
It used to be the case that federal prosecutors and regulators were the first to bring action against a corporate abuse, and plaintiff’s lawyers followed that with a class action lawsuit designed to obtain additional relief for harmed parties.
In the new Trump era, the federal government is increasingly abdicating that role. As Public Citizen points out, the Justice Department and other agencies have dropped scores of investigations of corporate lawbreaking.
Or else the DOJ is employing leniency practices that let companies off easy. For example, federal prosecutors just notified Liberty Mutual that the company will not be charged under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act despite evidence that its subsidiary in India paid bribes to officials at six government-owned banks. Under the declination deal, no charges will be filed if Liberty Mutual disgorges $4.7 million in profits.
Future enforcement actions against companies are growing less and less likely as a result of deep staffing cuts at many regulatory agencies and because some of those agencies are now led by Trump allies pursuing a MAGA agenda.
The courts, especially at the appellate level, are doing little to impede this retreat from enforcement. The U.S. Supreme Court is, in effect, cheering it on.
Yet there is also good news from the courts: those plaintiff’s lawyers are not backing down. Here are some examples of their efforts:
A federal judge in New York just gave final approval to a settlement in which Mastercard agreed to pay $26 million to resolve allegations of racial and gender discrimination in its hiring practices.
A federal judge in Illinois gave final approval to a deal in which Cargill is paying $32 million to settle litigation in which it was accused of improperly sharing internal information with other turkey processors to limit price competition. In another case in the same court, a group of poultry processors agreed to pay $41 million for their anti-competitive practices.
Last month, a state jury in California awarded $314 million in damages to Android mobile device users who sued Google for transferring data from their devices without their consent for information harvesting and surveillance purposes.
DuPont became the latest chemical company to settle litigation relating to PFAS contamination when it agreed to pay $27 million to upstate New York residents whose drinking water was tainted.
General Motors agreed to pay $150 million to end a case involving the sale of vehicles with hidden engine defects that caused excessive oil consumption.
Capital One paid $425 million in a lawsuit alleging it deceptively advertised its 360 Savings accounts as high-interest products.
Phillips 66 is paying $12.5 million to resolve a lawsuit in which workers at its refineries in California claimed they were not given proper meal and rest breaks and were not compensated for time spent donning and doffing personal protective equipment.
These are but a small sample of the steady stream of class actions brought in federal and state courts on behalf of consumers, workers, and communities. Corporations and their allies have long disparaged such cases as frivolous lawsuits and have sought to limit them through so-called tort reform.
Today, nonetheless, they are increasingly the primary way in which corporate misconduct is being addressed.
Note: Violation Tracker documents more than 5,000 class action lawsuits in a dozen categories.