Chicago federal appeals judges said objectors were right to argue a judge failed to give weight to evidence that the plaintiffs' lawyers have agreed to accept lesser amounts in other class action lawsuits on the West Coast
PHILADELPHIA (Legal Newsline) - Prominent plaintiffs’ law firm Hagens Berman can’t use the attorney-client privilege to shield information it gave to an outside ethics expert hired to defend the firm against claims it improperly pursued thalidomide claims despite strong evidence they were barred by the statute of limitations.
Objectors to a $180 million “mega-settlement” of antitrust claims say Hagens Berman is illegally holding on to a $53 million fee award that a federal appeals court vacated after determining it was significantly higher than the amount the law firm bid to gain control of the litigation.
PHILADELPHIA (Legal Newsline) - Saying a claimed “emergency” might be more of a delaying tactic, the judge overseeing a lawsuit by a disgruntled former client of the law firm Hagens Berman rejected a request to halt the proceedings while the firm appeals his ruling denying a venue change out of his court.“The sky has not fallen,” wrote U.S.
A special master investigating how the prominent class action firm Hagens Berman handled failed lawsuits over the banned morning sickness drug thalidomide has chastised the firm in unusually strong terms for redacting the entire report it commissioned from an ethics expert, down to the letterhead and page numbers.
FORT WORTH, Texas (Legal Newsline) – A conflicted Texas appellate court thinks climate change litigation pursued by private lawyers is “ugly” but ruled it is powerless to help ExxonMobil fight it.
PHILADELPHIA (Legal Newsline) - A long-simmering fight between the prominent plaintiffs’ law firm Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro and several unhappy clients has escalated into open war as one of them sued her former lawyers for allegedly misleading her about the chances of winning a lawsuit based on decades-old claims of being exposed to the dangerous morning-sickness drug thalidomide.
BOSTON (Legal Newsline) – Money was on the minds of Rhode Island officials who sued the energy industry when they couldn't convince state lawmakers to address climate change, according to records obtained by Energy Policy Advocates and submitted Tuesday to a federal appeals court.
NEW YORK (Legal Newsline) – The ongoing trial in New York City is giving ExxonMobil another chance to show that nonprofits, private lawyers and elected officials have for years targeted the company as a scapegoat for climate change.
NEW YORK (Legal Newsline) - The New York Attorney General has compared Matt Pawa, the private attorney suing ExxonMobil and other oil companies over climate change, to a whistleblower in filings seeking to seal the record of private emails between Pawa and former New York AG Eric Schneiderman.
WASHINGTON (Legal Newsline) – Democratic U.S. Senators are complaining that Big Oil’s lobbying efforts have stifled climate change measures and are supporting lawsuits against it – but they have also accepted more than $30,000 in donations from the private lawyers who would benefit financially.
MIAMI (Legal Newsline) – The owners of diesel General Motors-manufactured pickup trucks allege a fuel injection pump isn't built for U.S. diesel and fails.
WASHINGTON (Legal Newsline) - Class action lawyers who see arbitration as a mortal threat to their business have found unlikely allies among some of the nation’s most conservative state officials.
SAN FRANCISCO (Legal Newsline) - The cities of Oakland and San Francisco have replaced the private lawyers representing them in climate change litigation as a series of lawsuits against ExxonMobil, Shell and other oil companies head toward what could be their final challenges in appeals courts on either coast.
In August, lawyers arguing for a group of oil companies submitted a motion to Judge Robert S. Lasnik of the U.S. District Court of the Western District of Washington asking that King County’s climate change lawsuit be dismissed.
Democrat challengers aspiring to become the top lawyers in their states have received financial boosts from Tom Steyer, a billionaire investor and environmental activist who some feel is a driving force behind the recent string of climate change lawsuits struggling to persuade judges to punish the energy industry.
Now that federal judges on either coast have dismissed two of the most prominent climate lawsuits against the oil industry, risks to taxpayers may be going up.
New York City and the private lawyers it hired to sue the fossil fuel industry over alleged effects of climate change will not accept a federal judge’s recent decision to throw the lawsuit out of court.
Federal judges continue to reject the efforts of private lawyers who hold a financial stake in lawsuits brought by government officials against the oil industry over the alleged effects of climate change.
SAN FRANCISCO (Legal Newsline) – Three companies that control nearly 100 percent of the dynamic random access memory market are alleged to have conspired to fix prices.
