Alien Tort Statute, ChevronTexaco Lawsuit, Verizon Settlement, Sony Slave Trial

December 22, 2004
Daily Journal
“Verizon To Pay”

A judge Tuesday ordered Verizon to pay $88 million to California consumers for charging rental fees on obsolete rotary phones long after they had been replaced with modern equipment. . .
Some customers paid $1,000 each in rent for the old phones, said plaintiff’s lawyers Dan Stormer of Pasadena’s Hadsell Stormer and Marc Coleman of Long Beach. . .
“If companies take advantage of consumers, they must be made to pay all or most of what they profited,” Stormer said. “Otherwise companies have no incentive to do right.”

December 22, 2004
AFX.COM

“America’s Verizon settles lawsuit over phantom-phone billing for 88 mln usd”
US telecom giant Verizon has agreed to pay 88 mln usd to settle a lawsuit claiming it fraudulently charged customers rent for long-defunct rotary-dial phones, lawyers said yesterday.
“Our hope is that this sends a message that you cannot defraud, on a massive scale, hundreds of thousands of people and get away with it,” said another lawyer for the plaintiffs, Dan Stormer.
“After the deregulation of the phone industry, when people could buy their own phones, Verizon continued to bill people for the next 13 years for phones they didn’t even have,” he said.

December 15, 2004
Class Action Law Monitor
“Supermarkets, Janitors Reach $22 Million Settlement Over Wages”

Three California supermarket chains agreed to settle class action claims of over 2,000 immigrant janitors, who asserted that they worked approximately 70 hours per week at $3.50 per hour, on average, without receiving minimum wage or overtime. . . .
U.S. District Court Judge Percy Anderson granted preliminary approval of the settlement agreement under which the janitors will receive $22.4 million.
Counsel for Flores : Barbara E. Hadsell, Sandra C. Munoz, Hadsell & Stormer, 626-585-9600, Pasadena, Cal.; Bert G. Voorhees, Theresa M. Traber, Traber & Voorhees, 626-585-9611, Pasadena, Cal.; Della Bahan, Janet M. Herold, Puja Batra, Bahan & Associates, 626-796-5100, Pasadena, Cal.; Hector O. Villagra, Maureen Guadalupe Tellez, Steven J. Reyes, Thomas A. Saenz, Mexican American Legal Defense & Education Fund, 213-629-2512, Los Angeles, Cal; James L. Linsey, Cohen Weiss & Simon, 212-563-4100, New York; Karen C. Carrera, Mark Andrew Talamantes, Virginia Villegas, Talamantes Villegas & Carrera, 415-861-9600, San Francisco; Marvin E. Krakow, Krakow & Kaplan, 310-229-0900, Los Angeles; Robert D. Newman, Western Center on Law & Poverty, 213-487-7211, Los Angeles; Steven J. Kaplan, Rottman Kaplan, 310-288-3700, Beverly Hills, Cal.

December 14, 2004
The New York Times
“Unocal Settles Rights Suit in Myanmar”
By Bloomberg News

The Unocal Corporation, which has oil and gas operations on five continents, has agreed to settle lawsuits concerning human rights violations committed during the construction of a pipeline in Myanmar. . . The suits claim Unocal is responsible for atrocities committed by soldiers of Myanmar, formerly Burma, who forced others to work on the project. . .
Dan Stormer, a lawyer for the villagers, said the deal would help ‘’develop programs to improve living conditions, health care and education and protect the rights of people from the pipeline region.’‘

October 31, 2004
Los Angeles Times
“Green Dreams; Scores of urban farmers have put down roots on a site near downtown L.A., turning a blighted industrial sector into an urban oasis. Now they’ve been told they have to leave. They’re fighting back.”
By Emily Green

Until the eviction, this was the largest urban garden in North America that nobody had ever heard of. . .
They were now “urban farmers,” thank you, who for the last year have marched twice a week to City Hall chorusing Cesar Chavez’s 1972 battle cry, “Si, se puede!” (“Yes, it can be done!”). . .
They also got a lawyer, Dan Stormer of the Pasadena firm Hadsell & Stormer.

September 15, 2004
Los Angeles Times
“Unocal Must Face Abuse Suit”
By Lisa Girion

A Los Angeles County Superior Court judge denied a motion by Unocal Corp. to dismiss a long-running human rights lawsuit Tuesday, apparently clearing the way for a jury trial in the case of Myanmar refugees who allegedly suffered abuses at the hands of government soldiers guarding a Unocal pipeline.
“This is the moment I’ve been waiting for,” said Dan Stormer, a Pasadena lawyer representing some of the 15 Myanmar plaintiffs. “This means the case will go before a jury, and I think a jury will clobber them for their despicable behavior. This is the ruling that Unocal has feared from the start.”

August 28, 2004
Los Angeles Times
“New Damages in Labor Suit”
By Richard Verrier

A Santa Monica jury Friday ordered a vice president of legal affairs at Sony Pictures Entertainment and his wife to pay $275,000 in punitive damages to a woman who said the couple kept her as a domestic slave.
The total damages against James J. Jackson and Elizabeth Jackson would be $1.6 million, excluding attorney fees, said Ruiz’s attorney, Dan Stormer.
“This sends a message that jurors will not tolerate this type of abusive conduct,” he said.

August 27, 2004
City News Service
“Slave Trial”

A Santa Monica jury awarded $275,000 in punitive damages to a Philippine woman who claimed she was kept as a domestic “slave” for a year by a Sony Pictures executive and his wife. . . Because the jury determined Ruiz was duped into coming to the country to work, the total damages are automatically doubled to $1.65 million, said her attorney Dan Stormer. . .
“My argument to the jury essentially (was) to do justice, they had to make an example of the Jacksons, so that others would know there is a penalty for brutal conduct – and they responded,” Stormer said.

Aug 6, 2004
S.F. Daily Journal
“Judge Keeps U.S. Out of Chevron Lawsuit”

U.S. District Judge Susan Illston has rejected a request by ChevronTexaco Corp. to ask the federal government if a human rights lawsuit would disrupt American relations with Nigeria. . .
ChevronTexaco is being sued in Illston's court in San Francisco by more than two dozen Nigerians. The lawsuit stems from allegations that the oil giant bears responsibility for the violent suppression of environmental protests by Nigerian activists in the 1990s.

August 2, 2004
Financial Times (London, England)
“The questions over aiding and abetting: ALIEN TORT STATUTE: An oil company’s fight with the human rights lobby tests an 18th century law”
By Jonathan Birchall

In its ruling last month (on a case involving the federal government), the Supreme Court argued that the statute should be limited to violations that are “specific, universal and obligatory” under international law. . .
“We have slavery, we have torture, we have crimes against humanity as part of our claim,” said Dan Stormer, of the law firm Hadsell & Stormer, who argued on behalf of the Unocal plaintiffs. “They can pound the table all they want, but we are going to get to argue this case in court.”

June 25, 2004
City News Service
By Meredith Price

A proposed class action lawsuit was filed on behalf of card dealers at two South Los Angeles clubs, alleging minimum wage law violations, the plaintiff’s attorney said today. . .
At the end of each 30-minute rotation at a table, dealers must pay $1.50 to the floorman, or floor manager, said Dan Stormer, Santos’ attorney. This effectively cuts the base wage by $3 an hour, he said.

June 21, 2004
The New York Times
By John M. Broder

“Starting Over, 24 Years After a Wrongful Conviction
In 2002, Magistrate Judge Robert N. Block delivered a lengthy opinion stating that Mr. Goldstein had been wrongly convicted and ordered him released. . .
He spends his days as a paralegal at the small Pasadena law firm of Hadsell & Stormer and working with Mr. Kaye on a damage claim against the authorities who took his freedom.

March 17, 2004
Los Angeles Times
“South L.A. Gardeners Win Round in Effort to Keep Plots; Judge allows 350 families who cultivate a 14-acre parcel to keep growing their food and flowers until ownership issues are resolved.”
By Jessica Garrison

The community gardeners of South Los Angeles, who were ordered off their lush, vegetable-filled plots earlier this year to make way for warehouses or a cold storage unit, won a reprieve Tuesday.
Superior Court Judge David P. Yaffe issued a preliminary injunction allowing the 350 families who grow food and flowers on the 14-acre parcel at 41st and Alameda streets to stay, either until their lawsuit against the city of Los Angeles and developer Ralph Horowitz is resolved, or until the city follows its own required procedures for selling surplus property. . .
“The city did all this in secret, directly contrary to what the charter says.... It is shocking,” said Dan Stormer, one of the attorneys for South Central Farmers Feeding Families.