Judge OKs $6.1B in WorldCom Settlements

WorldCom settlements have finally been approved:

NEW YORK - A federal judge Wednesday approved legal settlements that will return more than $6.1 billion to investors who lost money in the massive WorldCom accounting fraud.

The deals, approved by U.S. District Judge Denise Cote, will divide payments among approximately 830,000 people and institutions that held stocks or bonds in the telecommunications company around the time of its collapse in 2002.

The judge said the settlements were “of historic proportions.”

“Given the risks that would have been inherent in proceeding with the trial and any appeals, the settlement amount that will be allocated to the Securities Act claims is more than reasonable; it is remarkable,” the judge wrote.

Money for the payouts will come from a long list of defendants, including investment banks, auditing firms and former WorldCom directors.

Google accused of copyright infringement

Google announced its library initiative late last year. The initiative involves scanning and indexing books from the New York public library and university libraries at Harvard, Stanford, Oxford and Michigan. Sounds great, right? Well, not for the copyright-holding authors…

NEW YORK - An organization of more than 8,000 authors accused Google Inc. Tuesday of “massive copyright infringement,” saying the powerful Internet search engine cannot put its books in the public domain for commercial use without permission.

“The authors’ works are contained in certain public and university libraries and have not been licensed for commercial use,” The Author’s Guild Inc. said in the lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Manhattan.

The lawsuit asked the court to block Google from copying the books so the authors would not suffer irreparable harm by being deprived of the right to control reproduction of their works. It sought class-action status on behalf of anyone or any entity with a copyright to a literary work at the University of Michigan library.

The Author’s Guild, a New York-based non-profit organization, said its primary purpose as the nation’s largest organization of book authors was to advocate for and support the copyright and contractural interests of published writers.

[...]

The lawsuit said Google knew or should have known that copyright laws required it to obtain authorization from copyright owners of literary works to create and reproduce digital copies for its own commercial use.

For more, check out the article at Yahoo! News. .

Wal-Mart Facing New Class Action Lawsuit

A new class action lawsuit has been filed against against Wal-Mart for sweatshop. The world’s largest retailer has been charged with overlooking labor abuse at factories run by its suppliers in several countries:

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Workers in six countries filed a class-action lawsuit against Wal-Mart Stores Inc. on Tuesday, claiming the world’s largest retailer overlooks sweatshop conditions at toy and clothing factories from China to Nicaragua.

The suit, filed in California state court in Los Angeles, lists as plaintiffs 15 workers in Bangladesh, Swaziland, Indonesia, China and Nicaragua. They claim they were paid below minimum wage, forced to work unpaid overtime and in some cases even endured beatings by supervisors.

The lawsuit also lists four California plaintiffs, including two unionized workers at Kroger Co. unit Ralph’s and Safeway Inc. grocery stores, who claim Wal-Mart’s entry into Southern California forced their employers to reduce pay and benefits.

The full article can be read here.

Huge toenail bill prompts class action lawsuit

From fungus to fiasco…

SEATTLE - A lawsuit challenging a hospital’s $1,133 bill to clip a toenail and run tests has been certified as a class action that could include other patients charged similar fees by the hospital.

Lori Mill is challenging a $418 fee included in the bill for “miscellaneous hospital charges” because she had her toenail clipped to check for fungus at Virginia Mason Medical Center’s downtown complex rather than at one of its other clinics.

The hospital has not yet provided how many patients were assessed such a fee, Mill’s lawyer, John Phillips said Friday.

Virginia Mason Medical Center says its downtown complex is authorized by Medicare to charge higher fees because it is licensed as a hospital. It maintains that such charges are standard practice elsewhere.

Judge Gregory P. Canova said the main question is whether those charges were properly disclosed, or were unfair or deceptive.

If Virginia Mason loses the case, “the state Consumer Protection Act allows triple damages of up to $10,000 per patient who provides documentation of such a billing.”

More trouble for Abercrombie & Fitch

Lawsuits accuse Abercrombie & Fitch of misleading shareholders:

COLUMBUS, Ohio - Three lawsuits filed in recent days against Abercrombie & Fitch Co. accuse the casual clothing retailer of misleading stockholders about its profits.

The suits in U.S. District Court allege the suburban Columbus company violated securities laws by announcing sales increases without also revealing that profit margins would be sharply lower than expected in the second quarter.

After the company announced that sales at stores open more than one year jumped 38 percent in June, the stock reached a high of $74.10. In the week that followed the announcement, Chairman and Chief Executive Michael Jeffries sold 1.44 million shares for $104 million, according to regulatory filings.

The stock then lost value after the company announced last month that it had missed Wall Street expectations by 6 cents per share in the second quarter, earning 63 cents per share or $57.4 million.

The lawsuits, the first of which was filed Friday, are seeking class-action status and unspecified damages for investors who bought Abercrombie stock from June 2 through Aug. 16.

Abercrombie was also recently in trouble for discriminatory hiring practices and for forcing employees to use their paychecks to buy A&F clothing.

$75 million pollution settlement in Jacksonville, FL

The Austin Business Journal is reporting that an Austin attorney has helped people in Florida win a $75 million settlement in a toxic-ash case. Here’s the article:

Austin attorney Tommy Jacks says he helped settle a toxic-ash lawsuit against the city of Jacksonville, Fla., for $75 million.

Jacks — whose Jacks Law Firm and two other firms represented 4,600 Jacksonville residents harmed by ash residue from city-operated incinerators — says the settlement brings justice to residents of predominately African-American neighborhoods on the city’s north side.

“This will finally bring some compensation to these families who have lived in contaminated homes, sent their children to schools with contaminated playgrounds and worked on contaminated job sites,” Jacks says.

Of the $75 million, the city is responsible for paying the first $25 million in cash by December, according to Jacks. The Jacksonville City Council approved the settlement Sept. 1.

The city and plaintiffs’ attorneys are seeking jointly to recover the balance of the $75 million from insurance companies that covered the city over much of the roughly 40-year period that the incinerators and ash dump sites were active.

Jacks says the class-action lawsuit, filed in 2003, claimed city polluted neighborhoods surrounding four former dump sites, as wells as areas surrounding three old incinerators. The plaintiffs claimed exposure to pollutants caused health problems. Contaminants in the incinerator ash included arsenic, lead and mercury, according to media reports.

Breakdown of Vioxx suits

Here’s a breakdown of the Vioxx-related suits filed so far:

More than 5,000 product liability lawsuits, nearly all of them personal injury lawsuits, have been filed against Merck. They include:

_1,811 federal lawsuits consolidated for pretrial coordination to streamline steps common to the cases, such as document gathering and witness depositions.

_More than 290 federal lawsuits pending but not yet consolidated with the others in what’s called multidistrict litigation.

_More than 250 cases pending in California state courts.

_About 2,475 cases pending and coordinated under one judge in Atlantic County, New Jersey.

_More than 200 cases pending in state courts elsewhere.

The above categories include 148 potential class-action cases, which could eventually include many plaintiffs if judges certify them as class actions. A handful of those cases involve union health plans, insurers and other third-party payers to seek reimbursement of money they paid for Vioxx for their prescription plan members. One such class action suit filed by a New Jersey union has been certified.

Class action against Microsoft (again)

Anthony Lin of the New York Law Journal has written about the latest antitrust class action against Microsoft:

A Manhattan judge has certified a class action suit against Microsoft Corp. on behalf of consumers who charge they were harmed by the software maker’s anti-competitive conduct.

Supreme Court Justice Karla Moskowitz ruled the plaintiffs in Cox v. Microsoft, 105193/00, had adequately shown that a class action would be the best way to provide redress to individual consumers.

[...]

The New York suit is one of several filed in courts nationwide in the wake of the U.S. Department of Justice’s 1998 antitrust suit against Microsoft and the 2000 ruling against the company in federal court in Washington, D.C.

That ruling was later largely overturned, though an appellate court upheld the finding that Microsoft acted illegally to maintain a monopoly in personal computer operating system software.

Among targeted practices was Microsoft’s requirement that computer manufacturers agree to pay a licensing fee to Microsoft for each computer shipped, regardless of the operating system. The practice discouraged manufacturers from installing any operating systems besides Microsoft’s. Consumer plaintiffs have claimed such practices harmed them by denying them choice and inflating prices.

Microsoft has already settled several state consumer class action suits. In 2003, a class of California consumers received $1.1 billion in vouchers for Microsoft products.

Shareholder Class Action Lawsuit Against Buca, Inc.

NEW YORK, Sept. 2, 2005 (PRIMEZONE) — The law firm Seeger Weiss LLP, www.seegerweiss.com, announces that yesterday it filed a class action lawsuit in the United States District Court for the District of Minnesota on behalf of: a class consisting of all persons who purchased the common stock of Buca, Inc. (Nasdaq:BUCA) (”Buca” or the “Company”) during the period of February 6, 2001, through and including March 11, 2005, and who were damaged by the decline of the Buca Stock. Plaintiff is seeking remedies under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (the “Exchange Act”). The action is against Buca, Inc., Joseph Micatrotto, Pete Mihajlov, and Greg A. Gadel (”Defendants”).

The complaint alleges that Defendants caused the Company to issue false and misleading financial statements which misrepresented: (1) the Company’s financial position by overstating the Company’s income by understating its lease costs through improper capitalization and deferral, by improperly capitalizing ordinary and routine repairs and maintenance and by understating its insurance reserves; (2) the Company’s revenues by improperly including in revenues the value of meals provided to employees and provided for promotional purposes; (3) that the Company’s financial statements were prepared in accordance with Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (”GAAP”) when in fact they were not. The complaint further alleges that the Company lacked adequate internal controls and, therefore, was unable to ascertain and present the true financial condition of the Company.

More details about this lawsuit can be found here.

Members of the class have until October 11th to request that the Court appoints them as lead plaintiffs.

Boy sues after being cut from HS b-ball team

The Ark Valley News is reporting that the parents of a boy who was cut from his high school basketball team are suing the local school district:

A Valley Center family has filed a lawsuit against U.S.D. 262, alleging discrimination based on race in the high school basketball program.

Teresa Garvey, whose son Joe is a Valley Center High School senior, is the plaintiff in the class-action complaint for civil rights violations. A scheduling conference was held Wednesday morning before Magistrate Judge Karen Humphries in federal court.

Here’s more:

The Garveys’ complaint alleges that selection procedures for the high school basketball team are excessively subjective.

“Selection of a sports team undoubtedly requires some subjectivity and discretion,” it states. “However, when that subjectivity and discretion is without boundaries, in the hands of racially or culturally biased coaches, such limitless discretion will have a disparate impact against minorities: just as it has in this case.”

[...]

The class-action aspect pertains to minority students who were enrolled since Jan. 1, 1999, at Valley Center High School and who may have been “excluded from athletic competition because of their race, ethnicity and/or color.”

Next Page »