Class Action

Two days after state officials shut down Woodlawn Cemetery, a lawyer has filed a class action lawsuit on behalf of people whose relatives may have been improperly buried or illegally disinterred. State officials shut down the cemetery Tuesday after finding fragments of bone and caskets scattered throughout the grounds. They also found evidence that people who had purchased single grave sites had, instead, been laid to rest in graves unlawfully filled with other caskets.

Maggie Ward (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio), a young legal whippet, precise and sharp as her Armani suit, is having a little trouble making herself heard in the San Francisco courtroom where she's defending big money interests. That's because next door, the great, fire-eating Jedediah Tucker Ward (Gene Hackman), lifelong defender of the underdog, is well into his summation and if he hasn't yet done a handstand on the jury railing, it may happen any minute now.

A 38-year-old Ventura woman has filed a class-action suit against Nutri-System Inc., claiming that her gall bladder had to be removed after she lost 34 pounds in 18 weeks on the company's diet program. Nancy Alyne Kirkham's suit filed in Ventura County Superior Court claims that Nutri-System caused her to lose weight too quickly, which led to gall bladder disease. The suit accuses Nutri-System of falsely advertising itself as a safe way to lose weight.

In a decision that could affect the way Immigration and Naturalization Service agents apprehend and detain suspected illegal aliens, a Los Angeles federal court judge ruled Wednesday that "all persons of Latin ancestry" lawfully residing in the central judicial district of California could be represented as a class in a lawsuit originally filed against the INS by a group of Orange County residents.

San Francisco lawyer Melvin M. Belli filed a new round of lawsuits Thursday against the Larry Fricker Co. and the City of Anaheim over a June chemical fire after deciding to drop an earlier $100-million class-action lawsuit and send those clients instead to small claims court.

The settlement of a class action arising from the collapse of Laker Airways was reached in a Washington court, the British carrier reported. It said it will join with Pan Am and Trans World Airlines in setting up a fund worth $30 million to compensate people who paid for tickets on any of the three airlines after Feb. 26, 1982, for travel between Britain and the United States between March 1, 1982, and March 31, 1984.

Tobacco company stocks gained sharply on Monday as the industry celebrated the dismissal of a hemophiliacs' class action against drug companies, saying the ruling could help end a massive suit filed against cigarette makers on behalf of millions of addicted smokers. Shares of New York-based Philip Morris surged $2.875 to close at $66.625 as Standard & Poor's tobacco stock index rose 3.9%, making it the leading gainer among all groups.

As famed class-action lawyer William S. Lerach steps before a federal judge in Los Angeles today to learn his sentence in a wide-ranging fraud and conspiracy probe, his misdeeds and those of former colleagues may be helping to alter the way securities law is practiced.

Last week, on the U.S. Senate floor, a well-financed effort by corporate interests to shut state courthouse doors to class-action litigation was blocked by a single vote. Only a filibuster prevented its passage. That's the good news. The bad news is that an even worse bill -- which would also eliminate "private attorney general" lawsuits in state courts -- has passed in the House of Representatives, and defeat was so close in the Senate that the legislation is certain to return soon.

A federal judge on Friday granted class certification to tens of millions of smokers in a lawsuit against cigarette makers, creating what may be the largest class action ever certified in U.S. legal history. A national consortium of plaintiff lawyers won the key ruling when U.S. District Judge Okla Jones II in New Orleans cleared them to proceed on behalf of smokers in the United States and its territories who allegedly became addicted to nicotine.