- Biggest recruit yet for climate recoupment suits: NYC Mayor Bill De Blasio sues blaming five oil companies for Superstorm Sandy [Seth Barron/City Journal, John Timmer/ArsTechnica, WSJ; Stephen Bainbridge on parallel divestment effort]
- California cities/counties suing oil companies: climate change will be our ruin. Same cities/counties selling bonds to investors: risk? what risk? [Andrew Scurria/WSJ; John O’Brien/Forbes] Santa Cruz joins several other Bay Area counties in action [Nicholas Ibarra, Santa Cruz Sentinel]
- Can’t spell “Oedipal” without “O-i-l”: Rockefeller heirs bankroll #ExxonKnew crusade against great-granddad’s company [Reeves Wiedeman, New York mag]
- Same article takes disbelieving tone about possibility that state AGs’ campaign might trample anyone’s First Amendment rights [memory refresher] More about that in this Margaret (Peggy) Little and Andrew Grossman 2016 Federalist Society podcast and my Twitter thread about it;
- National Association of Manufacturers launches legal initiative to push back against industrywide and attorney-general tort, nuisance, and public-recoupment suits, notably on climate and lead paint [John Siciliano, Washington Examiner; Linda Kelly, The Hill; NAM’s Manufacturing Accountability Project and its coverage of the art of “climate attribution,” the early failed Kivalina suit (more on which), origins of Global Warming Legal Action Project]
- Pssst, Vice — in profiling Steve Berman you might want to be aware that a few other attorneys claim some minor role in also having “won a $200 billion settlement from tobacco companies in the 90s” [compare claims of lawyers organizing opioid suits]
Posts Tagged ‘Steve Berman’
Steve Berman takes on pharmaceutical pricing
Profile of veteran class action and mass action lawyer Steve Berman of Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro quotes me [Damien Garde, STAT]:
“You will search with some difficulty for people who successfully do what he does and do not have a big personality,” said Walter Olson, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute’s Center for Constitutional Studies. “As is the case with birds, it helps both to deter competitors and intimidate enemies when you have a large feather display.”
Prosecutors: “Fast Eddie” Vrdolyak got secret cut of Illinois tobacco fees
The great tobacco settlement of the 1990s certainly is the scandal that keeps on giving, isn’t it? “On Tuesday, federal prosecutors…. charged that [influential former Chicago alderman Edward] Vrdolyak worked out a secret deal with other attorneys to collect as much as $65 million even though he’d done no work on the tobacco case [for the state of Illinois]. The indictment did not make clear just how much the former alderman actually pocketed. … The [Seattle-based Hagens Berman] firm has denied any attempt to conceal payments.” [Chicago Tribune]
By the time my book The Rule of Lawyers came out in its 2004 softcover edition, enough was known about the multistate tobacco settlement for me to call it a “gigantic heist.” More stories have emerged since then. How many more still haven’t come to light?
Environmental roundup
- Plaintiffs in Michigan v. EPA, now before U.S. Supreme Court, argue that cost-no-object regulation oversteps EPA’s authority [The Economist, Ilya Shapiro on Cato’s amicus brief]
- Apex predator? Class action firm and perennial Overlawyered favorite Hagens Berman sues Sea World demanding consumer refunds over animal handling [Orlando Sentinel, San Antonio Business Journal]
- Privately designed and operated cities can provide answers to tough growth questions [Alex Tabarrok and Shruti Rajagopolan]
- Following pile-on of publicity and lawsuits over formaldehyde levels in flooring, Lumber Liquidators distributes free test kits to consumers, gets sued over that too [Bloomberg, related]
- Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission won’t charge men who posted Facebook video of their hang-out with an apparently injured Great Horned Owl, but feds might [Lowering the Bar]
- Urban markets often blocked from providing supply of affordable housing [Adam Hengels, Market Urbanism] “Minimum parking requirements in the planning profession are closely analogous to bloodletting in the medical profession.” [Donald Shoup via Tabarrok]
- In Louisiana, legacy lawsuits over past oil and gas drilling roil Plaquemines Parish [WWL]
Medical roundup
- “Embattled Broward Health paid law firm $10.2 million; tab included a lawyer’s M&Ms” [Miami Herald]
- “Journalists were not very interested in the areas of vaccine policy that are actually debatable. They just wanted to find fools and laugh at them.” [Matt Welch]
- Wider access to pharmaceutically based drug rehabilitation may be sound policy. But is it compelled by the ADA? [Huffington Post via @sbagen]
- Kamala Harris carries water for the SEIU in a hospital deal, and Californians are the losers [John Cochrane]
- Drug case: “Hagens Berman argument ‘gives new meaning to frivolous,’ judge says; sanctions imposed” [ABA Journal]
- California: Kaiser Permanente “ordered to pay woman more than $28 million” [L.A. Times]
- “Bacteria can evolve. So can McDonald’s. Maybe federal policymakers can as well, before it’s too late.” [Steve Chapman]
Apple: “Betrayed by its own law firm?”
Lawyer in Apple’s law firm turns out to have been secretly advising and investing in patent-holding entity (repped by Hagens Berman) preparing a legal onslaught against Apple. “Why didn’t Morgan Lewis … see an ethical problem in letting one of its partners invest in a patent troll, especially one specially designed to target one of the firm’s big clients? And how many other big-firm lawyers are entwined with ‘start-ups’ that are actually holding companies, created to attack the very corporations they are supposed to be defending?” [Joe Mullin, Ars Technica via @tedfrank]
August 11 roundup
- Seattle’s best? Class action lawyer suing Apple, e-publishers has represented Microsoft [Seattle Times, earlier]
- “Disabled” NYC firefighter/martial arts enthusiast can go on getting checks for life [NYPost; compare]
- After the FDA enforcement action on drug manufacturing lapses come the tagalong liability claims by uninjured plaintiffs [Beck]
- “What If Lower Court Judges Weren’t Bound by Supreme Court Precedent?” [Orin Kerr]
- Fark.com settles a patent suit for $0 (rough language);
- Canadian law society to pay $100K for asking prospective lawyers about mental illness [ABA Journal]
- Self-help eviction? “Chinese Developers Accused Of Putting Scorpions In Apartments To Force Out Residents” [Business Insider]
iPod nano scratch settlement
Class action lawyers and Apple have reached a deal to settle claims that early versions of the pocket-sized device have an exterior that scratches too easily. Apple will offer $25 each to some users and the lawyers will cart away more than $9 million. (Ars Technica; settlement site; earlier here and here).
October 6 roundup
All-blog edition:
- Judges overheard chatting in coffee shop about sweetheart class settlement [WageLaw via Paul Karlsgodt’s weekly class action blog roundup]
- More attempts to sue/uncover anonymous blog commenters: “I was subpoenaed for a discovery deposition about one of my posts on this blog.” [Medblogger Dr. Wes]
- Thoughts prompted by the latest (NYC) round of litigation over “ladies’ nights” at drinking establishments [David Giacalone, f/k/a]
- Head of state (Bolivia’s Morales) to his lawyer: “If it’s illegal, go ahead and make it legal. That’s what you went to school for.'” [Cato at Liberty]
- Everybody run! Perennial Overlawyered mentionee Steve Berman has a blog [Class Action Law Today via his P.R. guy in Kevin O’Keefe comments]
- When infamous NYC lawyer Burt Pugach calls, hang up [Greenfield]
- Colleague described as “a soap opera doctor” elects to spend more time in the courtroom than in the operating room [Throckmorton]
- Dear Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee: “Please resist the efforts of vaccine-injury plaintiffs’ advocates to define themselves as representatives of ‘the autism community.'” [Kathleen Seidel, Neurodiversity]
Using Twitter to scare up class action plaintiffs
Perennial Overlawyered favorite Hagens Berman seems to be doing that to promote a Verizon late fee suit (Kevin O’Keefe, Sept. 16, via @kevinokeefe — yes, our first Twitter-derived post). Update: Tweet retracted.