May 17, 2024 LAWSUIT LEADERBOARD | LEGAL MARKETING | TOP LEADS | GET LEADS Welcome to the TGIF edition of Law News for You—brought to you by LawyersandSettlements.com.
Lawsuit Leaderboard
The Top 10 legal news stories our readers were most interested in this week.
#1 United Airlines California Wage Statement SettlementLos Angeles, CA - Many of us don’t realize that by providing accurate and complete information in pay stubs, workers’ rights are protected. With that in mind, it helps to understand why a federal judge at the beginning of February granted preliminary approval of a whopping $53.5 million class action and Private Attorneys General Act (PAGA) settlement in a wage statement lawsuit filed by California-based United Airlines attendants. The settlement stems from Vidrio v. United Airlines, Inc. alleging the wage statements provided by United Airlines violated the California labor code.
#2 ACLU Lawsuit: Incarcerated People Work for Aramark Without PayAlameda County, CA - The California Supreme Court has ruled in the lawsuit Ruelas v. County of Alameda that the state’s minimum wage law does not apply to people working for private companies while they are held in pretrial detention in California’s jails. The California labor lawsuit was filed by the ACLU on behalf of people incarcerated at the Santa Rita Jail who worked without pay for “private company” Aramark, a $16 billion for-profit corporation that provides food in jails and prisons, and more.
#3 Ozempic and Wegovy Linked to Aspiration PneumoniaLos Angeles, CA - Patients who have undergone surgeries and endoscopies and taking weight-loss Ozempic, Wegovy and other GLP-1 medications risk aspiration pneumonia. A study conducted by researchers in California found that patients who underwent the procedure were 33 percent more likely to suffer the complication, which can be life-threatening.
#4 Kanye "Ye" West Slapped with Two Discrimination lawsuits, and moreLos Angeles, CA - Kanye “Ye” West is facing a California labor harassment, discrimination and retaliation lawsuit – and more allegations – filed by Trevor Phillips, a Black man and former employee. Phillips, who claims West is anti-black, also included the rapper’s Yeezy company and his Christian private school Donda Academy. And last week Ye was hit with a similar discrimination suit in California state court.
#5 Seroquel Side Effects for the ElderlyPearblossom, CA - Seroquel is a neuroleptic indicated for the treatment of bipolar disorder—and like most drugs carries a host of Seroquel side effects, including diabetes, tardive dyskinesia and even birth defects. However, there is a little-known use for Seroquel off-label that concerned the daughter of one Alzheimer's patient for whom she was caring.
#6 Expert in ERISA Lawsuit Stumped by Basic Questions New York, NY - McCutcheon v. Colgate- Palmolive Co. is a rarity among modern ERISA lawsuits for the simple reason that it deals with a defined benefit retirement plan. In her class action lawsuit, Rebecca McCutcheon claims that her benefit and the benefits of many participants in the Colgate-Palmolive Co. Employees’ Retirement Income Plan (“Plan”) were miscalculated. Surprisingly, the expert witness offered by the Plan was unable to answer fundamental questions about how benefits were calculated.
Smelling obstruction, the plaintiffs cried foul and asked for sanctions. U.S. District Judge Lorna G. Schofield denied the request. So, the question remains: How can Plan participants get technical evidence that is exclusively in the possession of the defendants, especially when that evidence is essential to their lawsuit?Why so complicated?
Defined benefit pension plans, once the mainstay of the private pension industry, are increasingly rare as employers have moved toward employee 401k and other forms of defined contribution plans. At its simplest, a defined benefit plan promises to pay a participant a certain level of benefits, known as an accrued benefit, usually expressed as an annual annuity beginning at normal retirement age, often 65. The employer makes all the contributions. From the worker’s perspective, it’s a pretty simple concept – work a long time, and then get a benefit you can count on for the rest of your life.
From the employer’s perspective, it is far more complicated. The employer must calculate how much to contribute to the plan each year in order to fund obligations that may not become due for many years. This calculation, the process of working backwards from a target thirty or forty years in the future, involves actuarial assumptions about how long retirees can be expected to live and how much interest funds held in trust for them can be expected to earn. This is not simple math, to say the least.
Furthermore, the risk of a shortfall is entirely on the employer; defined benefit plans can be expensive to administer; and ERISA gives workers effective legal tools to enforce their rights. Employers have fled in droves. Sometimes, as was the case with Colgate-Palmolive, this involves amending an existing plan to limit the accrual of future benefits, even though existing benefits must be preserved.A long and tangled tale of underpayment
McCutcheon was employed by Colgate-Palmolive from 1979 to 1994 and participated in the Plan. Before July 1, 1989, the Plan used a final average pay formula, under which the level of benefits was based on the participant’s length of service and average salary during her final years of service. Effective July 1, 1989, the Plan became a cash balance plan, which essentially used a career average pay formula. The new benefit formula defined a participant’s benefits in terms of a Personal Retirement Account (“PRA”) balance, which reflected accumulated monthly pay-based credits and interest. A cash balance plan is something of a hybrid, with features of both a defined benefit and a defined contribution retirement plan. Importantly, this new design reduced the employer’s risk.
Upon retirement, the PRA balance could be converted into an annuity or paid as a lump sum worth as much as the annuity payable at normal retirement age using statutorily mandated assumptions. To ensure that participants with pre-July 1989 benefits received the full benefits to which they were entitled under the Plan in light of the changed formula, Colgate adopted Appendices B, C and D to set out the rules for calculating benefits.
McCutcheon took her benefits under the Plan in the form of a lump sum when she left her job in 1994. In 2005 the company found a problem with the conversion factors in the appendices and granted additional benefits to affected employees. For reasons that are not clear, however, it did not make any additional payments until 2014. Even then, McCutcheon did not receive the additional money. After repeated inquiries, she filed this lawsuit.Unqualified expert
Many people’s math minds melt when it comes to concepts like the present value of an annuity. But most people are not presented as experts on the topic of how retirement benefits were calculated in an old and much-amended ERISA pension plan.
In the course of her deposition, Colgate-Palmolive employee Elena Laskow repeatedly testified that she was she was not “qualified” to answer the benefit determination-related questions posed and that the questions were better left to the “experts.” She was allegedly both unprepared and unable to provide the required testimony, reading from “cheat sheets” that defense counsel provided to her during the deposition (which plaintiffs were unable to cross-examine). Her testimony appears to have been so spectacularly useless that the workers’ counsel complained of bad faith and asked the court to sanction the Plan or to require it to provide a knowledgeable witness. To date, those efforts have been unsuccessful.Outing the truth
The problem of compelling the production of evidence is not new. Lawsuits in the Johnson & Johnson Baby Powder cases have become more successful as internal documents discovered by media outlets have begun to reveal studies in J&J’s possession that raised concerns about asbestos contamination that date back decades. Will success in Rebecca McCutcheon’s ERISA lawsuit hinge on the same kind of lucky break? That is not an entirely encouraging prospect, but compelling good faith in the conduct of discovery can also be a difficult road.
#7 Microsoft to Pay $2 Million in Workplace Bullying CaseAustin, TX - Michael Mercieca kept the faith and after seven years finally saw the courts order Microsoft to pay for bullying him to a near breaking point.
#8 Employee Stock Ownership Lawsuit Unmasks Brazen Corporate FraudRiverside, CA - The allegations made in Gamino v. KPC Healthcare are pretty lurid, especially as ERISA lawsuits go. Even apart from the loaded handgun and the slashed tires, the Complaint tells a tale of shocking financial malfeasance.
#9 Non-Excusable Traffic Violations Drivers Should AvoidSanta Clara, CA - Drivers should always maintain safety on the road. Not doing so, or ignoring basic traffic rules, puts the lives of passengers, other drivers and pedestrians in danger. Traffic violations occur in many ways. While you can consider some minor traffic violations, the consequences are far-reaching. Below are non-excusable offenses you should avoid.
#10 NYC Workers Can Sue for Safe and Sick Leave ViolationsNew York City, NY - Earlier this year, New York City enacted a law that amends the city's Earned Safe and Sick Time Act (ESSTA) from 2014. Under Int. 0563-2022, “any person" has a private right of action to file New York lawsuits in court within two years of learning of an alleged violation. The law took effect in March, 2024.
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