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Western Alliance Bank Webinars On-Demand

February 13th, 2021|Categories: HB Tort Notes|

Western Alliance Bank Settlement Services Western Alliance Bank offers specialized banking for law firms, claims administrators and related businesses managing class action, mass tort and bankruptcy settlements. We bring you years of expertise in supporting all phases of the settlement process from escrow through distribution with a single point of contact. Our committed team offers a highly personalized banking experience with a focus on exceptional service, flexibility and responsiveness. Class Action Settlements Mass-Torts Bankruptcy Simple to complex attorney-focused fiduciary banking solutions Escrow & Distribution Solutions Learn More & Meet the Team CLE Webinars Compliments of Western Alliance Bank Settlement Services Rule 23 Mandatory Arbitration Data Breach Class Actions Wage & Hour Digital Payments Class Settlement Structures

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Chubb’s COVID-19 Claim Denials Draw Litigation from Hollywood

December 7th, 2020|Categories: HB Emerging Law Notes, HB Risk Notes, HB Tort Notes|Tags: , , , , , , |

Editor and Managing Director HB Litigation Conferences Editor@LitigationConferences.com Chubb’s COVID-19 Claim Denials Draw Litigation from Hollywood Well-known policyholder and insurance recovery attorney Kirk Pasich and his firm have sued Chubb insurance companies on behalf of policyholders in the entertainment industry to recover millions in losses they suffered as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. Entertainment Business Interruption On Nov. 11, 2020, the firm filed suit on behalf of United Talent Agency LLC in Los Angeles County Superior Court against Vigilant Insurance Co. and Federal Insurance Co. UTA seeks coverage for the millions it lost when concerts and television and movie projections had to be cancelled. The complaint says both carriers are part of the Chubb group, “which has adopted a universal practice of denying coverage for all business interruption claims associated with SARS-CoV-2, Covid-19, and subsequent events” (UTA v. Vigilant, No. 20STCV43745, Calif. Super. Ct., Los Angeles). Acts affected include Post Malone, Guns N' Roses, and Toby Keith. The case hinges in part on the carriers’ assertion that there was no “physical loss or damage.” UTA finds Vigilant based its finding on little information, and knowing for decades that "many courts have held that the presence of a hazardous substance on a property, including the airspace inside buildings, constitutes property damage and that there may be ‘direct [...]

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Heavy Metals in SFO Bay

October 16th, 2020|Categories: 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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James Beck on the Drug & Device Law Blog: Something Both Sides Should Agree On (re Class Actions)

September 21st, 2020|Categories: HB Emerging Law Notes, HB Tort Notes|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: HB Emerging Law Notes, HB Tort Notes|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: HB Tort Notes|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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NJ Judge Overstepped in Striking Talc Plaintiff Experts, Verus Reports

August 21st, 2020|Categories: HB Tort Notes|Tags: , , , |

Manager of Research Services Verus LLC klavin@verusllc.com 609-466-0427 Judge Abused Discretion in Striking Expert Evidence, NJ Appellate Court Finds Reverses 2016 Summary Judgment in Ovarian Cancer Cases On August 5, a three judge panel from the New Jersey state appeals court reversed a 2016 summary judgment granted in favor of defendants, talc manufacturer Johnson & Johnson and talc miner Imerys Talc America in cases brought by two women who allege J&J’s talc products caused their ovarian cancer. In its opinion, the panel ruled that Atlantic County Superior Court Judge Nelson C. Johnson abused his discretion by serving as the fact finder in deciding the credibility of the plaintiffs’ experts’ opinions instead of merely assessing whether the doctors’ opinions were based on sound scientific methodology. The trial judge acknowledged that the experts, Dr. Graham Colditz and Dr. Daniel Cramer, were qualified but opined that their scientific studies and evidence were narrow and shallow, showing a preference for cohort studies and their larger sample sizes over the case studies relied on by the experts.  In overturning the ruling by the trial court and discussing the studies cited by Colditz and Cramer, the appeals court stated that those studies satisfied the criteria outlined in the Federal Judicial Center’s Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence and also noted that size and [...]

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Microsoft Sued Over Data Sharing in Class Action

July 26th, 2020|Categories: Emerging Litigation & Risk, HB Emerging Law Notes, HB Risk Notes, HB Tort Notes|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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Monsanto, Bayer Paying Billions for PCB Cleanups

July 3rd, 2020|Categories: HB Tort Notes|Tags: , , , , , |

Read Baltimore Sun environmental writer Scott Dance's June 24, 2020, article titled, "A $550M national class-action settlement includes money for cleanup of PCBs in Baltimore waterways." He offers the Maryland angle on the $550 million class action settlement between Monsanto and 13 government agencies across the U.S., just part of a much larger agreement. "The settlement was one of several that Monsanto’s owner, German pharmaceutical company Bayer, announced Wednesday. Bayer said it’s paying up to $10.9 billion to settle current and potential future litigation over Monsanto’s weedkiller Roundup, which has faced numerous lawsuits over claims it causes cancer, and $1.22 billion to settle two further cases, including the class action focused on PCBs." Dance writes that the terms of this settlement are off to Judge Fernando M. Olquin of the Central District of California for his review. Judge Olquin was one of the presenters on multiple panels at the Class Action Law Forum presented by Western Alliance Bank and produced by my team at HB. Kenneth R. Feinberg, also a presenter, is the court-appointed special master in the case. The Baltimore Sun piece was one of many that gave the local perspective on this nationwide litigation and settlement in progress, like this one from the San Francisco Chronicle, with a Seattle dateline, and this one from the Washington State Wire quoting the [...]

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New Litigation Journal Coming January 2021

March 19th, 2020|Categories: HB Risk Notes, HB Tort Notes|

HB, Fastcase Partner to Publish Law Street Media’s Journal of Emerging Issues in  Litigation  FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE March 19, 2020 Media Contact: Jennifer Brand Ransom | Fastcase Media Relations 202.731.2114 | jbransom@brandsolutionsgroup.com Washington, DC (March 13, 2020) – Legal publisher Fastcase and partner HB Litigation Conferences today announced a journal partnership to provide firms with expert insights into emerging litigation. The new Law Street Media's Journal of Emerging Litigation will be led by Managing Director and Founder of HB Litigation Conferences Tom Hagy, former Publisher and Managing Editor of LexisNexis Mealey’s Litigation Reports. “There are many new areas of litigation emerging from vaping to mandatory arbitration, privacy breaches to drones and autonomous vehicles and our Docket Alarm service is in such a unique position to track the filing data. We wanted to focus on new types of suits and the experts who are leading the charge, before litigation completely unfolds. To do so, we needed a strong journalist and leader who could make sense of these new types of lawsuits and pick the best of the best to cover. Tom Hagy was the first and best choice for us,” noted Steve Errick, COO of Fastcase. Publishing its first issue this summer, the focus of the journal in many ways will parallel Hagy's career-long focus on emerging areas of litigation, supported with the valuable filing data from Docket Alarm. “Emerging [...]

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PTSD Claims Brought by Facebook’s ‘Graphic Content’ Reviewers Goes to ADR, Putting Civil Action on Pause

August 15th, 2019|Categories: HB Tort Notes|

By Tom Hagy Facebook can be great fun. How else would I have seen a video of an eight-year-old drummer-girl utterly thrashing Led Zeppelin’s Good Times Bad Times? Or a dog running away with a lit skyrocket as his human friends run, duck and ditch for their lives? Or what your cat looks like in a tuxedo? Facebook can also be a source of horror. Some of the most distressful commentary and images you wish you could un-see. And that’s just from my family. Imagine your entire job is to monitor Facebook discussions and remove its graphic content. Day in and day out. That’s literally all you did. A group of Facebook employees says that was their job, and their exposure to an “unmitigated barrage of horrifying content” and “toxic images” has caused them to suffer “debilitating trauma-related injuries.” In September 2018 they filed suit in California Superior Court in San Mateo seeking an order requiring Facebook to implement safety guidelines for content moderators which, they say, the company has admitted are “necessary and appropriate.” They also want the company to fund a medical monitoring program for the diagnosis and treatment of psychological injuries including post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD. The plaintiffs quote Chris Harrison, whom they characterize as a Facebook executive in charge of the company’s “global resiliency team” as [...]

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Canna Law Blog Reviews Hemp-CBD Regulations State-by-State, Week-by-Week

July 22nd, 2019|Categories: HB Risk Notes, HB Tort Notes|

“When it comes to hemp, few states have embraced it like Colorado,” writes Harris Bricken attorney Daniel Shortt. “If you buy a product containing hemp, in any state across the country, it likely came from Colorado.” The state has allocated more than 12,000 acres of outdoor space and 2.35 million square feet of indoor space to hemp cultivation, according to Marijuana Business Daily. Shortt and his colleagues are working their way through a state-by-state series on the Canna Law Blog™, titled Hemp-CBD Across State Lines. The Harris Bricken team has covered Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas and California, and added Colorado to the list yesterday, July 21. The firm’s series covers state regulatory activity following the enactment of the federal Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018, aka “The Farm Bill,” which removed hemp and its derivatives from the definition of marijuana under the Controlled Substances Act. The bill gave the USDA regulatory authority over hemp cultivation at the federal level, but states may maintain primary regulatory authority over the crop cultivated within their borders by submitting a plan to the USDA, Shortt explains. Read the Canna Law Blog's Colorado post and follow this series, updated weekly. Related Webinar This Week The Harris Bricken law firm has been on the forefront of the law regarding cannabis and related products for years. Three Harris Bricken attorneys, [...]

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