Welcome to Law.com Class Actions: Critical Mass, a weekly briefing for class action and mass tort attorneys.

This week: The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit heard Nov. 6 arguments on whether to change the third-party releases in the Boy Scouts bankruptcy. Assistant U.S. Attorney Ali Moghaddas, a lead prosecutor in the Tom Girardi trial, has joined Edelson PC. Find out who represents Pfizer in a growing number of lawsuits over Depo-Provera.

I'm Amanda Bronstad. Feel free to reach out to me with your input. My email is [email protected]. Follow me on LinkedIn or X: @abronstadlaw.

‘The Panel Was Pressing Both Sides Pretty Hard’

In a Nov. 6 hearing that lasted three hours, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit heard arguments on whether to dismantle the third-party releases in the Boy Scouts of America’s Chapter 11 reorganization plan.

Here’s the coverage from ALM’s Ellen Bardash on the hearing, which involved 10 attorneys who represented the Boy Scouts, insurance companies and sexual abuse claimants who supported the plan. But some insurance firms and abuse claimants want changes, citing the U.S. Supreme Court’s June 27 decision in Harrington v. Purdue Pharma, which found non-consensual third-party releases in opioid manufacturer Purdue Pharma’s $6 billion bankruptcy plan to be unlawful under the U.S. Bankruptcy Code.

Purdue isn’t only impacting the Boy Scouts case. At least three other bankruptcy judges have evaluated the decision in Chapter 11 plans involving Robertshaw U.S. Holding Corp., Tonawanda Coke Corp. and Smallhold Inc.

I asked Ellen what made the Boy Scouts' bankruptcy stand apart from the other cases. She told me:

“What sets this case apart most is the scope of it. The plan includes the largest sexual abuse settlement at least in the U.S. (maybe anywhere) and is set to pay out over 60,000 survivors. And there's the time element: the large majority of abuse claimants are elderly, and the longer this process is drawn out in the courts, the more are dying before getting compensation.”

So, did the Third Circuit panel give any indication of how it might rule? Ellen told me:

“The panel was pressing both sides pretty hard so I can’t say they were leaning one way or the other, but Judge [Margorie] Rendell, who used to be a bankruptcy attorney, seemed reluctant to shake up the third-party release practice without strong proof of problems in it.”

Girardi Prosecutor Joins Edelson: ‘I Loved Their Mission’

A lead federal prosecutor who got the Aug. 27 conviction of Tom Girardi has joined Edelson PC. Assistant U.S. Attorney Ali Moghaddas, of the Central District of California, joined the Los Angeles office of Edelson on Tuesday.

Jay Edelson (Edelson) said the hire comes as the firm is focused on a rise in class action trials. Edelson was a key player in breaking open the Girardi scandal when it alerted a federal judge in the lawsuits against Boeing over the Lion Air crash about a missing $2 million in client settlements. U.S. District Judge Thomas Durkin, of the Northern District of Illinois, issued a 2020 contempt order against Girardi and his firm, Girardi Keese, and referred them to federal authorities.

Moghaddas and Assistant U.S. Attorney Scott Paetty spearheaded the Girardi trial. Moghaddas did the closing argument and cross examination of Girardi on the stand. He told me he reached out to Edelson, whose lawyers were “instrumental to the Girardi investigation for several years,” to ask about other plaintiffs’ firms in Los Angeles he was considering joining.

“They said those places are outstanding, but if you’re looking to go plaintiffs’ side, we’re thinking about opening an LA office, so what about here?”

So, why did he pick Edelson? He told me: “I loved their mission. Knowing what I know about them and the Girardi case, they did something no other plaintiff lawyers would do.”

Still, Moghaddas said, the irony is not lost on him that "a prosecutor who put this big bad plaintiffs lawyer away is now a plaintiffs lawyer himself.” But he said:

“I cannot tell you how many times I met with Tom’s former clients who were witnesses in our case, and others that ultimately weren’t called for whatever reason, but it was, to me, how could this guy be such this salt-of-the-earth, folks who went to Tom in their darkest hour, really heartbreaking stories. There’s got to be a better way of doing this, got to be lawyers who put their clients first, and not these greedy plaintiffs lawyers who just want to buy personal jets and mansions. I’ve met many of them in LA. That’s not what I want to do, I want to put folks first.”

Who Got the Work?

DLA Piper partners George Gigounas stepped in to represent Pfizer in a growing number of lawsuits alleging injectable birth control medication Depo-Provera increases the risk of developing brain tumors. The defense lawyers appeared on Monday in the first Depo-Provera case filed, but Law.com Radar has identified at least four lawsuits so far.


Here’s what else is happening:

Marriott 2.0: Marriott was back before a federal appeals court to reverse – again – a district judge’s order that certified a class of hotel guests impacted by its 2018 data breach. The Nov. 1 oral arguments before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit focused on a 2023 order that found Marriott could not use the defense of a class action waiver to defeat certification because it argued for the cases to be coordinated into multidistrict litigation. That order followed the Fourth Circuit’s remand of an earlier class certification order, which had failed to consider a class action waiver.

Zantac Verdict? A jury in Alameda County Superior Court is deliberating in the first Zantac trial in California. The trial, against Boehringer Ingelheim, began Oct. 3. Jurors began deliberating on Nov. 6. The Oakland trial comes after two previous Zantac trials in Illinois ended in mistrials. Juries in two other trials in Illinois handed defense verdicts to Boehringer Ingelheim and GlaxoSmithKline, which agreed last month to settle 80,000 Zantac lawsuits for $2.2 billion.

Orrick Breach: A federal judge in California approved Orrick’s $8 million settlement of a lawsuit over its 2023 data breach. U.S. District Judge Susan Illston oversaw four separate lawsuits over the Orrick breach, which impacted the personal data of about 640,000 people. Meanwhile, Gunster agreed to pay $8.5 million to resolve a class action over a 2022 breach impacting 9,550 people. In 2024, three other law firms — Taft, Robinson & Cole and Burr & Forman — reported breaches.

Thanks for reading Critical Mass! I’ll be back next week.