Over the last four years, more than 200,000 unaccompanied minors have come to the United States. Most of them came from Central America, fleeing poverty and violence.
Some of these unaccompanied teens have ended up in small towns across the Midwest. A Senate investigation in 2016 found that many of these minors were vulnerable to labor trafficking, sometimes forced into unsafe working conditions in order to pay off debts from their smugglers.
In an interview for the Frontline documentary Trafficked in America, one immigrant teen described his work at an Iowa plant. “The first day that I arrived, I didn’t want to return because it was so horrible,” he said. “It was very cold. And the carts that we would take out of the cooler were heavy. The machines are very sharp and if you’re not paying attention, you put your hand in and it will cut everything.”
The Fair Labor Standards Act, a federal law passed in 1938, is meant to prevent children from working in hazardous conditions or for too many hours — regardless of their citizenship status. But labor experts say it’s difficult to know the scope of unlawful child labor in America, and even more difficult to enforce the law, because federal regulators don’t have enough resources.
To better understand the issue, we spoke with Michael Hancock, an attorney with the firm Cohen Milstein who spent 20 years at the Department of Labor. During the Obama administration, he was assistant administrator for policy at the Wage and Hour Division — the main federal office responsible for enforcing child labor laws.
“Child labor is one of those invisible problems,” Hancock said. “It’s not something that’s really obvious to the public at large. But it’s a real issue for the victims of child labor. It deprives them of an education. It puts them in harm’s way.”
See the Frontline Q&A.
Fran Minshew’s home on a dirt road near the Cape Fear River has become a focal point for North Carolina’s environmental regulators dealing with the GenX crisis.
Minshew lives in the cutout of a forest, less than a mile north of the Chemours plant, along the Cumberland-Bladen county line. Her well was among the first sampled for GenX, the chemical compound and possible carcinogen that has since turned up in public drinking water and private wells from Cumberland County to the coast.
An initial test on Minshew’s well found GenX at 1,300 parts per trillion; the state considers 140 parts per trillion to be safe. A second test showed 1,170.
Minshew’s well had the highest concentration of GenX found until future tests would discover a private well with 4,000 parts per trillion of GenX.
Minshew, 76, has breast cancer. And she has many, many questions.
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The lawsuit is just one of many that have been filed. Perhaps the biggest is a class-action filed on behalf of more than 100 people by the same law firm that is handling the water crisis in Flint, Michigan.
All of the lawsuits say Chemours and DuPont misled regulators about the chemicals released into the Cape Fear River and through smokestacks at the Fayetteville Works plant.
To access the full article, click here.
Part 3 of the story behind GenX: Traces of Industrial chemicals started turning up in water tests years ago, but
it wasn’t until 2017 that the public realized what they were drinking.
Larry Cahoon remembers the moment he learned that his tap water was spiked with a cocktail of potentially toxic chemicals.
As a leader with the Cape Fear River Partnership, he was moderating a small panel discussion last May about a recent study he read. It said scientists had found chemical contaminants at an unnamed public utility that draws water from the Cape Fear.
Was it a nearby water system? he asked.
The study’s co-author, Detlef Knappe, set him straight: It was Wilmington’s water system. The contamination is in the water that Cahoon and thousands of other people had been drinking for decades.
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In February, a bill advanced that would allocate $2.4 million to DEQ, with $813,000 for collecting air and water samples.
Some critics want to take the ultimate step — shutting down Chemours. Wilmington city officials, New Hanover commissioners and the Cape Fear Public Utility Authority have become so fed up with the company that they have approved resolutions demanding that the plant cease production of GenX and all other related and unregulated compounds.
“Chemours has had multiple opportunities to control sources of the compounds, but has shown an inability to do so,” Jim Flechtner, executive director of the Cape Fear Public Utility Authority, said in an email. “With this resolution, CFPUA is simply asking the State to enforce what it has stated many times — that these compounds do not belong in the Cape Fear River.”
A federal judge in Washington, D.C., has found the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ management of the Missouri River caused regular flooding, a liability finding that sets the stage for a trial over what plaintiffs’ counsel estimated as $300 million in damages.
Tuesday’s ruling by U.S. Court of Federal Claims Judge Nancy Firestone found that actions made by the Corps—rather than just nature—caused recurrent flooding of the Missouri River during five years that fell between 2007 and 2014. The ruling is a rare and significant decision against the U.S. Corp of Engineers, which a different Court of Federal Claims judge found in 2015 was liable for some of the Hurricane Katrina damage in New Orleans.
“This is one of the largest and most sweeping takings holdings in United States history—Katrina probably being the other one,” said Benjamin Brown, a partner at Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll in Washington, D.C. “In this corner of the law, this is pretty monumental.”
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The Missouri River, once dubbed the “Big Muddy,” is one of the “most engineered rivers in the world,” Brown said. Under the Flood Control Act, the Army Corps constructed dams and reservoirs so that farmers and other business owners could develop land near the river.
But the changes impacted the native habitat of several species of birds and fish. Following a raft of lawsuits, including those brought under the Endangered Species Act, a federal judge in 2004 ordered the Corps to make changes to its management of the Missouri River.
A decade later, more than 370 property owners along the Missouri River filed suit, claiming that the Army Corps’ changes brought on flooding that destroyed their land. They alleged that the Corps had violated the “takings clause” of the Fifth Amendment, which bars the federal government from taking private property without compensation.
“They maintained that since this was foreseeable, the Corps had anticipated that conforming with this biological opinion was going to lead to more flooding, and was leading to more flooding, and threatening their livelihood,” Brown said. “The appropriate response and what the Fifth Amendment dictates is the taxpayers all share the costs of this compliance with the Endangered Species Act rather than only those who live on the river.”
The trial involved plaintiffs with 44 representative properties. Firestone dismissed claims involving 16 of those properties, and she found the Corps was not liable for flooding that occurred in 2011.
The Oscars callout is leading to a real organizing effort, but studios may invite discrimination lawsuits if they prioritize gender and race in hiring decisions.
It might just be the most famous contract clause no one had ever heard of. When Frances McDormand uttered the words “inclusion rider” on the Oscar stage on March 4, the Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri star left viewers (and many in the industry) baffled.
The concept, however, is simple: stars — or anyone with leverage, such as showrunners and top movie directors — can negotiate a contract addendum, or rider, that commits a studio or producer to recruit and hire diverse actors and crew on a project. It’s the brainchild of USC professor Stacy Smith and Kalpana Kotagal, a civil rights employment attorney at Cohen Milstein.
“Movies fail to feature females, individuals from underrepresented racial/ethnic groups, the LGBTQ community, and people with disabilities,” says a summary they provided. “The Inclusion Rider is a solution.”
Smith first introduced the idea in a 2014 Hollywood Reporter guest column, but it lay mostly dormant until this year’s Oscar night. The media scholar says she’s not aware of any actors having used the rider, and entertainment attorneys say they’re unfamiliar with it. “Seen none. Have none,” says a top talent lawyer.
Yet Smith and Kotagal aren’t sharing the clauses they’ve crafted. “The language is for attorneys, actors and content creators — we don’t give it out,” says a colleague of Smith’s. “We want to avoid public negotiation,” says Kotagal, but the Washington-based attorney may also see secrecy as a ticket to Hollywood legal work. “Civil rights lawyers have a right to make money,” she notes.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
“Judgment is among the largest ever issued against a foreign state under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act”
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC, a leading national plaintiffs’ law firm, has obtained a judgment of $920 million against the Iranian government on behalf of more than 80 family members of soldiers who were killed or injured in the 1983 bombing of the U.S. Marine Barracks in Beirut, Lebanon, as well as soldiers who were injured in the attack themselves. The Beirut Marine Barracks bombing, which killed 241 American servicemembers and injured numerous others, was the deadliest state-sponsored terrorist attack against United States citizens before September 11, 2001.
“Nothing will bring back the brave men and women lost in the 1983 bombing, but this judgment is a step towards bringing justice for the victims’ families and the soldiers who survived but carry the mental and physical scars into today,” said Theodore J. Leopold partner and chair of the Catastrophic Injury & Wrongful Death, Managed Care Abuse, and Unsafe & Defective Products practices and co-chair of the Consumer Protection practice at Cohen Milstein.
Cohen Milstein filed the lawsuit in 2014 in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, arguing that the victims were due compensation under the exception in the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act that allows citizens to sue foreign countries if they are victims of state-sponsored terror. Cohen Milstein argued that the attack was carried out by the terrorist organization Hezbollah at the direction and with the support of Iran.
To date, Iran has not participated in the lawsuit, making the ruling a default judgment. However, under the United States Victims of State Sponsored Terrorism Fund, the plaintiffs can receive compensatory damages. The lawsuit is one of several against Iran for participating in state-sponsored terrorism.
“Our clients have endured extreme mental anguish, physical pain, and suffered emotional injury because of Iran’s actions,” said Robert A. Braun, an attorney at Cohen Milstein. “We are dedicated to delivering the full punitive damages to them and also to contributing to the wave of lawsuits against Iran to hold it accountable for sponsoring these acts of terror.”
“This judgment delivers a measure of long-deserved justice to our clients,” said R. Paul Hart, an attorney at Karsman McKenzie & Hart and co-counsel on the case. “We are grateful that the Court recognizes that Iran must be held accountable for the obscene act it perpetrated in 1983. These judgments operate to punish and deter terrorist activities. Although there is still much work to be done to compensate our clients, this judgment is a necessary milestone in the process. We eagerly move to the challenging next stage of identifying and securing Iranian assets to satisfy these judgments.”
About Cohen Milstein
Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC is recognized as one of the premier law firms in the country handling major, complex plaintiff-side litigation. With more than 90 attorneys, Cohen Milstein has offices in Washington, D.C., Chicago, Ill., New York, N.Y., Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., Philadelphia, Pa., and Raleigh, N.C. For additional information, visit https://www.cohenmilstein.com or call 877 515-7955.
A Washington, D.C., federal judge granted 80 victims of the 1983 bombing of a U.S. Marine Corps barracks in Beirut a $920 million judgment against Iran on Wednesday for its role in supporting the attack.
Having previously entered a default judgment against Iran in July 2016 after it failed to respond to the lawsuit, which accused the country of sponsoring Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant group that carried out the attack, U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth awarded the 80 plaintiffs — either service members killed or injured in the terrorist attack, their estates or their family members — just over $920 million in total.
That total, variously covering wrongful death and emotional injury claims, includes roughly $207.2 million in compensatory damages and $712.8 million in punitive damages, with individual awards ranging from $1.15 million up to $17.2 million. While foreign nations are normally given sovereign immunity from U.S. lawsuits, the case fell under a terrorism exception to the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act.
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Theodore Leopold of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC, counsel for the plaintiffs, said in a statement Thursday that “nothing will bring back the brave men and women lost in the 1983 bombing, but this judgment is a step towards bringing justice for the victims’ families and the soldiers who survived but carry the mental and physical scars into today.”
Clients of a nationwide staffing agency that allegedly honored company requests not to refer black workers for temporary gigs whiffed in their bid for an early exit from a proposed class action accusing them and the agency of racial bias.
No direct contractual relationship existed between the five workers who filed the lawsuit and the seven client companies, but that doesn’t mean the employees and other potential class members lack standing to sue the companies under 42 U.S.C. § 1981, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois ruled Feb. 22. The contracts or potential contracts between some of the workers and the staffing agency, MVP Staffing, are good enough, the court said.
The lawsuit involves the emerging issue of “customer preference discrimination.” The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which enforces federal race discrimination laws against private-sector employers, signaled in its strategic enforcement priorities for fiscal years 2017 through 2021 an intent to increase scrutiny of this form of job bias in the temporary, on-demand, and similar “complex” employment relationships that have taken hold in the contemporary workplace. And Joseph M. Sellers, one of the lawyers representing the proposed class, made clear to Bloomberg Law that the private plaintiffs’ bar has also begun to mobilize to root out this type of discrimination.
Cases like this focus on “a fast-growing industry that’s critical” to the U.S. economy, Sellers said Feb. 23. Staffing agencies have become the “gatekeepers for many jobs,” especially those with lower-level skill and educational requirements, he said.
For applicants who seek these jobs, their relationship with a staffing agency is often “the difference between being employed and not being employed,” he said, adding that this is just one of seven similar cases his firm currently has pending. Sellers is a partner in Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC in Washington.
And there are other similar lawsuits underway brought by Cohen Milstein’s co-counsel in the MVP Staffing case, he said.
All of the cases so far involve staffing agencies and client companies in the Chicago area, Sellers said. He said his firm is learning of similar staffing industry practices in other cities and may be bringing similar lawsuits elsewhere before the end of this year.
The client companies are included in these lawsuits so the problem can be addressed “globally,” Sellers said.
The companies’ attorneys didn’t respond Feb. 23 to Bloomberg Law’s request for comment.
Case Still in Early Stages
But Sellers stressed that the case against MVP Staffing and seven of its clients is still in the early stages. The seven client companies are Segerdahl Corp.; Mercury Plastics Inc.; MPS Chicago Inc., which does business as Jet Litho; Penray Cos.; Advertising Resources Inc., which does business as ARI Packaging; Lawrence Foods Inc.; and Blommer Chocolate Co.
In rejecting the client companies’ motion to dismiss them from the case, Judge John J. Tharp Jr. said Section 1981, a 1866 Reconstruction-era law, prohibits race discrimination in the making and enforcement of contracts. The employees’ complaint, he found, sufficiently alleges they had actual or proposed contractual relationships with the staffing agency, with which the client companies interfered, the judge said.
The Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll attorney is usually out-resourced and out-manned, but that hasn’t stopped him from using the law to win high-stakes, multi-million dollar cases brought against some of the world’s largest companies.
When Ted Leopold started his career after college as a high school teacher at Coral Gables High in Miami, he didn’t foresee that he would become one of the country’s most prominent plaintiffs attorneys, winning millions of dollars from huge corporations.
But while working as a teacher in the 1980s, Leopold, who is now a South Florida-based partner at Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll, realized he wanted to do important work that would make a difference in people’s lives. And he recognized that the law could be a vehicle to do just that. So with financial support from his wife, he went off to law school.
“It was an opportunity to do work that would be challenging. I wanted to do work that would be important. I wanted to have an opportunity to make a difference and help people,” Leopold said. “What I’ve come to appreciate even more is the difference litigation can have on changing conduct, actions, corporate misconduct, things of that sort. I’m still a strong believer in that.”
That belief has paid off. This month, Leopold was appointed interim co-lead class counsel in a class action water contamination lawsuit against global chemical producer DuPont and its wholly-owned subsidiary, the Chemours Co. FC LLC. He also leads the Pulse Nightclub shooting plaintiff team in a case filed on behalf of more than 90 survivors and victims’ families of the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando.
Among his sizeable list of big wins is one of the first and most important cases relating to managed care, Chipps v. Humana, which is still referred to in the industry today, nearly 20 years later. In 2010, he obtained a $131 million jury verdict against Ford Motor Co.—the ninth-largest verdict against an automobile company in U.S. history. More recently he successfully represented a client against Japanese company and air bag maker, Takata.
A human trafficking lawsuit just settled between two Indonesian fishermen and an American boat owner will not impact nearly 800 other foreign fishermen in Hawaii’s fleet who are banned from leaving boats when the vessels reach shore, industry officials say.
The 130 commercial fishing boats based in Honolulu rely almost entirely on foreign crews from impoverished Southeast Asian and Pacific countries who have no legal standing and never set foot in the U.S.
An Associated Press investigation into the Hawaii fleet in 2016 found men living in squalor on some boats, forced to use buckets instead of toilets, suffering sores from bed bugs and sometimes lacking sufficient food.
While many workers covet the jobs which pay more than they could earn back home, two Indonesian fishermen — Sorihin, who uses just one name, and Abdul Fatah — ran away from their boat, the Sea Queen II, in 2009 when it was unloading its catch at San Francisco’s Fisherman’s Wharf.
Eventually, federal officials issued each of them a special visa designated for victims of human trafficking, and in 2015 they sued the boat owner, claiming they were denied medical treatment, verbally abused and threatened with hefty fees if they tried to leave. The settlement was disclosed Wednesday.
The settlement, for an undisclosed sum, requires workers on the Sea Queen II and its sister vessel to receive detailed codes of conduct outlining their rights and ways to get help if needed. Crews on the two boats must have at least 77 hours of rest a week and access to their passports.
It doesn’t impact all of the other commercial fishing boats in Hawaii and California, but attorney Agnieska Fryszman said it should act as a wakeup call to the industry.
“There’s simply no excuse for turning a blind eye to human trafficking, and we look forward to continuing our efforts to hold others in the industry accountable,” she said.