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Wells Fargo Under Fire For 401(k) Rollover Practices

RPWB attorneys are investigating claims that Wells Fargo may have advised people rolling over their 401(k) retirement plans to invest in alternative investments in order to earn higher fees and commissions.

These 401(k) rollovers have caught the attention of federal regulators with the Department of Justice, Department of Labor and the Securities Exchange Commission, who are reportedly investigating.

RPWB attorneys are looking for assistance from current or former Wells Fargo customers who:

  • Rolled over their company-sponsored 401(k) into an Individual Retirement Account (IRA) with Wells Fargo
  • Were advised by a Wells Fargo employee to invest in certain alternative or non-traditional investments
  • Were advised by a Wells Fargo employee to invest in a Wells Fargo mutual fund
  • Put money into a managed investment account or into a fiduciary account (such as a trust fund)

If you rolled over your 401(k) into an IRA at Wells Fargo and/or a Wells Fargo employee advised you to invest in certain mutual funds or alternative investments, please call us at 1-866-344-8436 or fill out the form on this page.

You may be eligible for additional compensation by agreeing to be a class representative on behalf of other Wells Fargo customers.

RPWB is a reputable plaintiff law firm that represents consumers throughout the United States from our offices in South Carolina and Illinois. Your help in our investigation is greatly appreciated as we believe consumers must be protected to the fullest extent of the law.

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First Three Abilify Gambling Cases Settle

In April, the makers of Abilify settled the first three bellwether cases that were scheduled to go to trial this past June.

Judge M. Casey Rodgers also ordered both sides to begin work on the framework for a global settlement for the nearly 2,000 other Abilify cases pending in the Northern District of Florida. The deadline for the lawyers to report back is September 2018.

People who developed the compulsion to gamble or excessively shop while taking Abilify should contact us immediately to begin a free case review. Because statutes of limitation dictate how quickly a lawsuit must be filed, there is a very short period of time to file a claim. Depending on where you live, that window to file may have even closed.

RPWB attorneys represent Abilify users throughout the country who compulsively gambled or shopped. For more information, give us a call at 1-888-872-4086.

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RPWB Accepting DePuy Elbow Implant Cases

RPWB attorneys are representing patients who had to replace their faulty DePuy Synthes elbow implant, a defective medical device that was pulled from the market years ago yet it still causing problems.

In late 2016, the DePuy Synthes elbow implant was recalled after people who received the devices reported problems with radial stem loosening at the stem-bone interface. At the time, more than 50,000 of the devices had been made and sold.

Patients who received the Depuy Synthes Radial Head Prosthesis System may experience the following problems:

  • Pain
  • Device loosening
  • Bone loss
  • Poor range of motion
  • Bone fracture
  • Soft tissue damage
  • Revision surgery

Those people who needed a revision surgery may be entitled to compensation for pain, disabling side effects, lost wages and medical costs. Please contact us for more information.

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16 RPWB attorneys named to Best Lawyers List

CHARLESTON – Richardson, Patrick, Westbrook & Brickman was again recognized as South Carolina’s top-listed plaintiff law firm for product liability cases and mass tort/class actions by The Best Lawyers in America® in their 2019 edition released in August 2018.

In all, 16 RPWB attorneys were named 2019 Best Lawyers, including four new additions to the list. RPWB founding member Ed Westbrook was named Lawyer of the Year for class actions and mass torts in the Charleston-area.

Here are the RPWB attorneys named to the 2019 Best Lawyers list:

Michael Brickman
Litigation – Securities
Mass Tort Litigation/Class Actions – Plaintiffs

Elizabeth Middleton Burke
Mass Tort Litigation/Class Actions – Plaintiffs
Personal Injury Litigation – Plaintiffs
Product Liability Litigation – Plaintiffs

David Butler
Personal Injury Litigation – Plaintiffs
Product Liability Litigation – Plaintiffs

Blair Hahn
Mass Tort Litigation/Class Actions – Plaintiffs
Product Liability Litigation – Plaintiffs

Greg Lofstead
Mass Tort Litigation/Class Actions – Plaintiffs
Product Liability Litigation – Plaintiffs

Christiaan Marcum
Mass Tort Litigation/Class Actions – Plaintiffs
Product Liability Litigation – Plaintiffs

Kim Keevers Palmer
Mass Tort Litigation/Class Actions – Plaintiffs

Charles Patrick
Mass Tort Litigation/Class Actions – Plaintiffs
Product Liability Litigation – Plaintiffs

Terry Richardson
Business Litigation
Mass Tort Litigation/Class Actions – Plaintiffs
Personal Injury Litigation – Plaintiffs
Railroad Law

Tom Rogers
Medical Malpractice Law – Plaintiffs
Personal Injury Litigation – Plaintiffs

Hoyt Rowell
Health Care Law
Mass Tort Litigation/Class Actions – Plaintiffs

Chris Tuck
Mass Tort Litigation/Class Actions – Plaintiffs

Ed Westbrook
Mass Tort Litigation/Class Actions – Plaintiffs

Ken Wilson
Product Liability Litigation – Plaintiffs

Bobby Wood
Mass Tort Litigation/Class Actions – Plaintiffs

Since it was first published in 1983, Best Lawyers® has become universally regarded as the definitive guide to legal excellence. Best Lawyers lists are compiled based on an exhaustive peer-review evaluation. 83,000 industry leading lawyers are eligible to vote (from around the world), and we have received almost 10 million evaluations on the legal abilities of other lawyers based on their specific practice areas around the world. For the 2018 Edition of The Best Lawyers in America©, 7.4 million votes were analyzed, which resulted in more than 58,000 leading lawyers being included in the new edition. Lawyers are not required or allowed to pay a fee to be listed; therefore inclusion in Best Lawyers is considered a singular honor. Corporate Counsel magazine has called Best Lawyers “the most respected referral list of attorneys in practice.”

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RPWB is a US News 2018 Best Law Firm

CHARLESTON, S.C. – Richardson, Patrick, Westbrook & Brickman was named a 2018 Best Law Firm by U.S. News & World Report, recognizing the plaintiff firm for its work on mass torts and class actions, product liability, securities and personal injury lawsuits.

RPWB was selected as one of the top mass tort and class action law firms in the country as well as a top-tier firm in two metropolitan areas. This included recognition for work in product liability, securities litigation, health care law and mass tort litigation in the Charleston, S.C. market and personal injury litigation in the Augusta, Ga. market. The firm also was recognized for its work in railroad law.

In all, 12 RPWB attorneys were named 2018 Best Lawyers for their respective practice areas, including four additions in the past year.

The four lawyers recognized as Best Lawyers for the first time in the annual publication were Dave Butler, Greg Lofstead, Christiaan Marcum and Thomas Rogers.

Here are RPWB’s 2018 Best Lawyers listings:

Michael Brickman
Securities Litigation
Mass Tort Litigation/Class Actions – Plaintiffs

Elizabeth Middleton Burke
Mass Tort Litigation/Class Actions – Plaintiffs
Personal Injury Litigation – Plaintiffs
Product Liability Litigation – Plaintiffs

David Butler
Product Liability Litigation – Plaintiffs

Blair Hahn
Mass Tort Litigation/Class Actions – Plaintiffs
Product Liability Litigation – Plaintiffs

Gregory Lofstead
Mass Tort Litigation/Class Actions – Plaintiffs
Product Liability Litigation – Plaintiffs

Christiaan Marcum
Product Liability Litigation – Plaintiffs

Kimberly Keevers Palmer
Mass Tort Litigation/Class Actions – Plaintiffs

Charles Patrick
Mass Tort Litigation/Class Actions – Plaintiffs
Product Liability Litigation – Plaintiffs

Terry Richardson
Business Organizations
Mass Tort Litigation/Class Action Lawsuits – Plaintiffs
Personal Injury Litigation – Plaintiffs
Railroad Law

Thomas Rogers
Medical Malpractice Law – Plaintiffs
Personal Injury Litigation – Plaintiffs

Hoyt Rowell
Mass Tort Litigation/Class Actions – Plaintiffs
Health Care Law

Ed Westbrook
Mass Tort Litigation/Class Actions – Plaintiffs

In addition, Hoyt Rowell was named Lawyer of the Year in Charleston for his work on healthcare law. The firm serves as a foreign legal consultant to six provinces in Canada who are seeking to recover public health spending on tobacco-related illnesses from cigarette manufacturers.

About RPWB

With roots dating back to the 1930s in a small, but politically important town in South Carolina, RPWB was formed in 2002 as a collective of talented legal minds who focus on complex litigation that benefits consumers and ordinary people who are harmed through no fault of their own. The firm frequently holds leadership positions in national litigation against the world’s largest corporations. We are known as some of the first attorneys in the nation to successfully hold asbestos manufacturers liable for causing mesothelioma cancer, and as some of the notable attorneys who lead the fight against tobacco companies in the 1990s that led to the Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement. The firm enjoys a strong reputation for product liability, personal injury and class action litigation.

RPWB also represents individual people in many practice areas, including: catastrophic personal injury, truck accidents, railroad accidents, construction defects, medical malpractice, mesothelioma and other occupational lung disease, whistleblower & qui tam, nursing home abuse, pharmaceutical drugs and medical device cases.

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Extensive Experience in Sophisticated Litigation Locally, Nationally, and Internationally

Workers to receive pay after plant closure

 

CHARLESTON, SC – A settlement that provides six-week severance packages to former workers of a shuttered Moncks Corner fire truck manufacturer received final approval in U.S. District Court on Monday, August 31, 2015.

Former employees of American LaFrance will receive compensation for owed salary and benefits stemming from the plant’s sudden shutdown in January 2014. Workers arrived at the plant on January 17, 2014 to learn that the company would cease operations immediately and that they would receive no severance packages.

Plaintiffs Olivia and James Schreiner filed a class action on behalf of the workers alleging the company’s actions put it in violation of the federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act, which requires workers to be paid and receive benefits for 60 days when companies of a certain size reduce their workforce.

The settlement agreement, approved by U.S. District Judge Richard M. Gergel, calls for American LaFrance and Patriarch Partners, which plaintiffs contend controlled American LaFrance, to provide lump sum payments totaling $385,000 to approximately 100 former workers at the Moncks Corner plant.

“This settlement enables the workers to close the books on a tumultuous chapter of their lives,” said lead counsel James L. Ward, Jr. of Richardson, Patrick, Westbrook & Brickman, which represents the employees. “Imagine arriving to your workplace to find that it had suddenly closed and you were not getting any help. These employees were left in the lurch while they watched a private equity firm dismantle and liquidate the iconic fire truck brand’s assets.”

Prior to its abrupt closing, American LaFrance employed about 500 workers at locations in California, Pennsylvania, and South Carolina, about 100 of whom were based at the company’s Moncks Corner facility. Workers at the company’s other locations did not qualify for compensation because the employer’s headcount at those facilities did not meet federal thresholds.

RPWB is a plaintiff law firm based in Charleston, SC with extensive experience in complex litigation across a diverse array of practice areas, including employment class action cases. Patriarch Partners LLC, is a private equity investment firm based in New York that invests in financially-distressed companies.

Case Information
Schreiner et al v. Patriarch Partners LLC et al
Case #: 2:2014cv00220
Plaintiff Attorneys: James L. Ward, Jr., T. Christopher Tuck and Catherine H. McElveen of Richardson, Patrick, Westbrook & Brickman in Mt. Pleasant, SC; and Randall Charpia of Charpia Law Firm in Summerville, SC.
Defense Attorneys: Paul I. Perlman, Peter C. Godfrey, and Robert J. Fluskey of Hodgson Russ LLP in Buffalo, NY; and Scott Schools and E. Brandon Gaskins of Moore & Van Allen PLLC in Charleston, SC.
Judge: The Hon. Richard M. Gergel of the District of South Carolina

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RPWB is a 2017 US News Best Law Firm

CHARLESTON, S.C. – Richardson, Patrick, Westbrook & Brickman was named a 2017 Best Law Firm by U.S. News & World Report, recognizing the plaintiff firm for its work on product liability, securities and personal injury lawsuits.

RPWB was selected as a top-tier firm in two metropolitan areas, including product liability and securities litigation in the Charleston, S.C. market and personal injury litigation in the Augusta, Ga. market. The firm also was recognized for its work in railroad law, health care law and mass torts/class actions.

Nine RPWB attorneys are named to the 2017 Best Lawyers® list for their plaintiff work. They are:

Michael Brickman
Securities Litigation

Beth Burke
Mass Tort Litigation/Class Actions – Plaintiffs

Blair Hahn
Product Liability Litigation – Plaintiffs

Kim Keevers Palmer
Mass Tort Litigation/Class Actions – Plaintiffs

Charles Patrick
Mass Tort Litigation/Class Actions – Plaintiffs
Products Liability Litigation – Plaintiffs

Terry Richardson
Personal Injury Litigation – Plaintiffs
Railroad Law

Hoyt Rowell
Mass Tort Litigation/Class Actions – Plaintiffs
Health Care Law

Jay Ward
Mass Tort Litigation/Class Actions – Plaintiffs
Product Liability Litigation – Plaintiffs

Ed Westbrook
Mass Tort Litigation/Class Actions – Plaintiffs

RPWB Founding Member Terry E. Richardson, Jr. was named a 2017 “Lawyer of the Year” in the Augusta, Ga. market for his personal injury work. It is the second time he has received that honor for his work throughout South Carolina and the rest of the Southeastern United States.

About RPWB

Founded in 2002, RPWB is a leader in complex plaintiff litigation throughout the United States. The firm is frequently selected to hold leadership positions in nationwide lawsuits against the world’s largest and most powerful corporations. RPWB attorneys are assisting six Canadian provinces as foreign legal consultants in litigation to recoup public health spending on tobacco-related illnesses.

While RPWB takes pride in its work to help large groups of people who have been wronged by some of the biggest companies in the world, the firm is equally proud of its efforts to help individual clients seek justice. The firm represents individual plaintiffs in many practice areas, including: catastrophic personal injury, truck accidents, railroad accidents, construction defects, medical devices, medical malpractice, mesothelioma and other occupational lung disease.

About Best Lawyers®

Since it was first published in 1983, Best Lawyers® is regarded as a definitive guide to legal excellence. Best Lawyers lists are compiled based on an exhaustive peer-review evaluation. For the 2017 Edition of The Best Lawyers in America©, 7.3 million votes were analyzed. Lawyers are not required or allowed to pay a fee to be listed; therefore inclusion in Best Lawyers is considered a singular honor.

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Attorney Fights for Cleanup of SC’s Largest Gasoline Spill

MOUNT PLEASANT, S.C. – RPWB attorney Katie McElveen recently helped a national pipeline safety group prepare an amicus brief supporting a lawsuit to clean up one of the largest gasoline pipeline spills in South Carolina history.

In late 2014, residents of Belton followed the strong smell of gasoline to discover that a pipeline spanning from Louisiana to Washington D.C, had ruptured and spilled 369,000 gallons of gas, leaving dead plants and oil sheens in nearby creeks and the Savannah River.

Two years later, when it became clear that the owner of the pipeline, Kinder Morgan, had failed to adequately clean up the site, two environmental groups – Upstate Forever and Savannah Riverkeeper – filed a lawsuit under the Clean Water Act.

In April 2017, a U.S. District Court Judge dismissed the conservation groups’ case, finding that the spill was not a violation of the Clean Water Act because the pipeline was patched and the gasoline had not spilled directly into surface waters.

The two environmental groups appealed the ruling to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals.

On behalf of the Pipeline Safety Trust, McElveen prepared a friend of the court brief arguing the spill was a violation of the Clean Water Act because there is a direct hydrologic connection between where the rupture occurred and the waterways protected under the Act. The gasoline spilled uphill from two creeks that flow into the Savannah River. Gas from the spill seeped into the soil and flows through the groundwater into the two creeks.

Because approximately 160,000 gallons of gasoline has not been recovered from the spill site, petroleum continues to flow into the creeks and river. When the environmental groups returned to the site about 18 months after the spill, they found that the area still reeked of gasoline, and protective booms that were previously installed were so neglected that plants had taken root in them. Water testing determined that the pollution levels were actually higher than in 2015, suggesting more of the petroleum has now made its way into the creeks.

McElveen hopes her pro-bono work will result in the full cleanup of the pipeline spill and that it will contribute to case law used to protect waterways throughout the country.

“As a South Carolina native, protecting our waterways is an issue that is dear to my heart,” said McElveen.

3 thoughts on “Attorney Fights for Cleanup of SC’s Largest Gasoline Spill”

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RPWB is Recognized as a Top-Listed Product Liability and Mass Tort Law Firm

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Community Bank of Northern Virginia and Guaranty National Bank of Tallahassee

A full hearing and argument were held before the ADR panel commencing February 1, 2017, and concluding on March 15, 2017. On March 24, 2017, the panel issued its ruling.  The panel unanimously selected $24,000,000 as the amount that they believed most closely reflected the total valuation of the case. A copy of the panel’s ruling is linked below. It is anticipated that settlement checks will be mailed to class members in the next 30-60 days.

The Kessler-ResCap Bankruptcy Settlement has been funded and settlement checks were mailed to class members on April 4, 2017. A copy of the Kessler Settlement Notice is linked below. Paragraph 8 of the notice provides specific details regarding the formula used to determine the amount any given class member received.

Updated 09-15-2016

After conducting numerous mediation sessions between Defendant PNC Bank (the successor to CBNV) and Plaintiffs’ Co-Lead Counsel over the past few months, the Parties have agreed to a class settlement.  Pursuant to that agreement, on August 19, 2016, Judge Schwab issued an Order appointing a three-member alternative dispute resolution panel (the “ADR Panel”) that will consider the evidence and determine whether the class of CBNV borrowers will receive $24 million or $70 million.  The Order directs the ADR Panel to make its ruling no later than March 31, 2017. Plaintiffs’ Unopposed Motion for Preliminary Approval of Class Action Settlement was granted on September 14, 2016. Notice of Preliminary Approval of Class Action Settlement will be mailed to all CBNV class members within 30 days of the preliminary approval order. A copy of that Notice and the aforementioned Orders and other documents are available by clicking on the hyperlinks found below.  Those documents describe in more detail the terms and conditions of the settlement.

The Kessler Settlement reached through the ResCap bankruptcy proceeding in the Southern District of New York provides for payment to class members comprising both CBNV and GNBT borrowers. The process for finalizing the settlement is close to being completed and we anticipate that a disbursement of monies to class members will be made no later than the end of the first quarter of 2017.

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