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Pending and Recently Resolved Class Actions
Adkins, Kelston & Zavez, P.C., has litigated dozens of consumer class actions. Listed below are some that are still pending or were recently resolved.
Selection of Pending Cases
- Goldstein v. Savings Bank Life Ins. Co. of Massachusetts. We certified a class of approximately 515,000 SBLIC policyholders seeking the payment of previously underpaid dividends.
- Heritage Health Services v. Beacon Mutual Ins. Co. We have prevailed on several motions to dismiss and for summary judgment with respect to jurisdiction and liability and are now moving to certify a class of all Beacon Mutual policyholders wrongly denied policy dividends from Sept. 2001 to March 2006.
- Kristian v. Comcast Corporation. We are part of a nationwide team of law firms suing the cable television service provider on the grounds that it has violated antitrust laws by seeking to monopolize the market for cable television in the greater Boston, Philadelphia and Chicago areas.
- Gintis v. Bouchard Transportation. We have brought a class action on behalf of all waterfront real property owners whose property was contaminated by oil spilled in Buzzards Bay from a Bouchard barge in 2003. We are currently appealing the District Court’s denial of class certification.
Selection of Recently Resolved Class Actions and/or Derivative Actions
- Rieff v. Evans et al.: in this case, filed in 1997 and settled in 2005 for over $128.5 million, we certified a class of 300,000 policyholders of Allied Mutual Insurance Company, and succeeded in establishing important principles of law, including by winning two appeals before the Iowa Supreme Court -- one that strengthened the important role of juries even in complex cases and the other that both recognized that policyholders of a mutual insurer have standing to bring derivative litigation, and recognized the tort of de facto "demutualization" (that is, conversion of a mutual company, which is owned by its policyholders, into a stock company owned by shareholders, and "de facto" because it was done without following the legal requirements). As of 2005, the settlement was the largest class action recovery in Iowa’s history.
- Crandall v. Alderfer: in this case, we represented the plaintiffs in a class action suit alleging that the directors of Old Guard Mutual Insurance Company improperly converted it from a mutual insurance company to a stock company (i.e., “demutualized”) without compensating the class of its policyholders. After extensive motion practice and discovery, and certification of the class, plaintiffs settled the case on behalf of the class for $7 million.
- Silverman v. Liberty Mutual Insurance Company: in this case, we represented several policyholders who alleged that Liberty Mutual had filed a misleading proxy concerning its conversion to a mutual holding company and that the conversion, as structured, would harm the policyholders' equity interests in the mutual. After extensive pretrial litigation and targeted discovery, we settled the case on behalf of the named plaintiffs through an agreement that included (i) substantive changes in the way the company would operate for up to ten years, to eliminate or reduce potential conflicts resulting from the conversion, and (ii) the payment by Liberty Mutual of over $850,000 for litigation costs and to fund ongoing reform efforts.
- AKZ was part of a team of plaintiff law firms that brought separate class actions against Lincoln National Life Insurance Company, Franklin Life Insurance Company and Western Southern Life Assurance Company. All three of these cases settled on favorable terms for each plaintiff class.
- In re New England Life Insurance Company Sales Practices Litigation: in this case, AKZ was one of a team of plaintiff law firms that charged New England Life with deceptive sales practices. The case ultimately settled for an amount valued in excess of $100 million.
- Landy v. D’Alessandro et al.: in this derivative case, a shareholder of John Hancock Financial, Inc. sued CEO David D’Alessandro and the Hancock board of directors for allegedly paying and receiving unlawful, excessive director pay and executive compensation. The case survived a motion to dismiss as to the directors, and was dismissed without prejudice with a right to refile the complaint against the CEO. A subsequent sale of Hancock to Canadian-based Manulife Financial changed the Delaware Corporate law underlying the case and it ultimately had to be dismissed.
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