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GM to Pay $120 Million in Multistate Defective Ignition Switch Settlement

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General Motors will pay $120 million to settle claims from dozens of states in its massive ignition switch defect scandal, the Detroit Free Press reported today. The settlement announced yesterday comes after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled earlier this year that GM could no longer avoid hundreds of lawsuits from victims of the defective ignition switches in accidents occurring before GM filed for chapter 11 protection in 2009. Altogether the scandal left at least 124 people dead and 275 injured in small cars such as the Chevrolet Cobalt and Saturn Ion that were made by the old GM. The defective ignition switches could cause vehicles to stall, and GM recalled more than 2.7 million vehicles in 2014.

Analysis: Could Weinstein Accusations Lead to Delaware Derivative Litigation?

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Delaware legal observers this week acknowledged the possibility that derivative litigation stemming from damning allegations of sexual misconduct against Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein could spill into the Delaware Court of Chancery, which would have jurisdiction over suits involving the Delaware-incorporated company Weinstein helped to found, the Delaware Business Court Insider reported today. However, critical questions remained regarding Weinstein Co.’s corporate governance structure and the veracity of a yet-uncorroborated media report indicating that the company’s board may have known about Weinstein’s alleged history of sexual harassment but still worked contractual protections into his 2015 employment agreement. Multiple attorneys, though, confirmed in interviews that Weinstein Co. board members could potentially be vulnerable to shareholder litigation under the Caremark theory, which exposes directors to liability for corporate harm if they were aware of a systemic problem but failed to act.

VidAngel Files for Bankruptcy Amid Court Battle Against Studios

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VidAngel, a Provo, Utah-based streaming platform that edits content out of films and TV shows, has filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, its CEO announced yesterday, according to the Salt Lake City Tribune. For more than a year, the company has been locked in a legal battle with movie studios that said VidAngel sold altered versions of original content without paying royalties. Through the platform, users watching films and TV series could filter out language, nudity, violence or other content they consider objectionable. The movie studios argued that VidAngel streamed and altered the studios’ content without permission and didn’t pay for movie and television rights. In December, a federal judge in California said that until the lawsuit is resolved, the company must stop operations regarding movies from Disney Enterprises Inc., Lucasfilm Ltd. LLC, Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation and Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the movie studios in August. In June, the company altered its service and launched a new platform. The company originally purchased and stored DVD and Blu-ray copies of films it offered. Users virtually “bought” the programs, filtered out content they found objectionable and then “sold” the program back to VidAngel for credit on the site.

Scana Gets SEC Subpoena Related to Canceled Nuclear Project

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Scana Corp., already the target of federal and state investigations, said it received a subpoena from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in connection with an abandoned nuclear power project, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. The Cayce, S.C.-based company said that it will “fully cooperate” and offered no further details. Scana is under a federal investigation and a state probe into the expansion of its V.C. Summer nuclear reactor, a project it canceled after costs spiraled to more than $20 billion. Scana may be blocked from collecting billions it spent on the unfinished project, a prospect that could lead it to write down billions or sell itself. The company may have “failed to disclose information that should have been disclosed” when it sought rate increases to fund the project, state regulators said in a filing last month. Scana and its partner, state-owned utility Santee Cooper, halted construction on two new reactors at the plant after its contractor, Westinghouse Electric Co., went bankrupt. The decision leaves Southern Co. as the only utility owner building a nuclear plant in the U.S.