Critical Mass: What's Behind the Milberg Merger? Plus New Team in Low-T Trial
Welcome to Critical Mass, Law.com’s new briefing on class actions and mass torts. I’m Amanda Bronstad in Los Angeles. There's some big news this week out of New York: Milberg has merged with Sanders Phillips Grossman. Also, Microsoft is fighting class certification of a pay equity case by acknowledging the gender disparities in tech. And another “lowtestosterone” trial kicked off, but with different lead attorneys in charge. ➤➤ Want to receive this as an email? You can sign up for a complimentary trial here. In the meantime, please send your feedback to abronstad@alm.com or find me on Twitter: @abronstadlaw
Milberg Merger
A decade after two of its former partners landed in jail, securities class action firm Milberg has made the move to merge. Its merger partner? Sanders Phillips Grossman, a products liability firm. Here’s Law.com’s story by Scott Flaherty. Once a powerhouse to be reckoned with, Milberg saw its co-founders, Melvyn Weiss and Bill Lerach, and two other partners, plead guilty in 2007 and 2008 to charges that they paid kickbacks to lead plaintiffs. With the merger, Milberg gets a chance to “escape its old identity,” Columbia Law School Professor John Coffee told me. Not to mention, he said, other securities law firms “have long diversified into whistleblower cases and antitrust; I am just not sure that many other firms wanted to link to Milberg and its unhappy legacy,” he said. The new firm will be called Milberg Tadler Phillips Grossman and be headquartered in New York. You may have noticed the new name on the masthead: Ariana Tadler, Milberg’s managing partner. Last year, John Roberts appointed her to the U.S. Judicial Conference Advisory Committee on Civil Rules. She also made the cut for a leadership post in the Yahoo data breach case.
Microsoft Acknowledges Tech's Gender Imbalance
Microsoft Corp. is fighting class certification in a gender equity case by admitting it was “keenly aware of gender imbalance in the tech industry.” Here’s Law.com’s Erin Mulvaney with the story. More than 8,600 current and former female Microsoft employees brought the class action, and similar gender equity suits have been filed against Google and Uber. On Friday, Microsoft (repped by Orrick) acknowledged the tech industry’s gender problems in its opposition to class cert. I checked in with Erin, who told me Microsoft probably wanted to "avoid seeming being obtuse about what has become common knowledge about the white-male dominant industry." "It's possible the attorneys believed acknowledging this tension would give more weight when the response goes on to dissect the specific class action," she said. And speaking of bias in tech: A former Google software engineer who was fired over a memo in which he argued women are naturally less fit for tech jobs has filed a class action alleging political (he says his views were squelched because he is politically conservative), gender and race discrimination. My colleague Ben Hancock has that story.
New Team Takes Wheel in Low-T Trial
The third trial over AndroGel, the testosterone replacement therapy from AbbVie and Abbott Labs, kicked off on Monday – but with different lead attorneys. Here’s my story. The first two trials resulted in verdicts of $140 million and $150 million last year. The lead lawyers in those cases were from Seeger Weiss, Levin Papantonio and Robins Cloud. This time, Ronald Johnson of Kentucky’s Schachter, Hendy & Johnson is at the helm, with assistance from Morgan & Morgan and Douglas & London. And on the defense: Kirkland & Ellis is playing a bigger role as Chicago partner James Hurst heads up this month’s trial, rather than Paul Weiss and Dechert. Fellow Kirkland & Ellis partner Paul Clement joined the team when AbbVie sought to toss the earlier verdicts -- one of which was vacated last month. Another difference: This month’s trial makes claims tying AndroGel to blood clots, rather than heart attacks.
Here's what else you need to know: No Brotherly Love: A federal judge has allowed a Philadelphia personal injury lawyer’s false advertising suit against Morgan & Morgan to go forward, but dismissed several of its lawyers from the case. Philadelphia lawyer Jeffrey Rosenbaum has alleged the Florida-based firm’s ads are deceptive because Morgan & Morgan doesn’t represent clients in Pennsylvania. Here’s the update from Law.com’s P.J. D'Annunzio. Rough Ride: Texas-based Six Flags was hit with a class action in New Jersey for failing to comply with the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act’s requirement that credit card numbers be truncated on cash register receipts. Here’s Law.com’s story. Apparently, another amusement park company, Palace Entertainment, ended up giving class members free tickets to settle a similar suit in Pennsylvania. Missed Connections: On Jan. 5, Provost Umphrey’s Christopher Kirchmer wrote a one-page letter apologizing to U.S. District Judge Eldon Fallon for not appearing at a court-ordered Dec. 12 phone conference and Jan. 3 hearing in the Xarelto litigation. “In twenty-two years of practice, I have never missed a hearing or a conference call with the court,” he wrote in the letter (see here). “I am embarrassed to have done both in this case.” He and Provost Umphrey were each ordered to pay $1,000 in sanctions. A word of caution: Before tackling your own backlog of holiday emails, check out Kirchmer’s second letter (see here), in which he blamed the error on an inbox sorting problem.
