Recent Nuclear Verdicts Highlight Danger of Punitive Damages - In October and November 2023, four separate products liability trials ended with large plaintiff verdicts. Three of these verdicts were against Monsanto in...more
On October 19, 2021, Chief Judge Richard Seeborg of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California narrowed the claims in a putative securities class action asserting claims under the Securities...more
In a six-page order focusing on “the most glaring flaws,” U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria of San Francisco today denied preliminary approval to a proposed class action settlement of all future claims against Monsanto by...more
A proposed class action filed in federal court in California on Tuesday accuses Google of “surreptitiously amass[ing] billions of bits of information—every day—about internet users even if they opt out of sharing their...more
On May 20, 2020, the Eleventh Circuit affirmed the dismissal of a proposed class action against General Mills for its alleged failure to disclose the presence of a harmful chemical in its Cheerios cereal....more
A ruling this morning from South Korea’s top court means that Samsung’s de facto leader, its vice chair and chaebol heir Lee Jae-yong, could be heading back behind bars. The high court found that a lower appeals court “had...more
Welcome to the second 2019 issue of Product Lines – our quarterly e-newsletter that focuses on toxic torts and products liability issues. For this edition, we are reporting on several important and timely legal issues. As...more
That massive thud? That would be the other shoe dropping in the form of Chinese counter tariffs on another $60 billion in US goods in response to the White House’s trade moves last week....more
Carlos Ghosn, the onetime “savior” of Nissan, faced another indignity while again behind bars in Japan—the automaker officially removed the former chair from the board altogether....more
Monsanto’s (and, in turn, Bayer AG’s) terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day in court over its Roundup products’ links to cancer continued yesterday, as a jury awarded $80 million to the California man who it had already...more
Late last week, a California jury found Monsanto liable in the first of a series of cases accusing the Roundup weedkiller maker of causing plaintiff Dewayne Johnson’s non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, awarding him an incredible $289...more
Following news of Starboard Value’s plan to shake things up at Perrigo, we have this take from Breakingviews, which suggests that fending off a hostile takeover (as Perrigo did from Mylan) tends to “make fertile turf for an...more
We’ve got numbers for Bayer’s unsolicited bid to buy Monsanto—a cash offer of $62 billion, representing a 37% premium on Monsanto’s May 9 closing price...more
On January 21, 2014, objectors to a class action settlement over contamination from Monsanto Agent Orange herbicide filed a Petition for Writ of Certiorari with the Unites States Supreme Court. The Petition asked the Court to...more