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In 2010, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) enacted a law which encourages people in the know to “blow the whistle” on people or companies who are stealing from or cheating the government. The SEC rewards successful “whistleblowers” with up to 30% of sanctions collected by the agency.

Recently, an attorney has asked the agency to intervene in a legal battle between the attorney and his former employer. David Danon worked for Vanguard from 2008 to 2013, and according to Vanguard, sent company records to his home email address while he was employed by the company and “at the end of his employment”.

In May 2013, one month before leaving Vanguard, Danon filed an SEC whistleblower lawsuit against his employer and another lawsuit in New York state court. Danon alleges that Vanguard has been operating an illegal tax shelter for almost 40 years. According to the complaint, the company has avoided paying $1 billion in U.S. federal income taxes and at least $20 million in New York state taxes. The company allegedly accomplished this by providing services to the mutual funds it runs at prices that allow it to avoid federal and state income taxes.

Vanguard insists that the case is without merit and has said that it intends to defend itself in the courts. The company sent a letter to Danon after the filing of the lawsuit, saying that, “Vanguard intends to take all necessary and appropriate steps to protect its interests “. It also stated that Vanguard “reserves all of its rights to seek legal redress” if Danon fails to return the company’s documents immediately. Continue reading ›

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Machines are wonderful pieces of technology that have made many aspects of modern life faster and easier. For example, machines that automatically dial many numbers very quickly have made it incredibly easy for large companies with thousands of customers to quickly and easily reach all (or most) of their customers. Unfortunately, many customers are not as thrilled about receiving promotional phone calls from a machine, particularly when the customers are the ones footing the bill for these calls.

In the days of landlines, phone calls were paid for by the person or entity making the phone call. When cell phones came about, that was reversed, and now many people are paying for the calls that they receive, as well as the ones they make. This means that owners of cell phones who receive automated calls on those mobile phones are not only annoyed, but may be paying for the privilege of being annoyed. To protect the rights of consumers who are being made to pay for phone calls they do not want to receive and for the annoyance and wasted time of dealing with these in most cases unwanted calls, Congress passed the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), which makes it illegal for companies to auto-dial customers in a non-emergency situation without the express consent of the customers.

Despite the law, many companies continue to use auto-dialers to reach customers about sales and promotions. In some cases, the defendants argue that, by providing their cell phone numbers, customers are agreeing to be auto-dialed in non-emergency situations. Consumers frequently disagree with this assertion, claiming that the TCPA requires consumers to provide more explicit permission. The result is usually a lawsuit, such as the class action that was recently filed against AT&T that alleges the phone company violated the TCPA by calling customers using an auto-dialing system. Continue reading ›

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We all know that the Supreme Court is responsible for interpreting and clarifying the law. When a dispute between two or more parties reaches the Supreme Court, the Court’s decision in that case has the potential to influence American laws for decades to come. Sometimes, the rulings made by the Supreme Court influence not just the laws, but how those laws are enforced, including when a decision can be appealed to a higher court.

Appealing a Consolidated Lawsuit

For example, in a recent dispute that the Supreme Court will hear this term, multiple lawsuits that have been filed alleging manipulation of the London Interbank Offered Rate (LIBOR). A number of those lawsuits have been consolidated into one complaint. Courts will sometimes do this when one plaintiff is facing multiple lawsuits in which the complaints are all the same or similar. By combining them into one large lawsuit, the courts can deal with the case more efficiently and avoid repeating itself by dealing with the same issues again and again.

Many times, when dealing with a lawsuit that has multiple complaints, a court will dismiss some of the complaints while allowing others to continue through the court system. The question then becomes whether plaintiffs can appeal the court’s dismissal to a higher court. When plaintiffs tried to do this in the recent case involving alleged manipulation of the LIBOR, the Second Circuit Court declined to hear the case, claiming that, because the lower court had only dismissed some of the complaints, the Second Circuit Court lacked the jurisdiction for an appeal. The plaintiffs then appealed the decision to the Supreme Court, which will hear the case this term. The Supreme Court’s decision will determine whether such cases can move up the appellate courts piece by piece, or as one consolidated case.

The Defendant’s Burden in Moving a Class Action Lawsuit to Federal Court

The Supreme Court will also rule on the application of the 2005 Class Action Fairness Act (CAFA). This act gave defendants the power to have a class action lawsuit moved to federal court, if the case fit certain requirements, in order to prevent plaintiffs from filing the lawsuit in the court that would be most likely to rule in their favor, also known as “forum shopping”. In order to move a case to federal court, the class of plaintiffs must consist of members from more than one state and the amount in dispute must be more than $5 million.

In Dart Cherokee Basin Operating Company, LLC v. Owens, the district court and the Tenth Circuit Court both remanded the case back to state court because the defendant did not provide sufficient evidence that the amount in dispute is more than $5 million. The defendant argues that the courts should not need evidence of the amount in dispute until the plaintiff denies the amount. The Supreme Court’s ruling in this case will determine the amount of evidence a defendant needs to provide in order to have a case moved to federal court. Continue reading ›

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Consumers have long relied on recommendations from friends and family before buying products and services, and businesses have risen and fallen like empires on this tradition of word of mouth. Then, the Internet brought about the ability to broadcast your opinion of a business to practically everyone in the world, and to see reviews by people you’ve never met. The potential benefits to businesses of this have to be weighed against the potential detriment when people post negative reviews. Generally, people are only motivated to leave a review if they had a very positive or very negative experience, leaving a skewed perspective of the business on the world wide web.

Some businesses have tried to fight back by including language in their terms of agreement which punishes customers for posting negative reviews online. While the legality of such a measure is in question, consumers all over the Internet have made their displeasure known.

Recently, the Union Street Guest House (USGH), a New York hotel, took it a step further by allegedly including a clause which punishes customers if another customer posts a negative review of the hotel anywhere on the internet. According to the hotel’s policy, “If you have booked the Inn for a wedding or other type of event anywhere in the region and given us a deposit of any kind for guests to stay at USGH there will be a $500 fine that will be deducted from your deposit for every negative review of USGH placed on any internet site by anyone in your party and/or attending your wedding or event. … If you stay here to attend a wedding anywhere in the area and leave us a negative review on any Internet site you agree to a $500 fine for each negative review.” The policy further noted that the $500 charge would be removed once a negative review was taken down, and that the policy only applied to wedding parties and events. Continue reading ›

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The cost of everything goes up with inflation and insurance is no different. As the value of our things increases with time, it makes sense that people would want sufficient coverage for all of their belongings. This can become an issue though, when insurance companies insist on raising the limits on a plan (and thus raising the premiums) to levels that are much higher than the property can possibly be worth. Such is allegedly the case in a recent class action lawsuit against State Auto.

According to the complaint, the named plaintiffs, Mark and Andrea Schumacher, bought their home in 2001 for $234,000. They claim that they have made no improvements to the home since then, other than normal maintenance, and that its market value remains about the same. As evidence to support this assertion, the plaintiffs pointed out that the builder from whom they bought their home continues to construct homes in their neighborhood that are similar to the ones that they own, and sell them at a comparable price.

Despite that, State Auto, which has been insuring the Schumachers for years, allegedly increased their policy limit over the years until it stood at more than $500,000 as of 2013. According to the Schumachers, that is much more than what it would cost them to rebuild or replace their home, though it is important to note that there are two different ways of looking at that cost: 1) rebuilding from the ground up; and  2) buying a similar, older home. The cost of these two options can vary dramatically, depending on the market, and some people have a strong preference to buy insurance for one over the other. Continue reading ›

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The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) is responsible for maintaining safe and fair working conditions for all employees working in the United States. One of the main responsibilities that the DOL has is educating both employers and workers of the rights provided to employees under laws such as the federal Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). If a worker believes that her rights as an employee are being violated, she can choose to report her employer to the DOL, rather than filing a lawsuit herself. The DOL is not required to investigate every report of labor violations that it receives. In the event that the DOL chooses not to pursue a case, the employee then has the option of filing a lawsuit.

After investigating a case of alleged labor law violations, the DOL is capable of filing a lawsuit against an employer on behalf of a worker or group of workers, but a more desirable solution is for the department to reach a compliance agreement with the employer. In a compliance agreement, the employer pays damages and back wages (depending on the violations) to the wronged employees, but does not have to pay legal fees. In a court case, the defendant would end up paying for its own legal fees, as well as the legal fees of the plaintiff, if the plaintiff prevailed in the case or if the parties settled outside of court.

A recent example of a compliance agreement that the DOL reached involved the social media company, LinkedIn, which allegedly failed to properly pay its employees when they worked overtime. Under the FLSA, any time an hourly, nonexempt employee works more than eight hours a day or forty hours a week, that employee is entitled to one and one-half times her normal hourly rate for all overtime worked. Continue reading ›

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Whenever there are large loans, there are bound to be targets for debt settlement companies. These are companies that tell borrowers that they will negotiate lower monthly fees for the borrower in exchange for a hefty upfront fee. They convince borrowers to pay them hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars, then they leave the borrowers with the same debt they had to begin with. One such company, Broadsword Student Advantage of Carrollton, Texas, has a radio advertisement which claims “Your entire student loan can be forgiven.” In the past, these fraudulent companies targeted those with large credit card debt or mortgage loans. The recent economic downturn left those who owed more on their property than it was worth as prime targets for those companies, but now they have a new group of targets.

The amount that Americans currently owe in student loans has exceeded $1 trillion, and to make matters worse, a record number of college graduates entered the workforce just as the economy was taking a nosedive, resulting in high unemployment and underemployment rates. More than half of recent graduates are either unemployed or are working low-paying jobs that don’t require the expensive college degrees that they are still struggling to pay off. An estimated seven million Americans have already defaulted on a total of $100 billion in loans, with tens of thousands of more borrowers defaulting each month.

Illinois is now expected to become the first state to bring legal action against debt settlement companies in connection with student loans. The action consists of two separate lawsuits, one against Broadsword Student Advantage and one against First American Tax Defense, alleging that both companies convinced vulnerable borrowers to pay hundreds of dollars for services that the companies never provided. In the case of Broadsword, the company allegedly continued to charge borrowers $49.99 each month after they had paid an initial fee. Continue reading ›

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The landmark decision not to certify a class of plaintiffs in Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. v. Dukes has made it increasingly difficult for classes of plaintiffs to achieve certification. This is largely a result of the fact that the court in Wal-Mart determined that the class failed to meet the commonality requirement necessary for class certification. Courts all across the nation have been refusing certification to classes of plaintiffs that don’t have identical claims. According to the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, though, the reasoning behind refusal of class certification in Wal-Mart was much narrower than courts have been interpreting it.

IKO Roofing Shingle Products is currently facing a class action lawsuit from Debra Zanetti, which alleges that IKO’s organic asphalt roofing shingles were defective. According to the lawsuit, which Zanetti filed on behalf of all proposed class members, IKO’s shingles allegedly do not meet an industry standard known as ASTM D225. Compliance with this standard is commonly determined using a testing protocol known as ASTM D228. The lawsuit, which was initially filed in district court in Illinois, is seeking certification of a class of plaintiffs consisting of all consumers who purchased organic asphalt roofing tiles from IKO since 1979. The district court denied the class certification and the plaintiffs appealed the decision to the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals.

The district court refused to certify the class on the basis of commonality. The district court determined that, per the prior decision made in Wal-Mart, it could not certify a class of plaintiffs without identical claims. The appellate court disagreed, though, pointing out that Wal-Mart failed to meet the commonality requirement for class certification based on the fact that the treatment of employees under different managers was too dissimilar. Since that is not the case here, the court concluded that the district court had erred in refusing class certification on the basis of commonality. Continue reading ›

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