Keller Rohrback L.L.P. Investigates Securities Fraud Claims on Behalf of Flooring America — FRA — Shareholders
Seattle’s Keller Rohrback L.L.P. (www.SeattleClassAction.com) is currently investigating securities fraud claims on behalf of shareholders of Flooring America, Inc. (Nasdaq:FRA) (”FRA” or the “Company”) who purchased the common stock of FRA between November 11, 1999 and May 22, 2000, inclusive (”Class Period”).
Class Shareholders allege that FRA and certain of its officers and directors violated federal securities laws by issuing materially false and misleading financial statements. On May 22, 2000, the company revealed that it was delaying the filing of its Annual Report with the Securities and Exchange Commission, and that it expected to restate its financial results for the first two quarters of the fiscal year ended February 5, 2000 due to the audit process. After the Company’s announcement, FRA’s stock price fell to $2 9/16 per share, from a Class Period high of over $6 per share.
If you purchased FRA securities between November 11, 1999 and May 22, 2000, inclusive, you may wish to join the securities class actions that have been filed. You may move the court to serve as a lead plaintiff no later than August 14, 2000. In order to serve as a lead plaintiff, you must meet certain legal requirements.
If you wish to discuss this announcement, have information relevant to the investigation, wish to learn about your rights to seek to serve as a lead plaintiff, or have any questions on how to join as a class representative in any securities class action, you may contact Keller Rohrback L.L.P. (Lynn Sarko, Juli Farris or Elizabeth Leland, Esq.) toll free at 800/776-6044, via e-mail at investor@kellerrohrback.com, or on-line at www.SeattleClassAction.com.
Keller Rohrback L.L.P. is a law-firm headquartered in Seattle that has successfully represented shareholders and consumers in class action cases for over a decade. Its trial lawyers have obtained judgments and settlements on behalf of clients in excess of seven billion dollars. Keller Rohrback L.L.P. is currently involved in cases and investigations involving Cyber-Care Inc. (Nasdaq:CYBR), Citrix Systems Inc. (Nasdaq:CTXS) and S1 Corporation (Nasdaq:SONE), among others.
FTC concludes CSPI-prompted chain probes - US Federal Trade Commission investigation into fast food advertising claims; Center for Science in the Public Interest - Brief Article
BOSTON - The office of the Federal Trade Commission here said Taco Bell’s TV ad claiming that its Border Lights products were low in fat may have been misleading, but the FTC added that it would take no action be cause the ads ran only for brief time.
In addition, the FTC concluded its investigations of T.G.I. Friday’s, Chili’s an Big Boy concerning health claims at those chains and determined that “no further action is warranted.”
The Center for Science in the Public Interest had prompted the investigations.
Kenneth B. Moll & Associates, Ltd. is Investigating Claims of Deaths and Serious Injuries From Pilgrim’s Pride Deli Meats Contaminated With Listeria
Kenneth B. Moll & Associates, Ltd. announce that it is investigating claims related to an outbreak of listeria that has been linked to Pilgrim’s Pride Corporation’s processing plant in Franconia, Pennsylvania. Pilgrim’s Pride does business under the name Wampler Foods, Inc.
On October 15, 2002, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced that its investigation, along with several State Health Departments, has identified a specific or “outbreak” strain of Listeria that was found in the plant and in 46 ill persons. Of the 46 persons with the outbreak strain, there have been 10 deaths, including 3 miscarriages or stillbirths.
According to Kenneth Moll, “We believe that the total number of cases will be much higher. Our experience in prior outbreaks is that cases of Listeriosis are routinely under reported.”
The affected patients live in 8 states: Pennsylvania (14 cases), New York (11 cases in New York City, 7 in other locations), New Jersey (5 cases), Delaware (4 cases), Maryland (2 cases), Connecticut (1 case), Michigan (1 case) and Massachusetts (1 case). The most recent patient became ill on September 30.
Epidemiologic data indicates that precooked, sliceable turkey deli meat is the cause of the outbreak.
The investigation at the Pilgrim’s Pride plant revealed one food product and 25 environmental samples tested positive for Listeria. Further testing of the DNA fingerprint confirmed that 3 environmental samples matched that of patients with the current outbreak strain.
Prior to the CDC’s announcement, Pilgrim’s Pride recalled 27.4 million pounds of fresh and frozen ready-to-eat turkey and chicken products under the Wampler brand that were produced since May 1, 2002 with the code P-1351 in the USDA seal of inspection.
Listeriosis is a serious and fatal infection caused by food contaminated with the bacterium Listeria monocytogenes. About 2,500 cases of Listeriosis occur each year in the United States. The initial symptoms are often fever, muscle aches, and sometimes gastrointestinal symptoms such as nausea or diarrhea.
Keller Rohrback L.L.P. Investigates Potential Claims on Behalf of Enron Corp. — ENE — Employees and Former Employees
Seattle’s Keller Rohrback L.L.P. is currently investigating potential ERISA claims on behalf of participants and beneficiaries of Enron’s retirement and 401(k) plans.
The investigation period covers January 2000 through October 2001. The investigation focuses on concerns that, under the law interpreting ERISA, Enron and its plan administrators may have breached their fiduciary duties of loyalty and prudence by failing to disclose and inform the Plan participants and beneficiaries with respect to the use of employer stock as a Plan investment. Rather than providing complete and accurate information to the Plans’ participants, it may be alleged that Enron and the plan administrators may have withheld and concealed material information, thereby encouraging participants and beneficiaries to continue to make and to maintain substantial investments in company stock and the Plans. This investigation is being conducted in light of recent events.
On Oct. 16, 2001, Enron surprised the market when it announced that the Company was taking “non-recurring charges totaling $1.01 billion after-tax, or ($1.11) loss per diluted share,” in the third quarter of 2001. Enron later revealed that a material portion of the charge related to the unwinding of investments with certain limited partnerships, controlled by Enron’s CFO, and that the Company would be eliminating more than $1 billion in shareholder equity as a result of its unwinding of the investments. As this news began to be assimilated by the market, the price of Enron common stock dropped significantly. In addition, several recently filed securities suits allege that Enron executives engaged in extensive insider trading, gaining millions of dollars in personal proceeds. Enron retirees have lost a substantial portion of their retirement earnings due to the drop in value of their retirement assets.
If you are a member of an Enron retirement plan, wish to discuss this announcement, or have information relevant to the investigation, you may contact paralegal Liza Catabay, or any member of our team (Britt Tinglum, Liza Catabay, or Lynn Sarko) toll free at 800/776-6044, or via e-mail at investor@kellerrohrback.com.
Seattle’s Keller Rohrback L.L.P. has successfully represented shareholders and consumers in class action cases for over a decade. Its trial lawyers have obtained judgments and settlements on behalf of clients in excess of seven billion dollars.
Kenneth B. Moll & Associates, Ltd. Is Investigating Claims of Invasive Breast Cancer, Coronary Heart Disease, Stroke and Pulmonary Embolism as a Result of the Drug Prempro
Business Editors & Legal Writers
Kenneth B. Moll & Associates, Ltd. announce that it is investigating claims that the prescription hormone replacement therapy (HRT) drug Prempro (conjugated estrogens/medroxyprogesterone acetate tablets), manufactured by Ayerst Laboratories, a division of Wyeth-Ayerst, can cause an increased risk of invasive breast cancer, coronary heart disease, stroke and pulmonary embolism. It is estimated that over 6 million women are currently undergoing hormone replacement therapy.
On July 9, 2002, the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI), a division of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), announced that it has stopped a major clinical trial of the risks and benefits of combined estrogen and progestin. The study was to continue until 2005. However, data revealed that there were marked increases of invasive breast cancer, coronary heart disease, stroke and pulmonary embolism in patients taking the combination therapy compared to women taking a placebo. Prempro was the only estrogen/progestin combination drug tested in the study.
Specific study findings for the estrogen/progestin group compared to placebo include the following:
– 41% increase in strokes
– 29% increase in heart attacks
– 100% increase in blood clots
– 22% increase in total cardiovascular disease
– 26% increase in breast cancer
The results of this study only apply to women who have not had hysterectomies and are receiving Prempro. The NIH is continuing to study the long-term effects of women who have had a hysterectomy and use only estrogen therapy.
According to Kenneth Moll, “The minimal benefits from Prempro are greatly outweighed by the risks of increased invasive breast cancer, coronary heart disease, stroke and pulmonary embolism. The NHLBI should be given great credit for its swift and immediate action to stop the study and warn the public of the increased health risks related to Prempro
Investigator disputes claim about BTK
By Ric Anderson
THE CAPITAL-JOURNAL
Contradicting a claim by a Topeka woman who says she is writing a book about BTK killer Dennis Rader, a Wichita police detective said Wednesday that investigators never uncovered proof that Rader targeted a woman in Topeka.
Lt. Ken Landwehr, head of the Wichita Police Department’s BTK Task Force, said investigators were aware that Rader identified victims in communities outside of Wichita while traveling through the state as an employee of the U.S. Census Bureau in 1989. But Landwehr said he couldn’t verify a claim by the author, Kristin Casarona, that Rader had selected a victim in Topeka.
“We have never identified anybody in Topeka,” he said. “We looked for them up there, but we never found anybody.”
Casarona claims Rader told her that while traveling to Topeka several times to perform his duties with the census bureau, he prowled for victims in the parking lot of the Dillons store at 5720 S.W. 21st and at an apartment complex east of the store. She said Rader picked a target, a woman he dubbed “Project Capital,” and broke into her home with the intent to kill her. But the woman came home late on the day of the burglary, Casarona said, and Rader left before she arrived.
Asked Tuesday about Casarona’s claim, former Topeka Police Chief Ed Klumpp said BTK investigators had never informed him or his officers about a local victim. He further said he believed Wichita officers would have shared that information had they identified a Topekan targeted by Rader.
Casarona stood by her claim Wednesday. After learning about Klumpp’s comments, she said, she rechecked her research and spoke to a source who told her that Wichita police had identified a Topeka victim.
Not so, Landwehr said. He said he wasn’t ruling out the possibility that Rader selected a victim in Topeka but said investigators hadn’t positively identified one. He also said Project Capital didn’t ring a bell with him.
“To be honest, there were so many of them (projects), I don’t recall that one,” he said.
Casarona said she also reviewed a copy of a journal in which Rader detailed his criminal activities. She said the journal, which police seized after Rader was arrested last year, included an entry marked Project Capital in November 1989. She said Rader wrote the letters B and E beside the entry, his code for breaking and entering.
Casarona said there is a name included in the journal entry that she declined to disclose.
Known as BTK - Rader’s own moniker for “Bind, Torture, Kill,” - Rader was arrested in the murders of 10 people in the Wichita area between 1974 and 1991. He confessed last year that he was driven by sexual fantasies in the string of murders.
Rader, 61, is imprisoned at the El Dorado Correctional Facility.
Ric Anderson can be reached at (785) 295-1282 or ric.anderson@cjonline.com.
Assault claim under investigation
The Weber County Sheriff’s Office is investigating a woman’s claim that she was sexually assaulted in the rest room of a middle school in Eden. The woman, a volunteer at Snowcrest Junior High School, claimed she went to the rest room about 8:30 a.m. Tuesday and was assaulted by a man inside, said Weber County Sheriff’s Capt. Klint Anderson.
The woman did not have any obvious physical injuries such as cuts or bruises, Anderson said. But he said there was some physical evidence of an assault, although investigators Wednesday weren’t sure how conclusive it was.
No one else in the school saw the alleged attacker either enter or leave the building. Anderson said the school is set up in such a way that it would be very difficult for anyone to enter the building undetected.
A General climate of fear: shadows lengthen from the Kremlin
RUSSIA is once again becoming the country it has always been, where the will of the ruler in the Kremlin is the supreme law. President Vladimir Putin is drawing a line under the Gorbachev-Yeltsin era of comparative democracy. In foreign and domestic policies, Putin has been concentrating power into his own hands. The Federal Security Service, or FSB in its Russian acronym, has simply taken over from its predecessor, the KGB, as the arm of state to make sure the ruler has his way. Putin’s term of office ends next year, but yes-men are already proposing to change the constitution in order to extend his presidency.
Elimination of rival claimants to power testifies to this reversion to the past. The lucky ones are able to escape into exile abroad. One such is Boris Berezovsky. Once preeminent among the nouveaux riches oligarchs, he used to be a crony of Putin’s, on whose behalf he acted as a powerbroker. Making his own ambitions too plain, he condemned himself to flight.
In order to break the independence of the huge oil company Yukos, its head was put through a show trial and deported to Siberia; and his deputy was put in a penal colony. Bankers, journalists, businessmen, or even oil technicians are murdered when they venture into public life. Since these killings are neither prevented nor properly resolved, the man in the street attributes them to the Kremlin and the FSB. A general climate of fear takes hold.
Even against this background of suspicion, intimidation, double-crossing, and violence, the death in London last November of Alexander Litvinenko is extraordinary, and will remain a landmark in the annals of crime. For a start, the murder weapon was a novelty, polonium-210, otherwise used only in initiating nuclear weapons. Once ingested, a very small amount is enough to bring bodily functions to a halt. It should work immediately, so fast that the cause of death is a mystery. A particularly fit man, Litvinenko survived long enough for experts to identify the poison. On his deathbed, a tragic and spectral figure who had gone bald and aged prematurely, he wrote an open letter accusing Putin of responsibility for his murder.
Future thriller writers and conspiracy theorists will be taking an interest in the case. Four books are apparently being written already, and Hollywood is planning a movie. Suspects and clues already exist in the world of nonfiction, however. Two ex-KGB agents, Andrei Lugovoi and Dmitri Kovtun, admit to meeting Litvinenko on the day the polonium was administered, and in a hotel bar ideal for the purpose. Moreover, a giveaway polonium trail is traceable in rooms they slept in or visited, and in aircraft they flew on. They claim to be innocent. Kremlin spokesmen, as well as Putin, either sound indignant on their behalf or dismiss Litvinenko as a nonentity. Seemingly protective of the chief suspects, the Russian foreign minister, the prosecutor, and the police authorities combine to impose conditions that block investigation and possible extradition to Britain.
British scientists meanwhile have been able to establish which Russian-government power station produced the polonium. The state is the sole producer, and the costs would have been on the order of $10 million. The polonium can only have been handed out for use officially, or stolen. Scotland Yard detectives have been to Russia and believe they know who did what and when, but they are not saying anything, and perhaps never will.
Like the two men suspected of killing him, Litvinenko was an ex-KGB officer, with the rank of lieutenant colonel. His story was that he had been ordered to kill Berezovsky when Putin finally fell out with the oligarch. Rather than do so, he informed Berezovsky. Paul Klebnikov writes in his book that this was all a fabrication, but at any rate both Berezovsky and Litvinenko ended up in exile in London. There they became friends and associates. Berezovsky is said to have bought the London house in which Litvinenko and his wife Marina lived, and to have financed him as an investigative journalist. Primarily, Litvinenko exposed the barbarity of Russian tactics against the Chechens–the bulk of his work was put out on Chechen websites. With a colleague, Yuri Felshtinsky, he wrote a book, Blowing Up Russia, whose thesis is that the FSB bombed houses in Russia proper only to have a pretext for assaulting Chechnya. Litvinenko further personalized his attacks by describing Putin as a pedophile.
One cheer for the hot new memoir: the uses of George Tenet’s book
FORMER CIA director George Tenet’s new book is the most effective bipartisan initiative of the year. His At the Center of the Storm has been clobbered by the Left and the Right, and rightly so. The Left criticizes him for not speaking up when he was in power if he had so many misgivings about the Iraq War. The Right objects to his after-the-fact criticisms of Bush-administration figures and his neglect of the CIA’s clandestine service–a neglect that played a major role in the intelligence disasters over which he presided. And both Left and Right recoil at Tenet’s self-justification, which is extreme even by the standards of a Washington if-only-they-had-listened-tome memoir.
Yet there is a kernel of good in Tenet’s book. Underneath the excuse-making and the score-settling, Tenet’s portrayal of the pre-Iraq War intelligence on Saddam Hussein’s weapons programs dispels key contentions of the “Bush lied, people died” crowd. He captures the essential nature of intelligence–that it’s usually fragmentary and uncertain–and reminds us of the post-9/11 environment, in which policymakers were inclined to put the worst interpretation on incomplete information, lest they encounter another nasty surprise. Rather than undermine the case for war, Tenet’s book–no matter how he has tried to market it during high-profile interviews–tends to support it.
Tenet’s book certainly does not deserve three cheers, or even two. But it does deserve one–lonely and perhaps not very enthusiastic–cheer.
In a book that is hard on Bush-administration hawks, Tenet rebuts one of the persistent anti-administration charges, although one that’s never had any evidence behind it: that the Iraq intelligence was skewed in reaction to pressure from Vice President Dick Cheney and others. “Intelligence professionals did not try to tell policymakers what they wanted to hear,” he writes, “nor did the policymakers lean on us to influence outcomes.”
The infamous Downing Street memos from 2002 quote the head of the British Secret Intelligence Service, Sir Richard Dearlove, saying that “intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.” The word “fixed” became an obsession of anti-war conspiracy theorists. Tenet explains, “Sir Richard later told me that he had been misquoted. He reviewed the draft memo, objecting to the word ‘fixed’in particular, and corrected it to reflect the truth of the matter.” Dearlove had made the more pedestrian observation that he felt war with Iraq was coming.
Given what we know now, of course, Cheney’s statements circa 2002 appear reckless. But he wasn’t talking in an environment in which U.S. forces had scoured Iraq for WMD and come up empty. His aggressive posture was partly in reaction to the first Gulf War, after which it was learned that U.S. intelligence had badly underestimated how close Saddam had come to building a nuclear weapon. “No doubt that experience had colored the vice president’s view of U.S. intelligence gathering ever since,” Tenet writes, “but it also had a profound impact on my views and those of many of our analysts. Given Saddam’s proclivity for deception and denial, we, too, were haunted by the possibility that there was more going on than we could detect.”
This is one of many passages in which Tenet is more fair-minded than in his book-promotion interviews. To conclude that Saddam wasn’t pursuing WMD, Tenet writes, would have meant ignoring “years and years of intelligence that pointed in the direction of active programs.” In the north of Iraq, a CIA team managed to interview Iraqi military officers prior to the war. According to Tenet, “Every military officer we debriefed told us that Saddam did indeed possess WMD.”
Langley certainly wasn’t doing the work of the neocons. Tenet had doubts about invading Iraq. An intelligence officer named Bob Walpole managed the production of the 2002 NIE and told Tenet, “I just don’t believe in this war.” Even adjusting for his self-interest in explaining away failure, Tenet’s bottom-line judgment about the WMD intelligence sounds about right: “We got it wrong partly because the truth was so implausible.”
Benched science: increasingly, judges decide what science—if any—a jury hears
In television courtroom dramas, prosecutors and defendants’ attorneys parade expert witnesses who dazzle juries with insightful forensic analyses, new theories of mental incapacity, data suggesting dangerous flaws in technology, and assessments as to whether an individual’s sickness traces to toxic chemicals. In real life, however, many such scientific experts–and the data that their opinions draw upon–never make it to a jury.
Particularly in cases known as torts, in which victims claim injury from a product or circumstance, judges increasingly have been screening expert witnesses to decide whether the scientific evidence they might recite before a jury is reliable and relevant to the litigation. Affected cases have been primarily in civil courts, where the injured parties, or plaintiffs, claim that some actions by an individual, a company, or a government have caused the plaintiffs harm.
Although judges have always been permitted to preview and exclude expert evidence, relatively few exercised this right prior to a trio of U.S. Supreme Court decisions between 1993 and 1999, notes economist Lloyd Dixon of the RAND Institute for Civil Justice in Santa Monica, Calif. Beginning with the first of those decisions, known as Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals or simply Daubert, rulings by the high court formally instructed federal judges to assume a gatekeeping role for the admission of science into trials.
The result has been a radical transformation of the rules of evidence in torts, says Margaret A. Berger of the Brooklyn (N.Y.) Law School. In more than a dozen analyses in a July 20 supplement to the American Journal of Public Health (AJPH), she, other legal scholars, academics, and attorneys outline the impacts of these judicial changes.
The reports describe an increase since Daubert in the likelihood that scientific evidence will be challenged and great variability from court to court in what potential testimony gets excluded. One leading contention among these analysts: The increased likelihood that a judge will bar plaintiffs’ evidence from court reduces the chance that their case will ever reach trial.
Yet some legal scholars argue that these changes largely reflect a healthy winnowing of spurious and unsound evidence that before Daubert would have confused a jury. Judges now look for a better fit between scientific evidence and the issue being litigated, says Joe S. Cecil of the Federal Judicial Center’s Program on Scientific and Technical Evidence in Washington, D.C.
“I believe that, overall, Daubert was a step in the right direction,” he says, and that judges’ rulings “now more accurately reflect the scientific process than before Daubert.” Cecil acknowledges, however, that many judges are having problems carrying out their new responsibilities.
Sheila Jasanoff of Harvard University’s John E Kennedy School of Government disagrees with Cecil’s generally upbeat assessment. In the years since Daubert, she says, “we’ve got an artificially elevated standard for evidence [admissibility] based on ideas about how science operates that are patently untrue.”
One point on which few Daubert analysts disagree is that judges and science experts usually tome from different cultures and so have different vocabularies and goals. People studying the issue argue that the search for justice would benefit from the legal community learning more about science.
IT STARTED WITH NAUSEA In the 1980s, two women who had taken the drug Bendectin to combat morning sickness gave birth to children with severe defects. The drug is a combination of the antihistamine doxylamine and vitamin [B.sub.6]. William Daubert, the husband of one of the two women, and other members of the two families sued. The trial judge examined proposed evidence from nine experts and ruled that only the defendant’s–the drug maker’s–expert could testify.
This physician-epidemiologist had reviewed dozens of epidemiologic studies–which had used statistics to probe for connections between Bendectin use and health effects in large groups of women–and concluded that the data didn’t support a link between the drug and birth defects.
The plaintiffs’ experts had intended to refer to animal data, comparisons of the chemical structure of the drug with that of agents that cause fetal harm, and an unpublished reanalysis of epidemiologic studies. All these data were to show that the drug might cause birth defects. However, the judge decided that because there existed a wealth of published human data–epidemiologic studies that had included some 130,000 women–admitting any evidence other than the published epidemiology studies was unjustified.
The plaintiffs appealed to the Supreme Court, but in 1993, it affirmed the lower court’s decision. Moreover, it directed trial judges to become more proactive in culling unreliable or less-than-compelling scientific testimony from cases they oversee.
Two related Supreme Court opinions followed: General Electric Co. v. Joiner in 1997 and Kumho Tire Co. v. Carmichael in 1999. In the first case, the court ruled that judges could exclude the testimony even of experts with good credentials and espousing good science if it might confuse a jury by being insufficiently relevant to what caused the injury at issue in a case. The second opinion ruled that a judge could bar an expert from testifying if he or she used unusual criteria for interpreting data or events.