September 30, 2003
Network Associates (NAI) announced an offer to pay $70 million to settle a class action brought by shareholders who allege the company used improperly booked revenues to ramp up its share price. According to the lawsuit the IT security firm misled investors during the late 1990s by recording software sales when technology was shipped to distributors instead of when users actually bought product, a practice known as channel stuffing.
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10:52 AM
Two weeks ago, VeriSign, the sole domain name regulator for .com and .net names, enacted a DNS-side redirect service that automatically redirects users who attempt to connect to misspelled or unregistered Web addresses to a "search page" on VeriSign's own site (see our previous coverage). The company, which has a government-sponsored monopoly on the registration of all .com and .net domain names, has ignored requests by Internet companies and the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which oversees all domain name activities, to pull the redirect. The opposition has mounted in the last few weeks, with some individuals filing suits against VeriSign; but the culmination to date came Friday with the filing of a class-action lawsuit against the company. The plaintiff's lawyer is Ira Rothken, whose firm specializes in intellectual property and Internet-related law.
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10:51 AM
A Natick investor has sued former and current Polaroid Corp. executives and its auditor in federal court in Boston, alleging the photo company violated securities law leading up to its October 2001 bankruptcy. Stephen J. Morgan's class-action suit, filed Friday, claims the executives, including former chief executive Gary DiCamillo, and auditor KPMG LLP, misled investors through improper accounting and a failure to warn of deteriorating business operations.
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10:49 AM
September 29, 2003
It's been hailed as one of the most effective contraceptives ever, but just two years after its market release in Australia doctors are warning the product could be withdrawn because of rising insurance costs. The product – called
Implanon – is a hormonal implant inserted into a woman's arm for up to three years.
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10:47 AM
A federal judge today allowed nearly 2,000 IPALCO employees to join a lawsuit alleging that executives dumped stock while pushing workers to buy it for their retirement plans. U.S. District Judge David Hamilton granted the suit class-action status. The ruling allows other workers to join four former employees who filed a civil suit against the company.
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10:45 AM
In business, there is big, and there is Wal-Mart. With $245 billion in revenues in 2002, Wal-Mart Stores (WMT ) Inc. is the world's largest company. It is three times the size of the No. 2 retailer, France's Carrefour. Every week, 138 million shoppers visit Wal-Mart's 4,750 stores; last year, 82% of American households made at least one purchase at Wal-Mart. "There's nothing like Wal-Mart," says Ira Kalish, global director of Deloitte Research. "They are so much bigger than any retailer has ever been that it's not possible to compare." The company now faces a revolt of sorts in the form of nearly 40 lawsuits charging it with forcing employees to work overtime without pay and a sex-discrimination case that could rank as the largest civil rights class action ever.
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10:40 AM
September 26, 2003
Long before JetBlue was sued this week for giving a military contractor computer data on a million passengers, NASA quietly sought upward of 15 million passenger records from Northwest Airlines for similar computerized security research. Neither the airline — the world's fourth-largest — nor the National Aeronautics and Space Administration would say yesterday whether the data actually were handed over. At least three class-action lawsuits were filed against JetBlue this week, a response that cast NASA's request to Northwest in a new light.
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10:40 AM
Praising Philadelphia officials for "recognizing their responsibility," a federal judge approved the settlement of a class-action lawsuit by diabetics who were sickened after being denied medical aid in police lockups. Under the settlement approved by U.S. District Judge Petrese B. Tucker, a total of $206,000 will be paid to 256 people found to be eligible for damages. Also, police and city lockup staff will get new training about handling people with diabetes.
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10:38 AM
A class-action lawsuit was filed Friday in Marion Superior Court on behalf of judges in 92 counties who say they were improperly denied a pay raise. The suit against Gov. Joe Kernan was filed by a Grant County judge who contends all full-time circuit, superior, municipal and county court judges were improperly denied a pay raise from $90,000 to $99,000 effective Jan. 1, 2002.
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10:37 AM
Weight-watching consumers who sued a Florida ice cream maker for erroneously labeling a product as low-fat have settled - for more ice cream. The Orange Park manufacturer of Big Daddy, DeConna Ice Cream, agreed earlier this month to a $1.2 million settlement of a class-action lawsuit filed in 2001 in Broward Circuit Court. Under the settlement, plaintiffs with receipts will either get their money back or receive two free cups of Big Daddy ice cream for each cup they purchased. Those without receipts can only get ice cream, up to a maximum of 12 cups.
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10:35 AM
September 25, 2003
MEDINA, Ohio -- A state judge's ruling allows smokers in six northeast Ohio counties to sue tobacco giant Philip Morris USA on a claim they were duped into believing low-tar cigarettes were safer. Medina County Common Pleas Judge James Kimbler granted class-action status on Wednesday to a pair of lawsuits filed by Akron lawyer A. Russell Smith, who named Philip Morris brands Virginia Slims lights and Marlboro Lights. Lawyers for the tobacco company had urged the judge to throw out the lawsuits. On Thursday, Philip Morris said it plans to ask Kimbler to reverse his order.
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10:34 AM
WASHINGTON — Online advertisements offering drugs without a prescription will indeed deliver -- though buyers best beware of the product delivered to them, warn critics. Not only are these Internet pharmacies dealing medications illegally, but in many cases the drugs are counterfeit, overpriced and in some cases, dangerous “By ordering online, you’re playing Russian roulette,” said Richard “Bo” Dietl, an ex-New York City detective who now runs a security firm that just completed an extensive investigation of more than 1,400 online druggists. Dietl said he is considering a class action suit on behalf of the victims of illegal online pharmacies, some of whom are children.
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10:33 AM
A CLASS action is likely to be launched against the operators and manufacturers of a bouncy castle that was hit by a whirlwind at a South Australian race meeting, causing the death of an eight-year-old girl. Coroner Wayne Chivell delivered his findings yesterday in the case of Jessica Gorostiaga, who was killed at a Kapunda harness meeting in March 2001 when the Maxi-Giraffe Supa-Bouncer she was playing on was hit by winds of 100-120km/h. The whirlwind ripped the castle from its anchors and lifted it into the air. Jessica died from head injuries suffered when she fell to the ground. Another 15 people were injured, several seriously.
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10:32 AM
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — Of the thousands of lawsuits that target Wal-Mart Stores Inc., none worries the company more than the charge by six former employees that the country’s largest private employer discriminates against women. On Wednesday, a federal judge in San Francisco heard lawyers argue for the suit to be elevated to a class action — a move that could add 1.5 million plaintiffs and make the lawsuit against the nation’s biggest retailer the largest of its kind.
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10:30 AM
SAN FRANCISCO - Wal-Mart Stores argued yesterday that a sexual discrimination lawsuit seeking to represent 1.6 million current and former female workers should be dismantled into separate class actions against each of its 3,473 stores across the country.
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10:29 AM
Shares of Bayer AG jumped 6 percent after a federal judge in Minneapolis denied a motion to certify a nationwide class action lawsuit against the company regarding its now-withdrawn cholesterol-lowering therapy Baycol (cerivastatin). The judge ruled in favor of Bayer after the company argued that certification of a class action suit “was not appropriate because the claims of the possible class members involve too many diverse and individual issues,” Bayer said.
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10:28 AM
September 24, 2003
When an anthrax-laced letter was opened in the Washington office of South Dakota Sen. Tom Daschle on Oct. 15, 2001, Capitol Hill staff had good reason to panic. Ten days earlier, Bob Stevens, a 63-year-old photo editor at the supermarket tabloid the Sun, had died from complications related to inhalation of anthrax. The only prudent thing to do, authorities decided, would be to administer doses of the powerful antibiotic Ciprofloxacin Hydrochloride -- or Cipro -- to those who were in proximity to the infected letter. Daschle's office adjoined that of Montana Sen. Max Baucus. Baucus staffer John Angell took the drug along with all of his colleagues. Neither Angell, nor anyone else working at the Capitol, contracted inhalation anthrax. The drug seemed to work. But now some are asking, "At what cost?" Days after starting his cycle of Cipro, Angell began suffering pain in his joints and tendons. Walking became labored and painful. He stopped taking Cipro, but his condition did not improve. In fact, his condition has never improved. Chronic pain forced Angell to leave his post with Baucus. He now works as a consultant from home and lays the blame for his disability on Cipro.
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10:31 AM
Manhattan-based pharmaceutical companies Pfizer Inc. and Forest Laboratories Inc. both filed patent-infringement suits this week against manufacturers of rival drugs. Pfizer, which makes the erectile-dysfunction drug Viagra, filed suit in Delaware federal court against German firm Bayer AG and U.K. company GlaxoSmithKline Plc, which are co-marketing Levitra. The Pfizer spokesman says that this actually was a continuation of a suit filed in October; it was amended and refiled to reflect the fact that Levitra has now been approved for sale. Levitra has captured half the new prescriptions written for impotency since its launch earlier this month.
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10:30 AM
It is a fish tale repeated by confused consumers nationwide. The label change stems from a class-action lawsuit filed in April against three of the country's largest grocery chains. Eight consumers from Seattle charged that Safeway, Albertson's and The Kroger Company (which operates Smith's and Fred Meyer stores in Utah) had failed to let consumers know that the farmed salmon they were selling contained color additives.
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10:28 AM
State officials and TennCare advocates told a U.S. district judge yesterday why he should approve a tentative new court settlement that envisions a streamlined process for filling prescriptions and lowers state costs by millions. Senior U.S. District Judge John Nixon is overseeing one of four interlocking class-action lawsuits that were brought by advocates for the state's poorest and sickest citizens. In its nine years of existence, TennCare has struggled to keep costs in check and to comply with federal court orders. Many have focused on enrollee eligibility and prescription drugs.
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10:27 AM
September 23, 2003
PHILADELPHIA - Three of the world's largest forest-products companies have agreed to collectively pay $68 million to settle two class-action lawsuits that alleged conspiracy to fix prices for containerboard. The companies, International Paper, Weyerhaeuser Co. and Georgia-Pacific Corp., admit no wrongdoing in the settlement, but wanted to avoid litigation, the companies said.
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11:06 AM
Pascagoula Attorney Richard Scruggs is ready to challenge two insurance companies over the "hurricane deductible. Monday, Scruggs filed court papers to initiate a "class action" lawsuit against Allstate and State Farm insurance companies for adding the hurricane deductible in 1998 right before hurricane season. Scruggs alleges State Farm and Allstate changed the rules for policy holders just before Hurricane Georges and avoided paying millions of dollars in claims.
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11:04 AM
SALT LAKE CITY -- A group of passengers filed a class-action lawsuit against JetBlue Airways for passing their personal information to a Defense Department contractor. The lawsuit alleges fraudulent misrepresentation, breach of contract and invasion of privacy. The lawsuit filed in federal District Court in Salt Lake City follows JetBlue's acknowledgment that it had given information from about 5 million passenger records to Torch Concepts, of Huntsville, Alabama.
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11:03 AM
Debt-stricken French engineering group Alstom received a sharp reminder yesterday that its fight for survival is just beginning when it emerged that the manufacturer of London Underground trains is facing a class action lawsuit in the United States.
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11:01 AM
ATLANTA -- A federal appeals court has sided with the nation's largest tobacco companies in a price-fixing lawsuit brought by tobacco wholesalers. The wholesalers wanted to file a class-action lawsuit alleging a conspiracy to fix wholesale tobacco prices by Philip Morris USA and R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. Last summer, a U.S. District Court judge threw out the wholesalers' lawsuit, saying they had no proof that the big tobacco companies were working together. The wholesalers appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals in Atlanta, which ruled against them Monday.
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11:00 AM
September 22, 2003
A department head at Pennington Biomedical Research Center served as an expert witness for the marketers of ephedra, a controversial weight loss supplement being researched at the center. Dr. George Bray, a Boyd Professor at LSU and the chief of the Clinical Obesity section at Pennington, testified for Metabolife, the marketers of ephedra, in a class-action lawsuit in New Orleans.
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01:57 PM
The state Court of Appeals won't review a decision to make a nationwide, class-action lawsuit out of claims that Washington Mutual is charging people junk fees at the end of their mortgages. The decision not to review the ruling of a King County Superior Court judge means that, barring some further appeal by WaMu, the case is headed to trial.
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01:56 PM
DETROIT -- A federal judge dismissed a shareholder lawsuit that charged five former Kmart executives and the company's accounting firm with misleading investors before Kmart declared bankruptcy. U.S. District Judge Gerald Rosen threw out the 18-month-old lawsuit filed by five shareholder groups against former Kmart chairman and chief executive Charles Conaway, former President Mark S. Schwartz and former executives Jeffrey Boyer, Matthew Hilzinger, Martin E. Welch. The lawsuit also went after the company's accounting firm, PricewaterhouseCoopers.
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01:55 PM
A 24-year-old Haitian woman who claims she was traumatized by JCPenney security guards after being wrongly accused of shoplifting has filed a class-action suit accusing the store of racial profiling. Claudie Pierre claims a security guard called her a "black bitch" while she was held for three hours in a Queens store's "detention area," along with a number of other nonwhite customers, on suspicion of shoplifting a year ago today.
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01:51 PM
September 19, 2003
Florida businesses using certain Microsoft Corp. products may qualify to participate in the proposed $202 million settlement of lawsuits against the company. Businesses that purchased the Microsoft products between November 1995 and December 2002 may submit claims before a Nov. 24 hearing. The hearing will be in the 11th Judicial District Court of Miami-Dade County, a release stated.
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10:26 AM
The owner of the old Western Auto Supply chain will pay a total of $6.8 million to up to 5,000 black employees who alleged they were prevented from working in predominantly white neighborhoods. The settlement in the class-action lawsuit was finalized this month by retail giant Advance Auto Parts, which acquired Western Auto in 1998, plaintiffs' attorney Wil Florin said Thursday.
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10:23 AM
FRANKLINTON - Nearly eight years after a union tank car exploded outside of Gaylord Chemical, releasing a cloud of nitrogen tetroxide into a part of Bogalusa, opening statements began Tuesday for the trial against Gaylord Chemical, Gaylord Container and Union Tank Car.
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10:22 AM
WASHINGTON - An Associated Press analysis of 37 freshman House members on three key committees shows 35 of the lawmakers raised a greater percentage of political action committee money from the industries and unions that fall under their committees' jurisdiction than they had received before getting their assignments. But a separate AP analysis earlier this year found that on six hotly debated measures in the House - medical malpractice, class-action lawsuits, overhauling bankruptcy laws, the energy bill, gun manufacturer lawsuits and overtime pay - the biggest recipients of interest group money almost always voted the way their donors wanted.
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10:20 AM
September 18, 2003
A proposed class-action lawsuit against the manufacturer of the cholesterol-lowering drug Baycol was denied Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Minneapolis by Judge Michael Davis. German pharmaceutical maker Bayer faces more than 800 lawsuits in Minnesota and upward of 11,000 lawsuits nationwide by people who used the drug before it was pulled off the market two years ago. Baycol use has been linked to at least 100 deaths.
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05:15 PM
FRANKFURT -- Shares in German drug and chemicals maker Bayer AG BAYG.DE rose sharply on Thursday after it won another legal victory over compensation claims relating to withdrawn cholesterol treatment Baycol. A U.S. federal court on Wednesday denied certification of a class action filed against the firm over Baycol, a drug withdrawn in August 2001 and now linked with more than 100 deaths.
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05:14 PM
An Oahu Circuit judge ruled yesterday to permit a class-action lawsuit to proceed against a national drug distribution firm and its local office, which are accused of selling recycled drugs in Hawaii. The lawsuit alleges that during the 1990s IPC Pharmacy, owned by Pennsylvania-based Amerisource Bergen, accepted pills returned by nursing homes and recycled them either by returning them to bulk container bottles or by relabeling them.
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05:13 PM
A class-action lawsuit against AmerisourceBergen, a national drug distribution firm, and its local office IPC Pharmacy, was certified Wednesday by a Honolulu Circuit Court judge. The complaint accuses the company of selling recycled drugs to approximately 4,000 Hawaii senior citizens and other residents without disclosing that they were recycled.
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05:12 PM
Two years ago, the state of Louisiana quietly wrote a $1 million check to settle a Marksville woman's malpractice lawsuit against the Louisiana State University dental school and one of its oral surgeons over jaw joint implants that she claims disintegrated and caused her health problems. The settlement amount was made public Wednesday in response to a Times-Picayune lawsuit, marking the first time the state has revealed how much it paid out in any of the hundreds of suits that have resulted from the failure of jaw implants that were widely used in the 1970s and '80s.
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05:11 PM