Wexler Wallace

Thomas A. Doyle

admin — Fri, 18 May 2012 15:27:02 +0000

Professional Profile
Tom, who is also a member of Thomas A. Doyle, Ltd., joined the firm in April 2012, as Of Counsel. Tom focuses his practice on class action litigation, with most of his work in antitrust and employment litigation. He has litigated class and other complex litigation in state and federal courts throughout the United States, recovering millions of dollars for his clients. Tom has been able to pursue claims efficiently and effectively, helping large groups of people recover for injuries that they have suffered from unlawful conduct by others. As a result of his work, he is often asked to lecture and write articles on topics relating to class litigation as well as alternative dispute resolution.

Appointed & Representative Positions
In re TFT-LCD (Flat Panel) Antitrust Litigation, MDL 1827 (N.D. California). Tom is part of the team of lawyers that represent the indirect purchaser plaintiffs, who are bringing claims to recover losses from price-fixing conduct in the market for LCD panels. The indirect purchaser plaintiffs are end-users who bought either an LCD television, a notebook computer, or an LCD computer monitor. The defendants are large multinational corporations that make and sell consumer electronic products. The plaintiffs allege that the defendants have violated Section One of the Sherman Act and various state antitrust laws, and the plaintiffs seek more than $1 billion in damages. A trial is scheduled for later in 2012 in San Francisco.

Gomez v. PNC Bank, Case No. 12-cv-1274 (N.D. Illinois). Tom is Lead Counsel for the plaintiff class in this putative class action filed on behalf of employees of PNC Bank, seeking compensation for unpaid overtime work. The case alleges that the defendant had its employees work off-the-clock overtime hours at locations throughout Illinois, in violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act and in violation of the Illinois Minimum Wage Law. The case remains pending.

Jirak v. Abbott Laboratories, Case No. 07-cv-3626 (N.D. Illinois). Tom was Liaison Counsel for the plaintiff class in this Fair Labor Standards Act opt-in case. The plaintiffs were pharmaceutical representatives employed by Abbott laboratories. The trial court found that the defendant had improperly classified the plaintiffs as exempt from the overtime laws, holding that neither the outside sales exemption nor the administrative exemption applied. After finding that the plaintiffs had been wrongfully denied overtime pay, the trial court entered judgment and awarded damages to the plaintiffs. An appeal is pending.

In re TransUnion Corp. Privacy Litigation, MDL 1350 (N.D. Illinois). Tom was Liaison Counsel for the plaintiffs in this MDL class action alleging that TransUnion violated the Fair Credit Reporting Act in its use of information in consumer credit reports. Following almost a decade of litigation, with extensive motion practice and multiple appeals, the case settled on favorable terms for the plaintiffs. The case is currently in settlement administration.

Norman v. Salomon Smith Barney, Case No. 03-cv-4391 (GEL) (S.D.N.Y.). Tom was one of the Co-Lead Counsel for the plaintiffs in a class action brought by accountholders at an investment bank. The case alleged that the bank breached its fiduciary duties and breached its account agreement when it relied on flawed and self-serving research to select stocks for the plaintiffs’ accounts. The case settled on favorable terms for the plaintiffs.

Memberships

American Bar Association

Co-Chair of the Committe on ADR, Sec. of Labor & Empl. Law (2010-present)
Sections of Antitrust and Litigation

American Bar Foundation Fellow (2009-present)
Illinois State Bar Association
Chicago Bar Association
Chicago Bar Foundation

Board of Directors (2006-present)
Lincoln Circle (2005-present)
Grants Committee (2010-present)
Cy Pres Subcommittee (2009-present)

Publications, Presentations & Teaching

Lecturer, 29^th Annual Labor & Employment Law Institute at the University of Louisville, Brandeis School of Law, June 2012 (forthcoming)
Panelist, “The ‘Who Is the Client’ Dilemma,” Committee on Alternative Dispute Resolution’s Mid-Winter Mtg. (ABA Sec. of Labor & Empl. Law), Panama City, Panama, February, 2012.
Author, “Residual Funds and the Administration of Settlements in Illinois Class Actions,” IICLE Class Action Flashpoints, December, 2011.
Co-Author, ABA Hot Topic: AT&T Mobility, LLC v. Concepcion, May 12, 2011.
Moderator, “Negotiation Ethics in ADR,” Committee on ADR’s Mid-Winter Mtg. (ABA Sec. of Labor & Empl. Law), Los Cabos, Mexico, February, 2011.
Author, “Protecting Nonparty Class Members in Class Arbitrations,” 25 ABA J.Lab. & Emp.L. 25 (2009).
Author, “Residual Funds in Class Action Settlements: Using Cy Pres Awards to Promote Access to Justice,” 57 The Federal Lawyer 6, at 26-29 (July, 2010).
Co-Author, ABA Hot Topic: Stolt-Nielsen S.A. v AnimalFeeds Int’l, Corp., June 21, 2010.
Panelist, “Emerging Ethical Issues in ADR,” Committee on ADR’s Mid-Winter Mtg. (ABA Sec. of Labor & Empl. Law), San Juan, Puerto Rico, February, 2010.
Author & Panelist, “Effective Mediation Techniques,” ABA Sec. of Labor & Empl. Law’s 3^rd Annual Nat’l CLE Conference, Washington, DC, November, 2009.
Panelist, “Class Arbitrations,” ABA Sec. of Labor & Empl. Law’s 2^nd Annual Nat’l CLE Conference, Denver, CO, November, 2008.

State Court Admissions

State of Illinois

Federal Court Admissions

U.S. District Court, Northern District of Illinois
U.S. District Court, Central District of Illinois
U.S. Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit
U.S. Supreme Court

Academic Background

J.D., University of Illinois College og Law, 1990
B.S., Bradley University, 1987

Academic Leadership & Awards

Best Oral Advocate, F.H. Green National Moot Court Competition, University of Illinois College of Law, 1999
National Moot Court Team, University of Illinois College of Law, 1989-90
National Champion, Extemporaneous Speaking, American Forensics Association N.I.E.T, 1987

Wexler Wallace Files Case Against Accretive Health

admin — Wed, 09 May 2012 19:50:44 +0000

On May 4, 2012, Wexler Wallace LLP and Carney Williams Bates Pulliam & Bowman, PLLC, filed a shareholder derivative complaint in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois against officers and directors Accretive Health, Inc. The plaintiff alleges that Accretive Health, Inc.’s board members consciously disregarded their fiduciary duty of loyalty to the company by making several decisions for which there was no valid business justification including systematically and pervasively violating healthy privacy laws, state debt collection laws, and state consumer protection laws. Plaintiffs allege that, due to these violations, the company is now subject to numerous investigations and potential lawsuits by the Department of Justice and its shareholders, all of which have and will continue to cause damage to the company. To view a copy of the complaint, click here.

Consumer Reports Investigates: Dangerous Medical Devices

admin — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 20:02:13 +0000

As for the smaller number of high-risk products for which advance safety studies are required, government rules allow them to be sold based on studies that are smaller and less rigorous than those required for prescription drugs.

“Standards for devices exist, they just don’t make sense,” says Diana Zuckerman, Ph.D., a vocal critic of the current system and president of the National Research Center for Women & Families, a nonprofit advocacy organization.

In 2011, a panel from the prestigious Institute of Medicine said the FDA should overhaul its device regulatory system because it fails to ensure patient safety before and after products go on the market. Instead, Congress is now debating a new law that would keep the present system virtually intact and ratify an agreement between the FDA and industry to get devices on the market even faster.

The FDA believes “the program has served American patients well,” says Jeffrey Shuren, M.D., director of the agency’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health. “As a responsible guardian of public health, the FDA believes it’s a challenge to eliminate a program without having a better alternative.”

But an investigation by Consumer Reports, which included interviews with doctors and patients and an analysis of medical research and a device-safety database maintained by the FDA, shows the following areas of concern:

Medical devices often aren’t tested before they come on the market. “What they’re doing is conducting clinical trials on the American public,” says Dan Walter, a political consultant from Maryland. His wife was left with heart and cognitive damage from a specialty catheter, cleared without testing, that malfunctioned during a procedure to treat an abnormal heartbeat.
There’s no systematic way for the government, researchers, or patients to spot or learn about problems with devices. “A coffeemaker or toaster oven has a unique serial number so if a problem is found, the company can contact you to warn you. Your artificial hip or heart valve doesn’t,” Zuckerman says. “Your doctor is supposed to notify you of a problem but may not be able to if he has retired or passed away.”
Without major changes in the system, there’s not much that patients can do to protect themselves.

Surgical Mesh: No Testing

In 2007, Janet Holt of Floresville, Texas, felt swelling in her pelvic area. She went to her gynecologist, who told her that her bladder and uterus had prolapsed—dropped out of their normal position within her pelvis. The doctor recommended a hysterectomy and bladder lift.

“He talked about building a little bird’s nest to hold my bladder up,” Holt recalls. “He said I’d be back at work in two weeks.” She has yet to return to work full-time on the cattle ranch and small chain of restaurants she runs with her husband.

The “bird’s nest” turned out to be a sheet of synthetic mesh that was implanted by instruments inserted through the walls of her vagina. In the weeks and months after surgery, she says, “I was in such pain I couldn’t sit, I couldn’t stand, and I could hardly walk.” Over time, the mesh shrank and shifted, eventually working its way back out of the vaginal wall, an experience Holt likens to “open cigarette burns with each step you take. It’s complete torture.”

Today, after eight surgeries to adjust and remove the mesh, Holt, who is suing the device manufacturer, says she has been left with painful nerve damage in one leg. “I’m 54 years old and it has totally ruined my life,” she says.

Holt is one of hundreds of thousands of women implanted with transvaginal mesh for prolapse repair and bladder support since the first such products came on the market in the early 2000s. Manufacturers marketed the mesh packaged in a “kit” with tools for insertion and marketed them to doctors as an easier way to do a surgery that had traditionally required special additional training.

“The companies were saying, ‘The salesman will show you how to do it,’ ” said Lewis Wall, M.D., professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Washington University in St. Louis. Despite thousands of reports of adverse events, repeated alarms by women’s-health and consumer-health advocates, and multiple lawsuits, these products are still being sold—and are still classified as “moderate risk” devices.

In an August 2011 petition asking the FDA to take transvaginal mesh off the market, the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen called it “a ‘poster-child’ example of the fundamental failure … to protect the public’s health and welfare.”

To read the remainder of this article, please click here. A version of this article appeared in the May 2012 issue of Consumer Reports magazine with the headline “Dangerous Devices.”

Wexler Wallace represents a number of women who were injured by transvaginal surgical mesh. If you or a loved one has been injured by transvaginal surgical mesh, please fill out our contact form.

Edward Wallace Appointed to Plaintiffs’ Steering Committee in MDL Nos. 2187, 2325, 2326 and 2327

admin — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 19:17:11 +0000

The FDA issued an alert to health care practitioners in October 2011 warning them to only use transvaginal mesh as a last resort for treating pelvic organ prolaspe or stress urinary incontinence. Wexler Wallace represents hundreds of claimants that have suffered serious physical and mental injuries as a result of implanted transvaginal surgical mesh. If you or a loved one has suffered complications after the use of a transvaginal surgical mesh to treat pelvic organ prolapse or stress urinary incontinence, please contact Wexler Wallace or complete our online form.

Wexler Wallace Files Securities Case against Groupon

admin — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 18:04:07 +0000

More specifically, the complaint alleges that defendants violated the Securities Act of 1933 and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 by issuing a series of misrepresentations and omissions related to Groupon’s internal controls, financial results and business.

In November 2011, Groupon went public with an offering of 35 million shares priced at $20 per share, netting Groupon $658 million and its underwriters $42 million. In a March 30, 2012, press release and its first annual report filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Groupon announced that it was revising its fourth quarter 2011 financial results, resulting in a $14.3 million reduction to its fourth quarter revenues. Groupon also disclosed that its auditors found a material weakness in its internal controls, and that it could not assure the accuracy of its financial statements. On April 2, 2012, the first trading day following Groupon’s announcement, the company’s stock price dropped by nearly 17% to $15.27, well below its $20 IPO price and the class period high of $26.19.

The lawsuit is pending in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. To view a copy of the complaint, click here.

Wexler Wallace Files Case Against Makers of Lipitor

admin — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 18:54:07 +0000

According to the complaint, Pfizer and Ranbaxy also entered into sham litigation and anticompetitive settlement in an effort to protect the Lipitor monopoly and allocate the post-generic entry market. As a result of these actions, generic Lipitor competition was delayed for a number of years, forcing the proposed class of end purchasers to pay more for Lipitor and its generics than they should have but for defendants’ conduct.

Cases for both direct and indirect purchasers of Lipitor have been filed in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York and Massachusetts. On March 29, 2012, the Judicial Panel for Multi-District Litigation heard argument on consolidation and transfer of the pending cases to one forum. The parties are awaiting the Panel’s decision on these issues.

For a copy of the complaint, click here.

Benchmark Plaintiff Honors Wexler Wallace

admin — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 20:05:44 +0000

Benchmark Plaintiff, The Definitive Guide to America’s Leading Plaintiff Firms & Attorneys, was spawned by Benchmark Litigation in 2011. It is the only publication on the market to focus exclusively on litigation in the United States. According to its Website, the guide’s results are the culmination of a six-month research period that allows researchers to conduct extensive interviews with litigators and their clients. During these interviews Benchmark examines recent casework handled by the firms and asks sources to offer their professional opinions on litigators practicing within their state or national practice areas.

For a complete list of Illinois rankings, click here.

Wexler Wallace Files Antitrust Case Against the Makers of Skelaxin

admin — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 14:54:52 +0000

According to the complaint, filed March 8, King and Mutual also conspired to flood the FDA with baseless Citizen Petitions in an effort to protect the Skelaxin monopoly. In addition, the complaint alleges that King and Mutual entered into an anticompetitive settlement in which Mutual received cash payments, among other things, for helping King keep generics out of the market. As a result of these actions, generic Skelaxin competition was delayed for more than 3 years, forcing the proposed class of end purchasers to pay more for Skelaxin and its generics than they should have but for defendants’ conduct.

For a copy of the complaint, click here.

Wexler Wallace LLP Files Class Actions against Major Drug Manufacturers

admin — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 22:50:13 +0000

The Complaints allege that 10 major drug manufacturers (Merck & Co., Inc., Pfizer, Inc., Amgen Inc., AstraZeneca, Inc., GlaxoSmithKline, Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corp., Bristol-Meyers Squibb Co., Otsuka America Pharmaceutical, Inc., Gilead Sciences, Inc., and Abbott Laboratories) designed and implemented unlawful prescription co-payment (“co-pay”) subsidy programs that subsidize privately-insured individuals’ co-pays for the manufacturers’ key brand name drugs. They include the blockbuster drugs Nexium (AstraZeneca), Lipitor (Pfizer), and Crestor (AstraZeneca). Requiring health plan members to pay a small portion of the high cost of a branded prescription drug — either a co-pay or co-insurance — provides a reasonable, personal incentive for privately-insured individuals to choose less-costly, usually generic, medications, and drives down the cost of the much larger residual portion paid by the health benefit providers. Each of the co-pay subsidy programs implemented by defendant drug manufacturers alters the carefully calibrated co-payment system negotiated by health benefit providers and their members, and each is intended to steer unsuspecting members toward more expensive brand name drugs when less expensive therapeutic alternatives are available in generic form. The complaints allege that these co-pay subsidy programs, which are estimated to increase health benefit providers’ prescription drug costs by $32 billion over the next 10 years, violate federal racketeering and federal antitrust laws.

Click to view the following complaints: Abbott Laboratories, Merck & Co., Amgen Inc and Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Inc., GlaxoSmithKline, Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corp., and Bristol-Meyers Squibb Co.

For a Washington Post Article on these class actions, click here.

Corey G. Raines

admin — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 15:22:45 +0000

Professional Profile
Corey’s primary practice area at Wexler Wallace LLP is mass tort litigation. While in law school she actively engaged in the study of civil litigation and trial advocacy, where she was a member of the Moot Court Society and was a semi-finalist in the Intramural Moot Court Competition. She has applied these skills to her practice of law with Wexler Wallace where she works with clients that have been injured by the use of Actos, Pelvic Mesh and Yaz.

Memberships

Chicago Bar Association
American Association for Justice
Illinois State Bar Association
Jewish United Fund of Metropolitan Chicago Young Lawyers Group

Charitable & Community Contributions

Jewish United Fund of Metropolitan Chicago Young Lawyers Group Mentor/Mentee Program

State Court Admissions

State of Illinois

Academic Background

J.D., DePaul University College of Law, 2011
B.A., University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2008

Academic Leadership & Awards

Member, DePaul College of Law Appellate Moot Court Society
Member, DePaul National Cultural Heritage Law Moot Court Competition Committee
Semi-Finalist, DePaul University College of Law Intramural Moot Court Competition
Participant, Pepperdine University National Entertainment Law Moot Court Competition
Participant, George Washington University Religious Freedom Moot Court Competition