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Criminal enterprises are inundating class action settlements with fake claims, siphoning money away from real class members and threatening the class action system as a whole, reports Diana Novak Jones.
Fake claims aren’t new in class actions, but this level of fraud is unprecedented, attorneys and claims administrators said. After Artsana settled claims it had mismarketed its Chicco-brand car booster seats last year and agreed to pay customers who bought them $50, the company was hit with more than 3.3 million requests for payment. It knew it had only sold 875,000 of the seats in question, it said.
These scammers are often using stolen identities and addresses, so the claims can look real at first glance, administrators told Reuters.
Exactly how much money is stolen from settlements through fraud is hard to quantify, said Steve Weisbrot, president and CEO of claims administrator Angeion Group, because successful fraudsters evade those trying to stop them. He said it is reasonable to think millions of dollars have been siphoned out of settlements in recent years.
“Someone is making money off of it, or it would stop,” Weisbrot said.
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- The 9th Circuit Judicial Council publicly reprimanded U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez in San Diego for ordering a U.S. marshal to handcuff a 13-year-old girl to scare her into not doing drugs and to avoid becoming a criminal defendant like her father. The panel said the judge committed judicial misconduct during that February 2023 by engaging in abusive or harassing behavior and failing to maintain the high standards of conduct as a federal judge.
- Columbia Law School postponed all final exams amid ongoing turmoil over pro-Palestinian protesters encamped at the Manhattan university’s campus. Columbia’s decision comes after George Washington University Law School told students on April 25 that final exams would be moved to new locations to avoid any disruptions or distractions from the protests.
- Blank Rome and Simpson Thacher said they are opening offices in Boston, becoming the latest U.S. law firms to break into the technology and life sciences hub.
- Cleary Gottlieb, which was tasked with reviewing allegations of sexual harassment and workplace culture at the FDIC, has delivered its report to the agency, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.
- Comcast stopped broadcasting Bally Sports channels, disrupting baseball fans’ ability to watch regular-season MLB games and imperiling the regional sports network’s bankruptcy restructuring. Diamond Sports, a Sinclair subsidiary that operates 18 regional Bally Sports channels and broadcasts nearly half of all MLB, NHL and NBA games, has said that its bankruptcy restructuring depends on renewed deals with cable companies like Comcast.
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“With today’s lawsuit, it is my great honor to defend our Constitutionally protected freedoms from the out-of-control federal government.“
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—Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who is among more than two dozen Republican state attorneys general suing the Biden administration to stop a new rule that would require gun dealers to obtain licenses and conduct background checks when selling firearms at gun shows and online. The lawsuits challenge a rule finalized last month that DOJ officials said is aimed at closing the “gun show loophole” by subjecting those selling weapons at gun shows and over the internet to the same requirements as gun stores.
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- The U.S. government is expected to lay out its antitrust case against Alphabet’s Google in closing arguments wrapping up a court battle in which the online search leader is accused of breaking the law to stay on top. The U.S. government has hammered away at Google in a trial that started Sept. 12, arguing the company is a monopolist and that it illegally abused its power to favor its bottom line.
- New York prosecutors will ask the judge overseeing Donald Trump’s criminal hush money trial to impose another fine on the former president for violating a gag order that aims to prevent him from intimidating witnesses and other trial participants. The $4,000 penalty prosecutors are seeking would come on top of a $9,000 fine Justice Juan Merchan imposed on Tuesday, when he held Trump in contempt of court for social media posts that questioned the jury-selection process and insulted his former lawyer Michael Cohen.
- U.S. District Judge Valerie Caproni in Manhattan will hold a status conference in an antitrust lawsuit by sports promoter Relevent Sports seeking to open up the U.S. to official competitive soccer matches involving foreign clubs. Relevant is suing U.S. Soccer, which recently lost its effort at the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn a ruling that said it can be sued for following rules set by soccer’s international governing body FIFA. Relevant and FIFA have settled, but the terms haven’t been publicly disclosed.
- The 6th Circuit, sitting in Nashville, Tennessee, will consider whether to revive a lawsuit by four Tennessee-born transgender women challenging a state policy that bars them from changing the sex designation on their birth certificates. The district court dismissed the lawsuit last June, finding that birth certificates are simply records of historical observations and are not current identity documents
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Court calendars are subject to last-minute docket changes.
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- The 9th Circuit said a lawsuit filed by 21 young people claiming the U.S. government’s energy policies violate their rights to be protected from climate change must be dismissed, this time for good. A three-judge panel said the case should have been dismissed after the court first weighed in on the matter in 2020, when it said courts could not mandate broad policy changes that are better left to Congress and the executive branch.
- U.S. District Judge Catherine Eagles struck down parts of a North Carolina law restricting patients’ access to the abortion pill mifepristone, which has become the subject of legal battles nationwide. The judge ruled against the state’s requirements that mifepristone be prescribed only by doctors and only in person, as well as a requirement that patients have an in-person follow-up appointment.
- The 5th Circuit directed a judge in Texas to decide by the end of next week whether to block the CFPB’s new rule capping credit card late fees at $8. The order by the three-judge panel came in response to a bid by banking and business groups including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and American Bankers Association to have the appellate court itself decide whether the rule should be blocked.
- Bayer must face a U.S. antitrust lawsuit accusing a former unit of the German company of undermining competition for rival tick and flea treatments. U.S. District Judge Beth Freeman in San Jose, California, in an unsealed order said the plaintiff, pet products company Tevra, provided sufficient evidence for a jury to hear claims that Bayer schemed with retailers and distributors to block Tevra’s generic, lower-cost tick and flea pet medication.
- A Ukrainian man was sentenced to 13 years and seven months in prison for his role in conducting over 2,500 ransomware attacks and demanding over $700 million in ransom payments, the DOJ said. Yaroslav Vasinskyi was also ordered to pay over $16 million in restitution, the department said.
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- Clifford Chance hired former Shearman & Sterling partner Todd Lowther for its tax and energy and infrastructure teams in Houston, and M&A partner Chang-Do Gong from White & Case in New York. (Reuters)
- Cranfill Sumner hired Christina Zaroulis Milnor from the SEC to launch an affiliate group, named Mincey Bell Milnor, and a new D.C. office with two other white-collar partners. (Cranfill Sumner)
- Proskauer added credit and hedge fund partner Jennifer Dunn in New York. She most recently was at Schulte Roth. (Proskauer)
- Crowell & Moring brought on corporate partner Elaine Taussig and corporate and IP partner Tom Williams in Chicago. They previously were at Neal, Gerber & Eisenberg. (Crowell)
- Mitchell Sandler added D.C.-based partner Olivia Kelman to its fair lending practice from K&L Gates. (Mitchell Sandler)
- Kramer Levin added D.C.-based litigation partner Daniel Lerman, a former appellate attorney with the DOJ’s criminal division. He will serve as deputy chair of the firm’s Supreme Court and appellate litigation practice. (Kramer Levin)
- Willkie hired Thomas McCaffrey as a Houston-based private equity partner from Akin. (Willkie)
- Foley & Lardner picked up M&A partner Jeff Symons in New York. He previously was at Schulte Roth. (Foley & Lardner)
- Squire Patton Boggs added partner Steven Conigliaro to the firm’s financial services practice. Conigliaro was previously executive vice president and general counsel of digital transformation at Santander Bank. (Squire)
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Healthcare investments have been a favorite of private equity investors for more than a decade. As competition to invest in mature healthcare businesses has increased and investors seek to maintain returns, growth equity has emerged as a strategic focus in the healthcare space, write Kevin Sullivan and Michael Nowicki of McDermott. Growth equity investing is increasingly recognized as a separate and distinct asset class with unique returns, strategies and risks for both sponsors and the limited partner community.
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