Tuesday, February 9, 2021
Highlights from this issue include:
Supreme Court grants cert in securities class action to address whether the
Basic presumption of class-wide reliance can be rebutted based on the generic nature of the alleged representation and that the statement had no price impact.
Massachusetts appellate court emphasizes that evidence is required to support class certification, even under state law.
District court in the Second Circuit holds that
Daubert analysis must be conducted at the class certification stage.
Third Circuit holds that the failure to register tires under federal law is not enough to confer standing.
Seventh Circuit holds that violations of the data retention and destruction requirements of the Biometric Information Privacy Act are sufficient for standing.
Mars Mired in Milk Chocolate Melee
Yet another suit is hawkish over Dove Bar packaging claims
Strike Two?
Here’s a follow-up to the recent battle between Mars Wrigley Confectionery and Mohammed Garadi. If you recall and of course you do; you hang on our every word, right? Mars and Garadi were locked in a deadly duel of catty memos regarding Mars’ motion to have the case dismissed. Mars led off its missive in support by lambasting Garadi’s counsel for filing a strike suit a class action among a hundred others that employs “a raft of recycled complaints” against food manufacturers that “leverage the threat of putative class claims and force early settlements.”
Tech
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November 5, 2020
On Tuesday in a putative class-action complaint filed in California’s Santa Clara County Superior Court, plaintiff Nicholas Goglia sued Google alleging that it deceptively advertised its defective Pixel 3 phones and failed to honor its warranty.
Goglia brought this putative class action on behalf of individuals “who purchased first-generation Pixel 3 and Pixel 3 XL (collectively, ‘Pixel 3’) smartphones.” The plaintiff asserted that the Pixel 3 is “defective” because: “(1) the Pixel camera suffers from a malfunctioning autofocus feature, which causes the screen display to go black or the camera application to fail altogether; and (2) the Pixel’s battery drains at an accelerated pace after a short period of normal use, causing the phone to overheat and/or prematurely shut off.” The plaintiff claimed that these defects “are material and compromise the devices’ core functionality.” Specifically, Goglia proffered that Pixel
This paper attempts to provide a definition and context for the term,
Environmental, Social and Governance (“ESG”), explain how and why it is used, demonstrate how investors are driving the proliferation of ESG reporting, illuminate how investor reliance on ESG information creates new risks for reporting companies, and suggest steps attorneys can take to help mitigate the risks. This paper also provides a short summary on some hot topics in the ESG world.
I. The Evolution of ESG Disclosures
A. What is ESG?
In basic terms, ESG is a collection of information about a company’s operations in three broad areas of activity: Environmental, Social and Governance. It is data-based as well as narrative, and typically static or backward-looking. Increasingly, ESG reporting is goal-oriented and aspirational. Oftentimes, ESG is used interchangeably with the term “sustainability.”