Chitika

Saturday, August 22, 2015

Class Action News 22nd August 2015


Two Canadian law firms have filed a $578m class-action lawsuit against the companies that run Ashley Madison after a hacker group’s data breach exposed some 39 million memberships in the adultery website earlier this week.

Charney Lawyers and Sutts, Strosberg, both of Ontario, said Friday that they filed the lawsuit on behalf of Canadians who subscribed to Ashley Madison and whose personal information was disclosed to the public. The website, with its slogan “Life is short. Have an affair,” is marketed to facilitate extramarital relationships.

The lawsuit, filed on Thursday in the Ontario superior court of justice, targets Avid Dating Life and Avid Life Media, the Toronto-based companies that run AshleyMadison.com. Its class-action status “still needs to be certified by the court”, the statement says.

Ashley Madison did not immediately respond to requests for comment. It has said that the personal details exposed in the initial data leak can’t be used to prove the infidelity of their clients.


The class action lawsuit filed at the Manhattan Supreme Court alleges Dualstar Entertainment Group for not paying wages of 40 past and present interns at the company. A representative for the company released a statement defending the wage theft allegations as  "groundless."

Dualstar Entertainment is the parent company of prestigious labels, The Row and Elizabeth and James.  According to the Olsen Twins Class Action lawsuit, the interns were demanding payment for the work they provided for the company.  A former intern also alleges the company for their poor working conditions.

"The allegations in the complaint filed against Dualstar are groundless, and Dualstar will vigorously defend itself against plaintiff's claims in court, not before the media. Dualstar is confident that once the true facts of this case are revealed, the lawsuit will be dismissed in its entirety," Dualstar representative Annett Wolf wrote in a statement to USA TODAY.

The Class Action lawsuit claims that the interns deserved to be paid since they are providing the same work done by the regular employees.  They also cited the Olsens' work ethics that subjected the interns to longer working hours and too much work, Refinery29 reports.


A federal judge’s recent rulings in a driver pay case involving a class of thousands of drivers who participated in Werner Enterprise’s Student Driver Program found that the company failed to pay its drivers for sleeper berth time and short rest breaks.

The findings set the stage for a trial in September to determine damages owed to a class of thousands of Werner drivers who participated in the driver training program for up to three years prior to the initial filing of the class action suit on Sept. 14, 2011.

According to the initial collective class action complaint filed on behalf of plaintiff Philip Petrone and other similarly situated drivers, Werner Enterprises and its subsidiary driver training program, Drivers Management LLC, violated the Fair Labor Standards Act by intentionally failing to compensate the class members for wages earned while in the company’s employment.

Petrone’s suit alleges he was enrolled in Werner’s Student Driver Program, a mandatory six- to eight-week course for new hires. While in the program, the company violated Nebraska labor laws by failing to pay plaintiffs the minimum wage for hours they worked. Specifically, the suit alleges that drivers were cheated out of funds due to them for rest breaks and meals.

  
With legal troubles mounting, Barclays PLC (BCS - Analyst Report) is likely to face a class action related to a lawsuit accusing the bank of inflating its stock price through manipulation of the London Interbank Offered Rate ("LIBOR"). According to a Reuters report, on Thursday, a U.S. judge ruled that the shareholders who filed the lawsuit may move forward with the case as a class action.


A U.S. appeals court on Friday signaled it might reverse a judge's decision that expanded a class action of bondholders suing Argentina over debt in default since 2002.
Members of a three-judge panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York showed discomfort with a federal judge's decision to expand the class action over a series of euro-denominated bonds to cover anyone who held them instead of just continuous holders of the debt.

The 2nd Circuit on Aug. 10 had reversed U.S. District Judge Thomas Griesa's similar expansion of eight other class actions against Argentina, and the country's lawyer, Carmine Boccuzzi, argued on Friday that the ninth was similarly too broad.

Some judges appeared to accept that argument, questioning how creditors could receive notice that they could opt out of the class and how the court could determine who ultimately was covered by the lawsuit, given secondary-market bond trading.


A SEMINAL class action lawsuit against the country’s gold mining industry starts on Monday with activist groups set to argue to be allowed to join the case, as they expect to fully use the developing class action mechanism in the future.

Lobby group Section27 and two nonprofit allies intend to help bolster the case for applicants in the planned class action, which has few precedents. The long-awaited case will see 56 class representatives, acting on behalf of thousands of former mine workers, take on the entire gold mining sector in demanding compensation for silicosis and pulmonary tuberculosis they had contracted after 1965.

Representatives of the health rights group Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) and gender activist group Sonke Gender Justice, are seeking to join the suit as amici curiae, or friends of the court, in the two days of court proceedings.

The groups will argue that they "have an interest in developing this law (as their) constituency is marginalised people, which are the kind of people that class action lawsuits developed to help," Section27 lawyer John Stephens said at a media briefing on Thursday.


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