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For arbitration’s opponents, ensuring that consumers can go to court is not the end goal. It is actually the first step of a two-step dance at the plaintiffs’ lawyer prom. The second step is to allow these consumer cases to become large class actions—the kind that are famous for making a relatively few plaintiffs’ lawyers rich while giving the consumer masses pennies on the dollar, or even coupons, for their trouble.

Behind the scenes, at many military bases across the country and around the world, a not-too quiet challenge is developing against Barack Obama and his questionable qualifications to be President of the United States. Most FReepers are familiar with the ongoing civil litigation against Obama. Plaintiffs claim he is not constitutionally qualified to be president because he does not meet the legal description of a “natural-born citizen.” Obama’s lawyers have never entered pleadings on the MERITS of the plaintiffs’ cases. They oppose the plaintiffs’ suits on the issue of “standing.” They claim the plaintiff’s do not have a right to...

If you bought a Bluetooth headset between June 30, 2002 and February 19, 2009, the settlement of a class action lawsuit may affect your rights. The Settlement resolves claims in a class action lawsuit that Bluetooth headsets manufactured by Motorola, Inc.; Plantronics, Inc.; or GN Netcom, Inc. / "Jabra" (“Defendants”) create a risk of hearing loss. The lawsuit also claims Defendants acted wrongfully when they did not warn consumer of that risk, if it exists. The Defendants deny their Bluetooth headsets are unsafe or that they did anything wrong. Defendants are settling only to avoid the risk and expense...

If you were hit with an overdraft fee from Bank of America (NYSE:BAC) (or one of the banks it acquired) between 2000 and 2007, you may be in for a little cash. Bank of America recently settled a class-action lawsuit that alleged it (and by extension, Fleet Bank, LaSalle Bank and U.S. Trust Company, which it acquired during that period) changed the posting order of transactions and embarked on other activities in order to increase the revenue it received from non-sufficient funds fees, overdraft fees and similar charges. The lawsuit, which was settled for $35 million, also alleged that the...

WICHITA, Kan.—A federal judge on Friday denied a request by a patient-advocacy group to sue the federal government on behalf of patients of a physician who is charged with running a "pill mill" linked to 56 overdose deaths. U.S. District Judge Wesley Brown urged about 40 of Dr. Stephen Schneider's patients, some of whom had come to the hearing on crutches, to seek care at the emergency room, not the court. "If someone can prevent a criminal prosecution by filing a civil suit, there would be a flood of civil suits," Brown told the courtroom. The judge said the patients...

Lerach claims kickbacks were commonplace among class-action litigators when he was practicing. "Everybody was paying plaintiffs," he said in a letter inadvertently made public by his own attorneys last week. This should trigger a wider-ranging federal investigation of the plaintiffs bar, if indeed such a probe is not already being conducted. Senate and House Democrats, many of whom in years past received multiple campaign contributions from Lerach and others at Milberg Weiss, could demonstrate a laudable independence by opening a congressional inquiry.

LOS ANGELES The co-founder of a prestigious New York law firm and two co-defendants pleaded not guilty Monday in Los Angeles to federal charges related to a major class-action kickback scheme. Melvyn Weiss entered his pleas to two counts of conspiracy and one count each of obstruction of justice and making false statements in relation to documents that were the subject of a grand jury subpoena. Not guilty pleas were also entered by plaintiff Seymour Lazar and attorney Paul Selzer to charges contained in a superseding indictment filed last month. Lazar, who allegedly received kickbacks, and Selzer are each charged...

The fall of San Diego trial lawyer William S. Lerach may end his reign as Wall Street's king of pain, but the class-action lawsuit industry he helped create has become an established reality for corporate America. William S. Lerach: "I ... crossed a line and pushed too far.” Lerach, 61, admitted in a plea agreement that prosecutors filed yesterday that he participated in a scheme that secretly paid kickbacks to recruit plaintiffs for more than 150 class-action lawsuits brought against U.S. companies. As part of the deal, Lerach agreed to forfeit $7.75 million in unlawful gains, pay a $250,000 fine...

Spector, Roseman & Kodroff, P.C. Announces Class Action Lawsuit Against American Home Mortgage Investment Corporation Tuesday August 7, 10:13 am ET PHILADELPHIA--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The law firm of Spector, Roseman & Kodroff, P.C. announces that a securities class action lawsuit was commenced in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York, on behalf of purchasers of the publicly traded securities of American Home Mortgage Investment Corporation ("American Home Mortgage" or the "Company") (NYSE:AHM - News) between July 26, 2006 through July 27, 2007, inclusive (the "Class Period"). Also included are those who purchased shares in the Secondary Offering...

All 50,000 scratch-off tickets for car dealership contain grand prize Published: Friday, July 20, 2007 | 3:59 PM ET Canadian Press ROSWELL, N.M. (AP) - Everyone's a winner after a direct-mail marketing company hired by a local car dealership mistakenly sent out 50,000 scratch-off tickets to residents - all of them declaring the ticket-holder the $1,000 grand prize winner. Just one of the tickets was supposed to be the grand prize winner. Jeff Kohn, Roswell Honda general manager said a typographical error by Atlanta-based Force Events Direct Marketing, which printed the advertisment, had given all 50,000 scratch-off tickets grand prizes....

SAN FRANCISCO - A federal appeals court ruled Tuesday that Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world's largest private employer, must face a class-action lawsuit alleging female employees were discriminated against in pay and promotions. The ruling by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upholds a 2004 federal judge's decision to let the nation's largest class-action employment discrimination lawsuit go to trial. The suit claims that as many as 1.5 million current and former female employees earned less than men and were bypassed for promotions. The lawsuit exposes the Bentonville, Ark.-based retailing powerhouse to the possibility of billions of dollars in...

For decades, few things have inspired as much fear and loathing in the executive suites of corporate America as the law firm of Milberg Weiss and the two outsized personalities who ruled the place, Mel Weiss and Bill Lerach. Through creativity and ruthlessness, they transformed the humble securities class-action lawsuit into a deadly weapon.Always, Milberg Weiss cast itself as the champion of the little guy. In media interviews Lerach has spoken evocatively about fighting for the honest, struggling blue-collar worker who, through no fault of his own, had lost his hard-earned savings to corporate perfidy. The firm boasts of having...

Three more former congressional pages have come forward to reveal what they call "sexual approaches" over the Internet from former Congressman Mark Foley. The pages served in the classes of 1998, 2000 and 2002. They independently approached ABC News after the Foley resignation through the Brian Ross & the Investigative Team's tip line on ABCNews.com. None wanted their names used because of the sensitive nature of the communications. "I was seventeen years old and just returned to [my home state] when Foley began to e-mail me, asking if I had ever seen my page roommates naked and how big their...

LOS ANGELES - A California jury on Wednesday found pharmaceutical company Merck & Co. not liable for causing an elderly man's heart ailments after he took the drug maker's once-popular painkiller Vioxx. After deliberating several hours in California's first trial over Vioxx, the 12-person jury determined that Merck was not negligent, did not conceal information and that the drug did not cause Stewart Grossberg's health problems. Grossberg, 71, had sought compensatory and punitive damages, as well $214,000 for medical bills. The drug maker faces more than 16,000 lawsuits involving Vioxx, which was pulled from the market in 2004 after a...

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) - The Florida Supreme Court on Thursday rejected a $145 billion punitive damages award against tobacco companies for injuring smokers, saying it was excessive. The award had been the largest ever by an American jury. The justices also approved an appellate court ruling that it had been a mistake to certify a class-action lawsuit representing an estimated 300,000 to 700,000 ill Floridians. The certification led to the huge jury award for punitive damages in 2000.

The Truth Behind the iPod Nano "Scratch" Class Action Suit May 22, 2006 Dear Mac Community: Hello! My name is Jason Tomczak. Many people around the world rightly know me as a mild-mannered techie, photographer, writer, and nature-lover. I am an Apple fan and have been fortunate enough to use Mac computers and other Apple products since about 1985. On October 19, 2005, my life changed due to the unauthorized conduct of others. From that date forward, countless numbers of people around the world were driven to hate me and slander my name, sometimes using foul and threatening language. Since...

With Milberg Weiss on the ropes, rivals moving in Commentary: Silicon Valley faces class-action blitz over backdating options E-mail | Print | | Disable live quotes | Discuss By John Shinal, MarketWatch Last Update: 7:00 AM ET May 20, 2006 SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- This week's federal indictment of the nation's most prominent law firm dedicated to shareholder class-action suits will likely change the landscape for such securities complaints -- but not in a way non-lawyers might think. Indeed, far from fostering restraint, the government's decision to charge Milberg Weiss Bershad and Schulman with making illegal payments to clients is...

In a huge victory for pharmaceutical giant Wyeth, a Florida appeals court on Wednesday halted a class action suit that claimed its hormone replacement drug could harm hundreds of thousands of Florida women. A three-judge panel of the state's 3rd District Court of Appeal unanimously held in Wyeth Inc. v. Arlene Gottlieb that the claims were not common enough for the case to move forward as a class action. Instead, women who claim they may suffer future health problems because of their use of the drug Prempro will have to file individual suits against Wyeth. The Wyeth decision reverses a...

Massachusetts National Guard soldiers are taking the question straight to the top. They have filed a class-action lawsuit claiming they are owed $73 million in food, lodging, and commuting expenses they paid out-of-pocket while activated under state orders to protect sites such as military bases and reservoirs from terrorist attacks. The lawsuit, filed recently in federal court against the Massachusetts National Guard and the US Department of Defense, is believed to be the first of its kind nationally, and raises new questions about what the government owes its men and women in uniform. [. . .] . . . the...

  For Immediate ReleaseJanuary 21, 2006 President's Radio Address      Audio      THE PRESIDENT: Good morning. This past Thursday, I visited a thriving company in Loudoun County, Virginia, named JK Moving and Storage. I met with the owners and workers and with small businesspeople from the area, and I discussed my agenda to keep America's economy growing and to help our small businesses stay vibrant and strong. Our agenda for growing the economy and helping small businesses starts with wise tax policy. Our economy grows when American workers and families can keep more of their hard-earned money to spend, save, and...

Sony BMG has struck a deal with the plaintiffs in a class action lawsuit over copy-restriction software it used in music CDs, according to a settlement document filed at a New York court Wednesday. The record label has agreed to compensate buyers of CDs that contained the XCP and MediaMax DRM programs and to provide software utilities to allow consumers to uninstall both types of software from their computer. The furor over Sony's DRM software began at the end of October when a U.S. programmer discovered that XCP software on a Sony music CD had installed copy-restriction software on his...

When hundreds of Los Angeles high school students told administrators they planned to walk out of school to attend last week's protest by the liberal "World Can't Wait" group calling for President Bush's impeachment — the L.A. school district decided not to discipline them. Instead, the district provided school buses and a staff escort to transport some 800 students from 10 schools to the rally and back. School officials said students would attend the protest with or without their permission, and the district's chief operating officer told KNBC, "Our issue...was safety, and I think we fulfilled our mission." — FOX...

A class action lawsuit has been launched against Apple Computer claiming the company’s recently released diminutive iPod nano scratches too easily. The lawsuit, filed in US District Court in San Jose California, seeks to represent up to 125,000 iPod owners the law firm that launched the case said. The suit claims that the iPod Nano is defectively designed, allowing the screen to quickly become scratched with normal use. The suit also claims that the excessive, rapid wear renders the device unusable. “The suit charges that Apple violated implied and expressed warranties when it began selling what plaintiffs claim are defective...

Once upon a time in a distant kingdom, a man knocked on the door of a local lord. The man had traveled far. But his fearsome reputation as a legal advocate preceded him. "I represent the poor serfs down the road," the man warned the local lord. "They were wronged when you bought their lands for less than their true value. I have made a formal complaint with the local judge." "Surely we can work something out," the local lord said. The two men put their heads together and settled the dispute. The local lord agreed to pay the legal...

...In the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's annual list of jurisdictions with the worst litigation environment, Illinois is home to three of the top 15 counties: Madison, Le Clair and Cook (Chicago). So it's nice to see that the Supreme Court of Illinois has decided to rein in a local judge.... In a welcome display of common sense, a 6-0 court last week reversed a $1.05 billion judgment against State Farm Insurance Co. The case-- Avery v. State Farm-- was ostensibly about the parts used to repair cars covered under State Farm policies. The policies specified the use of "non-original equipment,"...

Seafood Fraud Allegations Hit Fast Food Business Rubio's Fresh Mexican Grill(R) Has Been Selling 'Lobster Burritos' for Years-But with 'Langostino' in Them Instead As the Health-Mex market heats up in California, a class action has been filed on behalf of consumers allegedly defrauded by restaurant chain's menu language. Who's had Langostino Newburg? Fans of Rubio's Fresh Mexican Grill(R) (NASDAQ:RUBO) , the self-described "Home of the Original Fish Taco," may want to reconsider their diets once they find out what one customer discovered after a recent meal at the Manhattan Beach, California Rubio's: There is nothing Americans traditionally call lobster in...

A California man has been charged with taking illegal kickbacks to act as a plaintiff in dozens of corporate class-action lawsuits filed by Milberg Weiss, a move that brings a three-year federal probe to the door of one of the leading U.S. securities law firms. The indictment handed down by a federal grand jury in Los Angeles on Thursday comes as prosecutors try to make a case that Milberg Weiss improperly paid plaintiffs to file lawsuits against publicly traded companies. A spokeswoman for the law firm said on Friday that Milberg Weiss had been subpoenaed in connection with the investigation...

A Texas appeals court has reinstated a lawsuit against several Houston strip clubs based on claims the clubs overcharged patrons for lap dances when the men paid using credit cards instead of cash. Paul Brian Meekey and Michael Fulmer brought the lawsuit after they were allegedly charged $25 for $20 lap dances because they paid with plastic. "Texas law is pretty clear that you cannot charge someone extra for using a credit card," said Sandra Krider, one of Meekey and Fulmer’s lawyers. "The fact that they are strip clubs shouldn’t mean they get away with it." But the ruling could...

“He denounced labor unions, the Securities and Exchange Commission, Medicare, Social Security, you name it. He denounced the civil rights movement as socialism. To him, socialism and communism were the same thing. And when challenged to explain his prejudice, he could not defend his argument, either ideologically, polemically or academically." – Dr. Yoshi Tsurumi, commenting on former student, George W. Bush Anyone who has contemplated filing for bankruptcy had better stop procrastinating. The Republican controlled Congress will soon pass legislation making it more difficult to get a second financial chance. The industry that bombards us with unsolicited offers of credit...

NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Dell Inc. is being sued for allegedly pushing consumers into high-interest financing schemes, as well as other aggressive sales practices, the plaintiff's law firm said Tuesday. The suit accuses the world's largest personal computer maker of false advertising and bait-and-switch practices, fraud and deceit in its sales and advertising representations, and breach of contract by unilaterally modifying terms and conditions of sales and financing. [snip] First is the bait-and-switch accusation. A statement from the law firm given to Reuters said the suit was filed on behalf of a San Francisco nurse who claims that in...

Bush Signs Bill Curbing Class-Action Suits By JESSE J. HOLLAND, Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON - President Bush on Friday signed a bill that he says will curtail multimillion-dollar class action lawsuits against companies and "marks a critical step toward ending the lawsuit culture in our country." The legislation aims to discourage multimillion-dollar class-action lawsuits by having federal judges take them away from state courts, a victory for conservatives who hope it will lead to other lawsuit limits. The president has described class-action suits as often frivolous, and businesses complain that state judges and juries have been too generous to plaintiffs....

CORPUS CHRISTI (AP) — Several doctors have been called to federal court to explain some 10,000 diagnoses of silicosis after one doctor said he'd diagnosed more than one-third of that number without seeing the patients or being knowledgeable about the lung disorder. Lawsuits claiming sand dust ruined the lungs of miners, sandblasters, roofers and other works hangs in the balance of the hearings beginning Wednesday. (snip) Lawyers for more than 30 mining and manufacturing companies named as defendants hope the three days of questioning will show the bulk of the lawsuits against their clients are based on shoddy, if not...

It says something about Jacques Chirac-no prizes for guessing what sort of something-that, at the very moment the U.S. Congress is taking steps to scale back abusive class-action law suits in the U.S., the Frency president has endorsed their introduction in France. Class actions are just one element of a U.S. tort system that has spiraled out of control in recent years. And, properly employed, they are a sensible and beneficial tool for deciding multiple cases that would, if tried separately, result in the smae outcome anyway. But what began as a way to save time has become, in the...

Three of California's largest supermarket chains have reached a tentative $22.4 million settlement in a class-action lawsuit brought by immigrant janitors who said they often earned just $3.50 an hour and were never paid overtime, the two sides said Monday.The supermarket chains - Vons, Ralphs and Albertsons - tentatively settled the lawsuit brought by 2,100 janitors, most of them from Mexico. Many asserted that they worked 70 or more hours a week, often seven days a week from 10 p.m. to 9 a.m.'snip'The janitors' advocates said the lawsuit was important to help check a trend in which thousands of employers...

The election is finally over. For those of us who have had to suffer through the last 18 months of debates, primaries, polls, pundits, and attack ads, it is a blessed relief. Now, perhaps, politicians will actually start to do their jobs instead of yak-yak-yakking about how terrible (fill in the blank) is and how they'd do a much better job. Thankfully, President Bush won re-election. I say thankfully because 1) I strongly supported his candidacy and 2) I did not want a traitor in the White House. Again. America has four more years of strong, compassionate leadership to look...

Stick a fork in your hospital. It's done. They cannot survive this lawsuit--the lawyers have succeeded now in destroying health care in the US. And we only have our own greed, resentment, spite and will to dominate to blame for it.

My ears picked up when my wife told me that she was one of the beneficiaries of a class-action lawsuit that brought a settlement of more than $100 million. "How many millions do you get?" I asked. I could envision our retiring to the Riviera or some such place. Here was our chance to become part of "the rich" we hear denounced during election years. It turned out that this was a lawsuit in behalf of some stockholders, and her few shares of stock would receive 58 cents each -- minus various deductions. It probably wouldn't add up to enough...

Talk about good timing. John Edwards's promotion to the national Democratic ticket is raising the profile of legal reform just as he and his Senate colleagues are facing a showdown this week on reining in class-action lawsuits. This is a debate worth watching, not least because the Senate is so close to a bipartisan breakthrough. The GOP has been rolling this stone up Capitol Hill since 1998, and the House has passed it no fewer than three times. But it has always rolled back down in the Senate, where Democrats and trial lawyers need only 40 votes to filibuster any...

I have heard rumors regarding a Class Action lawsuit against Linksys / Cisco regarding the WRV54G. I too have had inumerable problems with this "VPN" router. Here is a partial list of my most recent. Also, I build networks for a for a living so I am not a rookie with routers or VPN connectivity. - Router "goes away" every day or two and takes multiple resets to get it working - Procedures for getting the microsoft software VPN client to work with it have only worked once and fail to work reliably or at all since. - I have...

CHICAGO -- A landmark class-action lawsuit seeking reparations for descendants of African-American slaves was filed Wednesday. Bob Brown, the co-director of the group Pan-African Roots, is filing as a private attorney. The lawsuit alleges that 71 defendants have not complied with the Chicago Slave Era Disclosure Act, which was passed by the City Council in 2002. "Slavery was and is an illegal criminal business and criminal enterprise," Brown said. Defendants in the 10-count indictment include four Catholic churches; the pope; three government heads of state, including President George W. Bush; and five governors, including Rod Blagojevich. Banks and companies in...

This notice is being issued pursuant to the direction of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. On December 8, 2003, a class action lawsuit was filed in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, on behalf of all persons who purchased or acquired the securities of Loral Space & Communications, Ltd. ("Loral" or the "Company") (OTC Bulletin Board: LRLSQ.OB - News) between July 31, 2002, through June 29, 2003, inclusive, against defendant Bernard Schwartz, the Company's Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board, and Richard J. Townsend, the...

Today I received my share of the settlement in the Schwarz v. Citibank, et. al. class action lawsuit. Regarding all of us class members: "...all their claims stem the failure of Citibank and Universal to credit payments to the accounts of consumers as of the date on which they were received, unless the payments were received before 10:00 AM that day."The attorney's fee for bringing this huge financial institution to justice in this matter was $7.2 million. My award was $0.68.

<p>A group of Senate Democrats killed an effort yesterday to reform the judicial process governing massive class-action lawsuits that magnificently reward trial lawyers.</p> <p>"Once again, we have been prevented from dealing with legal reform," Senate Majority Whip Mitch McConnell, Kentucky Republican, said after the vote.</p>

<p>Anyone who thinks a single Senator doesn't matter should take a look at yesterday's failed attempt to limit runaway class-action lawsuits. Fifty-nine Senators voted in favor of going to a floor vote on the measure, one vote short of the 60 needed to break a filibuster.</p>

Not content with class action lawsuits, some California trial lawyers specialize in demanding cash settlements from thousands of businesses in exchange for not suing them. These shakedown suits don't require allegations of injury -- or even the inconvenience of clients: just the threat of a lawyer armed with California's bizarre consumer protection laws.

Nearly 40 Tennesseans have filed suit against pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline, charging the company did not properly inform patients of potential addictive side effects of the antidepressant drug Paxil. The suit, filed recently in Middle Tennessee’s U.S. District Court, asks Federal District Court Judge Todd Campbell to award damages of at least $1 million per plaintiff to individuals who say they suffered adverse physical and psychological effects akin to withdrawal symptoms when they stopped using Paxil, but had not been previously warned by the makers of the drug that such effects were possible. Legal documents state that GlaxoSmithKline knowingly marketed Paxil...

You may have recently sued Sears. And won. Of course, there is an excellent chance you didn't even know you sued anybody. That's because this is another class-action lawsuit brought to you by your friendly barristers and judges of Madison County. In this instance, Sears is accused of advertising a wheel-balancing service at its auto centers that was supposed to include placing the wheel assembly on a machine that rotated the tire and determined whether the wheel assembly was well-matched. If it was not, the machine was supposed to shave minute particles from the tire. According to the lawsuit, this...

MIAMI — At the beginning of World War II, Magda Kalman lived in an elegantly furnished apartment in the Jewish quarter of Budapest. Near the end of the war, the Nazis and their Hungarian collaborators stole her family's Persian rugs, jewelry, paintings and other valuables. "They took everything from us, and we had to start all over again," Kalman, 86, said last week as she looked at a photograph of a Persian rug in an old auction catalog of precious goods confiscated during the war. Kalman recently joined thousands of other Holocaust survivors who are suing to be compensated for...

November 7 -- Some election results.  The Senate results, as will be surmised, were a spectacular rout for organized trial lawyer interests, which had spent heavily to defend Democratic control of the upper chamber.  (Another key litigation lobby ally, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) (Jul. 7, 2000) did not face serious challenge and won easy re-election.)  Of the three extremely wealthy trial attorneys who ran for U.S. House seats in West Virginia and Florida (Oct. 11-13), all lost by margins of 60-40 or worse (Humphreys, Jacobs, Hogan).  And all of the nationally publicized state supreme court races seem to have been...

Some of the nation's most notorious personal injury lawyers are mounting an all-out assault on America's healthcare system that could batter it into a smoldering ruin before the next Presidential election. If successful, these unelected and unaccountable lawyers will raise healthcare costs to the point where millions of Americans and their employers may find themselves priced out of the system. Fresh from the tobacco wars and currently representing only a handful of plaintiffs, the lawyers' are attempting to convince a Miami-based federal judge that they should be allowed to represent almost all of the nation's 600,000 physicians as well as...