Advocates for Justice

“Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me: I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”
                       -Emma Lazarus

That quote used to be imprinted on the Welcome Mat of the United States.  Now, it’s been replaced by: “I’m sorry.  The hotel is full.  Next time make a reservation.”

In recent weeks, the new Administration of the United States has seen fit to clamp down on immigration.  There’s been fiery rhetoric about “bad hombres” apparently sneaking across the United States border with Mexico.  There was the now famous “refugee ban” that created chaos, confusion, hysteria and, now, has been replaced by a new policy that seems also destined to be the subject of multiple court challenges.  There’s even been talk about breaking up families – deporting adults who arrived in this country without going through proper channels but allowing their U.S.-born children to stay.  All of which has created a highly unstable and unpredictable situation with regard to the issue of immigration.

Courts recognize that there is more than one way to measure damages with environmental torts. In response, some have been willing to be flexible and choose measures to allow as full a recovery as possible where appropriate to circumstances.[1] Whether the contamination involves air, water or soil, complicated statistical models and scientific analysis are often required to establish the nature, quantity, and economic value of the damages.

Last week, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Fairness in Class Action Litigation Act of 2017, H.R. 985 (The “Act”); the Senate referred the Act to its Judiciary Committee. The Act would “would crown a decades-long campaign” by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to slam the courthouse doors shut on millions of Americans. The Chamber, and its allies in Congress, aim to achieve this through an amendment to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure which could make it impossible in class actions for a damages class to be certified unless each class member suffered exactly the same amount of harm.  This provision, and the Act in general, would inure to the benefit of corporate wrongdoers at the expense of the American public; if passed, the Act would essentially immunize from civil lawsuits thefts committed on a national scale.    

Pyramid and Ponzi schemes describe two types of fraud but lawyers who represent victims of the schemes, as our firm does, know that both types of fraudulent scheme share many characteristics.

CPM's Water Rights Litigation Group has conducted a three-year investigation regarding the taking of public water by private corporations. Some of these companies continue to pump massive amounts of water from the public's natural resources, then bottle it and sell it to consumers for astronomical financial gains. The popularity of drinking bottled water instead of soft drinks has created a booming – and very profitable – line of business for beverage companies. In fact, in 2017, bottled water is expected to surpass soft drinks in popularity.[1]

Legal scholars have been forecasting that generic drugs will be the next big antitrust price-fixing case, and 2017 seems to be confirming this prediction thus far. In December 2016, the Antitrust Division of the United States Department of Justice (“DOJ”) charged two former executives of Heritage Pharmaceuticals Inc. with price-fixing, bid rigging, and customer allocation of two generic drugs. Shortly thereafter, 20 states filed civil lawsuits against Heritage and its competitors—Mylan NV, Teva Pharmaceuticals, Mayne Pharma Group Ltd., Heritage Pharmaceuticals Inc., Aurobindo Pharma Ltd., and Citron Pharma LLC—for allegedly conspiring to fix the prices of two generic drugs. The two drugs at issue are the delayed-release version of the antibiotic doxycycline hyclate and the diabetes drug glyburide. A total of 40 states have now filed suits.

A federal court judge has upheld privacy-related claims related to the collection and sale of consumer viewer data by Vizio. CPM is co-lead counsel in the class action lawsuit, which alleges that the TV maker failed to inform consumers that it is gathering their viewing histories, including what shows they watch, IP addresses, zip codes, product model numbers, hardware and software versions, chipset IDs, region and language settings, and other data.