Class Action Suits

In a landmark court settlement proposed Tuesday, Caltrans agreed to spend $1.1 billion over the next 30 years to repair and improve state-controlled sidewalks, crosswalks and park-and-ride facilities so they are accessible for people with disabilities. The settlement, filed at the federal courthouse in Oakland, was a major victory for civil rights activists, who have been battling for years with the transportation agency to provide equal access to public rights-of-way for the blind and those who use wheelchairs, canes or walkers.

The Obama administration on Tuesday announced it would pay Native Americans $3.4 billion to settle a class-action lawsuit that claimed the federal government cheated tribes for more than a century of royalties for oil, mineral and other leases. The settlement ends a 13-year legal battle that led to 3,600 filings, millions of pages of discovery documents and 11 separate appellate decisions. It is the largest settlement Native Americans have ever received from the federal government, eclipsing the sum of all previous settlements, according to the plaintiff's lawyers.

Dannon Co. settled a false-advertising lawsuit Friday, agreeing to set up a $35-million fund to reimburse consumers who bought its Activia and DanActive yogurts. The class-action lawsuit, filed in January 2008, alleged that Dannon lied when marketing its Activia and DanActive yogurts by trumpeting health benefits that didn't exist. The White Plains, N.Y.-based yogurt maker denied the claims and admitted no wrongdoing as part of the settlement. The decision to settle was based on Dannon's desire "to avoid the distraction and expense of litigation," spokesman Michael Neuwirth said.

Civil rights advocates asserted in federal court Wednesday that California's highway agency has denied people with disabilities equal access to sidewalks throughout the state by failing to install wheelchair ramps and warnings for the blind at street corners. The class-action lawsuit, which went to trial before U.S. District Judge Saundra Brown Armstrong in Oakland, alleges that Caltrans has violated the 1992 Americans with Disabilities Act, a federal law that requires improvements in accessibility whenever sidewalks and roads are built or undergo major repairs.

Immigrants detained for more than six months without a bond hearing can sue the federal government in a class action aimed at getting a court to recognize their right to a swifter appearance before a judge, a federal appeals court ruled Thursday. In a case brought by civil rights groups, a three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a lower court decision denying the group class status for their lawsuit. "This is a huge victory for immigrants who have been held in prolonged, indefinite detention without the most basic element of due process: a hearing to determine if their detention is justified," said Ahilan Arulanantham, director of immigrants' rights and national security for the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California.

Legal advocates for the poor, elderly and disabled secured a $500-million class-action settlement Tuesday for as many as 200,000 people whose Social Security benefits were suspended on unfounded suspicions that they were fleeing prosecution. The suspensions, dating back nearly a decade in some instances, were ordered in cases of mistaken identity or outstanding warrants for offenses such as bounced checks or traffic violations. "Virtually none" of the Social Security recipients who were cut off after their names were matched with those in a computerized warrant database were felons using their government benefits to evade law enforcement or prosecution, said Gerald McIntyre, an attorney for the National Senior Citizens Law Center.

Former employees of Aurora Las Encinas Hospital, a private psychiatric facility in Pasadena, filed a class-action lawsuit Thursday against the owner alleging that chronic understaffing has compromised patient care. The lawsuit, filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court on behalf of four former employees, says understaffing forced Las Encinas staff to work past the ends of their shifts, with no overtime pay, to complete work obligations.

Consumer class-action lawsuits in California, which have encountered mounting skepticism from courts, face a major test in a tobacco case to be decided Monday by the state Supreme Court. The court will determine whether smokers who say they purchased cigarettes in response to deceptive ads can collectively sue the industry for the money they spent to smoke.

Dozens of aspiring parents and the women they hired to be surrogate mothers filed a class action lawsuit this week against a Modesto-based surrogacy agency that abruptly shut its doors and stopped returning phone calls, leaving hundreds of thousands of client dollars unaccounted for, according to the allegations.