Class Action Litigation

December 26, 2016

U.S. Supreme Court Rejects Challenges to the $1 Billion Settlement Made with NFL Retired Football Players

Individual NFL retired players will receive up to $5 million of the $1 billion settlement that was reached with the NFL (National Football League). The NFL has recognized that current and former players are exposed regularly to different forms of brain concussions. Some of these injuries lead to neurocognitive or neuromuscular symptoms. The NFL brand of football is increasingly fast, including extremely talented and bigger players. All participants are subjected to serious injuries, including brain injuries.

The player lawsuits originally accused the NFL of hiding what it knew about the link between concussions and chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), the degenerative brain disease found in dozens of former NFL players after their deaths. The settlement avoids the need for a trial and means the NFL may never have to disclose what it knew and when about the risks and treatment of repeated concussions.

The settlement covers more than 20,000 retired NFL players for the next 65 years. The league estimates that 6,000 former players, or nearly 3 in 10, could develop Alzheimer’s disease or moderate dementia. Continue reading

February 18, 2015

Illinois Appellate Court Affirms Dismissal of a Lawsuit with Prejudice when the Plaintiffs Chose Not to Ask Leave to Amend Their Complaint

by Robert Kreisman

On April 6, 2012, nine graduates from DePaul University College of Law filed a class-action lawsuit on behalf of themselves and all others who were similarly situated against DePaul. They were making claim that the university and particularly its law school violated the Illinois Consumer Fraud Act and committed common-law fraud and negligent misrepresentation.

The law school graduates claimed that DePaul published “employment and salary statistics that deceptively overstated the percentages of recent graduates who had obtained full-time legal employment with salaries in excess of $70,000.”

The law school graduates said they relied on DePaul’s statistics by entering law school and borrowing tens of thousands of dollars to pay their tuition and taking out loans to pay such tuition. The plaintiffs wanted DePaul to pay a percentage of the tuition they paid as well as the lifetime income they would have earned based on DePaul’s statistics.

October 8, 2013

U.S. Court of Appeals Affirms Unusually High Attorney Fee Award in Risky Shareholder Lawsuit

by Robert Kreisman

In a class action brought by Motorola investors it was maintained that during 2006, the company made false statements in order to disguise its inability to deliver a mobile phone for sale that would employ three different protocols. When it became public that Motorola could not produce the new mobile phone, its stock sank significantly.

After the lawsuit had been pending for four years, the district court denied Motorola’s motion for summary judgment. After that, the parties settled for $200 million. The class members approved the settlement, but objected to the judge’s decision to award 27.5% of the settlement to the trial lawyers who represented the class.

One of the former class members filed an objection a month after the deadline. Though he filed an objection to the award of legal fees, the objector chose not to file a claim for his share of the settlement fund. As a result, the court of appeals concluded that the objector lacked any interest in the amount of attorney fees awarded and as a result, dismissed his appeal.