Although workers recently received additional support for job discrimination cases in federal court, many recent studies indicate that employees who file lawsuits alleging discrimination are less likely to prevail in federal court than other plaintiffs.  Employment discrimination cases get less time in court and are more likely to be dismissed by judges.

Employee advocates hope that the Obama Administration will strengthen discrimination claims.  In January President Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which extends the legal deadline for filing pay discrimination cases and which experts think will lead to the filing of many more employment cases in federal court.

Previous patterns suggest that these new cases will not receive better reception.  Federal plaintiffs won 15 percent of job discrimination cases between 1979 through 2006, compared with a rate of 51 percent for other civil cases, according to a study to be published in February by the Harvard Law & Policy Review.

Read the full article here on the Wall Street Journal website (subscription required). 

A Delaware Supreme Court's ruling to overturn a Court of Chancery dismissal of a case against officers and directors of a bank holding company for rejecting an acquisition offer is the first to explicitly state that officers and directors have fiduciary duties of care and loyalty toward their companies and increases the vulnerability of corporate officers to lawsuits.

The shareholders’ suit charged that the defendants breached their fiduciary duties by rejecting a good financial offer to sell the company, reclassifying the shares so that they benefited the officers and directors at the expense of shareholders and issuing a false and misleading proxy statement about the share reclassification.  The Supreme Court ruled that directors could not use a shareholder vote to limit legal liability for decisions where such a vote is required, such as for a merger.  The article discusses the growing body of law in Delaware that addresses the issue. 

Read the full article here on the National Law Journal website (subscription required).

Legal and accounting experts say that many accounting firms that failed to detect the alleged fraud at Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities could now be liable for missing indications of potential wrongdoing.

Madoff’s firm was audited by Friehling & Horowitz, a firm in the New York metropolitan area that has one active accountant.  Lynn Turner, former chief accountant for the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), said that it was difficult to believe that the auditors of the funds that invested in Madoff’s firm examined Madoff’s auditor in order to establish confidence and that, if in fact they did not, investors would have to hold these auditors accountable.  Some firms involved in audits related to Madoff declined to comment because of increasing litigation, but others say that they were not obligated to investigate Madoff’s auditor and that their duty was to verify numbers, not to detect fraud.

The SEC is being criticized for exempting private financial partnerships such as hedge funds from the rule put in place under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 requiring auditors of brokerage firms to be registered.

By 2008 the assets managed by these private financial partners totaled approximately $1 trillion.  The SEC has acknowledged that it failed to adequately oversee Madoff.

Read the full article here on the Wall Street Journal Website (subscription required).

On February 13 the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco agreed to reconsider whether a huge sexual discrimination lawsuit filed against Wal-Mart Stores Inc. will proceed as a class action.

The court declared that it would rehear a 2007 ruling by a panel of three of its members, which upheld the decision of a district court to certify Dukes v. Wal-Mart as a class action.  The full appeals court will now revisit the contentious case, originally filed in 2001 by Betty Dukes, a Wal-Mart employee in California who alleged that she was denied training to obtain a job with a higher salary because of her sex.  The case expanded to include two million women who have worked at Wal-Mart since December 1998.

Lawyers say that the lawsuit is among the largest class-action sexual discrimination cases in the U.S.  Wal-Mart faces billions of dollars in legal exposure because of the size of the class.

The full article is available here on the Wall Street Journal Website (subscription required).

 

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit has in a majority decision reversed a district court decision, thereby allowing the Securities and Exchange Commission to go ahead with its action alleging fraud by James Tambone and Robert Hussey, former executives of Columbia Funds Distributor.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit has in a majority decision reversed a district court decision, thereby allowing the Securities and Exchange Commission to go ahead with its action alleging fraud by James Tambone and Robert Hussey, former executives of Columbia Funds Distributor. Columbia Funds Distributor is the principal underwriter and distributor for roughly 140 mutual funds in the Columbia mutual fund complex.

Tillinghast-Towers Perrin’s “2008 Update on U.S. Tort Costs,” is its 12th annual study highlighting trends and findings on the cost of the U.S. tort system.  The study found that tort costs rose by 2.1 percent in 2007, compared with a 5.5 percent decline in 2006.  The 2.1 percent increase is less than the year’s overall economic growth of 4.8 percent, meaning that the ratio of tort costs to gross domestic product grew smaller in 2007, as it had in three previous years as well.  The shrinking ratio reflects, to some extent, moderating costs in personal lines of insurance, where there has been a lowering in the number of auto accident claims, and in commercial lines, which have benefited from lower asbestos-related costs over the past few years.  The study predicts annual tort costs will increase by about 4.0 percent in 2008 and 5.0 percent in 2009 and 2010.  It identifies a number of issues that affected tort costs in 2008 and may continue to do so in the coming years.  They include gasoline prices (affecting miles driven), the credit crunch (causing an increase in shareholder lawsuits, for example), medical malpractice claims, employment practices liability claims, restrictions on products liability suits and the political shift in the administration and Congress.

The full study can be accessed at http://www.towersperrin.com/tp/getwebcachedoc?webc=USA/2008/200811/2008_tort_costs_trends.pdf.   

Two members of the U.S. House of Representatives' Committee on Financial Services have announced plans they will introduce legislation that will create national standards for how states regulate the surplus lines market and reinsurance as well as a uniform system of surplus lines premium tax allocation and remittance.

The Non-Admitted and Reinsurance Reform Act of 2009, to be introduced by Rep. Scott Garrett (R-NJ) and Rep. Dennis Moore (D-Kan.), will be introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives and both legislators stated they hoped the Senate would follow suit.

"We believe that the bill would make the surplus lines marketplace more efficient by facilitating the payment of surplus lines premium taxes and eliminating unnecessary duplicative compliance requirements on surplus lines multi-state risks," said John Wood, president of the National Association of Professional Surplus Lines Offices Ltd. "NAPSLO is pleased to see Rep. Garrett and Rep. Moore take the lead to have the bill introduced in the House of Representative and we are hopeful the bill will soon be introduced in the Senate."

Registration is now available for the 2009 PLUS Medical PL Symposium.  You can register by clicking on the link at the bottom of this page.

In our 9th year, this Symposium is designed to address new and significant issues affecting the legal, medical and insurance marketplace.

Please click here for more information about the program.

In addition to the fine educational sessions, individuals involved in the various aspects of Medical Professional Liability will enjoy a networking reception with others involved in the industry as well as a luncheon with Keynote Address by Paul H. Keckley titled Disruptive Innovation & Healthcare Reform: What's Ahead?

Paul H. Keckley, Ph.D., Executive Director, Deloitte Center for Health Solutions

Lodging is available at the Sheraton Chicago Hotel & Towers.  To reserve your room, please call them at 312-464-1000 and ask for the PLUS rate of $215. 

A jury awarded $2.5 million in medical malpractice damages to the family of a Nevada woman who died at age 27 after doctors failed to diagnose her cancer.

Officials called it the largest medical malpractice award in Clark County, Nev., District Court since 2004, when Nevada lawmakers capped malpractice awards for pain and suffering at $350,000.

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, charged with enforcing the nation's job discrimination laws, is facing its largest caseload in at least a quarter-century with sharply diminished staffing and resources, according to commission and union officials.

The 44-year-old commission has been dogged by budgetary and staffing problems before, but union officials say the Obama administration faces a tough challenge in overcoming morale problems and an overwhelmed workforce.

Some allegations of discrimination based on race, religion, sex, age or disability are languishing for months because of inadequate staffing.

More than 95,400 charges of job bias in the private sector were filed in fiscal year 2008, up 15.2 percent from the previous year and up 26 percent from 2006. But the size of the EEOC staff, which is responsible for investigating the complaints, has steadily decreased in size and now numbers 2,192, down from approximately 2,850 in 2000.

More workers are being let go as corporate layoffs that began in earnest last year have accelerated in recent weeks. And more often, people are looking around and complaining that they have been unfairly or improperly dismissed.

Former employees of Lehman Brothers, for example, say they were not given the required 60 days’ pay before their jobs vanished, while Dell is being sued over allegations of age and sex discrimination against workers, in what lawyers say are growing choruses.

Before filing many types of discrimination lawsuits, disgruntled employees must file a claim with the government. The number of such claims, which had fallen for several years, rose more than 15 percent last year on top of a smaller increase in 2007, and lawyers expect a bigger jump this year.

Read this full article here on the New York Times website.