Bee’s so-called ‘trusted fleet’ tuna vessels … We look forward to holding Bumble Bee fully accountable under the law.”
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