Net gambling leads to liability    "I think it's a big problem for the people who are addicted to gambling," said Reed Kathrein of Lerach Coughlin Stoia Geller Rudman & Robbins, which is handling the class action against the search engines. Cisneros v. Yahoo, No. CGC 04433518 (San Francisco Co., Calif., Super. Ct.). "If we could, we would go after the gambling sites themselves," he said.Kathrein, a partner in San Diego-based Lerach Coughlin's San Francisco office, noted that most online casino operators are overseas and difficult to track down. He said one of his partners is considering going after the casinos, but for now they are concentrating on the search engines, which can be sued under a California law that bans advertising of unregulated gambling, he said. "How else are you going to get to the casinos unless we get to the people who are supporting them," Kathrein said. "We got to looking at it and realized that the first place that people go is the search engines to find [gambling]. And if you just type in the word poker, casino, blackjack-up comes all kinds of stuff." Kathrein, who represents two plaintiffs, a gambler and a nongambler, said that to shut the door to online gambling, you have to close the search engine's door to potential gamblers. "At the heart of the complaint is stopping the advertising of Internet gambling," Kathrein said. "It's really addictive. And it's really bad."  5/5/2005

confidential witnesses    There's a reason why securities fraud informants like to stay anonymous.
  4/12/2005

2005 Mercury News article on Dell bait & switch    Reed Kathrein, an attorney with law firm Lerach Coughlin Stoia in San Francisco, who is representing the plaintiffs, said that since August the firm has investigated more than 100 consumer complaints against Dell.  3/13/2005

2005 reuters article on ebay litigation    EBay is being sued by a Pennsylvania man who charges that it illegally forces up prices when certain high bidders raise their maximum bid to guard against last-minute offers, an attorney for the plaintiffs has said.  3/13/2005

2004 new law weakens consumer protections    Reed Kathrein said that  Business & Professions Code § 17200 was an effective statute in cases in which a group of injured plaintiffs did not make up a traditional class.  3/6/2005

2004 Inside the Biotech Industry    Reed Kathrein, an attorney in San Francisco who represents shareholders in lawsuits filed against biotech companies, said that the companies have taken advantage of their ability to control the release of information about progress of their medications at the FDA. He said, "Sometimes there's a fine line between optimism and fraud"  3/6/2005

2004 Plaintiffs Bar Checks into Hospitals    Tenet tried to get more money from Medicare and Medicaid by artificially increasing the price of hospital services to uninsured patients.  3/6/2005

2003 Settlement in Largest Investment Manager Lawsuit in History    In early December, 2003 a Portland, OR, judge issued an order that governed the distribution of more than $300 million to the plaintiffs after a settlement in the case had been reached last June, which was a mere 18 months after the suit was first filed. The court's directive culminates a swift and masterfully orchestrated mediation of what could have been a tedious decade-long dispute. It also shows that, given the right motivation, the right organization, and the right representation, complex legal matters can be judiciously resolved at a minimum cost of time, resources, and legal fees.  3/3/2005

2001 3COM Agrees to Pay $259M in Second-Largest Securities Fraud Suit Pact    In the second-largest securities class action settlement in history, computer communications company 3Com Corp. has agreed to pay $259 million in cash to shareholders who claimed that its officers and directors used deceptive accounting to hide a $160 million loss at 3Com's newly acquired modem maker, U.S. Robotics Corp. In re 3Com Corp. et al., No. 97-21083, settlement announced (N.D. Cal., Nov. 3, 2000).  3/3/2005

2001 new york law journal    "Naturally we're looking for the underdog, the little guy who can't afford to prosecute or defend his patent," said Reed Kathrein, a partner in Milberg Weiss's San Francisco office.  3/13/2005

1999 Unfair Competiton and California Business and Professions Code Section 17200    Unfair competition cases are really quite simple:  "Does this practice exist?  Is it unfair?  It's one of the more efficient statutes for consumers to get a remedy."  5/1/2004

Midnight’s Children, Sept. 17th 1998 , from The Economist print edition    Reed Kathrein made a name for himself filing class-action suits on behalf of shareholders upset by a fall in the prices of their shares. Now he is bearing down on the Year 2000.Already, he has filed five class-action suits on behalf of consumers or small businesses against companies such as Intuit which have produced software that may fail because of Year 2000 problems.  3/13/2005