#class actions

Class action lawsuits against six of Ontario's largest for-profit long-term care (LTC) home providers, claiming gross negligence that led to illnesses and deaths during the COVID-19 pandemic, have been allowed to proceed.

In a ruling last week, the Ontario Superior Court of Justice certified class action suits against Sienna, Revera, Schlegel, Responsive, Extendicare and Chartwell.

The separate class actions were filed on behalf of thousands of clients, family members and visitors, who allege the companies were unprepared to provide care during the pandemic and failed to protect the health of residents and visitors.

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Key Takeaway A Massachusetts class action claim underscores that institutions of higher education will continue to be targets for cybercriminals – and class action plaintiffs know it. Background On January 4, 2023, in Jackson v. Suffolk University, No. 23-cv-10019, Jackson (Plaintiff) filed a proposed class action lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts against her…

Or: how your advertising helps your competitors.

Camp Lejeune and the Ford F-150 brake litigation: What do these torts have in common?

Both have been the subject of general advertising by competing interests. People submitted a litany of leads to my firm despite us having scarcely more than a page on our website for each.

Camp Lejeune commercials were utterly inescapable for a few months. The hype has died down a bit and I'm generally insulated from cable and Internet ads, so I haven't seen many lately. But we got so many leads without spending a dime on advertising.

Regarding the F-150, a potential client had written us saying they received a mailer about the litigation and were curious if they had a case. Several more had written us without mentioning the mailer.

We did not send out a mailer, and we aren't even interested in those cases at this time. Some other firm must have sent out a mail campaign and one of their recipients contacted us instead of the sender.

The moral of the story:

Make sure your call to action is specific and your ad is clearly branded. Your target audience may simply take your ad as a pretext to Google "x lawsuit" or "y class action" and wind up at your competitor's doorstep instead, if you don't have a strong search presence.

First BIPA Trial Results in $228M Judgment for Plaintiffs

Businesses defending class actions under the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA) have struggled to defeat claims in recent years, as courts have rejected a succession of defenses. We have been following this issue and have previously reported on this trend, which continued last week in the first BIPA class action to go to trial. The Illinois federal jury found that BNSF Railway Co.…