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             C L A S S   A C T I O N   R E P O R T E R

              Wednesday, May 8, 2013, Vol. 15, No. 90

                             Headlines


AFFYMAX INC: Faces Two Stockholder Class Suits in California
AMERICAN INT'L: NY AG to Forgo Right to Dispute $115MM Settlement
AMWAY: Fasken Martineau Discusses Court Ruling on Arbitration
BABOLAT: Faces Class Action Over Defrauding Consumers
BANK OF IRELAND: To Face Class Action Over Mortgage Rate Hike

BAYER: Judge Allows Canadian Yasmin Class Action to Proceed
BMW AG: Manufactures Leaky Sunroofs Since 2000, Suit Claims
BRISTOL CARE: Employee Class-Action Waivers Valid, Court Rules
CHARLES SCHWAB: Refiles Libor Fraud Claims in San Francisco Court
CHINA EDUCATION: Securities Class Action in California Settled

CINCINNATI ENQUIRER: Faces Suit for Charging Delivery People
CISCO SYSTEMS: Shareholders Agree to Dismiss Class Action
COMCAST CORP: Morrison & Foerster Discusses "Behrend" Ruling
CONNECTICUT: Defamed Arrestees' Suit Set for Argument This Month
CONSOLIDATED RAIL: Evacuees Can't Pursue Claims in State Court

CROSS COUNTRY: CC Staffing Faces "Ogues" Suit in California
DE BEERS: Consumers Set to Get Class Action Settlement Payments
DENDREON CORP: Yet to File Documents of $40-Mil. Suit Settlement
DORN VA: Mike Kelly Law Firm Files Class Action Over Data Breach
EASTMAN KODAK: Court Dismisses Hutchinson Securities Class Suit

EDISON MISSION: Appeal in Hurricane Katrina Suit Remains Pending
EDISON MISSION: Bids to Dismiss Complaints vs. Midwest Stayed
EDISON MISSION: Still Does Not Know If Suit Will Be Re-Filed
F.N.B. CORP: Awaits Final Okay of Settlement in Overdraft Suit
FIRSTMERIT CORP: Certification Appeal in Overdraft Suit Pending

FIRSTMERIT CORP: Certification Appeal in 365/360 Suit Pending
FIRSTMERIT CORP: Awaits Court Okay of MOU in Shareholders' Suit
GARDNER DENVER: Being Sold to Kohlberg for Too Little, Suit Claims
GENERAL ELECTRIC: Settles Investor Class Action for $40 Million
GOLD RESOURCE: Defends Consolidated Securities Suit in Colorado

HEWINS FINANCIAL: Taps Chicago Clearing to Help With Settlement
HOME DEPOT: Faces Suit Over Violation of Fair Credit Reporting Act
HOME FOR COLORED CHILDREN: Settles Class Suit for C$5 Million
HOT TOPIC: Being Sold to Sycamore for Too Little, Suit Claims
INTERSECTIONS INC: Appeal From Dismissal of Calif. Suit Pending

LEGGETT & PLATT: Continues to Defend Various Antitrust Suits
LOUISIANA-PACIFIC: Continues to Defend Hardboard Trim Litigation
LUZERNE COUNTY, PA: Public Defender's Office Lacks Resources
MACMILLAN: Settles E-Books Antitrust Class Action for $26MM
MACY'S INC: Suit Over Mislabeled Gold Has New Plaintiff

MARYLAND: Deal Reached in Suit Over Delayed Medicaid Processing
MARYLAND SPORTSERVICE: Faces Overtime Class Action
MATERION BRUSH: Ex-Employee Files Class Suit for Unpaid Wages
MERACORD LLC: Faces Class Action Over "Looting" Customers
NAT'L COLLEGIATE: Athletes Seek Class Certification

NAT'L COLLEGIATE: O'Bannon Class Action Hearing May Face Delay
NESTLE WATERS: Faces Class Action Over Racial Discrimination
NEW YORK: School Faces Class Action Over Standardized Tests Issue
NEW YORK: Police Officials Defends "Stop-and-Frisk" Practice
NVR INC: Judge Tosses Sales Reps' Overtime Class Action Claims

PACWEST BANCORP: Signs MOU to Settle Merger-Related Class Suit
PANDORA MEDIA: Appeal From Dismissal of Video Rental Suit Pending
PANDORA MEDIA: Bid to Dismiss Personal Info Suit Still Pending
PILOT FLYING J: Faces Fourth Class Action Over Fuel Rebates
PITTSBURGH, PA: Seeks Dismissal of Police Hiring Bias Class Action

POWER-ONE: Being Sold to ABB for Too Little, Suit Claims
PROTECTIVE LIFE: Continues to Defend Suit Over Health Coverage
PRUDENTIAL INSURANCE: Judge Won't Certify Class Alleging Deception
PTT PHONE: Faces Class Action Over Prepaid Phone Cards
SAFEWAY STORES: Accord Reached in Kona Coffee Blend Labeling Suit

SCOOTER STORE: Faces Suit Over Dumping Shares at Inflated Prices
SEGA CORP: Sued Over Falsely Advertised Aliens Video Game
STANDARD & POORS: IMF Australia to File Class Claim
SYMANTEC CORP: Faces Suit Over Compromised Antivirus Software
TANGOE INC: Faces "Rector" Securities Class Suit in Connecticut

TANGOE INC: Faces "Stein" Securities Class Suit in Connecticut
TEXXXAN.COM: Cannot Re-launch Site, Judge Rules
TJX COMPANIES: Denial of Class Certification in 'Ebo' Suit Upheld
UBIQUITI NETWORKS: Faces Class Action Over ToughCable Product
UNITED STATES: Settlement in Black Farmers' Suit Could Top $4.4BB

UNITED STATES: Must Provide Legal Aid for Mentally Ill Immigrants
UNITEK GLOBAL: Investors File Class Action to Recover Losses
UNIVERSAL MUSIC: Artist Privacy at Stake in Royalties Class Action
VECTOR GROUP: Liggett Unit Had 4 Class Suits Pending at Dec. 31
VERIZON COMMS: Dismissal of Hidden Fees Class Suit Affirmed

VITAMIN SHOPPE: Faces Class Action Over Misleading Consumers
VOLKSWAGEN GROUP: Settles Class Action Over CVT Failures
WELLS FARGO: Settles Medical Capital Class Action for $105 Mil.
WELLS FARGO: Calif. Judge Won't Dismiss RICO & Fraud Claims

* Democrats Want SEC to Ban Mandatory Arbitration Clauses
* Improvements Expected in Bankruptcy Reporting Procedures
* Pre-Class Certification Communications Carry Big Upside
* Shop Owner Wants 100 Other Bread Distributors to Join Suit
* Wage-and-Hour Lawsuits Rise in North Carolina


                             *********


AFFYMAX INC: Faces Two Stockholder Class Suits in California
------------------------------------------------------------
Affymax, Inc. is facing two stockholder class action lawsuits in
California, according to the Company's March 18, 2013, Form 8-K
filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

The Company and certain of its officers as well as Takeda
Pharmaceutical Company Limited, Takeda Pharmaceuticals U.S.A.,
Inc. and Takeda Global Research & Development Center, Inc. have
been named defendants in two lawsuits filed in February 2013 in
the United States District Court for the Northern District of
California, brought on behalf of stockholders of the Company that
alleges violations of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 in
connection with allegedly false and misleading statements made by
the defendants regarding the Company's business practices,
financial projections and other disclosures between December 8,
2011, and February 22, 2013, or the Class Period.  The plaintiffs
seek to represent a class comprised of purchasers of the Company's
common stock during the Class Period and seek damages, costs and
expenses and such other relief as determined by the court.

While the Company believes it has meritorious defenses and intends
to defend the lawsuit vigorously, the Company cannot predict the
outcome of these lawsuits.  The Company believes that there may be
additional lawsuits or proceedings brought in the future.
Monitoring and defending against legal actions, whether or not
meritorious, is time-consuming for the Company's management and
detracts from its ability to fully focus its internal resources on
its business activities and the Company cannot predict how long it
may take to resolve these matters.  In addition, legal fees and
costs incurred in connection with such activities may be
significant and the Company could, in the future, be subject to
judgments or enter into settlements of claims for significant
monetary damages.  A decision adverse to the Company's interests
on these actions or resulting from these matters could result in
the payment of substantial damages and could have a material
adverse effect on the Company's cash flow, results of operations
and financial position.

Affymax, Inc. -- http://www.affymax.com/-- is a biopharmaceutical
company based in Palo Alto, California.  Affymax's mission is to
discover, develop and deliver innovative therapies that improve
the lives of patients with kidney disease and other serious and
often life-threatening illnesses.


AMERICAN INT'L: NY AG to Forgo Right to Dispute $115MM Settlement
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Sholom Schreiber, writing for The Jewish Voice, reports that the
New York State Attorney General has decided to take an unexpected
action in order to move ahead with its civil fraud case against
the former head of American International Group.  The office of AG
Eric Schneiderman will forgo its legal right to challenge Maurice
Greenberg's $115 million settlement of a separate class-action
lawsuit, and the accompanying right to obtain as much as $6
billion worth of cash damages in the office's own legal action, to
expedite a trial that will put the ex-AIG CEO on the witness
stand.

In a letter to a state court judge, Mr. Schneiderman's office
wrote that it would continue to seek disciplinary actions against
Greenberg, including a ban from the securities industry and an
injunction against his serving as a director or officer of a
publicly traded company.

While approving the attorney general's decision to drop any claims
of cash damages, an attorney for Greenberg criticized the active
attempt to bring the case to trial.

"Mr. Greenberg, in his role as 'control person' at A.I.G., has
already voluntarily stipulated with the S.E.C. to broader
injunctive relief than the New York attorney general could obtain
in any event," David Boies stated.  "This case is over.  Someone
should put it out of its misery."

Mr. Schneiderman's move is intended to finally bring the eight-
year-old case against Greenberg and a former A.I.G. chief
financial officer, Howard Smith, to trial.  The legal skirmish,
which is based in accusations that the insurance company committed
accounting fraud that brought on a $3.9 billion restatement in
2005, has been implemented by the current attorney general and two
of his predecessors, Eliot Spitzer and (now-Governor) Andrew
Cuomo.

The seemingly improper actions taken by A.I.G. under scrutiny in
the two cases occurred prior to the insurer's $182 billion
taxpayer-financed bailout in the fall of 2008.

But Attorney General Schneiderman's case became newly vulnerable
last month when Mr. Greenberg and other defendants agreed to pay
$115 million to settle the class-action lawsuit that had been
filed by A.I.G. investors.  The federal court judge who is
handling that lawsuit approved the settlement on April 10, calling
it a fair deal.

Other defendants had already settled the investor lawsuits; A.I.G.
paid out approximately $725 million last year.

The attorney general posited in a court filing in late 2012 that a
settlement of the class-action lawsuit would still enable him to
pursue his case.

However, attorneys representing Mr. Greenberg have argued that the
latest settlement effectively obliterates what they contend are
duplicative claims that Mr. Schneiderman had been going after in
his lawsuit.

The attorneys are pursuing a motion for summary judgment that
would effectively dismiss Mr. Schneiderman's claims, and they have
argued that a separate settlement with the Securities and Exchange
Commission actually included injunctive relief.

As opposed to becoming entangled in a court fight over pursuing
cash damages that the attorney general was unlikely to win, he
will instead have the freedom to focus on forcing the former
A.I.G. chief executive to testify in court, according to
individuals who have been briefed on the matter.

In Mr. Schneiderman's perspective, requiring A.I.G.'s Greenberg to
testify as a witness in court has greater ultimate value than
securing additional payment in addition to the class-action
lawsuit.

"Attorney General Schneiderman feels strongly that individuals in
the financial services industry who perpetrate fraud, no matter
how wealthy or powerful, must be held publicly accountable,"
Damien LaVera, a spokesman for Schneiderman, stated.  "And that is
why we believe justice will best be served by proceeding to a long
overdue trial of Mr. Greenberg as quickly as possible."


AMWAY: Fasken Martineau Discusses Court Ruling on Arbitration
-------------------------------------------------------------
Kimberly Potter, Esq. at Fasken Martineau reports that in the
recent decision of Murphy v. Amway, the Federal Court of Appeal
upheld the lower court's determination that claims under the
Competition Act are arbitrable.  The appellant's proposed class
action regarding claims under the Competition Act was stayed, as
the appellant was party to a contract with an arbitration clause
and a limited class action waiver.

Two competing imperatives are bound up in the question of whether
or not arbitration clauses and class action waivers should be
enforced.  On the one hand, arbitration clauses and class action
waivers can cause access to justice issues.  Arbitration lacks the
openness, transparency, and precedential value of open court and,
as such, may be less successful than a class action at deterring
wrongful behavior.  On the other hand, giving effect to
arbitration clauses and class action waivers recognizes the value
in promoting freedom of contract and allowing parties to choose
how best to order their affairs.

Over the last several decades, the Supreme Court has consistently
prioritized the latter consideration.  The appellant in Amway
argued that the Supreme Court's recent decision in Seidel v. Telus
Communications Inc., which held that certain claims under the
British Columbia Business Practices and Consumer Protection Act
("BPCPA") are not arbitrable, supported his argument that claims
under the Competition Act are not arbitrable.  In rejecting this
argument, the Court affirmed that Seidel is consistent with a long
line of cases that have held that arbitration clauses must be
enforced absent clear statutory language to the contrary.
Background

The appellant, Ken Murphy, was registered as an Independent
Business Owner in British Columbia under the umbrella of the
respondent, Amway Canada.  The appellant, like all IBOs, was
required to sign an agreement that included an arbitration clause
and a limited class actions waiver.

The appellant commenced proceedings in the Federal Court in
October, 2009 alleging various breaches of the Competition Act.
The appellant sought damages of $15,000 and filed a motion for
certification of a proposed class action.  In response, the
respondent filed a motion for an order dismissing or permanently
staying the action and compelling arbitration on the grounds that
the Federal Court lacked jurisdiction due to the Arbitration
Agreement.

Both parties relied on Seidel to advance their arguments. In
Seidel, the Supreme Court, in a 5-4 split decision, held that
claims under s. 172 of the BPCPA are not arbitrable.  Section 172
of the BPCPA provides a statutory right for a person to bring an
action in the British Columbia Supreme Court whether or not the
person bringing the action is affected by the consumer transaction
that gives rise to the action under the BPCPA.  Section 3 of the
BPCPA provides that a person's waiver or release of his rights,
benefits or protections under the BPCPA is invalid unless the
waiver or release is expressly permitted by the BPCPA.

Justice Binnie for the majority in Seidel held that ss. 172 and 3
of the BPCPA in combination demonstrate a clear legislative
intention to prohibit arbitration clauses for claims made under s.
172.  The majority held that the fact that a person can bring a
claim under s. 172 of the BPCPA without having any personal
interest in the claim emphasizes the public interest nature of the
s. 172 remedy, which would be undermined by private and
confidential arbitrations.  The majority further found that the
statutory purpose of the BPCPA is all about consumer protection,
and as such, its terms should be interpreted to the benefit of
consumers.

The appellant argued that like the BPCPA in Seidel, the
Competition Act has a public purpose; namely, creating a regime of
public order that governs the conduct of companies in Canada with
an aim to prevent anti-competitive behavior.  He submitted that
enforcement of the arbitration clause and class action waiver
would be against the public interest.

The Court rejected the appellant's expansive interpretation of
Seidel.  The Court held that Seidel is consistent with other
Supreme Court jurisprudence which has held that arbitration
clauses must be enforced in the absence of clear statutory
language.  The Court disagreed with the appellant's assertion that
competition law disputes should never be the subject of
arbitration because arbitration is not compatible with the public
interest goals of the Competition Act.  Instead, the Court
affirmed that absent a clear legislative intention to prohibit
arbitration clauses, they should be upheld. The Court found that
the Competition Act does not contain provisions analogous to ss.
172 and 3 of the BPCPA; therefore, the Competition Act claims were
arbitrable.

                           Conclusion

Consistent with previous Supreme Court jurisprudence, Amway stands
for the proposition that courts will not find arbitration clauses
and class action waivers unenforceable in the absence of clear
statutory language.  This approach can be contrasted with the
approach adopted by a number of American courts, which have found
that in the context of consumer contracts, arbitration clauses,
particularly when combined with class action waivers, are void by
virtue of the unconscionability doctrine. Amway affirms that in
Canada, the enforceability of arbitration clauses and class action
waivers is a matter that will ultimately be left to the discretion
of the legislature.


BABOLAT: Faces Class Action Over Defrauding Consumers
-----------------------------------------------------
Courthouse News Service reports a federal class action alleges
Babolat defrauds consumers by claiming its tennis rackets used by
(nonparties) Andy Roddick and Rafael Nadal are the ones available
to the public.


BANK OF IRELAND: To Face Class Action Over Mortgage Rate Hike
-------------------------------------------------------------
Samuel Dale, writing for Money Marketing, reports that landlords
being hit with a tracker mortgage rate hike by the Bank of Ireland
on May 1 are pushing ahead with a class action for damages after a
"positive" legal opinion.

In February, the Bank of Ireland revealed it is more than doubling
the rate for 13,500 borrowers on its tracker mortgages, some 7% of
its borrowers.

Around half of those affected are buy-to-let borrowers who would
see rates increase from 1.75% above base rate to 4.49% above base
on May 1.  Residential borrowers would see their rates rise in two
stages, firstly to 2.49% on May 1 and then to 3.99% on October 1.

The bank blames the rise on increasing capital requirements.

In response, more than 250 landlords have looked to form a class
action against the bank and sought legal opinion.  They claim the
change in mortgage contract is unfair and should not be allowed to
stand.

On April 30 the group received the full barrister's opinion
detailing their options and chances of success and Law Department
solicitor Justin Selig, who is leading the legal action, was
writing on May 1 to all members to inform them of the next steps.

All class action members are being encouraged to complain to the
Financial Ombudsman Service.

Borrowers are then being split into two categories of amateur and
professional landlords.

Amateur landlords, who have other jobs and own only one or two
properties, may be deemed consumers and a test case with the
Office for Fair Trading will be pursued.

Professional landlords are being given a range of options to
pursue such as suing for damages.  If it proceeds to litigation
then landlords will be claiming damages for the extra 2.74% rate
increase for the rest of the term.

For a 15-year term, landlords will be claiming 41.1% of the value
of their debt or GBP82,000 for a GBP200,000 mortgage.

Property118.com owner Mark Alexander, who is part of the action,
says: "The barrister did not put a percentage on it when rating
our chances of success but his report was very positive.  We are
very confident because there is plenty of case law, particularly
for consumers, comparable to this action."


BAYER: Judge Allows Canadian Yasmin Class Action to Proceed
-----------------------------------------------------------
Heidi Turner, writing for LawyersandSettlements.com, reports that
it is not just in the United States that Bayer faces lawsuits
regarding Yasmin side effects and Yaz side effects.  A Canadian
judge has now given the go-ahead to form a class-action Yasmin
lawsuit against the maker of the birth control pills.

According to Global News, a judge has approved the motion to have
lawsuits against Bayer, maker of Yaz and Yasmin birth control,
consolidated into a class-action lawsuit.  The lawsuits allege
that Bayer did not adequately warn about the increased risk of
blood clot, stroke, heart attack and gallbladder problems.  So
far, approximately 2,000 women have contacted the law firm
involved in litigation.

Some Yasmin lawsuits against Bayer in the US have already been
settled, including claims that patients suffered gallbladder
problems after using Yasmin.  In March 2013, Bayer agreed to pay
as much as $24 million to settle claims of gallbladder injury in
Illinois, California, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.  Reuters
(reports that plaintiffs who had their gallbladders removed would
receive $3,000, while those who suffered injury but did not have
their gallbladders removed would receive $2,000, although those
amounts could decrease if many women file claims.  Bayer has also
reportedly agreed to pay $1 billion to settle approximately 4,800
claims of blood clots.

Bayer did not admit to any liability in agreeing to the
settlement.  In an annual report cited by Reuters, Bayer said it
was facing approximately 10,000 lawsuits in the United States
concerning Yasmin and Yaz.

In April 2012, the FDA announced a label change for all birth
control that contained drosperinone, including Yasmin and Yaz.
Drospirenone is a synthetic version of progesterone, and its use
in birth control pills has been linked in studies to an increased
risk of blood clots.  Some studies reported up to a three-fold
increase in the risk of blood clots when women take drospirenone-
containing birth control as compared with other birth control
pills.

The US case is In Re: Yasmin and Yaz (Drospirenone) Marketing,
Sales Practices and Products Liability Litigation, U.S. District
Court for the Southern District of Illinois, No. 09-md-2100.


BMW AG: Manufactures Leaky Sunroofs Since 2000, Suit Claims
-----------------------------------------------------------
Courthouse News Service reports that BMW has made cars with leaky
sunroofs since 2000, a class action claims in Federal Court.


BRISTOL CARE: Employee Class-Action Waivers Valid, Court Rules
--------------------------------------------------------------
The HR Specialist reports that the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals,
which covers Minnesota employers, has ruled that an employee who
previously agreed to waive her right to file a class-action
overtime lawsuit does indeed have to rely on individual
arbitration of her claim.  That's despite recent National Labor
Relations Board (NLRB) decisions that claim such waivers are
invalid.

Recent case: Sharon worked as an administrator for a chain of
nursing homes.  She was classified as exempt, so she didn't earn
extra pay for working more than 40 hours per week.  When she was
hired, Sharon signed an agreement promising to take any
employment-related problems to arbitration rather than court.  The
agreement also waived Sharon's right to participate in class-
action litigation, but acknowledged her right to complain about
working conditions or alleged discrimination to the EEOC, the NLRB
or any other state or federal agency.

Sharon went to federal court seeking certification on behalf of a
class of fellow employees who were allegedly wrongly classified as
exempt.  The nursing home company asked the court to send the case
to individual arbitration instead of certifying it as a class
action in federal court.

The lower court said the agreement Sharon had signed was invalid,
but the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals overturned that decision.  It
concluded that, as long as Sharon was free to go to various
agencies with her complaint and those agencies could file class-
action lawsuits, the arbitration agreement was legal.  Sharon can
only complain about her individual case -- and only in
arbitration. (Owen v. Bristol Care, No. 12-1719, 8th Cir., 2013)

Final note: If you have an existing arbitration agreement, make
sure it is broad enough to take advantage of this ruling.


CHARLES SCHWAB: Refiles Libor Fraud Claims in San Francisco Court
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Alison Frankel, writing for Thomson Reuters, reports that a month
ago -- right after U.S. District Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald of
Manhattan issued a stunning decision that dismissed antitrust and
racketeering class action claims against the global banks involved
in the process of setting the benchmark London Interbank Offered
Rate -- I told you that individual investors might be able to rise
from the wreckage with common-law fraud and federal securities
suits, so long as they could show that they were deceived by the
banks' misrepresentations about Libor's legitimacy and held enough
Libor-pegged securities to justify the expense of litigating
claims on their own.  On April 29, Charles Schwab filed a new
complaint in San Francisco County Superior Court asserting that it
meets both of those conditions: Schwab entities supposedly
purchased billions of dollars of Libor-based financial instruments
based on false assurances that the benchmark was set honestly.

Citing admissions from Libor settlements that U.S. and British
regulators have reached with Barclays, UBS and Royal Bank of
Scotland, as well as expert reports developed in the decimated
federal multidistrict Libor litigation, Schwab's lawyers at Lieff,
Cabraser, Heimann & Bernstein claim that Libor banks conspired to
suppress the benchmark borrowing rate.  That artificial
suppression, according to Schwab, permitted the banks to pay
unduly low interest rates on floating-rate securities pegged to
Libor and even on short-term fixed-rate notes with returns based
on Libor rates.  The parent company and various Schwab funds are
asserting common-law fraud, breach of contract and unjust
enrichment claims; violation of California's trade practices
statute; and federal securities claims.

Schwab (which also brought individual claims, now dismissed, in
the antitrust MDL) takes care to address two potential bank
defenses: reliance and timeliness.  The bulk of the 125-page
complaint is dedicated to demonstrating that Libor was
manipulated, but Schwab spends several pages detailing the banks'
public assurances that it was not.  The supposed conspiracy to
depress Libor, according to the complaint, "was, by its very
nature, self-concealing."  Reasonable investors could not know
that the rate was being suppressed, Schwab said, when officials
from Credit Suisse, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Citigroup
were assuring the public that Libor was legitimate.

The same "fraudulent and surreptitious nature of defendants'
misconduct," according to the complaint, should toll the statute
of limitations on Schwab's claims.  Until UBS disclosed in a
regulatory filing in March 2011 that it was under government
investigation for tampering with the benchmark, the company
argued, investors weren't on notice of the fraud.  Schwab also
contends that a conspiracy to conceal the misconduct continued
long after the actual alleged manipulation, so the clock didn't
begin to run on its claims until the conspiracy was exposed.

The complaint specifies each Schwab fund's Libor-pegged holdings
but does not value the company's supposed losses from Libor
manipulation.  You can be sure that among other defense arguments,
the banks will claim that Schwab can't actually tie losses to the
behavior of any particular bank.

Thomson Reuters didn't hear back from Schwab counsel Steven
Fineman of Lieff Cabraser.


CHINA EDUCATION: Securities Class Action in California Settled
--------------------------------------------------------------
China Education Alliance, Inc., a China-based education resource
and services company, on May 1 disclosed that the consolidated
securities class action lawsuit captioned In re China Education
Alliance, Inc. Securities Litigation, filed against China
Education Alliance in the United States District Court for the
Central District of California, has been settled and dismissed.

The Court had previously granted final approval of the settlement
in a related shareholder derivative lawsuit filed against certain
of the Company's past and present directors and officers,
captioned Padnos v. Yu, et al., and that settlement has also
become final and effective.


CINCINNATI ENQUIRER: Faces Suit for Charging Delivery People
------------------------------------------------------------
Courthouse News Service reports that The Cincinnati Enquirer
defrauds its delivery people by charging them $5 for each paper
they fail to deliver, though the papers cost less than that, a
class action claims in Hamilton County Court.


CISCO SYSTEMS: Shareholders Agree to Dismiss Class Action
---------------------------------------------------------
Stewart Bishop, writing for Law360, reports that Cisco Systems
Inc. shareholders agreed on April 26 to drop a consolidated class
action filed in California federal court accusing company brass of
artificially boosting stock prices while Cisco's CEO used insider
information to sell $134 million worth of company shares.  U.S.
District Judge Saundra Brown Armstrong signed off on the
stipulation and order dismissing the case with prejudice, with
both sides agreeing to bear their own costs.


COMCAST CORP: Morrison & Foerster Discusses "Behrend" Ruling
------------------------------------------------------------
Morrison & Foerster LLP's Rebekah Kaufman and Jacob M. Harper,
Esq. -- rkaufman@mofo.com and jacobharper@mofo.com -- report that
in Comcast Corp. v. Behrend, 569 U.S. __ (2013), the Supreme Court
answered a looming class certification question left open by Wal-
Mart Stores, Inc. v. Dukes, 564 U.S. __ (2011): whether a putative
class action plaintiff must offer credible evidence of damages
applicable on a class-wide basis before the district court can
certify a class under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23(b)(3). In
a 5-4 opinion, the Court answered yes. The decision promises to
have particularly significant implications in putative antitrust,
employment, and consumer protection class actions, where
plaintiffs traditionally rely on simplified assumptions and
modeling at the class certification stage to persuade courts that
proof of class-wide damages would be possible. The Behrend
decision confirms that defendants in such cases should not
overlook potential flaws in putative class plaintiffs' damages
theories at the outset of the case.

                             Background

Dukes made clear that preliminary issues of class certification
will likely require district courts to resolve "overlapping"
merits questions. Dukes did not, however, answer how courts should
resolve overlapping merits questions, and lower courts have
differed significantly in the level of scrutiny they apply to
those questions and to the evidence that is submitted at the class
certification stage.  Behrend -- the first Supreme Court decision
to apply Dukes -- directly addresses that issue by requiring a
district court to scrutinize a class plaintiff's damages evidence
at the class certification stage to ensure that evidence could
actually prove damages on a class-wide basis for the particular
liability theory asserted.

                               Facts

In Behrend, cable customers alleged that Comcast "clustered" its
cable television operations within a particular region by
acquiring competitor cable providers in the region, and swapping
its own systems outside the region for competitor systems located
in the region. The cable customers alleged Comcast's practice
harmed competition and artificially raised customer prices, in
violation of antitrust laws. The cable customers sought class
certification under Rule 23(b)(3), which allows damages-based
class relief where "questions of law or fact common to class
members predominate over any questions affecting only individual
members." The customers alleged four distinct theories of harm to
competition, and offered an expert's statistical model to prove
that the damages resulting from that harm were measurable on a
class-wide basis. In opposition to class certification, Comcast
challenged all four theories, as well as the customers' damages
evidence -- an expert report -- because the expert's model lumped
together all the customers' purportedly improper theories of harm
and did not isolate damages attributable to any one theory.
Although the district court rejected three of the four theories as
inapplicable to the class as a whole, it accepted the expert's
model and certified the class. The Third Circuit affirmed, holding
that Comcast's challenge to the model would improperly require the
district court to assess the merits of the expert's methodology at
the class certification stage.

                              Opinion

Reversing, the Supreme Court held that the district court was
required to assess whether the expert's damages methodology could
apply class-wide. Quoting extensively from Dukes, Justice Scalia's
majority opinion noted that "[b]y refusing to entertain arguments
against respondents' damages model that bore on the propriety of
class certification, simply because those arguments would also be
pertinent to the merits determination, the Court of Appeals ran
afoul of our precedents requiring precisely that inquiry." By
accepting the expert's damages model, the lower courts failed to
address the fact that plaintiffs' damages model incorporated three
theories of harm that the court held inapplicable on a class-wide
basis. Thus, "[t]here is no question that the model failed to
measure damages resulting from the particular antitrust injury on
which petitioners' liability in this action is premised." As such,
the damages model could not credibly show the predominance of a
common damages question unless the model showed damages
attributable to the only remaining legally valid theory of harm.
Because the analysis failed to do so, certification of the class
was improper:

     The Court of Appeals simply concluded that respondents
     "provided a method to measure and quantify damages on a
     classwide basis," finding it unnecessary to decide "whether
     the methodology [was] a just and reasonable inference or
     speculative." Under that logic, at the class-certification
     stage any method of measurement is acceptable so long as it
     can be applied classwide, no matter how arbitrary the
     measurements may be. Such a proposition would reduce Rule
     23(b)(3)'s predominance requirement to a nullity.

                             Dissent

For its part, Justice Ginsburg's and Justice Breyer's dissent (in
which Justices Sotomayor and Kagan joined) attacked the majority
for, among other things, potentially "requiring, as a prerequisite
to certification, that damages attributable to a class-wide injury
be measurable on a class-wide basis." The dissent further stated
that the predominance requirement "scarcely demands commonality as
to all questions" and that when adjudication of questions of
liability common to the class will achieve economies of time and
expense, the predominance standard is generally satisfied "even if
damages are not provable in the aggregate." The dissent also
attacked the majority for improperly "consider[ing] fact-based
matters" at the class certification stage. The dissent also
attempts to confine the majority's decision "for this day and case
only."

                               Impact

Behrend promises to pose extensive challenges to plaintiffs at the
class certification stage from here on out. Clarifying Dukes and
offering much-needed guidance to district courts currently
grappling with certification questions, Behrend presents
defendants with new ammunition at the class certification stage to
challenge a plaintiff's ability to prove class-wide damages.
Clients facing Rule 23(b)(3) class actions should renew their
focus on attacking plaintiffs' damages evidence at the class
certification stage, particularly where viable questions exist as
to the applicability of a damages model to the class as a whole,
or when the model is not carefully tied to plaintiffs' theory of
liability. Even if the damages theory could apply on a class-wide
basis, the opinion leaves open another potential avenue for
attacking plaintiffs' damages claims: whether the expert survives
scrutiny under Daubert -- a question the Court declined to address
in this case. In any event, the opinion makes clear that
plaintiffs must tie their damages claims to liability, and they
must show their damages claims are viable at the class
certification stage. Despite a recent trend to the contrary, the
Behrend decision breathes new life into the notion that
individualized issues as to damages can defeat a class -- a point
defendants should consider when assessing how to oppose class
certification.


CONNECTICUT: Defamed Arrestees' Suit Set for Argument This Month
----------------------------------------------------------------
Debra Cassens Weiss, writing for ABA Journal, reports that a
class-action lawsuit scheduled for argument this month in
Connecticut claims that the news media defamed arrestees in online
news stories about criminal records that were later expunged.

Lorraine Martin of Greenwich claims in the suit that news stories
about arrests that were true at the time of publication became
false after expungement, according to a New York Times op-ed by
columnist Bill Keller.  When readers discover the old stories via
search engine, the suit claims, there is a republication and a new
libel.

Ms. Martin, a nurse, was arrested with her two sons in 2010 after
police searched their home and found a small amount of marijuana,
scales and plastic bags, the story says.  Ms. Martin agreed to
take some drug classes, the case was dismissed and the record was
purged.

Mr. Keller talked to several lawyers who predicted the suit would
be dismissed because of First Amendment concerns.  "But the
dilemma underlying this case is real, and not so simple,"
Mr. Keller writes.  "The Connecticut case is just one
manifestation of an anxious backlash against the invasive power of
the Internet, a world of Big Data and ever more powerful search
engines, in which it seems almost everything is permanently
recorded and accessible to almost anyone -- potential employers,
landlords, dates, predators."

In Europe, Mr. Keller says, the idea of a "right to be forgotten"
on the Internet is becoming popular.  The idea is gaining ground
here as expungement laws proliferate and news outlets field more
requests to take down articles.  One option, he says, is for
search engines to accept requests for stories to be down ranked or
omitted in search results.


CONSOLIDATED RAIL: Evacuees Can't Pursue Claims in State Court
--------------------------------------------------------------
Rose Bouboushian at Courthouse News Service reports that residents
evacuated from their homes after a derailed train released toxic
chemicals into the air cannot pursue claims in state court, a
federal judge ruled.

In November 2012, a train owned by Consolidated Rail Corp.
derailed while crossing a bridge over Mantua Creek in Paulsboro,
N.J.  The bridge, also owned by the rail company, collapsed.

One car on the derailed train was a tanker containing 25,000
gallons of vinyl chloride, a toxic chemical used to make plastic
PVC, some of which was released in the accident, the Huffington
Post reported.  The spill forced 700 people to evacuate the
vicinity, and the entire population of Paulsboro was ordered to
"shelter in place."

John Stephenson and Tracy Lee later sued Consolidated Rail on
behalf of all evacuees and every person who lost less than $75,000
in income as a result of the spill.  The rail company removed the
case to federal court based on the Class Action Fairness Act's
jurisdictional threshold of $5 million.

On April 23, U.S. District Judge Robert Kugler affirmed
Consolidated Rail's calculations, and denied the plaintiffs'
motion to remand.

Consolidated Rail calculated the class claims of business income
loss at $370,000, residents' income loss at $492,000, and
quantified discomfort and annoyance at $1 million.  Based on these
figures, a punitive damages award would be about $3.8 million, and
attorneys' fees would come to about $1.7 million, it argued.

Based on these calculations, the plaintiffs' total award would
come to $7.5 million.

"Although plaintiffs argue that defendants' figures, though
accurate, are predicated on speculation and assumptions, this
argument misconceives the nature of 'legal certainty,'" Kugler
wrote.  "Defendants need not demonstrate to absolute certainty
that plaintiffs will recover more than $5 million.  Instead,
defendants must establish to a legal certainty that plaintiffs can
recover the jurisdictional minimum. Defendants have satisfied this
burden."


CROSS COUNTRY: CC Staffing Faces "Ogues" Suit in California
-----------------------------------------------------------
Cross Country Healthcare, Inc.'s subsidiary is facing a class
action lawsuit initiated by Alice Ogues in California, according
to the Company's March 18, 2013, Form 10-K filing with the U.S.
Securities and Exchange Commission for the year ended
December 31, 2012.

On December 4, 2012, the Company's subsidiary, CC Staffing, Inc.
(now known as Travel Staff, LLC) became the subject of a purported
class action lawsuit (Alice Ogues, on behalf of herself and all
others similarly situated, Plaintiffs, vs. CC Staffing, Inc., a
Delaware corporation; and DOES 1-50, inclusive, Defendants) filed
in the United States District Court, Northern District of
California.  The Plaintiff alleges that travelling employees were
denied meal periods and rest breaks, that they should have been
paid overtime on reimbursement amounts, and that they are entitled
to associated penalties.  At this early stage, the Company says it
is unable to determine its potential exposure, if any, and intends
to vigorously defend this matter.

Headquartered in Boca Raton, Florida, Cross Country Healthcare,
Inc. -- http://www.crosscountryhealthcare.com/-- is in the
business of healthcare staffing with a primary focus on providing
nurse, allied and physician (locum tenens) staffing services and
workforce solutions to the healthcare market.  The Company also
provides education and training programs specifically for the
healthcare marketplace.


DE BEERS: Consumers Set to Get Class Action Settlement Payments
---------------------------------------------------------------
Rob Bates, writing for JCK, reports that if some clients seem a
little happier, it may be because, after nearly a yearlong delay,
De Beers class action payments to consumer claimants are poised to
go out soon.

On April 9, class action attorneys filed a motion to disburse the
$109 million in funds earmarked for consumers who filed claims in
the antitrust case.

"The judge should sign the order within a few weeks," says Joseph
J. Tabacco, one of the attorneys on the case.  "Then checks will
take a few weeks thereafter to go out."

According to a court filing submitted by claims administrator Rust
Consulting, some 606,044 consumer claims have been filed, and of
those, 574,860 were deemed eligible.  The average payment amount
is $180.75.  Payments under $10 were disqualified.

Rust is recommending that the 5,820 valid late claims be allowed.

Consumers or industry members who have queries about individual
claims or about the process in general should contact the claim
administrators at diamondsclassaction.com.

The De Beers class action settlement received final court approval
last May.  The first checks went out to industry members in the
"indirect" purchaser class in August.  Many industry members said
they were quite pleased.

Checks to "direct purchasers" -- companies that bought rough
diamonds from De Beers or its rivals -- have yet to be
distributed.


DENDREON CORP: Yet to File Documents of $40-Mil. Suit Settlement
----------------------------------------------------------------
Dendreon Corporation is yet to file documents in connection with
its $40 million settlement of a securities class action lawsuit,
according to the Company's March 18, 2013, Form 8-K filing with
the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Dendreon Corporation announced in March 2013 that it has reached
an agreement in principle to settle the securities class action
litigation pending against it in the United States District Court
for the Western District of Washington.  Upon final approval, the
settlement will resolve the claims asserted against all defendants
in the previously disclosed putative securities class action.  The
lawsuit is currently pending against the Company and three current
and former executive officers.

In the lawsuit, captioned In re Dendreon Corporation Class Action
Litigation, Master Docket No. C 11-1291 JLR., an investor,
purporting to represent a class consisting of persons who
purchased Dendreon common stock between April 29, 2010, and
August 3, 2011, sought unspecified damages from Dendreon and three
current and former officers of the Company for allegedly false or
misleading statements concerning the Company, its finances,
business operations and prospects with a focus on the market
launch of PROVENGE and related forecasts concerning physician
adoption, and revenue from sales of PROVENGE.

The terms agreed upon by the parties contemplates a settlement
payment of $40 million, $38 million of which will be funded by
Dendreon's insurers.  Dendreon and the individual defendants
continue to deny that any statements they made were false or
misleading.

"We are pleased to put this matter behind us," said Christine
Mikail, Executive Vice President, Corporate Development, General
Counsel and Secretary of Dendreon.  "Upon final approval of this
settlement, Dendreon will have eliminated the potential
distraction from ongoing class action litigation that began in
2011."

The terms of the settlement must be formally documented and are
subject to approval by the District Court following notice to all
class members.  While the Company expects the settlement will
receive the needed approval, the process normally takes several
months.

                         About Dendreon

Dendreon Corporation is a biotechnology company whose mission is
to target cancer and transform lives through the discovery,
development, commercialization and manufacturing of novel
therapeutics.  The Company applies its expertise in antigen
identification, engineering and cell processing to produce active
cellular immunotherapy (ACI) product candidates designed to
stimulate an immune response in a variety of tumor types.
Dendreon's first product, PROVENGE(R) (sipuleucel-T), was approved
by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in April 2010.
Dendreon is exploring the application of additional ACI product
candidates and small molecules for the potential treatment of a
variety of cancers.  The Company is headquartered in Seattle,
Washington, and is traded on the NASDAQ Global Market under the
symbol DNDN.  For more information about the Company and its
programs, visit http://www.dendreon.com/.


DORN VA: Mike Kelly Law Firm Files Class Action Over Data Breach
----------------------------------------------------------------
Kevin Boozer, writing for Herald Independent, reports that the
Mike Kelly Law Group, with an office in Winnsboro, recently joined
with Columbia attorney Doug Rosinski in filing a federal class
action lawsuit on behalf of two veterans whose personal
information was compromised along with that of some 7,500 other
veterans when an unsecured laptop was stolen from the William
Jennings Bryan Dorn VA Medical Center on February 11, 2013.  The
two veterans in the lawsuit thus far are from Richland County but
Mr. Kelly realizes that since Fairfield County veterans are
referred to the Dorn VA that there is a good likelihood some of
their information was on the missing laptop.

"We will not find out the extent of this for some time," he said.
"Right now we are in the initial stages of the lawsuit, taking
depositions and interviewing witnesses."

He said people have been contacting his firm since the news broke
and that he keeps a database of the callers.  If the suit
succeeds, then those veterans who are part of the class action
lawsuit should receive compensation, according to Mr. Kelly.

This is not as large as the Department of Revenue data breach, but
it is potentially more serious because the health information is
compromised," Mr. Kelly said.  Such information could be used by
unscrupulous individuals in a defaming, embarrassing, humiliating,
and/or derogatory way, according to Kelly.

For its part, the Dorn VA center issued an April press release
notifying the veterans of the missing laptop.  As a precaution,
the facility is offering one year of free credit monitoring to
those affected Veterans.

"Any time a Veteran's personal information may be compromised, we
take the matter very seriously," said Rebecca Wiley, the Medical
Center Director.  "We are reaching out to each Veteran who may
have been impacted."

The Dorn VA Medical Center Police and Office of Inspector General
are treating the event as a criminal investigation which is on-
going.  According to the VA's April 12 press release, there is no
indication the information has been misused and the laptop has not
yet been recovered.


EASTMAN KODAK: Court Dismisses Hutchinson Securities Class Suit
---------------------------------------------------------------
District Judge Harold Baer, Jr., dismissed the lawsuit captioned
TIMOTHY A. HUTCHINSON, individually and on behalf of a class of
all others similarly situated, Plaintiff, v. ANTONIO M. PEREZ,
ANTOINETTE P. MCCORVEY, Defendants, No. 12 Civ. 1073 (HB),
(S.D.N.Y.).

The Court previously dismissed the Plaintiff's First Amended
Complaint because the Plaintiff's allegations of recklessness did
not meet the strong inference of scienter as required under the
Private Securities Litigation Reform Act.  The Court held that
"[b]ased on the alleged facts, the more compelling 'plausible,
nonculpable' explanation is that Defendants failed to avoid
Kodak's bankruptcy in January 2012 despite their best efforts to
fund and complete a successful digital transformation throughout
2011."  The Court, nonetheless, granted the Plaintiff's subsequent
motion for a second chance and allowed them to file a Second
Amended Complaint "in the interest of justice," although it
remained skeptical of the Plaintiff's likelihood of success.

The Plaintiff's Second Amended Complaint, filed on behalf of all
persons who acquired Eastman Kodak Company securities during the
period between July 26, 2011 and January 19, 2012, alleges that
the Defendants violated Sections 10(b) and 20(a) of the Securities
Exchange Act of 1934, 15 U.S.C. Sections 78(b), 78t(a), and SEC
Rule 10b-5, 17 C.F.R. Section 240.10b-5.

The Defendants filed a motion to dismiss the Second Amended
Complaint.

On April 25, 2013, Judge Baer granted the Defendants' motion to
dismiss, saying the PSLRA requires the Court to dismiss the
complaint if the alleged facts do not give rise to "a strong
inference" of scienter.

"Contrary to Plaintiff's contentions, the Court cannot combine
several insufficient allegations of scienter and, taken together,
construct "strong inference" of recklessness," he said. "I have
considered the parties' remaining arguments and find them to be
without merit," he added.

Judge Baer directed the Clerk of the Court to close the motion and
remove the case form the docket.

A copy of the District Court's April 25, 2013 Opinion and Order is
available at http://is.gd/klBPaxfrom Leagle.com.

                       About Eastman Kodak

Rochester, New York-based Eastman Kodak Company and its U.S.
subsidiaries on Jan. 19, 2012, filed voluntarily Chapter 11
petitions (Bankr. S.D.N.Y. Lead Case No. 12-10202) in Manhattan.
Subsidiaries outside of the U.S. were not included in the filing
and are expected to continue to operate as usual.

Kodak, founded in 1880 by George Eastman, was once the world's
leading producer of film and cameras.  Kodak sought bankruptcy
protection amid near-term liquidity issues brought about by
steeper-than-expected declines in Kodak's historically profitable
traditional businesses, and cash flow from the licensing and sale
of intellectual property being delayed due to litigation tactics
employed by a small number of infringing technology companies
with strong balance sheets and an awareness of Kodak's liquidity
challenges.

In recent years, Kodak has been working to transform itself from
a business primarily based on film and consumer photography to a
smaller business with a digital growth strategy focused on the
commercialization of proprietary digital imaging and printing
technologies.  Kodak has 8,900 patent and trademark registrations
and applications in the United States, as well as 13,100 foreign
patents and trademark registrations or pending registration in
roughly 160 countries.

Attorneys at Sullivan & Cromwell LLP and Young Conaway Stargatt &
Taylor, LLP, serve as counsel to the Debtors.  FTI Consulting,
Inc., is the restructuring advisor.   Lazard Freres & Co. LLC, is
the investment banker.  Kurtzman Carson Consultants LLC is the
claims agent.

The Official Committee of Unsecured Creditors has tapped Milbank,
Tweed, Hadley & McCloy LLP, as its bankruptcy counsel.

Michael S. Stamer, Esq., David H. Botter, Esq., and Abid Qureshi,
Esq., at Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP, represent the
Unofficial Second Lien Noteholders Committee.

The Retirees Committee has hired Haskell Slaughter Young &
Rediker, LLC, and Arent Fox, LLC as Co-Counsel; Zolfo Cooper,
LLC, as Bankruptcy Consultants and Financial Advisors; and the
Segal Company, as Actuarial Advisors.

Robert J. Stark, Esq., Andrew Dash, Esq., and Neal A. D'Amato,
Esq., at Brown Rudnick LLP, represent Greywolf Capital Partners
II; Greywolf Capital Overseas Master Fund; Richard Katz, Kenneth
S. Grossman; and Paul Martin.

Kodak completed the $527 million sale of digital-imaging
technology on Feb. 1, 2013.  Kodak intends to reorganize by
focusing on the commercial printing business.


EDISON MISSION: Appeal in Hurricane Katrina Suit Remains Pending
----------------------------------------------------------------
In March 2012, the federal district court in Mississippi
dismissed, in its entirety, the purported class action complaint
filed by private citizens in May 2011, naming a large number of
defendants, including Edison Mission Energy, and three of its
wholly owned subsidiaries, for damages allegedly arising from
Hurricane Katrina.  The Plaintiffs alleged that the defendants'
activities resulted in emissions of substantial quantities of
greenhouse gases that have contributed to climate change and sea
level rise, which in turn are alleged to have increased the
destructive force of Hurricane Katrina.  The lawsuit alleged
causes of action for negligence, public and private nuisance, and
trespass, and seeks unspecified compensatory and punitive damages.
The claims in this lawsuit were nearly identical to a subset of
the claims that were raised against many of the same defendants in
a previous lawsuit that was filed in, and dismissed by, the same
federal district court where the current case has been filed.  In
March 2012, the court ruled that the claims in the second lawsuit
were barred because they involved the same parties and the same
claims as the original lawsuit.  In April 2012, the plaintiffs
filed an appeal with the United States Court of Appeals for the
Fifth Circuit.

No further updates were reported in the Company's March 18, 2013,
Form 10-K filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission
for the year ended December 31, 2012.

Edison Mission Energy -- http://www.edison.com/-- is a holding
company whose affiliates are engaged in the business of
developing, acquiring, owning or leasing, operating and selling
energy and capacity from independent power production facilities.
EME also conducts hedging and energy trading activities in power
markets open to competition.  EME subsidiary, Midwest Generation,
operates six electric power generating plants in Illinois and
supervises operation of the EME Homer City Generation plant in
Homer City, Pennsylvania.  EME is an indirect subsidiary of Edison
International.  Edison International also owns Southern California
Edison Company (SCE), an electric utility in the United States.


EDISON MISSION: Bids to Dismiss Complaints vs. Midwest Stayed
-------------------------------------------------------------
The motions to dismiss two class action lawsuits against a
subsidiary of Edison Mission Energy were stayed due to its filing
for bankruptcy protection, according to the Company's March 18,
2013, Form 10-K filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange
Commission for the year ended December 31, 2012.

In January 2012, two complaints were filed against Midwest
Generation LLC, a Company subsidiary, in Illinois state court by
residents living near the Crawford and Fisk Stations on behalf of
themselves and all others similarly situated, each asserting
claims of nuisance, negligence, trespass, and strict liability.
The plaintiffs seek to have their lawsuits certified as a class
action and request injunctive relief, as well as compensatory and
punitive damages.  The complaints are similar to two complaints
previously filed in the United States District Court for the
Northern District of Illinois, which were dismissed in October
2011 for lack of federal jurisdiction.  Midwest Generation's
motions to dismiss the cases were denied in August 2012, following
which the plaintiffs filed amended complaints alleging
substantially similar claims and requesting similar relief.

On December 17, 2012, Edison Mission and 16 of its wholly owned
subsidiaries, including Midwest Generation LLC, filed voluntary
petitions for relief under Chapter 11 of the United States
Bankruptcy Code in the United States Bankruptcy Court for the
Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division.

Midwest Generation has filed motions to dismiss the amended
complaints, and these complaints are stayed as a result of the
Chapter 11 Cases.

Edison Mission Energy -- http://www.edison.com/-- is a holding
company whose affiliates are engaged in the business of
developing, acquiring, owning or leasing, operating and selling
energy and capacity from independent power production facilities.
EME also conducts hedging and energy trading activities in power
markets open to competition.  EME subsidiary, Midwest Generation,
operates six electric power generating plants in Illinois and
supervises operation of the EME Homer City Generation plant in
Homer City, Pennsylvania.  EME is an indirect subsidiary of Edison
International.  Edison International also owns Southern California
Edison Company (SCE), an electric utility in the United States.


EDISON MISSION: Still Does Not Know If Suit Will Be Re-Filed
------------------------------------------------------------
Edison Mission Energy still does not know whether the plaintiffs
in a dismissed class action lawsuit in Pennsylvania will file a
complaint in state court, according to the Company's March 18,
2013, Form 10-K filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange
Commission for the year ended December 31, 2012.

In January 2011, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency filed a
complaint in the United States District Court for the Western
District of Pennsylvania against the Company's subsidiary, EME
Homer City Generation L.P., the sale leaseback owner participants
of the Homer City plant, and two prior owners of the Homer City
plant.  The complaint alleged violations of the Prevention of
Significant Deterioration (PSD) and Title V provisions of the
Clean Air Act (CAA), as a result of projects in the 1990s
performed by prior owners without PSD permits and the subsequent
failure to incorporate emissions limitations that meet best
available control technology (BACT) into the station's Title V
operating permit.  In addition to seeking penalties ranging from
$32,500 to $37,500 per violation, per day, the complaint called
for an injunction ordering Homer City to install controls
sufficient to meet BACT emission rates at all units subject to the
complaint and for other remedies.  The Pennsylvania Department of
Environmental Protection (PADEP), the State of New York and the
State of New Jersey intervened in the lawsuit.  In October 2011,
all of the claims in the US EPA's lawsuit were dismissed with
prejudice.  An appeal of the dismissal is pending before the
United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.

Also in January 2011, two residents filed a complaint in the
United States District Court for the Western District of
Pennsylvania, on behalf of themselves and all others similarly
situated, against Homer City, the sale leaseback owner
participants of the Homer City plant, two prior owners of the
Homer City plant, EME, and Edison International (EIX), claiming
that emissions from the Homer City plant had adversely affected
their health and property values.  The plaintiffs sought to have
their suit certified as a class action and requested injunctive
relief, the funding of a health assessment study and medical
monitoring, as well as compensatory and punitive damages.  In
October 2011, the claims in the purported class action lawsuit
that were based on the federal CAA were dismissed with prejudice,
while state law statutory and common law claims were dismissed
without prejudice to re-file in state court should the plaintiffs
choose to do so.  EME does not know whether the plaintiffs will
file a complaint in state court.

In February 2012, Homer City received a 60-day Notice of Intent to
Sue indicating the Sierra Club's intent to file a citizen lawsuit
alleging violations of emissions standards and limitations under
the CAA and the Pennsylvania Air Pollution Control Act.  On
December 13, 2012, Homer City and the Sierra Club entered into a
settlement agreement in the Sierra Club's appeal of the permit
issued to Homer City for certain environmental improvements.  Part
of the settlement included a conditional commitment by the Sierra
Club not to pursue the allegations contained in the Notice of
Intent to Sue letter.

The Company says adverse decisions in these cases could involve
penalties, remedial actions and damages that could have a material
impact on the financial condition and results of operations of
EME.  EME cannot predict the outcome of these matters or estimate
the impact on its results of operations, financial position or
cash flows.  EME has not recorded a liability for these matters.

Edison Mission Energy -- http://www.edison.com/-- is a holding
company whose affiliates are engaged in the business of
developing, acquiring, owning or leasing, operating and selling
energy and capacity from independent power production facilities.
EME also conducts hedging and energy trading activities in power
markets open to competition.  EME subsidiary, Midwest Generation,
operates six electric power generating plants in Illinois and
supervises operation of the EME Homer City Generation plant in
Homer City, Pennsylvania.  EME is an indirect subsidiary of Edison
International.  Edison International also owns Southern California
Edison Company (SCE), an electric utility in the United States.


F.N.B. CORP: Awaits Final Okay of Settlement in Overdraft Suit
--------------------------------------------------------------
F.N.B. Corporation awaits final approval of settlement in
consolidated Overdraft Litigation, according to the Company's Form
10-K filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for
the fiscal year ended December 31, 2012.

On June 5, 2012, the Corporation was named as a defendant in a
purported class action lawsuit, the Ord Action. The Ord Action
alleged state law claims related to FNBPA's order of posting ATM
and debit card transactions and the assessment of overdraft fees
on deposit customer accounts. On August 14, 2012, FNBPA was named
as a defendant in a purported class action lawsuit, the Clarey
Action. The Clarey action alleged claims and requested relief
similar to the claims asserted and the relief sought in the Ord
Action. On September 11, 2012, FNBPA removed the Clarey Action to
the United States District Court for the Western District of
Pennsylvania, Civil Action No. 2:12-cv-01305-AJS. On Sept. 17,
2012, the plaintiffs in the Ord Action filed an amended complaint
in which they added FNBPA as a defendant with the Corporation. On
September 27, 2012, the United States District Court for the
Western District of Pennsylvania consolidated the Ord and Clarey
Actions at Civil Action No. 2:12-cv-00766-AJS.

On October 19, 2012, the parties to the Ord and Clarey Actions
participated in a mediation required pursuant to the local rules
of the court. On October 22, 2012, the parties filed a Joint
Motion to Stay Pending Settlement Approval requesting that the
court stay all proceedings due to the parties having reached an
agreement in principle, subject to the preparation and execution
of a mutually acceptable settlement agreement and release, to
fully, finally and completely settle, resolve, discharge and
release all claims that have been or could have been asserted in
the Ord and Clarey Actions on a class-wide basis. The proposed
settlement contemplates that, in return for a full and complete
release of claims by the plaintiffs and the settlement class
members, FNBPA will create a settlement fund of $3,000 for
distribution to the settlement class members after certain
court-approved reductions, including for attorney's fees and
expenses. Amounts related to the proposed settlement were accrued
for in October 2012. On February 12, 2013, the court granted
preliminary approval of the proposed settlement, which is subject
to final court approval.


FIRSTMERIT CORP: Certification Appeal in Overdraft Suit Pending
---------------------------------------------------------------
Firstmerit Corporation has a pending appeal from the class
certification in the Overdraft Litigation, according to the
Company's Form 10-K filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange
Commission for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2012.

Commencing in December 2010, two separate lawsuits were filed in
the Summit County Court of Common Pleas and the Lake County Court
of Common Pleas against FirstMerit Corporation and its wholly-
owned subsidiary, FirstMerit Bank, N. A. The complaints were
brought as putative class actions on behalf of Ohio residents who
maintained a checking account at the Bank and who incurred one or
more overdraft fees as a result of the alleged re-sequencing of
debit transactions. The lawsuit that had been filed in Summit
County Court of Common Pleas was dismissed without prejudice on
July 11, 2011. The remaining suit in Lake County seeks actual
damages, disgorgement of overdraft fees, punitive damages,
interest, injunctive relief and attorney fees. In December 2012,
the trial court certified the class and the Bank and Corporation
have appealed the determination.


FIRSTMERIT CORP: Certification Appeal in 365/360 Suit Pending
-------------------------------------------------------------
Firstmerit Corporation's subsidiary has a pending appeal from the
class certification in 365/360 Interest Litigation, according to
the Company's Form 10-K filing with the U.S. Securities and
Exchange Commission for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2012.

In August 2008, a lawsuit was filed in the Cuyahoga County Court
of Common Pleas against FirstMerit Corporation's wholly-owned
subsidiary, FirstMerit Bank, N. A. The breach-of-contract
complaint was brought as a putative class action on behalf of Ohio
commercial borrowers who allegedly had the interest they owed
calculated improperly by using the 365/360 method. The complaint
seeks actual damages, interest, injunctive relief and attorney
fees. In June 2012, the trial court certified the class and the
Bank has appealed the determination.


FIRSTMERIT CORP: Awaits Court Okay of MOU in Shareholders' Suit
---------------------------------------------------------------
Firstmerit Corporation is awaiting court approval of its
memorandum of understanding settling a consolidated class action
lawsuit related to its merger with Citizens Republic Bancorp,
Inc., according to the Company's Form 10-K filing with the U.S.
Securities and Exchange Commission for the fiscal year ended
December 31, 2012.

Between September 17, 2012 and October 5, 2012, alleged
shareholders of Citizens filed six purported class action lawsuits
in the Circuit Court of Genesee County, Michigan, which have been
consolidated as In re Citizens Republic Bancorp, Inc. Shareholder
Litigation, Case No. 12-99027-CK (the "Lawsuit"). The consolidated
complaint (the "Complaint") names as defendants Citizens, each of
the current members of Citizens' board of directors and
FirstMerit. The complaint alleges that the director defendants
breached their fiduciary duties by failing to obtain the best
available price in connection with the merger, by not utilizing a
proper process to evaluate the merger and by agreeing to
protective devices that ensure that no entity other than
FirstMerit will seek to acquire Citizens. The Complaint also
alleges that FirstMerit and Citizens aided and abetted those
alleged breaches of fiduciary duty.  The Complaint seeks
declaratory and injunctive relief to prevent the consummation of
the merger, rescissory damages and other equitable relief.  The
defendants filed a motion to dismiss the Complaint.

On February 21, 2013, the plaintiffs and defendants entered into a
memorandum of understanding (the "MOU") setting forth their
agreement in principle to settle the Lawsuit. While the defendants
deny the allegations made in the Complaint, they have agreed to
enter into the MOU to avoid the costs and disruptions of any
further litigation and to permit the timely closing of the merger.
The MOU, which is filed as an exhibit to this joint proxy
statement/prospectus, describes the terms that the parties have
agreed to include in the final settlement agreement concerning the
Complaint (the "Settlement Agreement"), subject to confirmatory
discovery by the plaintiffs, and describes the actions that the
parties will take or refrain from taking between the date of the
MOU and the date that the Settlement Agreement is finally
approved.

The MOU, among other things, provides that the defendants will
amend the joint proxy statement/prospectus relating to the prosed
merger to include the supplemental disclosures contained in
Exhibit A to the MOU. The MOU also provides that the Settlement
Agreement will include an injunction against proceedings in
connection with the Complaint and any additional complaints
concerning claims that will be covered by the Settlement
Agreement. In addition, the MOU provides that the Settlement
Agreement will include a release on behalf of the plaintiffs,
along with other members of the class of Citizens' shareholders
certified for purposes of the Settlement Agreement, in favor of
the defendants and their related parties from any claims that
arose from or are related to the merger. The defendants have
agreed to pay the plaintiff's attorneys' fees and expenses as
awarded by the court, subject to court approval of the Settlement
Agreement and the consummation of the merger.

Based on information currently available, consultation with
counsel, available insurance coverage and established reserves,
Management believes that the eventual outcome of all claims
against the Corporation and its subsidiaries will not,
individually or in the aggregate, have a material adverse effect
on its consolidated financial position or results of operations.
However, it is possible that the ultimate resolution of these
matters, if unfavorable, may be material to the results of
operations for a particular period. The Corporation has not
established any reserves with respect to any of this disclosed
litigation because it is not possible to determine either (i)
whether a liability has been incurred or (ii) to estimate the
ultimate or minimum amount of that liability or both at this time.


GARDNER DENVER: Being Sold to Kohlberg for Too Little, Suit Claims
------------------------------------------------------------------
Courthouse News Service reports that directors of Gardner Denver
are selling the company too cheaply through an unfair process to
Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, for $76 a share or $3.9 billion,
shareholders claim in Chancery Court.


GENERAL ELECTRIC: Settles Investor Class Action for $40 Million
---------------------------------------------------------------
Victor Li, writing for The Litigation Daily, reports that after
GE's lawyers at Weil Gotshal spent four years trying in vain to
knock the case out completely, the company and its execs agreed to
pay $40 million to settle a proposed class action brought by
investors claiming they were duped about GE's exposure to subprime
mortgages and other risks during the financial crisis.


GOLD RESOURCE: Defends Consolidated Securities Suit in Colorado
---------------------------------------------------------------
Gold Resource Corporation is defending a consolidated securities
lawsuit in Colorado, according to the Company's March 18, 2013,
Form 10-K filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission
for the year ended December 31, 2012.

On October 25, 2012, a purported securities class action lawsuit
captioned Scott Cantor, on Behalf of Himself and All Others
Similarly Situated v. Gold Resource Corporation, et al., was filed
in the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado and on
November 13, 2012, a similar case captioned Robert Rhodes, on
Behalf of Himself and All Others Similarly Situated v. Gold
Resource Corporation, et al., was filed in the same court.  The
cases were subsequently consolidated into In re Gold Resource
Corp. Securities Litigation, No.1:12-cv-02832.  This federal court
action names the Company and certain of its executive officers
individually as defendants and alleges, among other things, that
the Company and those officers violated Section 10(b) and Rule
10b-5 of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 in connection with
statements and/or omissions relating to the Company's annual
production targets, mine operations and financial reporting for
the period between January 30, 2012, and November 8, 2012.  The
plaintiffs seek damages, including interest, equitable relief and
reimbursement of the costs and expenses they incur in the lawsuit.

The Company believes the allegations are without merit and that
the Company has valid defenses to such allegations.  The Company
intends to defend this action vigorously.

Gold Resource Corporation -- http://www.goldresourcecorp.com/--
is currently engaged in the exploration for and production of gold
and silver in Mexico.  The Company was organized in Colorado in
1998 and is headquartered in Colorado Springs.


HEWINS FINANCIAL: Taps Chicago Clearing to Help With Settlement
---------------------------------------------------------------
Lisa Shidler, writing for RIABiz, reports that a $3.5 billion RIA
is the most recent firm to partner with Chicago Clearing Corp. to
offer its clients a chance to gain access to some of the money
from class-action settlements arising from the 2008-09 financial
meltdown.

Recently, Hewins Financial Advisors LLC and Wipfli Hewins
Investment Advisors of San Mateo, Calif., announced to its 1,000
clients that the firm has crafted an agreement with Chicago
Clearing, a securities class action claim filing service.  The
firm works with 250 RIAs representing some $250 billion in assets
and tracks thousands of security lawsuits from their inception to
the time -- if any -- at which a settlement is reached.
In a world where most people try to steer clear of lawyers,
Chicago Clearing chief executive James Tharin is quick to point
out that his is not a law firm.

"We are a claim filing service," he says.

Chicago Clearing has recovered $100 million since 2009 but its
leaders say they're just now beginning to see settlements on the
hundreds of lawsuits filed in the market meltdown of 2008 and
2009.  One of the biggest settlements in which the company will be
staking claims is the $2.4 billion settlement reached with Bank of
America and shareholders regarding owners of common stock from
Sept. 18, 2008, to Jan. 21, 2009.  Another big settlement was
announced earlier this year by Citigroup -- worth $730 million --
and CCC also intends to file claims in that settlement as well.

Given how slowly the legal system works, Brian Blockovich, Chicago
Clearing's president and general counsel, says that cases filed in
2008 and 2009 are just now starting to reach settlement stage.
It's not unusual, he says, for it to take five years from
formation of a class to settlement.

"To put it into perspective, we're just starting to see
settlements related to the meltdown.  The tip of the iceberg is
the Bank of America case.  Things are very busy, and RIAs are
getting slammed with these notices about these lawsuits.  But they
don't want to deal with all of them, and we have a solution for
them," Mr. Blockovich says.

RIAs such as Hewins Financial Advisors don't pay Chicago Clearing.
Instead, their clients can choose to opt in.  If they do so,
Hewins will share the clients' information -- including investment
holdings -- with CCC.  The filing firm then uses its database to
learn about emerging and actual class actions and pairs them up
with the clients of RIAs.

If Chicago Clearing determines that a client's holding makes him
or her eligible to participate in a class action settlement
proceeding, it files the claim.  If the claim filing results in a
settlement payment, Chicago Clearing sends a check to the clients'
custodian.  The filing firm takes 20% of whatever it recovers of
the claim and clients will get the 80% in the custodian account.

Brian Hamburger, founder and managing director of MarketCounsel
LLC, points out that by using a firm like Chicago Clearing,
clients will get less than they would receive if they simply join
or initiate a class action claim themselves.

"While CCC may take 20% as their fee, this is almost always after
attorneys' fees and other claims administrator fees are also
deducted," Mr. Hamburger says.  "Thus the proceeds eventually
realized by the beneficial owner of the security is quite small.
Nonetheless, it is a good business for CCC and arguably better for
the investor than if they did not participate at all in the award.

He continues: "That being said, if investors or their advisors
would otherwise remain vigilant about such claims on their own and
remain willing to complete the paperwork, they can avoid that 20%
fee.  But to take that even further, if they were to pursue these
claims on their own and detach from the class action, they could
also avoid the attorney's fees.  These alternatives, however, are
unlikely."

Although RIAs and clients can file their own class actions, it
just doesn't tend to happen that often.  In fact, William Steiner,
legal counsel and compliance associate for Hewins, says his firm
had never made any filings with class actions.

"We weren't filing any claims and it was our policy not to file
any claims.  This is an opportunity for clients to recoup money
that they wouldn't have gone after.  A lot of clients aren't
paying attention to this.  Everyone is under the impression that
it's not worth the effort, but this service is great because if
there happens to be a settlement, our clients will get some
portion."

Mr. Steiner says his firm doesn't want to go into the claim-filing
business.

"They're keeping track of all of the filings and monitoring them,"
Steiner says.  "Anytime, there is a securities class action
lawsuit, they are monitoring it to see how it goes.  They only
start interacting once the settlement has been reached.  I'm so
picky with compliance issues, and I took a good look at every
element and decided it was a great way to go.  It took us a long
time to make this decision, because of the due diligence
involved."

Mr. Steiner says the company received the first consent letter
back minutes after the e-mail went to clients.  Mr. Blockovich
points out that all of the RIAs his firm works with send out
letters to clients, and the majority of clients choose to opt in.
Clients can opt out if they choose.

"Thousands of opt-in letters have gone out and only a handful of
people have opted out. RIAs are not in the business of filing
class action claims."

Mr. Blockovich says that many clients do receive notice that they
may be eligible to receive compensation but typically don't do
anything with the paperwork.

"We comprehensively look at all cases," he says.  "We track all of
the cases out there and run them against our database, and we end
up filing so many more cases.  We file for everything we can.  We
track cases that are filed, and we don't get involved until there
is money in escrow.  When there is money in escrow for a
settlement, then we bear down and look at which of our clients may
be part of that class."

Helping Chicago Clearing track cases is its loose partnerships
with TD Ameritrade, Schwab Advisor Services and Advent Software.
With Advent, the company has created a pull-history so that CCC
can track when an RIA's client's security was purchased, sold, the
amount of shares and the price.  This is the necessary information
for filing a claim in a settlement.

Schwab spokesman Greg Gable said on May 1 his firm was not able to
make a comment.

TD Ameritrade spokeswoman Kristin Petrick says that Chicago
Clearing Corp. is an affinity service provider.  "We do not have
any direct connectivity to them from a data perspective.  The
advisor who wants to check a client's trade history would need to
download the information out of Veo and provide it to them for
review.  They check the history to see if there are any trades
that may make them eligible for funds associated with a class
action suit."


HOME DEPOT: Faces Suit Over Violation of Fair Credit Reporting Act
------------------------------------------------------------------
Courthouse News Service reports that Home Depot violates the Fair
Credit Reporting Act by using consumer or credit reports to
conduct background checks on employees, a class claims.


HOME FOR COLORED CHILDREN: Settles Class Suit for C$5 Million
-------------------------------------------------------------
The Canadian Press reports that the Nova Scotia Home for Colored
Children has agreed to pay $5 million to former residents of the
Halifax orphanage after they launched a class-action lawsuit two
years ago over allegations of abuse. The lawsuit involved about
140 former residents who alleged they were physically, sexually
and mentally abused by staff at the home over a 50-year period up
until the 1980s.

According to terms of the agreement signed on April 25, the money
will be placed in a trust account until a separate class-action
lawsuit against the provincial government is resolved.

If that lawsuit is still ongoing a year after the settlement money
from the home has been received, the lawyers for the plaintiffs
can seek the court's approval of a plan to distribute the funds.

The home has also agreed to co-operate with the plaintiffs as they
continue their lawsuit against the government.  The agreement is
still subject to approval during a settlement hearing scheduled
for June 10 before the province's Supreme Court in Halifax.

In December, Halifax police and the RCMP announced they would not
be laying criminal charges in the case after concluding there was
not enough evidence to support the allegations.

Premier Darrell Dexter promised in a throne speech last month that
his government would set up an independent panel to review the
accusations. Details of that review have not yet been released.

The home opened in 1921, but its role has evolved over the years,
eventually expanding its services to promote the health and well
being of children and families within Nova Scotia's black
community.


HOT TOPIC: Being Sold to Sycamore for Too Little, Suit Claims
-------------------------------------------------------------
Courthouse News Service reports that insiders will unjustly profit
by selling Hot Topic to Sycamore Partners too cheaply through an
unfair process, for $14 a share or $600 million, shareholders say
in two federal class actions.


INTERSECTIONS INC: Appeal From Dismissal of Calif. Suit Pending
---------------------------------------------------------------
An appeal from the dismissal of a class action lawsuit in
California remains pending, according to Intersections Inc.'s
March 18, 2013, Form 10-K filing with the U.S. Securities and
Exchange Commission for the year ended December 31, 2012.

On May 21, 2012, Intersections Insurance Services Inc. was served
with a putative class action complaint (filed on May 14, 2012)
against Intersections Insurance Services Inc. and Bank of America
in the United States District Court for the Northern District of
California.  The complaint alleges various claims based on the
sale of an accidental death and disability program. Intersections
Insurance Services Inc. and Bank of America moved to dismiss the
claims and to transfer the action to the United States District
Court for the Central District of California.  The motion to
transfer to the Central District was granted, and Intersections
Insurance Services Inc. and Bank of America then moved to dismiss
the claims.  The motion to dismiss was granted with prejudice on
October 1, 2012.  The plaintiffs filed a notice of appeal, which
appeal is pending before the United States Court of Appeals for
the Ninth Circuit.

Intersections Inc. -- http://www.intersections.com/-- is a
leading provider of subscription based consumer protection
services.  The Company also provides subscription based insurance
and membership services.  The Company was incorporated in Delaware
and is headquartered in Chantilly, Virginia.


LEGGETT & PLATT: Continues to Defend Various Antitrust Suits
------------------------------------------------------------
Leggett & Platt, Incorporated continues to defend itself against
antitrust class action lawsuits filed in the United States and
Canada, according to the Company's Form 10-K filing with the U.S.
Securities and Exchange Commission for the fiscal year ended
December 31, 2012.

The Company states: "Beginning in August 2010, a series of civil
lawsuits was initiated in several U.S. federal courts and in
Canada against over 20 defendants alleging that competitors of our
carpet underlay business unit and other manufacturers of
polyurethane foam products had engaged in price fixing in
violation of U.S. and Canadian antitrust laws.

"A number of these lawsuits have been voluntarily dismissed, most
without prejudice. Of the U.S. cases remaining, we have been named
as a defendant in:

   (a) three direct purchaser class action cases (the first on
       November 15, 2010) and a consolidated amended class action
       complaint filed on February 28, 2011 on behalf of a class
       of all direct purchasers of polyurethane foam products;

   (b) an indirect purchaser class consolidated amended complaint
       filed on March 21, 2011 (although the underlying lawsuits
       do not name us as a defendant); and an indirect purchaser
       class action case filed on May 23, 2011;

   (c) 36 individual direct purchaser cases, (i) one filed
       March 22, 2011, (ii) another amended August 24, 2011 to
       remove class allegations, (iii) one amended August 25,
       2011 to name us as a defendant, (iv) three others filed
       October 31, 2011, (v) one filed November 4, 2011, (vi)
       three filed December 6, 19 and 30, 2011, respectively,
       (vii) one filed January 27, 2012, (viii) five filed
       March 19, 2012, (ix) one amended March 30, 2012 to name us
       as a defendant, (x) one filed April 27, 2012, (xi)  two
       filed April 30, 2012, (xii) two filed May 11, 2012, (xiii)
       one filed May 17, 2012, (xiv) four filed May 25, 2012,
       (xv) one filed June 12, 2012, (xvi) four filed August 8,
       2012, (xvii) one filed September 21, 2012, (xviii) one
       filed November 7, 2012 (which suit also makes indirect
       purchaser claims), and (xix) two filed January 9 and 15,
       2013, respectively; and

   (d) a direct and indirect purchaser class action filed on
       November 29, 2012 asserting claims under the Kansas
       Restraint of Trade Act.

"All of the pending U.S. federal cases in which we have been named
as a defendant, have been filed in or have been transferred to the
U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio under the
name In re: Polyurethane Foam Antitrust Litigation, Case No. 1:10-
MD-2196.

"In the U.S. actions, the plaintiffs, on behalf of themselves
and/or a class of purchasers, seek three times the amount of
unspecified damages allegedly suffered as a result of alleged
overcharges in the price of polyurethane foam products from at
least 1999 to the present. Each plaintiff also seeks attorney
fees, pre-judgment and post-judgment interest, court costs, and
injunctive relief against future violations. On April 15 and
May 6, 2011, we filed motions to dismiss the U.S. direct purchaser
and indirect purchaser class actions in the consolidated case in
Ohio, for failure to state a legally valid claim. On July 19,
2011, the Ohio Court denied the motions to dismiss. Discovery is
underway in the U.S. actions.

"We have been named in two Canadian class action cases (for direct
and indirect purchasers of polyurethane foam products), both under
the name Hi Neighbor Floor Covering Co. Limited and Hickory
Springs Manufacturing Company, et.al. in the Ontario Superior
Court of Justice (Windsor), Court File Nos. CV-10-15164 (amended
November 2, 2011) and CV-11-17279 (issued December 30, 2011). In
each of the Canadian cases, the plaintiffs, on behalf of
themselves and/or a class of purchasers, seek from over 15
defendants restitution of the amount allegedly overcharged,
general and special damages in the amount of $100 million,
punitive damages of $10 million, pre-judgment and post-judgment
interest, and the costs of the investigation and the action. We
are not yet required to file our defenses in the Canadian actions.
In addition, on July 10, 2012, plaintiff in a class action case
(for direct and indirect purchasers of polyurethane foam products)
styled Option Consommateurs and Karine Robillard v. Produits
Vitafoam Canada Limit‚e, et. al. in the Quebec Superior Court of
Justice (Montr‚al), Court File No. 500-6-524-104, filed an amended
motion for authorization seeking to add us and other manufacturers
of polyurethane foam products as defendants in this case.

"On June 22, 2012, we were also made party to a lawsuit brought in
the 16th Judicial Circuit Court, Jackson County, Missouri, Case
Number 1216-CV15179 under the caption "Dennis Baker, on Behalf of
Himself and all Others Similarly Situated vs. Leggett & Platt,
Incorporated - Polyurethane Foam Class Action." The plaintiff, on
behalf of himself and/or a class of indirect purchasers of
polyurethane foam products in the State of Missouri, alleged that
we violated the Missouri Merchandising Practices Act based upon
our alleged illegal price inflation of flexible polyurethane foam
products. The plaintiffs seek unspecified actual damages, punitive
damages and the recovery of reasonable attorney fees. We filed a
motion to dismiss this action, which was denied on November 5,
2012. Discovery has commenced.

"We deny all of the allegations in all of the actions and will
vigorously defend ourselves. These contingencies are subject to
many uncertainties. Therefore, based on the information available
to date, we cannot estimate the amount or range of potential loss,
if any, because, at this juncture of the proceedings, the damages
sought by plaintiffs are unspecified, unsupported, and
unexplained; discovery is incomplete (no depositions have been
taken, class certification issues are not yet ripe, expert
liability reports have not been exchanged); and because the
litigation involves unsettled legal theories."


LOUISIANA-PACIFIC: Continues to Defend Hardboard Trim Litigation
----------------------------------------------------------------
Louisiana-Pacific Corporation continues to defend class action
lawsuits under the Hardboard Trim Litigation, according to the
Company's Form 10-K filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange
Commission for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2012.

The Company states: "We were named in four putative class action
lawsuits filed against us in United States District Courts during
the first quarter of 2012 related to nontreated hardboard trim
product formerly manufactured at our Roaring River, North Carolina
hardboard plant: Brown v. Louisiana-Pacific Corporation., Case No.
4:12-CV-00102-RP-TJS (S.D. Iowa) (filed March 8, 2012, as a state-
wide putative class); Holbrook v. Louisiana-Pacific Corporation,
et al., Case No. 3:12-CV-00484-JGC (N.D. Ohio) (filed February 28,
2012, as a state-wide putative class); Bristol Village Inc. v.
Louisiana-Pacific Corporation, et al., Case No. 1:12-CV-00263
(W.D.N.Y.) (filed March 30, 2012, as a state-wide putative class
or, alternatively, as a nation-wide putative class) and Prevett v.
Louisiana-Pacific, Case No. 6:12-CV-348-ORL-18-KRS (M.D. Fla)
(filed March 5, 2012, as a state-wide putative class). The Prevett
v. Louisiana Pacific lawsuit was voluntarily dismissed by the
plaintiffs on May 31, 2012. This lawsuit was replaced by Riley v.
Louisiana-Pacific, Case No. 6:12-CV-00837-18 (M.D. Fla) (filed
June 4, 2012 as a state-wide putative class). A fifth lawsuit,
Eugene Lipov v. Louisiana-Pacific, Case 1:12-CV-00439- JTN (W.D.
Mich) (filed May 3, 2012) was filed as a statewide putative class
action in the second quarter of 2012. These lawsuits follow two
state-wide putative class action lawsuits previously filed against
LP in United States District Courts: Ellis, et al. v. Louisiana-
Pacific Corp., Case No. 3:11-CV-191 (W.D.N.C.); and Hart, et al.
v. Louisiana-Pacific Corp., Case No. 2:08-CV-00047 (E.D.N.C.). The
Ellis case was dismissed by the District Court, and affirmed by
the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit on
November 2, 2012, and the Hart case has been certified by the
District Court as a class action.

"Plaintiffs moved to combine pretrial matters through a
Multidistrict Litigation (MDL) motion, filed as In Re: Louisiana-
Pacific Corporation Trimboard Siding Marketing, Sales Practice and
Products Liability Litigation MDL No. 2366 (U.S. Judicial Panel on
Multidistrict Litigation) seeking to transfer all cases to the
Eastern District of North Carolina. Louisiana-Pacific objected to
the MDL motion and on June 11, 2012, the MDL Panel denied
plaintiffs Motion to Transfer. Subsequently, the Holbrook case was
dismissed by the District Court on August 29, 2012 and has been
appealed by the plaintiffs to the United States Court of Appeals
for the Sixth Circuit.

"The plaintiffs in these lawsuits seek to certify classes
consisting of all persons that own structures within the
respective states in which the lawsuit were filed (or, in some
cases, within the United States) on which the hardboard trim in
question is installed. The plaintiffs seek unspecified damages and
injunctive and other relief under various state law theories,
including negligence, violations of consumer protection laws, and
breaches of implied and express warranties, fraud, and unjust
enrichment. While some individual owners of structures within the
putative classes may have valid warranty claims, we believe that
the claims asserted on a class basis are without merit and we
intend to defend these matters vigorously. We have established
warranty reserves for the hardboard trim in question pursuant to
our normal business practices, and we do not believe that the
resolution of these lawsuits will have a material effect on our
financial condition, results of operations, cash flows or
liquidity."


LUZERNE COUNTY, PA: Public Defender's Office Lacks Resources
------------------------------------------------------------
Edward Lewis, writing for Times Leader, reports that defenses by
Luzerne County Public Defender's Office of three men separately
charged with firearm offenses, burglary and sexually assaulting a
child will be inadequate due to excessive caseloads, understaffing
and lack of resources, according to an amended class action
lawsuit filed in county court on April 26.

The amended suit, filed on behalf of former Chief Public Defender
Al Flora Jr., and three men facing felony charges, claims the
public defender's office and public defenders cannot lawfully
represent their clients due to limited resources and space and a
declining budget from county council.

Flora filed a separate lawsuit in federal court in April over his
dismissal as chief public defender by county Manager Robert Lawton
on April 17.

The amended suit replaces another lawsuit that Flora, when he was
chief public defender, filed against the county in April 2012.
Trial is scheduled in June.

According to the latest suit:

In December 2011, Flora stopped assigning public defenders to
represent clients who were charged with lesser crimes due to
excessive caseloads, limited staffing and a state Supreme Court
order to expunge the records of nearly 3,000 juvenile cases that
were presided over by former county judge Mark Ciavarella.

In June, Senior Judge Joseph Augello ordered Flora to resume
representing all defendants who qualified for representation and
told the county to allow Flora to fill vacant positions. Flora
reassigned a public defender from adult cases to juvenile cases,
but was not permitted by the county to hire an attorney despite
money in the budget to pay the salary.

Flora claimed county council allocated $2.5 million, a nearly
7 percent decrease from 2011, for the public defender's office in
2012. Flora rearranged the spending plan to prevent staff layoffs
but reduced his expert witness budget from $100,000 to $72,000.

"This budget reduction substantially impacted the ability to
retain experts in capital and juvenile cases, both of which
frequently require expert testimony," the lawsuit says.

The lawsuit says Luzerne County and Lawton ranged the spending
plan to prevent staff layoffs but reduced his expert witness
budget from $100,000 to $72,000.

"This budget reduction substantially impacted the ability to
retain experts in capital and juvenile cases, both of which
frequently require expert testimony," the lawsuit says.

Named as defendants in the latest lawsuit are Luzerne County and
Lawton.


MACMILLAN: Settles E-Books Antitrust Class Action for $26MM
-----------------------------------------------------------
Reuters reports that publishing house Macmillan moved on April 26
to settle a raft of antitrust suits accusing it of conspiring with
other publishers to raise e-book prices, hammering out a $26
million settlement with a group of states and individuals, court
filings show.

The agreement requires Macmillan to pay not only a $20 million
fine, but legal fees and a small award as well to the individual
plaintiffs for their participation.

U.S. District Judge Denise Cote ordered the government to file a
motion of preliminary approval by May 24, a step toward completing
the settlement, after the sides told her in a letter on April 25
that they had hammered out the terms of a deal.

"We are extremely pleased in resolving the claims of class members
across the country in the e-book litigation and we think it was an
extremely good result," said Jeff Friedman, a partner at Hagens
Berman in San Francisco, who worked on the settlement on behalf of
the plaintiffs.

"We also appreciated working very closely in the settlement with
the state attorneys general in the action."

A lawyer for MacMillan declined to comment.

Macmillan is a unit of Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck GmbH,
based in Germany.  It announced in February plans to settle
antitrust suits by the U.S. Justice Department and the class of
plaintiffs.

Four of the five publishers named in the suits, including Pearson
P.L.C.'s Penguin Group, News Corp.'s HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
and CBS Corp.-owned Simon & Schuster Inc., have now settled.

The settlement with the government requires Macmillan to lift
restrictions on discounting by e-book retailers and report to the
Justice Department its communication with other publishers.

Apple Inc. is the only remaining defendant in the Justice
Department's lawsuit, which was filed in April 2012 in U.S.
District Court in New York.

The class action case is In Re: Electronic Books Antitrust
Litigation, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York,
No. 11-02293.

                           *     *     *

Edvard Pettersson writing for Bloomberg, reports that the
agreement resolves both a lawsuit by U.S. states and a consumer
class-action lawsuit, according to an April 25 letter the Texas
attorney general sent to U.S. District Judge Denise L. Cote in
Manhattan. MacMillan will also pay $3 million in legal costs to
the states that sued and $2.5 million to the lawyers for the
consumers in the class-action case, according to the letter.

The settlement follows a February agreement MacMillan reached with
the Justice Department to resolve antitrust allegations. Other
U.S. publishers already reached settlements with both the Justice
Department and with the states. Apple is still defending the
allegations.


MACY'S INC: Suit Over Mislabeled Gold Has New Plaintiff
-------------------------------------------------------
Rob Bates, writing for JCKOnline, reports that the lawsuit
claiming that Macy's sells mislabeled gold took an unusual turn on
April 18: The case got a new plaintiff after news emerged that the
first was the mother of the class action lawyer.

In October, Natalya Barsukova sued the department store in
Massachusetts federal court, claiming that she bought a set of
earrings labeled "fine gold" that turned out to be silver. The
suit sought class action status. However, in his most recent court
filing, Barsukova's lawyer, Sergei Lemberg, acknowledged the
plaintiff was his mother and substituted a new plaintiff.

The new litigant, Clearwater, Fla., resident Isaac Aviles, lodged
a similar complaint, alleging he bought a $194 diamond ring from
Macy's in September 2008 that was described on its receipt as
"14KT YG DIA RING." After a few years, the ring showed signs of
"tarnish and discoloration," and turned out to be sterling silver
surface-plated with a thin layer of gold, which would be a
violation of the FTC Guides, the suit charges.

Later, when Aviles got the ring serviced by Macy's, the invoice
described it as "gold plated," rather than 14k gold, the suit
further notes.

The suit charges breach of contract, unjust enrichment, and fraud,
and seeks class action status.

Macy's declined comment. However, the retailer has previously
denied that its descriptions mislead consumers.


MARYLAND: Deal Reached in Suit Over Delayed Medicaid Processing
---------------------------------------------------------------
Luke Broadwater, writing for The Baltimore Sun, reports that the
O'Malley administration has settled a class action lawsuit brought
by critics who accused the state of failing low-income and
disabled Marylanders by regularly taking nearly a year to approve
medical assistance applications as part of a severe backlog.

The settlement means the Maryland Department of Human Resources
will process claims faster and work to eliminate a backlog of more
than 9,000 delayed cases, according to the Public Justice Center,
the Homeless Persons Representation Project and the National
Center for Law and Economic Justice, the organizations that filed
suit.

"Imagine being sick and getting sicker, and not being able to go
see a doctor because you can't pay," Camilla Roberson, staff
attorney at the Public Justice Center, said in a statement. "Now,
timely processing will at least eliminate one of the barriers to
healthcare that low-income, vulnerable individuals have been
facing for years."

The lawsuit, which the advocacy groups filed in January in
Baltimore Circuit Court on behalf of nearly 10,000 disabled
adults, sought to force the Department of Human Resources to
approve the Medicaid applications within 60 days, as required by
state law. The advocates alleged that nearly 46 percent of
applications in 2012 were illegally delayed.

Ted Dallas, the state's secretary of human resources and member of
Gov. Martin O'Malley's Cabinet, said the administration agreed to
the settlement because his agency was already working to reduce
the backlog.

Under the settlement agreement, the department agrees to eliminate
the backlog of pending applications by Jan. 15, Dallas said in a
statement. Already this year, the agency has reduced the backlog
to 5,245 cases, a decrease of 66 percent, he added.

"These cases are, by their very nature, complex determinations of
eligibility that involve medical determinations by doctors and
significant documentation from the applicant, which can be
difficult to collect," Dallas said.

Dallas added that portions of federal health care reform that
become effective in January 2014 will simplify the application
process with changes to the documentation requirements.

The advocacy groups said they will monitor the agency's progress
closely.

"This is an important first step," Mary Lou Magee-Kern, a 47-year-
old Reisterstown woman who was the lead plaintiff and lost health
insurance when her husband was laid off, said in a statement. "Now
people won't be waiting months or years and getting sicker and
sicker like me, just to find out if they have Medicaid."

When the suit was filed, Magee-Kern had been waiting more than 230
days for the state to approve her application, according to the
suit. Magee-Kern first filed her application for medical
assistance May 29. She received two letters from the state, dated
June 28 and July 30, that indicated "an agency delay has
occurred."

As a result, Magee-Kern hadn't been able to get treatment by
specialists -- except when hospitalized -- for kidney failure,
diabetes and hypertension, among other ailments. Within two days
of the case being filed, Magee-Kern's application was processed
and she was found eligible for Medicaid, according to the advocacy
groups.


MARYLAND SPORTSERVICE: Faces Overtime Class Action
--------------------------------------------------
Courthouse News Service reports that Maryland Sportservice stiffs
employees who work at Oriole Park at Camden Yards for overtime, a
class action claims in Baltimore City Court.


MATERION BRUSH: Ex-Employee Files Class Suit for Unpaid Wages
-------------------------------------------------------------
Kristina Smith, writing for Fremont News Messenger, reports that a
former Materion employee has filed a class-action lawsuit against
the company, alleging she and at least 200 other workers weren't
paid for all their work hours.

Suzanne Caris of Oak Harbor alleges Materion Brush Inc. did not
pay her and other employees for work they did -- getting
instructions at their work stations, consulting with other
employees and operating equipment -- before their shifts started,
according to the lawsuit filed April 1 and amended April 3 in U.S.
District Court in eastern Ohio.

Materion, formerly known as Brush Wellman, makes beryllium, a
metal used in a variety of things from cellphones to military
devices. The Harris Township plant is one of Ottawa County's
largest employers.

Caris, who worked at Materion for six years, also alleges
employees were not paid for time spent changing into and out of
uniforms and safety equipment they are required to wear at the
plant. She maintains failing to pay for these activities is a
violation of the federal Fair Labor Standards Act.

In a response filed to the lawsuit, Materion denied Caris'
allegations and said Caris and other workers were fully
compensated for their work.

Caris is the only person named in the lawsuit. She requests that
others who fit in the class that comprises "all hourly, non-exempt
production employees" of Materion who worked at the Harris
Township plant from April 1, 2010, to present be allowed to join
in the lawsuit, according to court records.


MERACORD LLC: Faces Class Action Over "Looting" Customers
---------------------------------------------------------
Jonny Bonner at Courthouse News Service reports that so-called
payment processor Meracord LLC "loots" customers' accounts by
taking exorbitant, fraudulent fees through a network of "front
end" debt relief companies, customers claim in a RICO class
action.

Lead plaintiff Donte Cheeks sued Meracord LLC and its sureties,
Fidelity and Deposit Company of Maryland and Platte River
Insurance Company, in Federal Court.  The four named plaintiffs
claim that Meracord, based in Tacoma, Wash., changed its name from
NoteWorld "after a number of class action lawsuits were filed
against Note World. . . . (M)any of the events described herein
took place when the company was called 'NoteWorld,'" the complaint
states.

The Courthouse News database shows similar complaints against
Meracord, including two class actions, in upstate New York, in two
other California venues, and in Cleveland and Cincinnati.

"Meracord engages and relies upon a network of 'front-end' debt
relief companies ('Front DRCs') that it utilizes to recruit
customers," the complaint states.  "The Front DRCs offer to act as
intermediaries between distressed and distraught debtors and their
creditors, using inflated claims and misrepresentation about their
services to sign up customers, and charging exorbitant, abusive,
and often illegal fees once the mark is on the hook.  The front
DRCs require customers to set up an escrow account into which the
customer makes a monthly deposit, generally via an automatic
electronic funds transfer.  These accounts are administered by
Meracord, which is a 'back end' debt relief company.  In theory,
the Front DRC will 'negotiate' with creditors in order to modify
or lower a customer's debt obligations and use the funds in the
escrow account to pay the creditors on behalf of the customer.  In
the case of credit card and student loan debts, the Front DRCs
will approach creditors and utilize the accumulated balance to
settle outstanding debts for a lump sum.  In the case of mortgage
debt, the Front DRCs claim they can negotiate a mortgage
modification that will lower the customer's monthly payments, and
that the funds in the escrow account will go towards those new
lower payments.  The reality, however, is very different from
these promises.

"The Front DRCs and Meracord represent to consumers that Meracord
is independent and unaffiliated with the Fronts DRCs, and that
consumers will at all times have control over their money.  Linda
Remsberg-Meracord's owner, president and CEO-calls Meracord 'an
objective third party processor' on her blog.  These statements
are false.  In fact, Meracord is deeply intertwined with, and
actively conspires with, the Front DRCs.  For most of the Front
DRCs, Meracord provides software through which consumers view
their account balances and have the ability to 'approve or
decline' settlement agreements with their creditors -- if any are
actually ever reached.  This software in many cases represents the
bulk of the 'services' that the Front DRC actually provides.

"Despite its statements to the contrary, Meracord does not act as
an independent fiduciary.  Together with its network of Front
DRCs, it loots customers' escrow accounts by withdrawing
exorbitant and abusive fees pursuant to contracts that are wholly
fraudulent because they are obtained by means of: (1) false
representations, including guarantees about consumers' debts being
settled for 'pennies on the dollar'; (2) promises that the DRCs
will be able to modify the terms of consumers' mortgages even when
the lender has previously rejected modification requests; (3)
misleading statements about the success rates of the debt relief
services; and (4) In many cases, the customers are told to stop
making payments to their creditors -- and even encouraged to stop
making payments in order to show their 'financial hardship' -- in
order to pay the exorbitant fees charged by the DRCs, resulting in
creditors initiating lawsuits and foreclosure proceedings --
leaving the customer in a worse position than before the DRCs
offered to 'help.'

"If consumers discover the fraud and attempt to retrieve the
illegally extracted fees, they often find that the Front DRC is
completely unresponsive, or, worse, is nothing more than a shell
entity with no real address and no discernible ownership
structure.  Meracord, for its part, stonewalls customers and
refuses to refund illegal fees, hiding behind false claims that it
only provides 'payment processing' services; that it is 'not a
debt settlement company;' and that it is wholly 'independent' from
the suddenly unavailable (or vanishing) Front DRCs.  By the time
Meracord actually closes a customer's escrow account, the customer
will have lost hundreds or thousands -- and in some cases tens of
thousands -- of dollars in unlawful charges."

The class claims that Meracord changed its name from NoteWorld to
try to hide from lawsuits just like this one: "By changing names,
companies in the industry are able to wipe clean their online
reputation virtually overnight, making it more difficult for
consumers to associate the companies with lawsuits and other
negative consumer feedback," the complaint states.

The class claims that Meracord is a defendant in "numerous cases"
around the country, and has settled at least two cases "that have
severely depleted its available assets, including insurance
policies."

The complaint lists dozens of Front DRCs Meracord allegedly uses.

The plaintiffs seek class certification and damages to be paid
from "over $17 million" in surety bonds that Meracord allegedly
carried.

They are represented by Steve Berman with Hagens Berman Sobol
Shapiro of Seattle.


NAT'L COLLEGIATE: Athletes Seek Class Certification
---------------------------------------------------
Elizabeth Warmerdam at Courthouse News Service reports that
college athletes seek class certification in a lawsuit claiming
they were cheated out of a cut of the profits from TV broadcasts
and video games that used their names and images.

The National Collegiate Athletic Association, Electronic Arts Inc.
and College Licensing Company were accused of orchestrating a
"horizontal and vertical price-fixing conspiracy and a group
boycott" in an antitrust action led by former UCLA basketball star
Ed O'Bannon.

The complaint alleged that the NCAA forces athletes to sign away
the rights to their own images, cheating them out of a share in
the profits from DVD and video game sales.

In February, U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken refused to strike
the athletes' motion for class certification, and last week the
athletes filed a reply brief in support of their motion.

A hearing on the certification is scheduled for June 10.

The athletes say the NCAA tried to justify the conspiracy using
the association's amateurism rules, which bar players from
receiving money during their eligibility years.

The defendants "largely (but not totally) sidestep" the issue of
conspiracy by trying to defeat class certification, the athletes
claim.

For example, the defendants claimed that the identities of the
proposed class members are insufficiently ascertainable and that
the lawsuit lacks common questions required to unite the class.

"Participants in the proposed classes can be readily identified
from defendants' own records, a fact that they conceal from the
court," the athletes argue.  "The existence of common questions is
clear and among them are the questions relating to defendants'
failure to pay former [student athletes] for use of their [names,
images and likenesses] in game footage and video games and their
justification of this practice on the basis of the NCAA's
amateurism rules."

The proposed class "is appropriate for certification ... because
it seeks prospective relief on behalf of current and former
[student athletes], all of whom are being injured by defendants'
ongoing conduct," the athletes say in their brief.

Electronics Arts and the College Licensing Company argued
separately that they were not part of any conspiracy and were only
following the NCAA's rules.

But the athletes said these arguments "are basically a rehash of
their prior unsuccessful dismissal motions and are inconsistent
with this court's prior orders, settled case law, and their own
internal documents.

"There is a wealth of evidence from defendants' own documents and
testimony that will be used to show, on a common basis, that EA,
CLC, and the NCAA colluded" to use former and current student
athletes' names and images in their video games "without
compensation," the athletes say.

"These factual issues are therefore predominantly common ones."


NAT'L COLLEGIATE: O'Bannon Class Action Hearing May Face Delay
--------------------------------------------------------------
Steve Berkowitz, writing for USA TODAY Sports, reports that the
scheduled June hearing on whether an anti-trust lawsuit over the
use of college football and men's basketball players' names and
likenesses should be certified as a class action could be delayed
by three to four weeks following objections raised on April 30 by
the NCAA and the case's other defendants.

The objections, lodged with a U.S. District Court in California,
were in response to a voluminous filing on April 25 by lawyers
representing former and current college football and men's
basketball players in the case.

The plaintiffs' filing included four new and lengthy expert
reports, and the defendants' lawyers on April 30 asked the court
to either strike those reports from the case record or set a new
schedule that would result in a three- or four-week delay for the
hearing, which Judge Claudia Wilken had scheduled for June 20.

If the expert reports are not stricken, the defendants' lawyers
want additional time built into the schedule that would allow them
to take depositions from the plaintiffs' experts and then make the
last pre-hearing filing to which they are entitled.

The plaintiffs' lawyers also asked for expedited consideration of
their request by Nathanael Cousins, the magistrate judge who is
helping Judge Wilken handle the case.

The suit seeks damages from the NCAA, video game manufacturer
Electronic Arts and the nation's leading collegiate trademark
licensing and marketing firm, Collegiate Licensing Co.  The named
plaintiffs, including former basketball stars Ed O'Bannon, Oscar
Robertson and Bill Russell, say their names, images and likenesses
were used illegally by the NCAA.

They allege that the defendants violated anti-trust law by
conspiring to fix at zero the amount of compensation athletes can
receive for the use of their names, images and likenesses in
products or media while they are in school and by requiring
athletes to sign forms under which they allegedly relinquish in
perpetuity all rights pertaining to the use of their names, images
and likenesses in ways including TV contracts, rebroadcasts of
games, and video game, jersey and other apparel sales.

Judge Wilken's eventual ruling on whether the case should be
certified as a class action is likely to be a critical turning
point.  Such a ruling likely almost certainly would bring
thousands of current and former college athletes into the matter
and potentially place billions of dollars in damages at stake.

The defendants' lawyers wrote on April 30 that the expert reports
recently submitted by the plaintiffs -- revised versions of two
prior experts' reports and reports from two new experts -- should
not be allowed by the court for a variety of legal procedural
reasons.

Nevertheless, they wrote, they have been negotiating with the
plaintiffs' lawyers about deposition dates, filing deadlines and
other related matters.  The defendants' lawyers said sides have
not reached agreement on all of these points -- and they wrote
that the plaintiffs' side objects to any change in the date of the
class certification hearing.

Thus, the defendants asked Mr. Cousins to either throw out the
expert reports recently filed or reset the case schedule,
including a new hearing date.


NESTLE WATERS: Faces Class Action Over Racial Discrimination
------------------------------------------------------------
Courthouse News Service reports that Nestle Waters North America
dba Arrowhead Waters discriminates against black sales reps, a
class action claims in Orange County Court.


NEW YORK: School Faces Class Action Over Standardized Tests Issue
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Marlene Kennedy at Courthouse News Service reports that parents
who think standardized tests are a waste of time filed a federal
class action against New York and their son's school, which
punished him for refusing to take a test, as his parents
instructed.

New York has no policy on "opt-out" protests, so students in one
district may be disciplined for "insubordination" while students
in a neighboring district can sit out "without fear of reprisal,"
lead plaintiffs Melissa and Craig Barber say in the complaint.
They sued the state, its Department of Education, the Rush-
Henrietta Central School District and School Board, its
superintendent and the principal of Burger Middle School.

The Barbers say they told their son's school by letter that they
did not want him to take the test.  But not only did the school
punish him for being "insubordinate," it called the sheriff's
office to send officers to a ball field to be sure he did not play
baseball while the school was punishing him, the parents say in
the complaint.

For following his parents' instructions, their son, H.G., was
barred from extracurricular activities -- baseball practice and a
game -- his parents say.  They claim the school district "in fact
. . . arranged to have the Monroe County Sheriff's Department" at
the fields, "apparently to discourage [the boy] or his parents
from practicing."

The school district denied recess to another student, in
elementary school, "for having simply refused (as her mother
directed) to take the examinations," the complaint states.

"In addition, the parent of this child was also threatened, in
sofar as she was warned that 'should these absences [from testing]
become excessive, the district may refer the matter to Child
Protective' Services," according to the complaint.

"Plaintiffs, and other like-minded parents and students across the
Rush-Henrietta School District, the State of New York and the
United States of America, have come to believe that the redundant
and inconsistent administration of high-stakes standardized
assessment examinations . . . are unfair, unnecessary, unduly
stressful, and therefore, in their best judgment as parents,
harmful to their child," the Barbers claim.

New York public school students in grades 3 to 8 are taking new
tests this month, developed under so-called Common Core State
Standards, adopted by 45 states and the District of Columbia,
which aim to teach students what they need to know by graduation
from high school to be college- and career-ready.  The new tests
were administered April 16-18 to assess English language skills;
math tests were scheduled April for 24-26. Similar tests have been
given annually in the past, but the new ones are more rigorous.

That sparked some protests from parents who worried that the tests
were coming too soon after the new Common Core standards were
introduced in classrooms.  The topic is a hot one on Facebook and
in blogs, where parents talk about anxious children and strategies
for sitting out the tests, the (Albany) Times Union reported.

The Barbers want the Rush-Henrietta district be enjoined from
punishing their son for not taking the tests, because doing so
violates his rights to free speech and equal protection "under
color of state law."  They say it also deprives him of the right
to a free public education.

"The defendants' inconsistent, arbitrary and capricious
administration of test and 'consequences' associated with those
tests is a violation of plaintiff's right to an education as
guaranteed by Article XI of the Constitution of the State of New
York, as well as a clear violation of rights protected by the
First and Fourteenth Amendments of the United States
Constitution," the complaint states.

The Barbers' son is a student at Burger Middle School.  His
parents also demand that the state develop regulations to ensure
that standardized exams "are administered in a noncoercive,
consistent and constitutional manner."  They claim that while
Rush-Henrietta students who refused to take the tests were
punished, students who did likewise in the nearby districts of
Churchville-Chili Central, Rochester City and Wayne Central were
not disciplined.  Neither were students who are home-schooled.

"Such disparities in terms of how school districts throughout New
York state viewed and handled students who opted out, occurred, in
large part, because New York state's Education Department failed
to promulgate regulations and/or protocols to ensure that the
students and families that were subject to these examinations were
treated in an equitable, just, consistent and constitutional
manner," the parents say.  They seek a temporary restraining order
to bar punishment for opting out of the April 25-26 math tests,
and a preliminary injunction barring any further disciplinary
action.  They also seek court costs and attorneys' fees.  They are
represented by Van Henri White of Rochester.

Here are the defendants: the State of New York, the New York State
Department of Education, Commissioner of Education John B. King,
the Rush-Henrietta School District, its Board of Education,
Superintendent J. Kenneth Graham Jr., and Burger Middle School
principal Greg Lane.


NEW YORK: Police Officials Defends "Stop-and-Frisk" Practice
------------------------------------------------------------
Heather Manes, writing for Opposing Views, reports that police
officials in New York battling a "stop-and-frisk" class action
lawsuit have offered an interesting defense for encouraging
officers to reach a certain number of stops: cops are just lazy.

Commanders and lawyers have spoken up in the stop-and-frisk trial
in attempts to counteract the testimonies of whistle-blowing
police officers who claimed that their superiors are forcing them
to stop people on the street without much reason to do so.

The commanders have struck back, claiming that the so-called
quotas were goals they had set in place in order to get lazy
police officers out of their vehicles while on shift.  Secretly
taped police station recordings illustrate how the commanders are
constantly battling laziness, and how some police officers will
only do real work if they are getting paid overtime.

"You have 10 percent that will work as hard as they can, whenever
they can, no matter how bad we treat them, how bad the conditions
are," said Joseph Esposito, who was the NYPD's highest ranking
uniformed officer up until his retirement in March.  These
officers "love being cops and they're going to do it no matter
what."

Mr. Esposito also spoke of the other extreme, "You have 10 percent
on the other side that are complete malcontents that will do as
little as possible no matter how well you treat them."

Mr. Esposito said that most of the ticket-writing and stops
occurred when officers were on overtime pay.

One of the tapes released in court recorded a conversation between
a Bronx police chief and one of his officers who only had two
citations for an entire year.

"We're still one of the most violent commands in the city," Deputy
Inspector Christopher McCormack said on the tape.  "And to stop
two people, you know, to see only two things going on, that's
almost like you're purposely not doing your job at all."

As the trial continues, it has become increasingly clear,
according to the police commanders, that they are simply trying to
battle poor work ethics.

"I think we're charged with trying to get the police officers to
work, do the things that they're getting paid for," said John
Beirne, the Police Department's deputy commissioner for labor
relations.


NVR INC: Judge Tosses Sales Reps' Overtime Class Action Claims
--------------------------------------------------------------
Bill Donahue, writing for Law360, reports that a New York federal
judge on April 29 nixed both federal and state class action
overtime claims against homebuilding giant NVR, ruling that the
company's salespeople plaintiffs had wide-ranging job experiences
that made the case ill-suited for collective treatment.  U.S.
District Judge David G. Larimer decertified the case under the
Fair Labor Standards Act and refused to certify it as a Rule 23
class action under New York state labor laws, meaning Patrick
Tracy must now individually pursue his claims.


PACWEST BANCORP: Signs MOU to Settle Merger-Related Class Suit
--------------------------------------------------------------
PacWest Bancorp entered into a memorandum of understanding to
settle a merger-related class action lawsuit, according to the
Company's March 18, 2013, Form 8-K filing with the U.S. Securities
and Exchange Commission.

PacWest Bancorp and First California Financial Group, Inc., a
Delaware corporation ("First California"), have reached an
agreement in principle to settle a putative class action lawsuit
on behalf of First California stockholders filed in the Superior
Court of the State of California, on November 20, 2012 (the
"Action").  The lawsuit, captioned Paul Githens v. C.G. Kum, et
al., Case No. BC496018, names as defendants First California,
PacWest, and the directors of First California.  The lawsuit
alleges that the directors of First California breached certain
alleged fiduciary duties to First California stockholders by
approving the Agreement and Plan of Merger (the "Merger
Agreement") with PacWest pursuant to an allegedly unfair process
and at an allegedly unfair price and that First California failed
to disclose certain information about the proposed merger with
PacWest.  The lawsuit also alleges that PacWest aided and abetted
those breaches.

On March 17, 2013, PacWest and First California entered into a
memorandum of understanding with the plaintiff in the Action
regarding the settlement of the Action.  In connection with the
settlement of the Action, PacWest and First California have agreed
to make the following supplemental disclosures (the "Supplemental
Disclosures") to the joint proxy statement/prospectus filed with
the SEC on February 13, 2013 (the "Proxy Statement").

The memorandum of understanding also contemplates that the parties
will enter into a stipulation of settlement.  The stipulation of
settlement will be subject to customary conditions, including
court approval following notice to First California's
stockholders.  In the event that the parties enter into a
stipulation of settlement, a hearing will be scheduled at which
the Superior Court of the State of California will consider the
fairness, reasonableness and adequacy of the settlement.  If the
settlement is finally approved by the court, it will resolve and
release all claims in all actions that were or could have been
brought challenging any aspect of the proposed merger, the Merger
Agreement and any disclosure made in connection therewith,
pursuant to terms that will be disclosed to First California's
stockholders prior to final approval of the settlement.  In
addition, in connection with the settlement, the parties
contemplate that plaintiff's counsel will file a petition in the
Superior Court of the State of California for an award of
attorneys' fees and expenses to be paid by First California or its
successor.  The settlement will not affect the consideration that
First California's stockholders are entitled to receive in the
merger.  The Company says there can be no assurance that the
parties will enter into a stipulation of settlement, or that the
court will approve any proposed settlement.  In such event, the
proposed settlement as contemplated by the memorandum of
understanding may be terminated.

The settlement will not affect the timing of the special meeting
of PacWest stockholders or the special meeting of First California
stockholders, or the amount of the merger consideration to be paid
to stockholders of First California in connection with the
proposed transaction.  The settlement is not, and should not be
construed as, an admission of wrongdoing or liability by any
defendant.  First California, PacWest and the directors of First
California continue to believe that the Action is without merit
and vigorously deny the allegations that First California's
directors breached their fiduciary duties.  Likewise, neither
First California, PacWest nor the directors of First California
believe that any disclosures regarding the Merger are required
under applicable laws other than that which has already been
provided in the Proxy Statement.  Furthermore, nothing in this
Current Report on Form 8-K (this "Report") or any settlement shall
be deemed an admission of the legal necessity or materiality of
any of the disclosures set forth in this Report.  However, to
avoid the risk of the putative stockholder class action delaying
or adversely affecting the Merger, to minimize the substantial
expense, burden, distraction and inconvenience of continued
litigation and to fully and finally resolve the claims, First
California and PacWest have agreed to make these supplemental
disclosures to the Proxy Statement.

PacWest Bancorp -- http://www.pacwestbancorp.com/-- is a bank
holding company headquartered in Los Angeles, California.  The
Company's principal business is to serve as a holding company for
its banking subsidiary, Pacific Western Bank.


PANDORA MEDIA: Appeal From Dismissal of Video Rental Suit Pending
-----------------------------------------------------------------
An appeal from the dismissal of a consumer class complaint over
alleged Michigan video rental privacy law violations remains
pending, according to Pandora Media, Inc.'s March 18, 2013, Form
10-K filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for
the year ended January 31, 2013.

In September 2011, a putative class action lawsuit was filed
against Pandora in the United States District Court for the
Northern District of California alleging that it violated
Michigan's video rental privacy law and consumer protection
statute by allowing Pandora listeners' listening history to be
visible to the public.  Pandora's motion to dismiss the complaint
was granted with leave to amend on September 28, 2013.  The
Plaintiff consented to entry of judgment.  Judgment was entered on
November 14, 2012, and the plaintiff filed a notice of appeal on
December 14, 2012.

The Company currently believes that it has substantial and
meritorious defenses to the claims in the lawsuit and intends to
vigorously defend its position.

The outcome of any litigation is inherently uncertain.  Based on
the Company's current knowledge it believes that the final outcome
of the matter will not likely have a material adverse effect on
its business, financial position, results of operations or cash
flows; however, in light of the uncertainties involved in such
matters, there can be no assurance that the outcome of each case
or the costs of litigation, regardless of outcome, will not have a
material adverse effect on the Company's business.

Headquartered in Oakland, California, Pandora Media, Inc. --
http://www.pandora.com/-- provides an Internet radio service in
the United States.  The Company has developed a form of radio that
uses intrinsic qualities of music to initially create stations
that then adapt playlists in real-time based on the individual
feedback of each listener.


PANDORA MEDIA: Bid to Dismiss Personal Info Suit Still Pending
--------------------------------------------------------------
Pandora Media, Inc.'s motion to dismiss a class action lawsuit
over unlawful transmission of personal information through an
Android mobile application remains pending, according to the
Company's March 18, 2013, Form 10-K filing with the U.S.
Securities and Exchange Commission for the year ended January 31,
2013.

In June 2011, a putative class action lawsuit was filed against
Pandora in the United States District Court for the Northern
District of California alleging that it unlawfully accessed and
transmitted personally identifiable information of the plaintiffs
in connection with their use of the Company's Android mobile
application.  In addition to civil liability, the amended
complaint includes allegations of violations of statutes under
which criminal penalties could be imposed if the Company were
found liable.  Pandora's motion to dismiss the first amended
complaint was filed on March 23, 2012.  No hearing date is
currently set.

No further updates were reported in the Company's latest SEC
filing.

The Company currently believes that it has substantial and
meritorious defenses to the claims in the lawsuit and intends to
vigorously defend its position.

The outcome of any litigation is inherently uncertain.  Based on
the Company's current knowledge it believes that the final outcome
of the matter will not likely have a material adverse effect on
its business, financial position, results of operations or cash
flows; however, in light of the uncertainties involved in such
matters, there can be no assurance that the outcome of each case
or the costs of litigation, regardless of outcome, will not have a
material adverse effect on the Company's business.

Headquartered in Oakland, California, Pandora Media, Inc. --
http://www.pandora.com/-- provides an Internet radio service in
the United States.  The Company has developed a form of radio that
uses intrinsic qualities of music to initially create stations
that then adapt playlists in real-time based on the individual
feedback of each listener.


PILOT FLYING J: Faces Fourth Class Action Over Fuel Rebates
-----------------------------------------------------------
John Caniglia, writing for The Plain Dealer, reports that a
Mississippi man is taking on Browns owner Jimmy Haslam and his
family's company, Pilot Flying J, in another lawsuit over fuel
rebates linked to the federal investigation of the truck stop
magnate.

Bruce Taylor of Holmes County, Miss., filed a class-action lawsuit
in U.S. District Court in Jackson, claiming that Mr. Haslam's
company withheld "tens of millions of dollars in diesel fuel price
rebates and discounts from customers since at least 2005, in
violation of state and federal law."

The suit brings the number of lawsuits against Mr. Haslam and his
company to four.  Companies in Arkansas, Alabama and Georgia have
filed similar claims.  They have asked judges to have their cases
ruled as class-actions, an attempt to permit a large number of
similarly situated people to bring their case to one courtroom,
according to court papers.

Mr. Taylor's suit, like the others, uses an FBI affidavit filed in
U.S. District Court in Knoxville, Tenn., as its road map.  The FBI
document was used to obtain a judge's permission to search Pilot
Flying J's headquarters and the homes of some of the company's
sales executives.

The document said Mr. Haslam knew about the fraud committed by top
sales officials at the company, and it accused employees of
defrauding unsophisticated trucking companies through a diesel
rebate program.  The FBI and IRS have investigated the rebate
program for two years, and the federal affidavit says they are
investigating charges of conspiracy and mail and wire fraud.

No one has been charged.

The lawsuit cited the federal affidavit for key details, including
that Cathy Giesick, a former regional manager for the Pilot Flying
J, told FBI agents that Brian Mosher, the company's director of
national sales, intentionally withheld a portion of the agreed-
upon rebate with truckers and companies.

The suit does not describe Mr. Taylor or his occupation.  A family
member said he was a truck driver.  His attorney, Don Barrett,
could not be reached.

Mr. Haslam has acknowledged his chain of truck stops has suffered
from publicity over the raids by federal agents. He has called for
a series of changes in the way Pilot Flying J does business and
has attempted to contact customers of his family's company and
correct any problems.

A spokeswoman for the company could not be reached on April 30.

In a statement, Rachel Albright, a spokeswoman for Mr. Haslam
said: "We've been advised by counsel class-action lawsuits in a
matter like this are expected and no surprise.  Our counsel will
review them as they come and defend them."

According to newsnet5.com's Ron Regan, Morehouse Trucking in
Omaha, Nebraska confirms it received a wire transfer from Haslam
on April 29 that now pays back $146,000.

Kurt Morehouse said Mr. Haslam has "made things completely whole."

On April 29, a Knox County judge presiding in the local case
rejected a bid to prevent Mr. Haslam from contacting trucking
companies potentially affected by the alleged scheme.

According to wbir.com, Pilot lawyers were in court on April 29 in
a separate lawsuit from a group of lawyers in Georgia.  After that
hearing, a Pilot spokesman told us the company fully expects to
have a lot of days in court.

"Our counsel has advised us that in a matter like this, you can
expect class action suits to come out of the woodwork." said Tom
Ingram.

None of these lawsuits have been certified as a class action case
yet.

In the meantime, Pilot says it continues to reach out to customers
that may have been affected by its rebate program.

The company also says it plans to hire its own investigator to
look into these accusations of fraud.


PITTSBURGH, PA: Seeks Dismissal of Police Hiring Bias Class Action
------------------------------------------------------------------
The Associated Press reports that a federal judge should dismiss
the American Civil Liberties Union's class-action lawsuit alleging
discrimination against blacks in police hiring because the five
named plaintiffs weren't qualified for the job, attorneys for the
city said in a court filing.

The ACLU sued in August, claiming that only 14 of 368 offices
hired since 2001 have been black and arguing that a selection
process, whose final step was a "Chief's Roundtable" of top police
bureau officials, discriminated against blacks and favored friends
of those already on the force.  During much of that time, the
city's police chief was black as were several commanders.

In any event, only 3.8 percent of new officers have been black,
while 26 percent of the city's population is black, the ACLU said.

Although only five plaintiffs were suing, the ACLU wants a judge
to declare the case a class-action on behalf of about 300
candidates it claims were wrongly passed over.

But the motion to dismiss argues that the plaintiffs have
"extremely weak individual claims" and says hiring decisions are
so individualized that a class action wouldn't be appropriate.
U.S. District Judge David Cercone did not immediately schedule a
hearing on the motion, which was filed late on April 29.

When the lawsuit was filed, the ACLU's legal director in
Pennsylvania, Witold Walczak, said, "Our investigation shows that
every stage of the selection process involves shenanigans that
hurt minority applicants."

But the city argued it had good reason not to hire the plaintiff
applicants.

The lawsuit contends James Foster, who first applied to the
Pittsburgh police in 2008, was No. 3 on a final list of officers
but was passed over by at least 32 white applicants who ranked
lower on the list.

The city's motion said Mr. Foster had three warrants for failing
to respond to citations, spotty work records and a "poor" driving
record with at least nine citations that "placed his likelihood of
success on the job below the other candidates."

Plaintiff Mike Sharp graduated from the Police Training Academy at
Indiana University of Pennsylvania and applied in 2009.  The
lawsuit alleges that he was No. 11 on the final list but wasn't
selected, though 49 hiring offers were made.

The city said Mr. Sharp acknowledged a "long history of illicit
drug use and dealing" including smoking marijuana between 800 and
1,000 times and arranging drug deals from 1996 to 2004.

That "rendered him less desirable for the position of Police
Officer Recruit than applicants with whom he was compared," the
city wrote.


POWER-ONE: Being Sold to ABB for Too Little, Suit Claims
--------------------------------------------------------
Courthouse News Service reports that Power-One is selling itself
too cheaply through an unfair process to ABB Ltd., for $6.35 a
share or $1 billion, shareholders claim in Chancery Court.


PROTECTIVE LIFE: Continues to Defend Suit Over Health Coverage
--------------------------------------------------------------
Group health coverage issued through associations and credit
insurance coverages have received some negative publicity in the
media as well as increased regulatory consideration and review and
litigation. Protective Life Corporation has a small closed block
of group health insurance coverage that was issued to members of
an association; a purported class action lawsuit is currently
pending against the Company in connection with this business,
according to Protective Life's Form 10-K filing with the U.S.
Securities and Exchange Commission for the fiscal year ended
December 31, 2012.


PRUDENTIAL INSURANCE: Judge Won't Certify Class Alleging Deception
------------------------------------------------------------------
Rose Bouboushian at Courthouse News Service reports that a federal
judge will not certify a class that claims Prudential stopped
selling a certain health insurance policy to lock in sick
customers to rising rates.

Lead plaintiff Beverly Clark sued Prudential Insurance in Newark
Federal Court, alleging deception, bad faith, and violation of
California's Unfair Competition Law.  Clark accused Prudential of
"closing the block" -- that it stopped selling a certain health
insurance policy to new customers so as to unlawfully increase
premiums.  When healthy policyholders left, the sick were locked
into the increasingly costly policy and locked out of other
options due to their pre-existing condition, Clark claims.  The
class claimed that Prudential falsely claimed higher premiums
would result from the increasing age of the insured and rising
medical costs, not from block closure.

On Feb. 5, U.S. District Judge Dickinson Debevoise denied class
certification on multiple grounds and partially Prudential partial
summary judgment based on the statute of limitations.  Debevoise
ruled that the proposed 17,000-member class spanning a 30-year
period across four states was not fit for class treatment.

In the past, Debevoise refused to reconsider or to redefine the
class to be certified solely for purposes of liability, not
damages.  He found that "the proposed class and subclass still do
not overcome the problems of class-wide treatment discussed at
length above: materiality, varied conduct, or calculation of
damages by common proof.  The post-2001 policyholders were subject
to the sharp premium increases once Prudential lifted the cap.  As
a result of these sharp increases, the post-2001 policyholders
were understandably likely to call Prudential as to the cause of
their increased bills and to seek assistance in lowering the
premium. Indeed, the court's individualized review of these varied
communications with agents later led to dismissal of two of the
four challenged class representatives, who all held on to their
policy after 2001, due to the triggering of notice and running of
the statute of limitations."

Debevoise also tossed the claim that Clark lacked reason to
suspect the basis of her death spiral-based claims.

"(T)he record shows that Ms. Clark had reason to at least suspect
that a type of wrongdoing had injured her, and that continuous
suspicion was supported by her knowledge of the closed block, the
escalating premiums, and Prudential's proffered reasons for the
rises," Debevoise wrote.  "The record shows that this factually
supported suspicion was triggered in 1993, approximately fifteen
years prior to the filing of this suit.  No reasonable trier of
fact could conclude otherwise.  Prudential did not need to
articulate the word 'death spiral' for her to suspect that a fraud
was upon her."

Nor did the court overlook a factual or legal issue that may alter
its disposition, the ruling states.

"Mss. Clark and Drogell did not learn any new facts to form the
fraud basis of their claims," Debevoise wrote.  "They simply
waited too long to file the claim.  Ms. Clark had already
uncovered the factual basis of her claims in 1993, outside of the
statute of limitations.  That her attorney at that time, whom she
knew was not knowledgeable in insurance law, did not identify the
correct legal theory here is inapposite.  The same is true as to
Ms. Drogell as per her phone call with a Prudential agent on May
27, 2003, also outside of the statute of limitations."


PTT PHONE: Faces Class Action Over Prepaid Phone Cards
------------------------------------------------------
Courthouse News Service reports that PTT Phone Cards dba Star
Pinless provides only half the minutes its prepaid phone card
customers pay for, if that, a class action claims in Federal
Court.


SAFEWAY STORES: Accord Reached in Kona Coffee Blend Labeling Suit
-----------------------------------------------------------------
A report from Kona Coffee Farmers Association, available at the
Hawaii Reporter, says Safeway Stores has settled a federal court
lawsuit brought by a California consumer alleging damages from
deceptive labeling of "Safeway Select Kona Blend Coffee".

In August 2011, California resident Chanee Thurston filed a class
action complaint stating that she and other consumers had been
mislead by the labeling of "Safeway Select Kona Blend Coffee"
packages which did not disclose that any of the coffee contained
in the packages was grown in regions other than Kona on the Island
of Hawaii.  The plaintiff alleged that, in fact, these Kona Blend
packages contained only a small proportion of Kona beans, if any,
and that the vast majority of the coffee was from other
unidentified regions.   The complaint sought recovery of more than
$5,000,000 for consumers who purchased "Safeway Select Kona Blend
Coffee" after August 30, 2007.

Safeway in response asserted that use of the words "Kona Blend"
did not indicate that a majority of the beans in the package were
grown in Kona and that those words fairly alerted consumers that
the packages contained a mix of other different types of
unidentified coffees in addition to Kona beans. Safeway also
contended that the relief sought by Ms. Thurston should be limited
because in 2012 (in response to actions of the Kona Coffee Farmers
Association) Safeway had increased the Kona coffee in the blend to
a minimum of 10% and changed the labels to reflect that minimum
10% and to disclose that up to 90% of the contents was Latin
American-grown coffee.

After almost two years of litigation, including extensive
discovery and expenditure of considerable legal resources by both
sides, the parties have reached an agreed resolution of the case.
With a hearing on potentially dispositive cross motions for
summary judgment scheduled for June 7, 2013, the lawyers for Ms.
Thurston and for Safeway filed an agreed stipulation for dismissal
of the case on March 21, 2013.  The papers in the court file do
not disclose the terms -- monetary or otherwise -- agreed by
Safeway and Ms. Thurston in connection with the settlement of the
lawsuit.

The stipulated dismissal settles only the claims between Ms.
Thurston and Safeway -- and prevents the court from proceeding to
decide important legal issues raised by the class action
allegations in the Complaint.  Dismissal of the case leaves
thousands of consumers (other than Ms. Thurston) who purchased
"Safeway Select Kona Blend Coffee" after August 30, 2007, with no
recovery for the damages described in the Complaint.

Kona coffee growers are disappointed that the stipulated dismissal
leaves unresolved what they believe is the key question raised by
the lawsuit -- that is, Does use of the name "Kona" on packages of
coffee containing little, if any, coffee actually grown in Kona
violate federal and state consumer protection and fair marketing
laws?

Kona Coffee Farmers Association President Cecelia Smith observed,
"Kona coffee growers had hoped that a court decision on the legal
issues in the Safeway case would encourage the Hawaii Legislature
and the Hawaii Attorney General to begin providing the types of
protections that, for example, California provides to Napa Valley
Wine, Idaho to Idaho Potatoes, and Georgia to Vidalia Onions.  We
are disappointed that there was no court decision on the issues
presented by this case."


SCOOTER STORE: Faces Suit Over Dumping Shares at Inflated Prices
----------------------------------------------------------------
Courthouse News Service reports that top dogs at The Scooter Store
dumped shares at inflated prices, costing 2,938 tens of millions
of dollars in retirement plans when the company was investigated
for Medicare fraud, a class action claims in Federal Court.


SEGA CORP: Sued Over Falsely Advertised Aliens Video Game
---------------------------------------------------------
Griffin McElroy, writing for Polygon, reports that Sega and
Gearbox Software are the defendants in a lawsuit claiming the two
companies falsely advertised Aliens: Colonial Marines with
unrepresentative trade show demonstrations.

The suit, obtained by Polygon earlier on April 30, was filed on
April 29 in the Northern District of California court by law firm
Edelson LLC on behalf of plaintiff Damion Perrine.  Citing a
number of California civil and business codes, the suit claims
that Gearbox and Sega falsely advertised Aliens by showing demos
at trade shows like PAX and E3 which didn't end up being accurate
representations of the final product.

These demos, which Gearbox co-founder Randy Pitchford called
"actual gameplay," according to filing, were criticized after the
game's launch for featuring graphical fidelity, AI behavior and
even entire levels not featured in the game.

The suit claims that by sending out review code to the press under
an embargo that lifted in the early morning of Aliens: Colonial
Marines' launch date of Feb. 12, the game's pre-orderers and early
adopters would have no knowledge of the discrepancies between the
demo and final game.  As such, it seeks damages for anyone who
purchased the game on or before its release date.

"Each of the 'actual gameplay' demonstrations purported to show
consumers exactly what they would be buying: a cutting edge video
game with very specific features and qualities," the claim reads.
"Unfortunately for their fans, Defendants never told anyone --
consumers, industry critics, reviewers, or reporters -- that their
'actual gameplay' demonstration advertising campaign bore little
resemblance to the retail product that would eventually be sold to
a large community of unwitting purchasers."

The suit also cites a tweet from Pitchford, published a week after
the game's launch, as acknowledgement of the differences between
the demo and game.

"That is understood and fair and we are looking at that,"
Pitchford said in response to a tweet asking about the press demo
discrepancies.  "Lots of info to parse, lots of stake holders to
respect."

Polygon reached out to Edelson to find out why they had decided to
take on Perrine's case.

"The gaming community had a strong reaction to the release of
Aliens: Colonial Marines," Edelson LLC's Ben Thomassen told
Polygon.  "We think the video game industry is no different than
any other that deals with consumers: if companies like Sega and
Gearbox promise their customers one thing but deliver something
else, then they should be held accountable for that decision."

A Sega representative has released the following statement to
Polygon: "SEGA cannot comment on specifics of ongoing litigation,
but we are confident that the lawsuit is without merit and we will
defend it vigorously."


STANDARD & POORS: IMF Australia to File Class Claim
---------------------------------------------------
Sally McGlew, writing for In My Community, reports that litigation
funder IMF Australia intends to file a claim in the Federal Court
on behalf of about 90 councils, churches and charities against US-
based ratings agency Standard and Poors.

City of Swan chief executive Mike Foley said the local government
was one of the councils in the class-action suit.  He said in
September 2008 the City's collateralised debt obligation (CDO)
holdings with Lehman Brothers Australia was $9.7 million
(including the Federation CDO of $500,000).

In total, the original face value of the City's claim, as part of
the class action against Lehman Brothers, was $9.2 million. This
takes into account that the Federation CDO, worth $500,000, was
paid out in full.

With certain securities maturing, the current face value of the
claim is less, based at $7.8 million.

The face value does not represent actual losses as not all CDOs
have defaulted, so the calculation of loss is open to
interpretation.

While the City took a conservative approach in 2008 and 2009, the
losses to date are $3 million.

This is broken down as follows:

     Kalgoorlie -- $70,000 (sold for $430,000);
     Bluegum -- $500,000 (CDO defaulted);
     Scarborough -- $1.5 million (CDO defaulted);
     Parkes 2A -- $500,000 (CDO defaulted);
     Torquay -- $500,000 (CDO defaulted)

The City of Swan is party to the action known as the Belmont Group
of litigants.

The litigation relates to S&P's granting of triple and double-A
ratings to eight CDOs. The new claim follows separate rulings late
last year by the Federal Court in cases against Lehman and S&P
involving complex financial products sold in Australia.

In this claim, the investors will allege the ratings given to the
CDOs, the value of which plummeted during the global financial
crisis of 2007 and 2008, were made without a reasonable basis.

The investors, which were almost exclusively investing public
funds to facilitate public works and community services, required
high ratings by an independent, objective ratings agency for any
investment they contemplated.

As representatives of investors in the claim, the City of Swan
(WA) and a NSW council, will allege that S&P falsely represented
that its credit ratings of the CDOs were objective, independent,
uninfluenced by any conflicts of interest and reflected S&P's true
opinion regarding the credit risks posed to investors.

Their lawyers will also argue that S&P did not have reasonable
grounds for concluding that the CDOs should be assigned triple and
double A ratings.


SYMANTEC CORP: Faces Suit Over Compromised Antivirus Software
-------------------------------------------------------------
Courthouse News Service reports that Symantec waited six years to
tell customers that its antivirus software had been compromised by
hackers -- in fact, the hackers broke the news -- a class action
claims in Federal Court.


TANGOE INC: Faces "Rector" Securities Class Suit in Connecticut
---------------------------------------------------------------
Tangoe, Inc., is facing a securities class action lawsuit brought
by Calvin Rector in Connecticut, according to the Company's
March 18, 2013, Form 10-K filing with the U.S. Securities and
Exchange Commission for the year ended December 31, 2012.

On March 15, 2013, Calvin Rector, a purported purchaser of the
Company's common stock, filed a complaint in the United States
District Court for the District of Connecticut against the
Company, its President and Chief Executive Officer and its Chief
Financial Officer, Rector v. Tangoe, Inc., Albert R. Subbloie, Jr.
and Gary R. Martino.  The plaintiff alleges violations of Sections
10(b) and 20(a) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended
(the "Exchange Act") and Rule 10b-5 promulgated under the Exchange
Act.  The plaintiff seeks to represent a class purchasers of the
Company's common stock from December 20, 2011, through
September 5, 2012, and alleges that during this period the market
price of the Company's common stock was inflated by false or
misleading statements principally concerning the results of the
Company's business.  The outcome of this matter is not presently
determinable.

Tangoe, Inc. -- http://www.tangoe.com/-- is a Delaware
corporation based in Orange, Connecticut.  Tangoe is a global
provider of communications lifecycle management software and
services to a wide range of large and medium sized commercial
enterprises and governmental agencies.


TANGOE INC: Faces "Stein" Securities Class Suit in Connecticut
--------------------------------------------------------------
Tangoe, Inc., faces a securities class action lawsuit commenced by
Lewis Stein in Connecticut, according to the Company's
March 18, 2013, Form 10-K filing with the U.S. Securities and
Exchange Commission for the year ended December 31, 2012.

On March 1, 2013, Lewis Stein, a purported purchaser of the
Company's common stock, filed a complaint in the United States
District Court for the District of Connecticut against the
Company, its President and Chief Executive Officer and its Chief
Financial Officer, Stein v. Tangoe, Inc., Albert R. Subbloie, Jr.
and Gary R. Martino.  The plaintiff alleges violations of Sections
10(b) and 20(a) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended
(the "Exchange Act") Rule 10b-5 promulgated under the Exchange
Act.  The plaintiff seeks to represent a class of purchasers of
the Company's common stock from December 20, 2011, through
September 5, 2012, and alleges that during this period the market
price of the Company's common stock was inflated by false or
misleading statements principally concerning the results of the
Company's business.  The outcome of this matter is not presently
determinable.

Tangoe, Inc. -- http://www.tangoe.com/-- is a Delaware
corporation based in Orange, Connecticut.  Tangoe is a global
provider of communications lifecycle management software and
services to a wide range of large and medium sized commercial
enterprises and governmental agencies.


TEXXXAN.COM: Cannot Re-launch Site, Judge Rules
-----------------------------------------------
David Lee at Courthouse News Service reports that operators of
Texxxan.com, a "revenge porn" website that hosts semi-nude and
nude images of ex-girlfriends, cannot re-launch the site, a judge
ruled.

Men use the site to post humiliating intimate photos and private
facts about their ex-girlfriends without permission, according to
a class action 17 women filed in January against the site, web
host GoDaddy.com and all of its subscribing members, among others.

"This website is significantly designed to cause severe
embarrassment, humiliation, and emotional distress to all of the
women plaintiffs, and to all the women victims that are sought to
be named as plaintiffs through class-action certification," the
complaint alleged.  "The defendants who own this website, or who
contribute to its contents, or who subscribe to this website, are
fully aware that they do not have permission from any of the women
victims to publish their photographs or their other personal
information.  As such, the defendants . . . are all acting in a
deliberately reprehensible manner to participate in activity that
they know to be malicious, hurtful and harmful."

Orange County District Court Judge Buddie Hanh ordered an
injunction after a hearing on April 16, the Beaumont Enterprise
first reported.  He ordered the website's administrators to hand
over photographs and information from Texxxan.com within 15 days.

Hunter Thomas Taylor, of Orange, Texas, and his parents, Sandra
and Kenneth Taylor, also of Orange, were later named as defendants
in the lawsuit, as well as Austin Ray Ponthieu, also of Orange.
Attorneys for Hunter Taylor's parents and for Ponthieu told the
judge their clients have had no involvement with Texxxan.com.

Plaintiffs' attorney John Morgan of Beaumont told the judge that
GoDaddy shut the site down for copyright infringement, but then it
allowed the administrators to purchase the Texxxans.com domain and
repost content from the previous site.

GoDaddy then hosted the new site, Morgan said.

Several of the plaintiffs and their families were present at the
hearing, the Enterprise reported.

"Y'all should feel good about the results today," Morgan told
them, according to the article.

GoDaddy had sought dismissal as a defendant, arguing that the
Federal Communications Decency Act gives immunity to Internet
service providers and companies like it that host web content
created by third parties.

Hanh denied the motion the next day in a letter to attorneys.

Morgan applauded the ruling, deeming it "the right decision under
the current law," according to the Beaumont Enterprise.

"I don't believe they have immunity under federal law because
revenge porn is not lawful pornography," Morgan reportedly said.
"It is a criminal enterprise. I'm not suing them under federal
law.  The Communications Decency Act does not preempt state law."

The plaintiffs claim the website serves no useful, social or
economic purpose, that it is "merely a blight upon society and a
sick, cowardly enterprise for the specific purpose of inflicting
emotional distress and harm upon each and every plaintiff."


TJX COMPANIES: Denial of Class Certification in 'Ebo' Suit Upheld
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Albert Ebo took an appeal from an order partially denying his
motion for class certification.  Mr. Ebo was an assistant store
manager at a retail store owned and operated by defendants and
respondents The TJX Companies, Inc., Marshalls of California, LLC
and TJ Maxx of California, LLC.  Mr. Ebo contends, that the TJX
Defendants failed to provide him and the class he purports to
represent timely meal and rest periods in violation of California
law.

On January 20, 2009, the trial court entered an order granting in
part and denying part Mr. Ebo's motion for class certification.
The court denied class certification of Mr. Ebo's first cause of
action for meal and rest periods on the grounds that he failed to
show commonality and superiority. It also denied class
certification for Mr. Ebo's second cause of action for inaccurate
wage statements against TJ Maxx of California LLC, but granted
certification for this cause of action against Marshalls of
California, LLC and The TJX Companies, Inc. upon a modification of
the class definition to state that it only included California
employees.

The trial court denied Mr. Ebo's motion for class certification
with respect to his meal and rest periods cause of action before
the California Supreme Court published Brinker Restaurant Corp. v.
Superior Court (2012) 53 Cal.4th 1004 (Brinker).  Mr. Ebo contends
that the trial court abused its discretion in partially denying
his motion by failing to apply correct legal analysis in
compliance with Brinker.

The Court of Appeals of California, Second District, affirmed the
January 20, 2009 ruling saying the trial court did not abuse its
discretion in partially denying Mr. Ebo's motion for class
certification.

"Contrary to Ebo's assertion, we find nothing in the trial court's
order that conflicts with either the majority or concurring
opinion in Brinker," the Court said.

Respondents are awarded costs on appeal.

The case is ALBERT EBO, Plaintiff and Appellant, v. THE TJX
COMPANIES, INC., et al., Defendants and Respondents, No. B214937.

A copy of the Appeals Court's May 1, 2013 Decision is available at
http://is.gd/zUo9I2from Leagle.com.


UBIQUITI NETWORKS: Faces Class Action Over ToughCable Product
-------------------------------------------------------------
Courthouse News Service reports that Ubiquiti Networks
misrepresented its disastrously designed, water-absorbing
ToughCable as weatherproof, a class action claims in Federal
Court.


UNITED STATES: Settlement in Black Farmers' Suit Could Top $4.4BB
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Chicago Tribune reports that in 1999, President Bill Clinton set
out to right a wrong: the government's widespread discrimination
against black farmers, particularly in the South. The victims had
applied for farming loans but, owing to bias on the part of
federal loan officers, had been rejected. Faced with some 1,000
claims in a class-action lawsuit, the U.S. Department of
Agriculture agreed to pay $50,000 to each claimant to settle the
matter. "It's a tremendous victory for black farmers across the
nation," exulted John Boyd Jr., head of the National Black Farmers
Association.

But what started out as a simple attempt to compensate for past
injustices has ended up as something much less ennobling -- an
out-of-control giveaway program that rains federal dollars on
undeserving opportunists as well as the real victims. Instead of
1,000, more than 90,000 people have filed claims, and the price
tag may rise to $4.4 billion. The compensation has been expanded
to include Hispanic and female farmers.  And it has become so
indiscriminately generous that even some black farmers shake their
heads.

Credit where it's due: Much of the unfolding information on this
federal fiasco comes from a 5,200-word investigative report on
April 26 by the New York Times.

Over the years the government didn't quite hand out cash blindly,
but close. Because most of the relevant USDA records had been
destroyed, it was hard for legitimate victims to prove they had
been shafted, and most of them had no records, either. So the
Clinton administration elected, as the presiding judge explained,
to grant people "with little or no documentary evidence with a
virtually automatic cash payment of $50,000."

That approach had the apparent virtues of letting the farmers get
compensation without a difficult court battle and letting the
government conclude the matter speedily and without excessive
cost. But things didn't work out quite as expected. Before long,
the government was swamped with dubious claims.

In 16 Southern ZIP codes, the Times found, "the number of
successful claimants exceeded the number of farms operated by
people of any race in 1997." Nearly a third of payments went to
mainly urban counties. Some applicants were as young as 4 years
old. A former USDA official told the Times that in one ZIP code in
Columbus, Ohio, nearly everyone in two adjoining apartment
buildings had filed claims. One Arkansas recipient said, "It just
went wild. Some people didn't even have a garden in the ground."

Latinos and females filed lawsuits claiming they too had
encountered discrimination from the USDA, but the courts said the
evidence did not support the charge. Under pressure from the
Congressional Hispanic Caucus, though, the Obama administration
agreed to settle their claims for the same amount of money --
though with somewhat stricter standards of proof.

But the recruitment of claimants evidently hasn't stopped. The
Times' report closed with a scene on the night of April 25 at a
church in Little Rock, Ark., with the head of a farmers' advocacy
group boasting to listeners that "he and his four siblings had all
collected awards, and his sister had acquired another $50,000 on
behalf of their dead father. She cinched the claim, he said to a
ripple of laughter, by asserting that her father had whispered on
his deathbed, 'I was discriminated against by USDA.'"

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, a former Democratic governor of
Iowa, defended the program, blaming criticism on USDA employees
who refuse to admit the agency's past mistakes. The Justice
Department said the program may have headed off even greater
expenses.

But that may be wishful thinking. A balance has to be struck
between making it feasible for victims of discrimination to get
justice and inviting widespread abuse. In this instance the
government seems to have erred badly in the direction of making
claims too easy.

Given that, it should be no surprise to find unscrupulous people
taking advantage of the chance to reap a windfall. One Arkansas
farmer who was one of the original claimants sized up the problem
neatly: "Any time you are going to throw money up in the air, you
are going to have people acting crazy."


UNITED STATES: Must Provide Legal Aid for Mentally Ill Immigrants
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Matt Reynolds at Courthouse News Service reports that the U.S.
government must give legal representation to a class of immigrant
detainees with serious mental disabilities, a federal judge ruled.

A class of immigrants with serious mental disabilities sued the
government in 2011, claiming they were often left to rot in
detention facilities for years without counsel.  Class
representatives the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern
California touted the "historic" and "landmark" decision in a blog
post, calling it the first time a court has ever recognized
immigrants' rights to legal counsel in immigration proceedings.

In a ruling last month, U.S. District Judge Dolly Gee said that
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the attorney general and
the Executive Office of Immigration Review have an obligation
under the Rehabilitation Act to provide the mentally disabled
immigrant detainees in California, Arizona and Washington with
"qualified representatives."

The ACLU said that the government plans to introduce nationwide
safeguards to ensure that immigrants with mental disabilities are
now represented in detention and removal proceedings.

Uncle Sam must also explain at bond hearings why immigrants with
serious mental disabilities have been detained beyond six months.

Gee rejected the government's contention that providing counsel
would place an "undue financial burden," and result in a
"fundamental alteration of the immigration court system."

Law students and law graduates who had not yet been admitted to
the bar could represent the class, according to the ruling.  The
judge also found that a requirement of representation was not
inimical to the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA).

"Defendants can hardly argue that it is audacious to require a
qualified representative for mentally incompetent individuals in
immigration proceedings when the INA itself has pronounced that
some form of procedural safeguards are required for those who are
mentally incompetent," Gee wrote.  "By the same token, the
appointment of a qualified representative for sub-class one
members serves only to level the playing field by allowing them to
meaningfully access the hearing process."

The ruling defines sub-class one members as individuals "who have
a serious mental disorder or defect that renders them incompetent
to represent themselves in detention or removal proceedings."

At bond hearings, the government must show, by "clear and
convincing evidence," that detainees were either a flight risk, or
too dangerous to be released, Gee said.

Denying the class's motion for summary judgment on all remaining
issues, the court also rejected the class's motion for a
preliminary injunction as moot.

The ACLU noted that more than half of defendants in immigration
courts, "including 84 percent of detained individuals" - have to
argue their cases without representation.  Of the 34,000
immigrants detained every day, 1,000 are mentally disabled, the
civil rights group said, citing government statistics.

Lead plaintiff Jose Antonio Franco-Gonzalez, 33, functions "at the
cognitive level of a child," the ACLU said.

"In April 2005, after serving a sentence in state criminal
custody, Jose was transferred to immigration detention," it added.
"A few months later, an immigration judge ordered the closure of
his case, citing the finding by a government psychiatrist that
Jose lacked even the most basic understanding of his immigration
proceedings.

"Despite the fact that there were no open removal proceedings
against him, Jose remained incarcerated for another four and a
half years.  Because he didn't have an attorney, Jose never
stepped foot into a courtroom during that time.  Finally, after an
attorney learned of Jose's case and filed a habeas petition in
federal court seeking his release, Jose was released from custody
in March 2010."

The ACLU called the ruling a "huge step."

"While it is a shame that it took a federal lawsuit and protracted
litigation before the government took any action to protect this
vulnerable population, it is necessary that, going forward, the
federal government commit to implementing systemic policy changes
that protect individuals like Jose," it said.  "As the country
engages in a debate over comprehensive immigration reform, it is
important to remember that principles of due process, fairness,
and humanity must govern our immigration enforcement policies."


UNITEK GLOBAL: Investors File Class Action to Recover Losses
------------------------------------------------------------
A class action lawsuit has been filed on behalf of UniTek Global
Services, Inc. (NASDAQ: UNTK) investors who purchased or acquired
stock between May 18, 2011 and April 12, 2013 announced Deans &
Lyons LLP. Concerned UNTK stockholders who seek to recover value
for their shares should contact securities lawyer Hamilton Lindley
at 877-819-8033 or hlindley@deanslyons.com about potential
investor claims.

"UnitTek stock dropped 50% due to the announcement that a company
investigation revealed fraudulent activity within a subsidiary,
prompting a restatement of financials and the resignation of the
company's CFO," said shareholder rights lawyer Hamilton Lindley.
"Our potential investor lawsuit seeks to restore value for company
shareholders at no out of pocket cost to UNTK stockholders."

Deans & Lyons LLP has significant experience representing
investors in securities class action and derivative lawsuits
nationwide.  Stockholders with concerns about their UniTek Global
stock or anyone with information about this situation should
contact Hamilton Lindley at hlindley@deanslyons.com or 877-819-
8033.

Hamilton Lindley Deans & Lyons LLP 325 N. Saint Paul Street, Suite
1500 Dallas, TX 75201 (877) 819-8033 Toll Free (214) 965-8500
Telephone (214) 965-8505 Facsimile hlindley@deanslyons.com
deanslyons.com


UNIVERSAL MUSIC: Artist Privacy at Stake in Royalties Class Action
------------------------------------------------------------------
Eriq Gardner, writing for The Hollywood Reporter, reports that
Universal Music Group, which is defending a class action lawsuit,
wants to keep certain financial information secret.

In 2011, a proposed class action lawsuit was launched against UMG
over digital income.  The litigation from Rob Zombie and Rick
James on behalf of themselves and others under the UMG umbrella
seeks substantial damages from the record label's decision to
treat income from downloads off of venues like Apple's iTunes as
"sales" instead of "licenses."

Just how much money is at stake is an open question.

The lawyers representing the plaintiffs want UMG to turn over
download revenue and volume data tied to particular artists so
they are able to come up with a calculation of damages and order
the information in an effort to gain class certification.

But UMG is telling a judge that's not reasonable, and if it
happens, the privacy of artists will suffer.

The current litigation, in many ways, is a follow-up from a path-
breaking 2010 ruling by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals over a
dispute pitting Eminem's production team of Mark and Jeff Bass
against Eminem's record label, Aftermath (a subsidiary of UMG).
At the 9th Circuit, the judges ruled that a lower court had erred
by not deeming the label's agreements with third-parties download
providers as licenses instead of sales.

The attorneys for other UMG artists want to repeat the success,
which would entitle these artists to collect about 50 percent of
collected digital revenue instead of about 15 percent.

But this case is somewhat more complicated given the potential
number of artists who have contracts with UMG.  Not every artist
has precisely the same contract.  Not all artists enjoy the same
level of success.  Commonality is one of the factors that a judge
will consider when deciding whether or not to certify a class
action.

The plaintiffs' lawyers think that having access to data will help
them sort through the issues in preparation for certification.
And they're not willing to settle for data that leans on anonymity
such as "Artist #437 had 1000 downloads and $785 in download
revenue in 2005."

The plaintiffs are willing to designate the information
potentially handed over as "Attorneys' Eyes Only," but UMG is
objecting with a noteworthy argument on "third-party privacy
interests."

UMG says that "the issue' here is that the plaintiffs' attorneys
-- "all 50 or so of them" -- do work in the music industry.  UMG
lawyers states in a court filing on April 26, "Under plaintiffs'
proposal, plaintiffs' attorneys and music-industry professionals
could review the private financial information of thousands of
recording artists with whom they may have adverse relationships,
and who have not indicated any desire to be part of any class or
to be represented by these attorneys or professionals."

In the case involving Eminem music referenced above, UMG asserts
that "when plaintiffs earlier sought private download data for
just a single artist, Eminem . . . he strenuously objected, and
was prepared to intervene until Plaintiffs agreed not to seek such
data at all."

UMG also believes that the "true, disguised purpose in seeking the
artist names is to help evaluate their case for settlement
purposes."

Nonsense, responds the other side.

According to the court documents, the plaintiffs tell the judge,
"It is ironic that UMGR continues to press for more information
about how Plaintiffs will calculate their damages, but seeks here
to deprive Plaintiffs of important data Plaintiffs can use both
for internal analysis of class certification theories, and to
illustrate for the Court available methods for calculating damages
for any class or subclass.  Plaintiffs should not be handicapped
in these tasks."


VECTOR GROUP: Liggett Unit Had 4 Class Suits Pending at Dec. 31
---------------------------------------------------------------
Vector Group Ltd. disclosed in its Form 10-K filing with the U.S.
Securities and Exchange Commission for the fiscal year ended
December 31, 2012, that at the end of 2012, there were four
actions pending for which either a class had been certified or
plaintiffs were seeking class certification, where its subsidiary
Liggett Group LLC is a named defendant, including one alleged
price fixing case. Other cigarette manufacturers are also named in
these actions.

Plaintiffs' allegations of liability in class action cases are
based on various theories of recovery, including negligence, gross
negligence, strict liability, fraud, misrepresentation, design
defect, failure to warn, nuisance, breach of express and implied
warranties, breach of special duty, conspiracy, concert of action,
violation of deceptive trade practice laws and consumer protection
statutes and claims under the federal and state anti-racketeering
statutes. Plaintiffs in the class actions seek various forms of
relief, including compensatory and punitive damages,
treble/multiple damages and other statutory damages and penalties,
creation of medical monitoring and smoking cessation funds,
disgorgement of profits, and injunctive and equitable relief.

Defenses raised in these cases include, among others, lack of
proximate cause, individual issues predominate, assumption of the
risk, comparative fault and/or contributory negligence, statute of
limitations and federal preemption.

In Smith v. Philip Morris, a Kansas state court case filed in
February 2000, plaintiffs allege that cigarette manufacturers
conspired to fix cigarette prices in violation of antitrust laws.
Plaintiffs seek to recover an unspecified amount in actual and
punitive damages. Class certification was granted in November
2001. In January 2012, the trial court heard oral argument on
defendants' motions for summary judgment and in March 2012, the
court granted the motions and dismissed plaintiffs' claims with
prejudice. In July 2012, plaintiffs noticed an appeal. The appeal
is pending.

In November 1997, in Young v. American Tobacco Co., a purported
personal injury class action was commenced on behalf of plaintiff
and all similarly situated residents in Louisiana who, though not
themselves cigarette smokers, are alleged to have been exposed to
secondhand smoke from cigarettes which were manufactured by the
defendants, and who suffered injury as a result of that exposure.
The plaintiffs seek to recover an unspecified amount of
compensatory and punitive damages. In October 2004, the trial
court stayed this case pending the outcome of an appeal in another
matter, which has been concluded. There has been no further
activity in this case.

In February 1998, in Parsons v. AC & S Inc., a case pending in
West Virginia, a class was commenced on behalf of all West
Virginia residents who allegedly have personal injury claims
arising from exposure to cigarette smoke and asbestos fibers. The
complaint seeks to recover $1,000 in compensatory and punitive
damages individually and unspecified compensatory and punitive
damages for the class. The case is stayed as a result of the
December 2000 bankruptcy of three of the defendants.

Although not technically a class action, in In Re: Tobacco
Litigation (Personal Injury Cases), a West Virginia state court
consolidated approximately 750 individual smoker actions that were
pending prior to 2001 for trial of certain common issues. In
January 2002, the court severed Liggett from the trial of the
consolidated action, which commenced in June 2010 and ended in a
mistrial. The rescheduled trial commenced in October 2011 and it,
too, ended in a mistrial. A new trial is scheduled for April 15,
2013. If the case were to proceed against Liggett, it is estimated
that Liggett could be a defendant in approximately 100 of the
individual cases.

Class action suits have been filed in a number of states against
cigarette manufacturers, alleging, among other things, that use of
the terms "lights" and "ultra lights" constitutes unfair and
deceptive trade practices. In December 2008, the United States
Supreme Court, in Altria Group v. Good, ruled that the Federal
Cigarette Labeling and Advertising Act did not preempt the state
law claims asserted by the plaintiffs and that they could proceed
with their claims under the Maine Unfair Trade Practices Act. The
Good decision has resulted in the filing of additional "lights"
class action cases in other states against other cigarette
manufacturers. Although Liggett was not a defendant in the Good
case, and is not currently a defendant in any other "lights" class
actions, an adverse ruling or commencement of additional "lights"
related class actions could have a material adverse effect on the
Company.

In addition to these cases, numerous class actions remain
certified against other cigarette manufacturers. Adverse decisions
in these cases could have a material adverse affect on Liggett's
sales volume, operating income and cash flows.


VERIZON COMMS: Dismissal of Hidden Fees Class Suit Affirmed
-----------------------------------------------------------
Dan Packel, writing for Law360, reports that the Third Circuit
affirmed on April 29 the dismissal of a putative class action
against Verizon Communications Inc. that accused the telecom giant
of charging hidden fees in connection with its television
protection plan, concluding that the company had not engaged in
misrepresentation.  In an opinion supporting a New Jersey federal
court judge's decision, a three-judge panel determined that
Verizon clearly stated in the terms and conditions of the plan
that a contested fee for repairs applied to all televisions, not
just those under 32 inches.


VITAMIN SHOPPE: Faces Class Action Over Misleading Consumers
------------------------------------------------------------
Courthouse News Service reports that Vitamin Shoppe misleads
consumers about the dietary supplement True Athlete Training
Formula because it uses an ingredient that is "useless" for
building muscle, while underdosing on more effective compounds, a
class claims.


VOLKSWAGEN GROUP: Settles Class Action Over CVT Failures
--------------------------------------------------------
Mashfique Hussain Chowdhury, writing for Drive Arabia, reports
that a class-action lawsuit against the Volkswagen Group of
America was brought on by owners of 2002-2006 Audi A4 and A6
models over alleged defects with the CVT automatic.  That lawsuit,
involving 64,000 cars in the United States, has now been settled
by Audi.

According to the New York Times, the German automaker continues to
deny all allegations, claiming that they settled the case because
it was "mindful of the fact that future protracted litigation,
with the burdens and uncertainties it creates, may not be in the
best interests of their customers."

As part of the settlement, several parts of the original
powertrain coverage, including transmission control modules, will
have their warranty bumped up from 4 years/80,000 km to 10
years/160,000 km for the original owner, and it will reimburse
owners who paid for specific repairs if they occurred within the
extended warranty coverage.  The agreement also includes trade-in
reimbursements for lost value if the vehicle was sold or traded
with no repair.  Excluded from the settlement are claims for
personal injury, property damage or subrogation.

However, neither the extended warranty nor the settlement is valid
outside the United States.


WELLS FARGO: Settles Medical Capital Class Action for $105 Mil.
---------------------------------------------------------------
Matthias Rieker, writing for Dow Jones Newswires, reports that
Wells Fargo & Co. agreed to pay $105 million to investors of
defunct medical-receivables-financing-company Medical Capital
Holdings Inc.

The San Francisco bank was a trustee for Medical Capital
securities, and on April 25 settled a class action by investors,
according to a court document made public on April 30.

In July 2009, the Securities and Exchange Commission alleged
Medical Capital affiliates defrauded investors; one month later,
the company went into receivership.  In September that year,
investors who had bought bonds issued by Medical Capital
affiliates initiated a lawsuit against Wells Fargo and Bank of New
York Mellon Corp., another trustee, alleging the banks failed in
their role as trustees by not catching the fraud.

From 2001 through 2009, Medical Capital, based in Anaheim, Calif.,
raised about $2.2 billion from over 20,000 investors through nine
private-placement offerings of promissory notes, according to the
Financial Industry Regulatory Authority.

Wells Fargo denied wrongdoing and that it acted improperly,
according to the settlement document.  A spokeswoman for the bank
said on April 30, "This case is really about a fraud committed by
Medical Capital, which unfortunately caused a number of parties to
suffer losses.  We are pleased to be able to put this matter
behind us."

Bank of New York Mellon had settled a similar lawsuit in December
for $114 million.


WELLS FARGO: Calif. Judge Won't Dismiss RICO & Fraud Claims
-----------------------------------------------------------
Dan McCue, writing for the Courthouse News Service, reports that a
federal judge in San Francisco refused to dismiss a class action
accusing Wells Fargo of charging homebuyers who go into default
inflated fees and interest rates.

In a lawsuit filed in February 2012, lead plaintiffs Latara Bias,
Eric Breaux and Nan White-Price claimed Wells Fargo and J.P Morgan
Chase marked up default-related fees charged by third-party
vendors -- often by 100 percent or more -- and then passed the
inflated bill to borrowers.  The plaintiffs said their mortgage
contracts never disclosed that the lenders could mark up the
actual cost of default-related services to make a profit.

Wells Fargo routinely assessed these inflated fees "even when they
[were] unnecessary and inappropriate," the 2012 lawsuit states.

"Employing this strategy, defendants are able to quietly profit
from default-related service fees at the expense of struggling
consumers," the plaintiffs claimed. "Indeed, in the fourth quarter
of 2011 alone, defendant Wells Fargo & Co. saw a 20 percent
increase in profits."

They sued for RICO violations, conspiracy to violate RICO, fraud
and violations of California's business code.

The claims against J.P Morgan Chase were severed into a separate
action.

In its motion to dismiss, Wells Fargo argued that Louisiana law
should apply, not California law, because the plaintiffs bought
homes in Louisiana.

But U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers said the
allegations go further up the chain.

"[D]rawing all reasonable inferences in favor of plaintiffs, the
totality of plaintiffs' allegations sufficiently state that the
scheme was initiated and perpetrated by executives in California,"
Rogers wrote.  She added that further discovery is needed to
determine if the claim "is ultimately tied to California solely by
a California headquarters."  That determination "is better suited
for the class certification stage," she said.

Judge Rogers also rejected Wells Fargo's claim that the plaintiffs
failed to plead "with particularity" their fraudulent business
practices claim.

"Plaintiffs have alleged numerous instances where omitted
information could have been revealed -- namely, in the mortgage
agreements themselves, in the mortgage statements reflecting the
marked-up fees, or during communications with Wells Fargo where it
told plaintiffs that the fees were in accordance with their
mortgage agreements," Rogers wrote.

Similarly, she rejected the bank's claim that the RICO claims
should be dismissed for lack of standing.

"Plaintiffs allege they paid marked-up fees. Wells Fargo's
argument that no 'injury in fact' exists where the charges
assessed were within the market rate is not persuasive," she
wrote. "A consumer who has been overcharged can claim injury to
property under RICO based on a wrongful deprivation of money,
which is a form of property."

Rogers continued, "As alleged, the fraud is equally about the
failure to disclose material information as it is that the amounts
demanded on mortgage statements were false because they did not
correspond to the actual amounts owed pursuant to the mortgage
agreements relied upon by defendants."

She also rejected the lender's bid to have the unjust enrichment
claim tossed.

"Plaintiffs have pled sufficient facts to support a claim for
unjust enrichment," Rogers concluded. "Whether there was legal
justification for Wells Fargo's conduct such that it was 'unjust'
is another factual issue that should proceed beyond the
pleadings."


* Democrats Want SEC to Ban Mandatory Arbitration Clauses
---------------------------------------------------------
Caitlin Nish, writing for Dow Jones Newswires, reports that dozens
of congressional Democrats are joining the push for the Securities
and Exchange Commission to prevent brokerages from including
mandatory arbitration clauses in their contracts with clients.

Such clauses are standard in brokerage contracts, requiring any
client claim of losses to be argued in binding arbitration instead
of the courts.

"Ensuring a choice of forum, particularly for small investors,
heightens fairness and ultimately enhances participation in our
capital markets," a group of 37 members of the House and Senate
wrote in a letter to SEC Chairman Mary Jo White on April 30.  "We
are deeply concerned that the Commission's failure to respond to
the dangers posed by widespread forced arbitration will weaken
existing investor protections."

The 2010 Dodd-Frank Act authorized the SEC to prohibit or restrict
arbitration requirements for both broker-dealers and investment
advisers, but the agency has yet to take action on the issue.  The
lawmakers wrote that a recent move by Charles Schwab Corp. to
expand its mandatory arbitration clause increases the need for
quick action.

The discount brokerage is entangled in a dispute with the
Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, Wall Street's self-
regulator, over its inclusion of a provision in its contracts
forcing customers to waive their rights to participate in class-
action lawsuits.

Sen. Al Franken (D, Minn.) and 36 lawmakers urge the SEC to ban
mandatory arbitration clauses.

Such a clause essentially prevents investors from being able to
pursue any group action.  Arbitrators in Finra's dispute-
resolution forum, where investors must bring all claims against
their brokers, aren't able to decide those types of cases.

Finra's enforcement division brought a complaint charging that its
rules prohibit the use of class-action waivers by brokerage and
investment-banking firms.  But a hearing panel earlier this year
dismissed part of that complaint, ruling that the regulator can't
enforce its own rules because they are in conflict with federal
arbitration law.

In their letter on April 30, the lawmakers wrote that the
ambiguity created by the panel's ruling underscores the urgency
with which the commission should adopt rules.  Finra is appealing
the hearing panel's decision to its appeals board and either party
can later appeal its ruling to the SEC.

Proponents of arbitration argue that it is the fastest and least
expensive option and that only lawyers would benefit from
investors bringing claims to court.  The lawmakers wrote in their
letter that if arbitration indeed offers an efficient forum,
investors may choose that option -- but they should be given the
choice.

"It is equally important that investors not be precluded from
bringing class actions because of contractual fine print imposed
by a mandatory waiver class action clause," they said.

Spearheaded by Sen. Al Franken (D, Minn.), the letter was signed
by 13 other Democratic senators, one Independent and 22 Democratic
representatives.

The letter follows other recent calls by SEC member Luis Aguilar
and state securities regulators to ban mandatory arbitration
clauses.

At a conference earlier this month, Mr. Aguilar said the
commission must be proactive.

"By providing investors with the ability to choose the forum in
which to bring their legal claims and protect their legal rights,
we enhance investor protection and add more teeth to our federal
securities laws," he said at the time.


* Improvements Expected in Bankruptcy Reporting Procedures
----------------------------------------------------------
According to The New York Times' Ann Carrns, when you file for
personal bankruptcy protection and have debts discharged by the
court, your credit report is supposed to be updated to reflect
that you no longer have to pay those bills.

In the past, the big three credit reporting bureaus were not
always so good about doing that.  But in the last few years, the
bureaus have become much better, says John Ulzheimer, president of
consumer education at SmartCredit.com.

The reason, he said, is a settlement agreement the bureaus reached
to as part of a class-action lawsuit. (Mr. Ulzheimer was an expert
witness on behalf of plaintiffs in the suit.)

The class-action case, which began as multiple suits in 2005 and
2006, said that the major credit bureaus -- Experian, Equifax and
TransUnion -- issued credit reports stating that consumers were
delinquent in making payments on debts that had been eliminated in
bankruptcy.  Some plaintiffs also said the credit bureaus did not
investigate the errors, even after they made the bureaus aware of
a problem.

A $45 million financial settlement in the suit was approved by the
trial court, but was thrown out in April by the United States
Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.  The appeals court found
that some plaintiffs in the case stood to benefit more than
others, creating an improper conflict.

Improvements in the bureaus' bankruptcy reporting procedures,
however, had already gone into effect, as part of an earlier
agreement reached as part of the suit in 2008, Mr. Ulzheimer said.
As part of that settlement, the credit bureaus agreed to put in
place systems to ensure debts accrued before bankruptcy were
accurately reported as being included in a bankruptcy filing. (As
long as the debts are eligible, of course.  Some debts, like
student loans, cannot be discharged in a bankruptcy.)

The bankruptcy and its negative effect remains on your credit
report for years -- 10, in the case of a Chapter 7 filing.  So is
it really a big deal if your report incorrectly shows that you
still owe some debts, since your credit is ruined anyway?

Well, yes, Mr. Ulzheimer said.  It is true that in the year or two
immediately after a bankruptcy filing, your credit rating will
suffer greatly.  If you stay on top of new debts, though, it
should gradually begin to improve.  But if old debts are still
incorrectly shown as due and payable, your credit score would be
worse than it should be.

Accurately reflecting the status of your debts "makes the best out
of a bad situation," he said.

You should not expect all traces of prior delinquency to magically
disappear overnight, however.  Experian's Web site notes that
after a debt is discharged in a bankruptcy, the associated account
is not immediately deleted from your credit history.  Rather, the
site explains, the accounts are "updated" so show they are
included in the bankruptcy, so there is no balance due.


* Pre-Class Certification Communications Carry Big Upside
---------------------------------------------------------
In an article at Workforce's The Practical Employer, Jon Hyman, a
partner in the Labor & Employment group of Kohrman Jackson &
Krantz, reports that there are significant strategic decisions
that companies and their attorneys must make when defending class
action lawsuits.  Pre-certification communications with potential
class members carry a big upside, albeit with the potential of
significant risk.

Have you heard that the new owner of the Cleveland Browns has
gotten himself into a bit of legal trouble? It's alleged that
Jimmy Haslem's other business, Pilot Flying J, defrauded trucking
companies of fuel rebates.  In an effort to head-off a stream of
civil lawsuits, Mr. Haslam has been meeting with customers to
settle the alleged missing rebates.  One such customer sought a
temporary restraining order to stop such meetings because,
according to the Wall Street Journal, Pilot was "obtaining
releases, and settling claims before the potential class members
even know the full extent of their claims."  On April 29, the
court denied the restraining order, permitting Mr. Haslam's
company to continue attempting to settle these claims.

Recall that just two weeks ago, the Supreme Court decided a case
involving the pick-off named plaintiffs in wage and hour
collective actions.  In the Genesis Healthcare case, however, the
employer communicated the offer to the plaintiff through her
attorney.  What happens, however, if the employer communicates
directly with un-represented and un-named members of a yet-to-be-
certified class? Is there anything prohibiting an employer from
contacting them directly in an effort to obtain settlements of
their potential claims? It depends.

There is nothing inherently unethical in defense counsel
contacting putative class members at the pre-certification stage.
According to ABA Comm. on Ethics and Prof'l Responsibility, Formal
Op. 07-445 (2007), communications between defense counsel and
putative class members does not violate the Models Rules of
Professional Responsibility because there is no attorney-client
relationship between plaintiffs' counsel and members of an un-
certified, putative class.

Yet, a court still might limit such communications if they are
designed to confuse or coerce.

In Gulf Oil v. Bernard (1981), the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the
argument that defense counsel are per se prohibited from
contacting putative class members before a class is certified.
Instead, a court can only limit pre-certification communications
to address communications that misrepresent the status or effect
of the case or that have an obvious potential for confusion, and
must be based on "a specific record showing by the moving party of
the particular abuses by which it is threatened."

In accordance with the Supreme Court's Bernard decision, federal
district courts have routinely refused to exercise their
supervisory authority over communications with putative class
members in situations where the complaining party cannot
demonstrate actual abuses.  Such abuses that would justify a gag
order include communications that coerce putative members into
excluding themselves from the class, undermine cooperation with or
confidence in plaintiffs' counsel, or suggest retaliation for
participating in or assisting the class.

For example, in Parks v. Eastwood Ins. Servs. (C.D. Cal. 2002),
the named plaintiffs brought a collective action against their
employer for unpaid overtime under the Fair Labor Standard Act.
Prior to sending a court-approved notice to putative class
members, the employer sent a memorandum to its employees asking
them to contact the company's general counsel if they had any
questions regarding the case.  The court concluded that a curative
communication was unnecessary because the at-issue memorandum was
not coercive and did not suggest that any employee would be
retaliated against for joining the class.


* Shop Owner Wants 100 Other Bread Distributors to Join Suit
------------------------------------------------------------
The News Age Online reports that the Constitutional Court was set
to hear an application for leave to appeal against a judgment by
the Supreme Court of Appeal which said those short-changed by the
price fixing could not lodge a "class action" (to jointly sue) the
three companies.

Imraan Ismail Mukuddam, a Cape Town shop owner and bread
distributor, is the main applicant in the matter, but he wants the
court to allow 100 other bread distributors to join in and lodge a
single lawsuit.

"It is accordingly submitted that, in a case where a group of
people has suffered injury as a result of the unlawful conduct of
a wrongdoer, their claims are relatively modest and they do not
have the financial means to pursue their claims individually, the
class action constitutes the sole means of providing effective
access to justice to the class," Mr. Mukuddam's lawyer Paul
Hoffman, SC said in his heads of argument.


* Wage-and-Hour Lawsuits Rise in North Carolina
-----------------------------------------------
Chris Bagley, writing for Triangle Business Journal, reports that
lawsuits and investigations of unpaid wages and other alleged off-
the-clock work have been piling up for about five years in North
Carolina.  But attorneys say those don't tell the full story,
because so many North Carolina companies are sued and investigated
in other jurisdictions.  That's a particularly important point for
collective lawsuits, which are similar to class actions, and often
with similarly high stakes.

Like a class action, a collective action for 100 employees is also
more efficient than separate lawsuits for employees who work for
the same employer at 100 different locations, of course.  Relative
to class actions, collectives involve fewer workers and are
considered easier to win, says David Woodard, a partner at Poyner
Spruill in Raleigh who travels frequently to Florida and elsewhere
in the course of defending clients that are based in North
Carolina.

Attorneys at Poyner, Kilpatrick Stockton and other defense-side
firms say their volume of out-of-state work has been surging in
the last few years.  Ogletree Deakins, an employer-side firm with
a large Raleigh office, reported revenue growth of 17 percent last
year, and one of the firm's leaders in Raleigh pointed to large,
complex employment litigation as a key reason.

Employees can also file complaints of nonpayment and underpayment
anonymously with the U.S. Department of Labor.  You can see in the
graph at right that growing numbers of them have recovered back
wages as a result, but employer-side attorneys say private-party
lawsuits have multiplied more dramatically.

Many of those lawyers end up traveling frequently to federal
courts in California, Chicago and New York City.  Employment laws
in those states are relatively favorable for plaintiffs, which
prompts lots of plaintiff-side firms to set up shop there.

Some lawsuits end up in federal court districts there for the
simple reason that that's where employee-side attorneys choose
file them.  Numerous cases are filed in the corresponding state
courts but then transferred to federal court at the request of
defense attorneys who see federal court as a relatively good venue
for employers.  In both situations, an employer with employees in
New York and Research Triangle Park is more likely to be sued in
New York in part because the Big Apple is home to far, far more of
the large plaintiff-side firms that focus on collective and class
actions.


                             *********

S U B S C R I P T I O N  I N F O R M A T I O N

Class Action Reporter is a daily newsletter, co-published by
Bankruptcy Creditors' Service, Inc., Fairless Hills, Pennsylvania,
USA, and Beard Group, Inc., Washington, D.C., USA. Noemi Irene
A. Adala, Joy A. Agravante, Valerie Udtuhan, Julie Anne L. Toledo,
Christopher Patalinghug, Frauline Abangan and Peter A. Chapman,
Editors.

Copyright 2013. All rights reserved. ISSN 1525-2272.

This material is copyrighted and any commercial use, resale or
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