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Mass Tort Emotional & Psychological Claims

October 27th, 2020|Categories: CLE OnDemand, Complex Business Litigation, Featured On-Demand, Mass Torts|Tags: , , |

Emotional & Psychological Claims in Multi-Plaintiff Toxic Tort Litigation: What attorneys need to know about the scientific and medical aspects of these injuries.  On-Demand | Recorded October 27th, 2020 ON DEMAND WEBINAR REGISTRATION Emotional injury claims often arise in toxic torts due to exposure to asbestos, mold, carbon monoxide, and environmental contamination, to name a few. And now, as large swaths of the nation are often engulfed in flame, what physical and emotional effect might manifest from prolonged smoke inhalation? Determining the validity of these injuries and any causal connection is difficult. It requires careful study by truly qualified experts often from various disciplines. When psychological harm exists, it can be debilitating. There is much an attorney should know when wading into these types of claims. How often is there a legitimate injury? What different types of injuries are there? What should attorneys know when working with or challenging psychological experts? How is causation proven or disproven? How are damages determined? Join our panel comprising a forensic neuropsychologist, an industrial and occupational physician, a forensic psychiatrist, and an experienced mass tort practitioner as they share their insights and experiences. Key Points Understanding the different types of psychological injury claims. Understanding the differences between objective injuries that are easy to identify and distinguish, versus subjective injuries such [...]

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Emboldened by New Resources and Expanded Authority, Feds Continue 10-Year Look Back at Chinese Investment

October 17th, 2020|Categories: Complex Business Litigation, Corporate Compliance, HB Risk Notes, News|Tags: , , |

MoginRubin LLP By Dan Mogin, Jonathan Rubin, Jennifer M. Oliver, and Timothy Z. LaComb Journal: Policy Derailed: Can U.S. Antitrust Policy Toward Standard Essential Patents Get Back on Track. Author, Jonathan Rubin, MoginRubin LLP. Podcast: Algorithmic Software Facilitated Price Fixing with Jonathan Rubin Journal:  FTC v. Amazon: Market Definitions and Section 5 of the FTC Act. Author, Jonathan Rubin, MoginRubin LLP Blog: Full Ninth Circuit Removes Unwarranted Hurdles to Class Certificatio. Authors, Jonathan Rubin and Dan Mogin, MoginRubin LLP Blog: FTC’s Case Against Facebook Will Test the Flexibility of U.S. Antitrust Law. By Jonathan Rubin and Jennifer Oliver, MoginRubin LLP OnDemand CLE Webinar:   The Antitrust Case Against Google. Speakers Dan Mogin, Jonathan Rubin, Jennifer Oliver, Timothy LaComb, John Newman, Dr. Alan Grant OnDemand CLE Webinar: Class Certification After Olean v. Bumble Bee, Jonathan Rubin, James Bogan, Jonathan Cohn, Bradley Hamburger Interested in More CLE OnDemand? Click Here. Interested in this program? Click here to send us a note. Emboldened by New Resources and Expanded Authority, Feds Continue 10-Year Look Back at Chinese Investment At a conference earlier this year on the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, or CFIUS, Assistant Treasury Secretary Thomas P. Feddo spoke with pride of the Committee’s increased funding, jurisdiction, expenditures, and more aggressive review activities. Feddo began [...]

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Heavy Metals in SFO Bay

October 16th, 2020|Categories: Complex Business Litigation, Environmental Torts, HB Tort Notes|Tags: , , , |

Legal Writer Law Street Media San Francisco Baykeeper Sues Aviation Part Manufacturer Over Heavy Metal Pollution Reposted with permission of Law Street Media and Fastcase. On Tuesday in the Northern District of California, plaintiff San Francisco Baykeeper filed a civil action against defendants Allied Engineering & Production Corp., Allied Land Co. (collectively Allied), and Stone Boatyard to rectify the alleged past and ongoing contamination of canal shoreline near the San Francisco Bay. The plaintiff brings the suit under the private attorney general provision, asserting rights on behalf of the public against the defendants for supposedly dumping metal shavings in the Oakland Inner Harbor Tidal Canal in violation of the law. Baykeeper is an environmental non-profit organization with approximately 3,500 members who live and recreate in and around the San Francisco Bay area. The organization’s mission is “to defend San Francisco Bay from the biggest threats and hold polluters accountable to create healthier communities and help wildlife thrive.” It monitors and investigates pollution as part of its efforts to ensure that the bay is clean and safe for recreation. Defendant Allied Engineering operated a machine shop from 1951 to about 2011, located in Alameda, Calif., on a property that Allied Land owned. The machine shop manufactured aviation industry components and stored hazardous materials, hydraulic oils, [...]

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Podcast: Charlie Kingdollar on Social Disparagement

October 15th, 2020|Categories: Complex Business Litigation, HB Risk Notes, Insurance, News|Tags: , , , , |

HBLC · HBPC Charlie Kingdollar Social Disparagement - 10:8:20, 7.57 PM Charlie Kingdollar spent more than four decades with General Reinsurance, three-quarters of which as the company's Emerging Issues Officer. One colleague described him as "one of the most prescient and gifted industry futurists I have met in my 36 year professional career within the insurance industry. Entertaining and insightful, his ability to digest and communicate complex issues, many before they are readily apparent, is both a gift and a talent." Follow him on LinkedIn. Charlie Kingdollar on Social Media Disparagement Are the risks posed by social media -- which has added jet fuel to one person's ability to smear another -- adequately addressed by the insurance market? It was my pleasure to interview Charlie for our first emerging issues podcast. It's based on his article on social disparagement which will be featured in the inaugural issue of the Journal on Emerging Issues in Litigation (JEIL), which will release in January 2021. JEIL is a collaborative project between HB and the Fastcase legal research family, which includes Full Court Press, Law Street Media, Docket Alarm and, most recently, Judicata. If you have comments or wish to participate in one our projects, or want to tell me how awesome Charlie is, drop me a note at [...]

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James Beck on the Drug & Device Law Blog: Something Both Sides Should Agree On (re Class Actions)

September 21st, 2020|Categories: Class Actions, Complex Business Litigation, HB Tort Notes, News|Tags: , , , |

Senior Life Sciences Policy Analyst Reed Smith LLP Drug & Device Law Blog: Something Both Sides Should Agree On (re Class Actions) We’ll be very clear – as we have before:  We don’t like most class actions.  Indeed, if given our druthers, we would abolish Rule 23, as it applies to class actions for damages, altogether.  But that’s not in the offing anytime soon.  Today, we offer a class action decision that we think both sides, us on the defense and those on the plaintiffs side, can agree on, excluding only those responsible for the problem. In Pearson v. Target Corp., 968 F.3d 827 (7th Cir. 2020), the court came up with one possible solution to the class action “objector problem.” What’s that? Well, once a class action settles (as most do), all too often “objectors” come out of the woodwork.  While these objectors purport to assert the interests of the class, usually, all they want is money to make them go away.  Or, as described in Pearson: We address here a recurring problem in class-action litigation known colloquially as “objector blackmail.”  The scenario is familiar to class-action litigators on both offense and defense.  A plaintiff class and a defendant submit a proposed settlement for approval by the district court.  A few class members object to the settlement but [...]

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Washington AG Sues Juul, Minnesota Judge Tosses RJR’s Suit to Overturn City’s Flavored Tobacco Ban, Verus Reports

September 14th, 2020|Categories: Complex Business Litigation, HB Tort Notes, Mass Torts, News|Tags: , , , |

Manager of Research Services Verus LLC klavin@verusllc.com 609-466-0427 Photo by Rubén Bagüés on Unsplash Litigation Update: Vaping and Flavored Tobacco Products Lawsuits The Washington state attorney general has filed a lawsuit in King County Superior Court against Juul Inc., alleging that the company knowingly targeted minors in its marketing campaign on social media in an effort to push its products on young consumers. In the suit, Attorney Bob Ferguson claimed that in using young models, brightly colored ads and candy-flavored vaping juice, Juul violated Washington state’s consumer protection laws and failed to meet state tobacco product licensing regulations which would make the sales of the company’s e-cigarettes unlawful between August 2016 and April 2018 .... In another tobacco-related case, U.S. District Judge Patrick J. Schiltz tossed out R.J. Reynolds’ lawsuit against Edina, MN over the city’s ban on flavored tobacco products.  The company had claimed that Edina had overstepped its authority with a ban that was aimed at curbing vaping by younger consumers. In his ruling, Judge Schiltz wrote that the ban fell under a provision of the federal tobacco laws granting local governments the authority to regulate the sale of certain products .... Read more at VerusLLC.com.

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Progress of Roundup Settlement in Question, Verus Reports

September 2nd, 2020|Categories: Class Actions, Complex Business Litigation, Environmental Torts, HB Tort Notes, Mass Torts|Tags: , , , , , |

Manager of Research Services Verus LLC klavin@verusllc.com 609-466-0427 Progress of Roundup Settlement in Question Judge Would Likely Not Have Agreed to a Stay Had He Known About the Contingency On August 27, plaintiffs’ counsel in the multi-district litigation involving Monsanto and its widely used weed killer Roundup, advised the court that parent company Bayer AG appeared to be going back on the settlement agreement announced in June. At that time, the company had agreed to settle about 75% of the 125,000 claims filed by plaintiffs alleging that their non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma was linked to Roundup use; the settlement was for an estimated $10 billion. At the hearing, Judge Vince Chhabria advised that he had received confidential letters from a number of plaintiffs’ counsel with cases pending in the MDL who were concerned that Bayer AG was going back on the settlement, noting that the company had terminated settlement term sheets and refused to execute master service agreements that would finalize their settlements; Bayer conceded that there were currently no final agreements. Bayer did advise Judge Chhabria that about 667 of the cases currently pending in the MDL had been resolved, a figure that the judge noted was only a fraction of the 4,000 currently filed.  The judge also pointed to Bayer’s June 24 announcement of the settlement, [...]

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Organizational Values & Business Risks: Properly Balancing Stakeholder Concerns

August 6th, 2020|Categories: CLE OnDemand, Complex Business Litigation, Corporate Compliance, Employment, HB Risk Notes, Mass Torts, News|Tags: , , , |

Accommodations. Appropriate accommodation for high-risk employees or employees with family members who are at a heightened risk. Mitigation. Attention to means of mitigating transmission and infection. Tracing. Contact tracing and management of data collected, including health data, as well as responses to employees who refuse to report. Patient Sensitivity. Duty to avoid discrimination and stigmatization. Preparedness. Developing plans to address possibility of re-occurrence in the fall and managing possible outbreaks in company’s offices. On-demand on the Thomson Reuters West LegalEdcenter as part of the HB catalog. Organizational Values & Coronavirus Business Risks: Properly Balancing Stakeholder Concerns Produced for Emory University Center for Ethics by HB Litigation Conferences The current pandemic confronts businesses, nonprofit organizations, governments, and the legal profession with innumerable ethical challenges.  Management issues and liability concerns, stakeholder demands and legal duties become even more complex in an environment of uncertainty and one where the consequences could result in serious illness or even death.  This program seeks to engage the participants in thinking through these challenges and developing processes of ethical response to them.  Managers must acknowledge and address the framework of fear associated with the pandemic, ranging from fear of contagion and death to fears of unemployment, childcare, and the duties of home-schooling.  Additionally, as the economy reopens there must be [...]

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$3M Transferred in Fraud Scheme, Law Firm Gets Sued, Says It Followed Client Instructions

July 29th, 2020|Categories: Complex Business Litigation, Emerging Litigation & Risk, HB Risk Notes, Law Firm Operations, News|Tags: , , , , |

$3M Transferred in Fraud Scheme, Law Firm Sued, Says It Followed Client Instructions Two related foundations hired a big law firm to sell stock and execute a merger via wire transfer. Cyber fraudsters had other ideas. Posing as stock seller, and intercepting a verification email, the perpetrators grabbed $3.1 million. The foundations sued the firm in state court in Utah, claiming the firm should have red-flagged certain inconsistencies and known it was being duped. The firm should also have picked up the phone to verify the source of the fraudulent emails and documents. Not so fast, the firm maintains. The plaintiff was not a client and it was only acting on wiring instructions sent via the plaintiff's email system and provided the instructions to the paying agent. The money was sent to the account of an alleged furniture company in Hong Kong. Sorenson, et al. v.  Continental Stock Transfer, Tassel Parent, and Holland & Knight, 3rd. Jud. Dist. Ct., Salt Lake Co., Utah. Download

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Microsoft Sued Over Data Sharing in Class Action

July 26th, 2020|Categories: Class Actions, Complex Business Litigation, Corporate Compliance, HB Risk Notes, HB Tort Notes, News, Technology Law|Tags: , |

Microsoft Sued Over Data Sharing in Class Action Consumers, including individuals and companies, filed a class action complaint  against Microsoft in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, claiming the company shared consumer data without consent to subcontractors and third parties, including Facebook, despite policies that stated otherwise.  The plaintiffs accused Microsoft of “misrepresenting its privacy and security practices, violating federal and state law, and illegally sharing and using its business-class Microsoft Office 365 and Microsoft Exchange customers’ data.”  Read more from Law Street Media: https://lawstreetmedia.com/tech/microsoft-sued-over-data-sharing-in-class-action/

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Healthcare Industry Antitrust Measures Advance as Pandemic Pressures Persist

July 15th, 2020|Categories: Complex Business Litigation, Corporate Compliance, Emerging Litigation & Risk, News|Tags: , , , , |

Healthcare Industry Antitrust Measures Advance as Pandemic Pressures Persist Did consolidation help frustrate U.S. COVID-19 preparedness? Clearly antitrust enforcers must consider external circumstances like the COVID-19 crisis when making enforcement decisions, and the agencies have bene able to pivot to respond to this crisis remarkably quickly. It is important, however, to also consider whether and how these emergency COVID-19 collaborations will unwind once the crisis has subsided. Collaborating competitors will have already shared critical information and resources, and that momentum can be difficult to halt. Jennifer M. Oliver, Partner, MoginRubin LLP READ MORE Jennifer M. Oliver Partner MoginRubin LLP

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Tech’s Big Four Will Testify Before Antitrust Subcommittee

July 13th, 2020|Categories: Complex Business Litigation, Emerging Litigation & Risk, News, Technology Law|Tags: , , , , |

Four Technology Giants’ CEOs Will Testify Before Congress in On-going Antitrust Investigation Executives from Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google will appear (either virtually, as they are permitted to, or in person) before the U.S. House of Representatives’ Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee on July 27, 2020. According to its press release, the Subcommittee has been scrutinizing the companies’ dominance in their respective digital spheres and the “adequacy of existing antitrust laws and enforcement,” since June 2019. The hearing will enable legislators to question the executives about possible antitrust abuses, which have been the focus of many federal, state, and foreign regulatory inquiries. For example, Representatives may inquire about Amazon’s treatment of third-party merchants who sell products on its e-commerce platform, Google’s highly profitable ad business, Apple’s App Store terms that infringe on the rights of third-party app developers, and Facebook’s leverage of previously acquired companies to solidify its social media dominance, according to a July 1, 2020 New York Times article by David McCabe. The hearing may serve as the crowning piece of the Subcommittee’s antitrust probe. As the Subcommittee’s press release stated, the CEOs’ “forthcoming” testimony is “essential” to completion of the investigation.

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