Plaintiffs attorneys in 2 multidistrict litigations face sanctions for protective order document breach
Plaintiffs lawyers in two different multidistrict litigations were recently sanctioned by judges for violating protective orders by referencing court documents in both cases. (Photo by May Lim/500px/Getty Images)
Plaintiffs lawyers in two different multidistrict litigations were recently sanctioned by judges for violating protective orders by referencing court documents in both cases.
Bret Stanley of the Stanley Law Firm in Houston worked on the plaintiffs’ steering committee against the Uber sexual assault multidistrict litigation. U.S. Magistrate Judge Lisa Cisneros of the Northern District of California said Stanley violated a protective order when he referenced multidistrict litigation documents in several state court cases against Uber.
Stanley was sanctioned $80,000 and removed from the plaintiffs’ steering committee, according to coverage on Law.com.
“For me, professionally, this was a big deal,” Stanley told Law.com. “And there’s a lot of nuances about everything that happened.”
In another multidistrict litigation of 600 cases alleging a link to the use of acetaminophen and autism and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, plaintiffs lawyer Ashley Keller of Keller Postman in Chicago was sanctioned “for using confidential documents under a protective order in state court cases,” according to Law.com.
Keller said he only made reference to the documents and did not share them. The sanction from U.S. District Judge Denise Cote of the Southern District of New York has been appealed.
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