We may never really
understand why plaintiffs’ lawyer Gary Friedman of
theFriedman Law Group sabotaged
his own promising career by secretly disclosing a trove of privileged and
confidential documents from his antitrust class action against American Express
to Keila Ravelo,
MasterCard’s counsel in a parallel class action against Visa and MasterCard.
But thanks to filings Wednesday in the Amex case, we now know the breathtaking
scope of Friedman’s improper disclosures, which Hofstra law professor Roy Simon described
in an expert witness report as the most “repeated and serious violations” of
professional duties that he can recall in 20 years of advising class counsel.
A Southern California man has
filed a lawsuit against Uber for the ride-sharing app's price claims and
regulation of free ride vouchers, which he hopes to make a class-action
lawsuit.
Sennett Devermont is the creator of Mr. Checkpoint, an
app that notifies its users of DUI checkpoint locations. He said he has taken
nearly 500 rides with Uber in the last two years, and regularly recommends the
service through his app to encourage drunken drivers to get home safely.
"I
personally use Uber every day. I think it's a good service that can benefit
people," Devermont said. "They just need to not mislead people and do
what they promise."
Devermont
doesn't believe Uber's claim on their website that UBERx rides are cheaper than
they would be in a taxicab. He has filed a lawsuit against the company that he
and his attorney Michael Cohen hope will become a class-action lawsuit.
Plaintiffs filed 85 new federal
class-action securities cases against U.S.-based companies in the first half of
2015, a decrease from the second half of last year, which saw 92 cases filed,
according to a new report.
The report, Securities Class Action Filings—2015 Midyear Assessment,
from Cornerstone Research and the Stanford Law School Securities Class Action
Clearinghouse, found the number of filings in the first six months of 2015
remains 10 percent below the semiannual average of 94 observed between 1997 and
2014—the seventh consecutive semiannual period below the historical average.
Despite this period of little overall
change in filing activity, securities class actions against companies
headquartered outside the U.S. increased in the first half of 2015. Twenty
filings, or 24 percent of the total, targeted foreign firms. Asian firms were
named in more than half of these cases.
“Securities class actions continue to
percolate at a relatively low level, whether measured by the number of cases
filed or the dollar amounts at stake,” said Professor Joseph Grundfest,
director of the Stanford Law School Securities Class Action Clearinghouse and a
former SEC Commissioner, in a statement. “The interesting question is ‘why?’
Some observers point to high stock price valuations and the lack of volatility
in equity markets. Others point to the fact that many of the major accounting
scandals now appear to be happening outside the United States. A combination of
both factors could well be at work.”
Another notable development in the
first half of 2015 was the surge in class-action suits in the Ninth Circuit,
driven primarily by an increase in the technology and industrial sectors.
Filings in the Ninth Circuit (much of the western United States) represented a
90 percent increase over the last six months of 2014.
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