BOWLING GREEN, Ky. - A federal judge in Kentucky on Nov.12 granted motions to dismiss by seven newly named defendants in a benzene case, holding that the plaintiff’s claims against them are barred by the one-year statute of limitations (Wanda Jeffries, et al. v. Thermo Fisher Scientific, et al., No. 1:07CV-192-JHM, W.D. Ky.; 2009 U.S. [...]

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The family of Johnny Lee Cutliff, who died with his boss, Houston plaintiffs lawyer John O’Quinn, in a car accident on Oct. 29, has filed a wrongful death suit seeking $7 million from O’Quinn, his estate and Classy Classic Cars, owner of O’Quinn’s car collection. The Cutliffs’ attorney says the family is primarily seeking monetary [...]

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A student loan company accused of hiding fees in loan agreements cannot force the lead plaintiff in a putative class action into arbitration, a New York federal judge has ruled, finding the terms of the loan unconscionable. Joshua G. Fensterstock, a 2003 Hofstra University School of Law graduate and now an associate at Isaacs & [...]

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In a case involving an employer’s theft of e-mails from the personal account of an employee suing for sexual harassment, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals held that a plaintiff must prove actual damages to be eligible for statutory damages under the Stored Communications Act.

Tags: actual damages, circuit court of appeals, communications act, court [...]

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Casino company Lakes Entertainment has sued Milberg for $54 million in federal court, accusing the plaintiffs firm of employing a damages expert who had a strong motive to inflate his damages estimate in a since-settled 1997 securities fraud action against Lakes’ predecessor. According to the complaint, Milberg’s expert estimated damages to the class to be [...]

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Risk management firm RiskMetrics Group on Wednesday released its annual list of the top 50 plaintiffs firms for securities class actions. Bernstein Litowitz, Coughlin Stoia, and Grant & Eisenhofer topped the list for total shareholder settlement value, number of settlements and average amount for those settlements. The study notes that 2008 was the first time [...]

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Everyone knew that after a chimpanzee mauled a Connecticut woman, causing near-fatal injuries, a huge lawsuit was coming. Now Connecticut lawyers are watching to see if the case breaks new ground in state tort law. The plaintiff is seeking $50 million in damages, and her lawyers argue that the chimpanzee’s former owner is strictly liable [...]

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A feisty 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday peppered lawyers for Wal-Mart and a gigantic class suing over gender discrimination, with neither side emerging as the clear victor. Playing to a packed house, lawyers for both sides ran into skepticism from the federal appeals court. The case, with hundreds of thousands of potential [...]

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A federal judge has turned down a request for more than $2 million in fees and sanctioned a plaintiffs lawyer $25,000 for submitting false fee applications in civil rights litigation against FedEx. Judge Susan Illston also forbade Waukeen McCoy from filing any more FedEx-related fee petitions, calling his actions regarding the petitions “among the most [...]

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Ohio federal Judge Solomon Olivier Jr. has ruled that one class of state law tort claims against drug makers is still pre-empted by federal law, even after the Supreme Court’s ruling. Olivier was considering a case involving the Wyeth drug Redux. In 2008 he dismissed the plaintiff’s case in its entirety, finding that her [...]

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The federal government got off the sidelines Thursday to throw a few blocks for plaintiffs in a huge gender class action against Wal-Mart. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is opposing Wal-Mart’s bid to try punitive damages on a case-by-case basis, according to an amicus curiae brief the commission filed with the 9th Circuit. The move [...]

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On Wednesday, Manhattan federal Judge Gerard Lynch dismissed Mayer Brown and partner Joseph Collins as defendants in the Refco securities class action, concluding that the Supreme Court’s ruling gave the plaintiffs no basis to sue them, even if they had engaged in fraud. But now Lynch is urging Congress to change the law. [...]

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Lawyers for a class of plaintiffs suing EarthLink over millions of dollars of allegedly unfair early termination fees will appeal last month’s ruling by a Georgia judge that the Internet service provider does not have to return any fees charged to class members’ credit cards. At issue were $149.95 fees charged to EarthLink customers when [...]

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A New Jersey judge on Tuesday denied a request to certify a class action against Merck & Co. on behalf of consumers for their out-of-pocket expenses for the painkiller Vioxx, withdrawn from the market in 2004 after a medical study linked it to heart disease. Superior Court Judge Carol Higbee said the suit lacked the [...]

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A Denver-area oilman says he will continue his claims that energy and natural gas pipeline companies are cheating the federal government out of billions in royalties. A three-judge panel of the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday upheld a Wyoming federal judge’s decision that threw out 73 lawsuits filed by Jack Grynberg, who [...]

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In a case of first impression, a New Jersey appeals court on Wednesday denied a defense request for an autopsy of an asbestos-exposure plaintiff who died two days before trial. The panel, in , affirmed a trial judge’s finding that defendants Chrysler and Honeywell failed to show that examination of the dead man’s lung tissue [...]

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A California Superior Court judge recently awarded more than $46 million to a woman almost entirely paralyzed in a 2006 car accident and her husband. The judgment, entered Friday, came after at least one insurance company tried and failed to intervene in the case when it discovered that the defendant was not going to put [...]

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San Francisco lawyers rescued Wal-Mart and a group of pet food manufacturers on Monday from a class action that could have led to millions of dollars in damages. A federal judge in Nevada granted a motion by the defense to pre-emptively deny certification to a class of plaintiffs that would have spanned eight states. Squire, [...]

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A federal judge has refused to dismiss monopoly claims against pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline, maker of the antidepressant drug Wellbutrin, for allegedly using sham patent suits to delay generic versions of the drug from making their way to the market. In the suit, a group of drug wholesalers claim that GSK conspired with Biovail, the Canadian [...]

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If ever a case could be counted on to create the classic 9th Circuit contretemps, surely the one involving a man in an armed standoff with the police, who turns around and sues the police, qualifies. An en banc court ruled 6-5 that police didn’t need a warrant to arrest the plaintiff in his home [...]

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