The case involved a class action by turkey growers against Land O'Lakes alleging breach of a 1980 cooperative marketing pool agreement, breach of fiduciary duty, and violation of a state cooperative marketing statute after the company shifted from outright purchases to a pooled marketing system. Following class certification, extensive discovery, a mini-trial with mixed advisory verdicts, and negotiations, the parties settled for a $1,550,000 payment to the class. The court approved the settlement as fair and reasonable under Fed.R.Civ.P. 23(e) and ordered specific allocations from the fund for attorneys' fees, litigation expenses, and reimbursements to contributing class members.
The case concerned a challenge to the Secretary of Health and Human Services' interim final rule implementing section 2640(a) of the Deficit Reduction Act of 1984, which required that children receiving Social Security Child’s Insurance Benefits be included in AFDC assistance units with their half-siblings living in the same home and that their benefits be treated as available family income. The district court granted summary judgment to the plaintiff class and intervenors, permanently enjoining enforcement of the rule and related state instructions against families where the Social Security recipient children had not applied for AFDC. The court reasoned that the rule created an irrebuttable presumption of need and income availability without required factual determinations under 42 U.S.C. §§ 602(a)(7), (10), (38) and 606(a), and that due process required pre-deprivation hearings to establish actual availability of benefits before any reduction or termination of AFDC grants.
The case concerns whether a bank could apply deposits from a collateral account—containing proceeds of the debtors' inventory and receivables—to reduce the debtors' outstanding loans during the 90 days before they filed for bankruptcy. The bankruptcy court ruled that the applications amounted to an improper setoff creating a voidable preference under 11 U.S.C. § 553(b) and ordered the bank to return $139,657.12 to the estate. On appeal, the district court held that the bank's security interest in after-acquired collateral did not attach or become perfected during the preference period due to the intervening bankruptcy filing, making the reductions avoidable instead under 11 U.S.C. § 547(c)(5). The court therefore remanded for new findings on the debt and collateral balances at the time of filing to recalculate the exact amount of the voidable transfer.
This case involved a union's suit under the Labor Management Relations Act to enforce a Trade Board arbitration award against General Pipe Covering, Inc., for allegedly violating a collective bargaining agreement by subcontracting work to a related entity. The Trade Board had fined the company $75,000 after an ex parte hearing. The court granted the union's motion to confirm the award and awarded attorney fees, while denying the company's motion to vacate, as well as the union's requests for attachment or injunctive relief. It reasoned that the company received adequate notice and an opportunity to participate, satisfying due process, and that the award drew its essence from the agreement's provisions authorizing fines or penalties for violations. The court declined to review the merits of the underlying dispute or recharacterize the award as punitive.
In this bankruptcy appeal, debtors Jerome and Charlotte LaFond, who had filed a Chapter 7 petition after losing their farm, sought to avoid a non-purchase-money security interest held by Production Credit Association on certain items of farm equipment valued at $10,475, claiming the items as exempt tools of the trade under 11 U.S.C. § 522(f)(2)(B). The Bankruptcy Court granted the lien avoidance motion, and the District Court affirmed after reviewing the record. The court held that the LaFonds' primary occupation was farming, rejecting the application of the restrictive 'farmer' definition in 11 U.S.C. § 101(17) to lien avoidance proceedings. It further concluded that large farm implements qualify as tools of the trade eligible for avoidance, consistent with the statute's text and the fresh-start policy of the Bankruptcy Code, while noting limits on avoidance amounts.
This case concerned challenges by environmental organizations to federal regulations that would have authorized a sport hunting season for Minnesota gray wolves and broadened a livestock depredation control program allowing the trapping and killing of wolves. After an initial district court ruling blocked both measures and an appeals court affirmed the prohibition on the sport season while remanding the depredation rules, the parties reached a consent agreement. The court ordered the government to amend its regulations to permit wolf removal only on private lands when a specific wolf has caused significant depredation on domestic animals, to restrict such actions on public lands to a narrow buffer zone, to require humane methods, and to prohibit the sale or interstate or international export of Minnesota gray wolves.
