Law, Strategy, and Risk in Commercial Disputes
What do you do if you paid a bunch of money to settle a class action but some of the class members who didn't opt out demand that you arbitrate a dispute relating, at least in part, to the subject matter of the claims you settled?
You start by asking the arbitrators to stay their…
Blawgletter's friend Sam Simon asked us to visit this morning with the Class Action Committee of the New York State Bar's Antitrust Section, and the chair — whom we also count as a friend — Hollis Salzman gave her okay.
You can see below the remarks we wrote out (plus a Q&A at the end to reflect…
Did you really not know that selling out your clients could get you in trouble?
A law firm that agreed to take many millions — up to $7.5 millions — from a defendant in return for getting plaintiff-clients to settle cheap seems not to have thought that far ahead.
The firm hired on to represent…
Today the Third Circuit denied Comcast's request for the whole court to rehear its appeal in Behrend v. Comcast Corp., No. 10-2865 (3d Cir. Sept. 20, 2011).
Blawgletter noted the panel's 2-1 ruling on August 23 that the district court did not err in granting class treatment of the antitrust claims against Comcast.
See…
The Third Circuit today affirmed a class certification order in an antitrust case.
The case, Behrend v. Comcast Corp., No. 10-2865 (3d Cir. Aug. 23, 2011), involves claims that Comcast violated sections 1 and 2 of the Sherman Act and that the antitrust violations allowed Comcast to overcharge Philadelphia cable subscribers.
The court's 2-1…
Some people think most class actions exist to reward the lawyers, not the members of the class. Blawgletter doesn't think that, but some people do.
And then a case like In re Bluetooth Headset Products Liability Litig., No. 09-56683 (9th Cir. Aug. 19, 2011), comes along. It likely didn't start as a platform for…
With the U.S. Supreme Court making the test for class actions tougher, you may see a short-term increase in denials of class treatment. You may as a result also witness a surge in class members' filing cases where they assert the now-dead class claims on an individual basis.
But what if — as often happens…
The wages of sin is death. What wages do you get from a Ponzi scheme?
The kind you can't access any more.
People who worked at Stanford Group Company found that out the hard way. Their employer, we now learn, paid them with proceeds of a Ponzi scheme. The Fifth Circuit held that funds they…
Blawgletter's firm handles much of our work on a contingent fee basis. That means we share risk with our clients — and earn no fee if we don't help our clients get a good result.
What counts as a good result will vary from case to case. It often involves a money inflow, sometimes not…
Way back in January 2009, Blawgletter wrote that we doubted a 1995 federal law – a sub-section of which the Second Circuit called "the RICO Amendment" — bars claims, under the Racketeer-Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, that allege fraud involving credit default swaps and other swap contracts. MLSMK Inv. Co. v. JP Morgan Chase & Co., No.