Berger & Montague News, Press Releases and Attorney Publications

A federal judge in Manhattan on Wednesday denied a bid by Citigroup Inc. and Discover Bank to dismiss a long-running antitrust suit accusing them of conspiring with American Express and Wells Fargo to impose mandatory arbitration clauses on credit card holders from 1999 to 2003. And as detailed in the decision, much of the alleged conspiracy unfolded alongside the banks' in-house and outside counsel.

Litigation over arbitration clauses is as ubiquitous as Marc Jacobs frocks at Lincoln Center during New York's Fashion Week. (Not a fashionista? Then let's just say we here at On the Case can't stop writing about plaintiffs trying to get around...

Air Canada on Wednesday resolved allegations that it conspired with other airlines to fix the price of freight shipping to and from the U.S., becoming the latest company to settle in a multidistrict litigation that has now netted customers nearly $500...

A New York federal judge on Wednesday refused to dismiss claims against Discover Bank and Citigroup Inc. in the multidistrict litigation claiming credit card issuers conspired to insert anti-competitive arbitration clauses in their customer agreements. ...

Philadelphia, PA, February 6, 2012 - The law firm of Berger & Montague, P.C., with the law firm of Cohn Lifland Pearlman Herrmann & Knopf LLP serving as local counsel, has brought a class action in state court in New Jersey against the Housing...

A class of current and former employees of Nebraska Beef Ltd. on Thursday reached a preliminary $3.9 million settlement agreement with the meatpacker over claims that the company didn't pay workers for time spent donning protective gear and performing...

A class of employees suing technology and media giants including Apple Inc. and Google Inc. in California over alleged agreements not to recruit each other's employees said Thursday that evidence the companies provided to federal antitrust regulators...

Drug buyer plaintiffs in a putative antitrust class action accusing Braintree Laboratories Inc. of initiating baseless patent litigation to block a generic version of the laxative MiraLax asked a Delaware federal judge Friday to approve a $17.25 million...

In what is not the first and certainly will not be the last, Berger & Montague has filed a lawsuit in the Southern District of New York against Jon Corzine, numerous executives of MF Global, CME Group and JP Morgan related to the missing segregated...

Although many thought that the SEC's nadir was their failure to detect the Madoff and Stanford frauds, the missing $1.2 billion in customer funds at MF Global shows that the incompetence of financial regulators in the United States has now sunk to...

If there's one thing the law teaches, it's that there's almost nothing new under the sun. Take MF Global's alleged misuse of its customers' brokerage accounts -- and the related disappearance of $1.2 billion of customer money -- in the run-up to MF's bankruptcy last fall. Shocking, yes, but you only have to look back a few years, to the 2005 collapse of the brokerage conglomerate Refco, to find the same alleged failure to segregate customer money.

On January 10, 2012, Berger & Montague filed a class action complaint on behalf of tens of thousands of commodities account holders who fell victim to the alleged massive theft and misappropriation of client funds at MF Global Inc. The complaint,...

A Nebraska magistrate judge on Monday advised the court to deny Farmland Foods Inc.'s bid for decertification of a collective action accusing the meat packer of stiffing workers on don and doff pay, saying that the employees are similarly situated enough to proceed together.

A lawsuit has been settled in the case of a Reading man who claimed he was denied a job in Breinigsville because of his race and a 30-year-old involuntary manslaughter conviction. Albert Dunn, 56, who is black, said his civil rights were violated when he was denied a job at an Amazon.com warehouse, according to the Public Interest Law Center of Philadelphia. Dunn previously pleaded guilty to the 1981 shooting of a man who had threatened him and his family. Dunn, who was in his 20s at the time, pleaded guilty and served time in prison, according to the center.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE - INTEGRITY STAFFING SOLUTIONS LEADS THE WAY IN JOB OPPORTUNITIES FOR EX-OFFENDERS ALLENTOWN, PA - Integrity Staffing Solutions, the Public Interest Law Center of Philadelphia and Berger & Montague, P.C. jointly announce the...

A Pennsylvania federal judge signed off Monday on a trio of settlements worth about $2 million between Cadbury PLC and three classes of plaintiffs in the multidistrict litigation accusing a number of major chocolate producers of conspiring to fix...

The National Arbitration Forum reached a settlement Thursday with a class of credit card holders that had accused it of helping large banks and card companies collude to include compulsory arbitration clauses in cardholder agreements meant to prevent...

IN RECENT YEARS, A NEW STANDARD appears to have emerged regarding class certification. Courts have largely dismissed the notion—originally derived from Eisen v. Carlisle & Jacquelin—that they cannot resolve issues relevant to the merits in deciding whether to certify a class. How far they may delve into the merits, however, has remained somewhat of a mystery.

A Georgia federal judge on Wednesday approved a $12.5 million settlement in a class action targeting online bank NetBank Inc. and executives for allegedly defrauding investors by not disclosing the bank's true condition before its takeover by federal regulators and subsequent liquidation.

American Express Co. has agreed to pay $49.5 million to partially settle a class action in New York accusing the credit card giant of conspiring with several banks to fix foreign currency conversion fees and impose arbitration clauses in cardholder agreements, the plaintiffs’ attorney said Thursday.

A Nebraska federal judge blasted Nebraska Beef Ltd. on Thursday for serious discovery violations in a class action accusing the meatpacking company of failing to pay workers for time spent donning and doffing protective gear, but refused to hand employees an immediate win.

A group of loan officers for Fifth Third Bancorp’s Cincinnati-based regional banking corporation lodged a class action Wednesday claiming the bank failed to pay them overtime wages in violation of the Illinois Minimum Wage Law and Wage Payment and Collection Act.

A Florida federal judge on Tuesday denied a motion by Transitions Optical Inc. to throw out a multidistrict class action accusing the corrective lens maker of anti-competitive conduct, saying the purchaser plaintiffs' monopoly accusations were reasonable enough for trial. U.S. District Judge James D. Whittemore denied Transitions' motion to dismiss the suit filed by a group of companies that say Transitions resorted to various anti-competitive tactics to keep prices high for its line of ultraviolet-ray-resistant lenses.

WHEN MILLIONAIRE Philadelphia lawyer Daniel Berger saw the protesters on his TV, they reminded him of Bolsheviks - "a vanguard of extremists who believe in an ideology." But Berger - a trial lawyer who has made a fortune in class-action lawsuits involving securities fraud and environmental and civil-rights issues - isn't talking about the new breed of protesters occupying Wall Street and elsewhere with signs reading "Tax the Rich."

On October 5, 2011, managing shareholder Daniel Berger appeared on MSNBC's The Ed Show to discuss federal tax policy.