Our “To Blog’ Inbox Runneth Over
We’re back, and our "to blog" list is so long that we have little choice but to clear it out with the quick hits below:
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Class actions are flying as the public rage against pet food maker Menu Foods bubbles over. Pet owners are learning, however, that most state laws consider animals - even beloved pets - to be only "personal property," meaning the damages available are usually limited to replacement value of the animal, and emotional damages are not available. Some commentators believe this situation may result in "pressure on legislators to remove liability barriers, to not see these animals as property but as entities like humans."
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The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral argument in the Tellabs case (previously discussed here and elsewhere on this blog) on Wednesday, March 28. A copy of the transcript from the argument is available here. The National Conference on Public Employee Retirement Systems and the National Association of Shareholder and Consumer Attorneys (NASCAT) warn here that the higher scienter standard being considered in the Tellabs case could result in "nearly insurmountable" barriers to investors seeking to recover fraud losses.
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Like some of their US counterparts, UK institutional investors report success after opting out of the AOL Time Warner securities class action.
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The Supreme Court of Canada heard its first shareholder class action on March 20, 2007. The dispute is between retailer Danier Leather Inc. and a group of its IPO-era investors, and "hinges on what level of disclosure is required by a company’s management if facts become known between the time a prospectus has been issued and an initial public offering’s closing date that would cast doubts on forecasts contained in the prospectus."
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The SEC has a sense of humor, reportedly issuing an entire mock press release on April 1–told you so!
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The jury of Cubs fans has reached a verdict in the The People of Chicago vs. Tribune Co., Case No. 1908, Court of Public Opinion. Almost immediately after this verdict, the "defendant" announced it is selling the team. Coincidence?
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Securities class actions in Nigeria? Really?
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Apparently there is a consumer watch dog in the UK that has since 2002 had the statutory power to bring a class action against a company that has been convicted of price fixing or any other anticompetitive practice. The watchdog–known as "Which?"–had never before used these powers but did so for the first time in March, proceeding with a multimillion-pound legal claim against the high street chain JJB Sports. What was it that finally pushed Which? to take action? Not surprisingly it was football-related: Some one million replica England and Manchester United football shirts are said to have been sold at "rip-off” prices due to price-fixing.
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Global warming-based class actions? Individual plaintiffs in Comer v. Nationwide Mut. Ins. Co., 2006 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 33123 (S.D. Miss. 2006) seek to represent a class of property owners in Mississippi who suffered losses as a result of Hurricane Katrina. They have sued "dozens of oil and coal companies and chemical manufacturers, alleging that their business practices contributed to global warming, which in turn intensified the effects of the hurricane." This article notes that the individual plaintiffs have been granted leave to submit a fourth amended complaint in an effort to certify various classes in the case.
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The US government has offered Native American plaintiffs in the decade-old Indian Trust case a new $7 billion settlement, but this offer has been rejected. This article reports that Native American plaintiffs say that the offer is still "pennies on the dollar" for their claims, which involve "the alleged mismanagement by the US Department of the Interior of American Indian money - lease and sales revenues, permit fees and interest - received and held for Native Americans by the US Government over the last 120 years."
