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Lawyers for U.S. military veterans suing 3M Co. over its earplugs are trying to block the manufacturer’s plan to resolve the yearslong liability case in bankruptcy court, the Wall Street Journal reported. Aearo Technologies LLC, a 3M subsidiary that once produced the earplugs, late last month accepted responsibility for claims of hearing-loss from more than 230,000 veterans who have said they used the earplugs during their time in the military. As part of the move, Aearo absolved the Minnesota-based industrial conglomerate from liability for the earplugs. Aearo immediately filed for federal bankruptcy protection in Indianapolis. Bankruptcy provides corporate defendants, such as Aearo, leverage to settle mass liability claims. Companies in chapter 11 usually can’t be sued outside of bankruptcy court. Aearo said the bankruptcy should allow it to end trials and mediation talks between 3M and the claimants that have been under way in U.S. District Court in Pensacola, Fla., since 2019. “The verdicts were already outsized and untethered to reality,” Aearo said in its July 26 bankruptcy filing. Aearo said the case is now the largest product-liability civil case in the U.S. The prospect of a long, costly process for 3M to settle the claims is clouding the outlook for the company’s business performance and causing investors to be wary of 3M’s stock, according to industry analysts.

The U.S. Department of Justice has demanded more court oversight of Celsius Networks' plans to make employee severance payments and to sell bitcoins during the cryptocurrency lender's bankruptcy, Reuters reported. The U.S. Trustee, DOJ's bankruptcy watchdog, filed an objection on Wednesday in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan opposing Celsius' proposed severance payments of $409,000 to 19 employees, following a separate objection Tuesday to the company's bitcoin mining proposal. In both objections, the DOJ called on the bankruptcy court to require more transparency from Celsius about its assets and plans to pay back creditors before allowing it to move forward. The DOJ said it may ask for a court-appointed examiner to ensure that Celsius is providing creditors with accurate information in the bankruptcy case, according to its filings. New Jersey-based Celsius did not respond to a request for comment on Wednesday. Celsius filed for chapter 11 protection on July 13, listing a $1.19 billion deficit on its balance sheet. Its business model, as well as those of other crypto lenders, came under scrutiny following a sharp sell-off in the crypto market spurred by the collapse of major tokens terraUSD and luna in May.

Niche credit traders have a pitch for crypto holders locked out of their accounts at Voyager Digital Ltd. and Celsius Network LLC: Sell the rights to your coins at something like a 75% discount and let Wall Street worry about the rest, Bloomberg News reported. When crypto lenders Voyager and Celsius went bankrupt last month, they turned their customers into creditors. Those users cannot touch their coins and don’t know when they will get repaid, how much they might recoup or what form payouts could take. Now, an oft-overlooked corner of the credit market is offering an escape hatch. Bankruptcy claims traders — firms that deal in the payables of insolvent enterprises — are already circling the busted crypto platforms, offering quick cash payouts to customers who don’t want to or can’t afford to wait. The crypto bankruptcies are unusual because of who the platforms’ creditors are — overwhelmingly small, individual account holders — and the sheer number of them. Celsius had about 300,000 users with account balances of at least $100 as of July, while Voyager counts more than 3.5 million active users, according to court papers.

The Swarthmore Group, a Philadelphia stock-and-bond investment company that once counted the state, city and SEPTA pension plans among its fee-paying clients, has filed for bankruptcy liquidation, five weeks after shutting its doors and leaving managers demanding millions they say they are owed, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. Records submitted to federal bankruptcy court Aug. 4 in Philadelphia with Swarthmore’s chapter 7 petition show the firm’s revenues had plunged to $1 million in the first seven months of 2022, down from about $4 million in calendar years 2020 and 2021. In June, the firm, founded and run by James E. Nevels, gave employees and clients two weeks’ notice that it was closing its doors, sending back investors’ money, and leaving staff to seek work elsewhere. As of March 30, Swarthmore had managed $1.5 billion, including about $400 million in stocks and the rest in bonds. It charged fees ranging from 0.25% of the bonds it bought for clients to about 1% of the value of clients’ stocks, with discounts for larger customers.

Endo International PLC, a pharmaceutical manufacturer facing thousands of lawsuits alleging it fueled the opioid addiction crisis, said Tuesday that it is likely to file for bankruptcy imminently, the Wall Street Journal reported. The company said that it is in negotiations with a group of senior lenders that it expects will result in an agreement for a chapter 11 filing. Endo also said that it is in discussions with opioid litigants as well as other creditors but didn’t say that it has reached a proposed deal with them. Endo, domiciled in Ireland with operations in Malvern, Pa., has been grappling for years against opioid-related lawsuits from state and local governments over its painkiller Opana. The company, which has denied liability in connection with the opioid crisis, discontinued Opana in 2017 at the request of the Food and Drug Administration. Endo has reached piecemeal settlements over opioid claims with states including Florida, Texas, New York, West Virginia and Alabama. But it still faces about 3,500 lawsuits from state and local governments, private healthcare providers and individuals. The company has also been struggling under $8 billion of debt as earnings declined in part driven by the loss of exclusivity for a key drug, Vasostrict.

U.S. conspiracy theorist Alex Jones could end up owing as little as 10% of the $45.2 million in punitive damages that a Texas jury awarded to the parents of a Sandy Hook victim last week, legal experts told Reuters. A jury handed down the punitive damages' verdict on Friday and awarded the parents $4.1 million in compensatory damages on Thursday after a two-week trial in Austin, Texas, where Jones’ Infowars radio show and webcast is based. Jones was found last year to have defamed parents Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis, whose 6-year-old son Jesse Lewis died in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in 2012, by spreading lies that they were part of a government plot to stage the massacre. While juries have broad discretion on awards, Texas law caps punitive damages at $750,000 when economic losses are not involved, as in this case. Mark Bankston, an attorney for the parents, told Reuters by email that because Jones and his company face three claims each, he estimates the cap would be $4.5 million. Bankston said that he will argue the damages cap does not apply but declined to elaborate. Judge Maya Guerra Gamble must approve the final amount, a decision that is expected soon. Jones' lawyer, Federico Andino Reynal, said in court Friday that he will seek to reduce the $45.2 million punitive damages award because it does not comply with Texas law. He confirmed to Reuters on Monday that he plans to invoke the cap.

Veterans who claim that 3M Co's military-issue earplugs caused hearing damage are asking the judge overseeing their record-shattering mass tort litigation to block the company from offloading its liability onto a bankrupt subsidiary, Reuters reported. Two motions filed this week in Pensacola, Florida, federal court by plaintiffs in the multidistrict litigation made separate arguments over why the company could not escape the nearly 300,000 lawsuits by putting its Aearo Technologies subsidiary — the original maker of the earplugs, which 3M bought in 2008 — into bankruptcy. 3M has said it believes bankruptcy law allows for this strategy and has argued that the Indianapolis bankruptcy court can resolve the earplug claims more fairly than the MDL. "We are prepared to move forward and believe the applicable law supports our position," 3M said in a statement. Aearo filed for bankruptcy on July 26 and said it had committed $1 billion to resolve the earplug litigation. Out of the 16 trials in that litigation to date involving 19 service members, plaintiffs have won 10, with about $265 million in combined awards to 13 plaintiffs.

A Texas jury ordered the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones on Friday to pay the parents of a child killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting $45.2 million in punitive damages for spreading the lie that they helped stage the massacre, the New York Times reported. The jury announced its decision a day after awarding the parents more than $4 million in compensatory damages and after testimony on Friday that Jones and Free Speech Systems, the parent company of his misinformation-peddling media outlet, Infowars, were worth $135 million to $270 million. Jones was found liable last year for defaming the victims’ families while spreading bogus theories that the shooting had been part of a government plot to confiscate Americans’ firearms and that the victims’ families had been complicit in the scheme. Last week’s trial was the first of three to determine how much Jones owes the families for the suffering he has caused, and the size of the award is sure to be contested. Jurors deliberated for about four hours before reaching Friday’s verdict.

A $300,000 New York Department of Environmental Conservation grant will help keep a former Boy Scout camp in Lewiston from being developed, the Buffalo News reported. The Town of Lewiston, N.Y., will use the grant award announced this week to assist in its purchase of Camp Stonehaven, a 66.9-acre forested property the Greater Niagara Frontier Council of the Boy Scouts of America put on the market last year to help pay for its share of a proposed settlement in federal bankruptcy court for childhood sexual abuse victims. Lewiston town officials voted in March to sign a purchase agreement for the camp for $665,000, with plans to turn it into a nature preserve. The Council in May also sold Camp Schoellkopf in Wyoming County for $2.6 million. Lewiston Town Supervisor Steve Broderick said the town is waiting for word on whether it will also get a $319,000 Greenway Ecological Grant from the New York Power Authority before closing on the Boy Scout property. The Boy Scouts of America bankruptcy case has yet to be finalized, but 252 local councils have agreed to contribute a combined $519.6 million, plus a promissory note of about $100 million, toward a $2.7 billion settlement trust for more than 80,000 abuse victims. The Greater Niagara Frontier Council’s share of the settlement is pegged at $1.5 million.

Equifax Inc., the second-biggest global credit bureau, was hit with a proposed class-action lawsuit after a report that it provided inaccurate credit scores on millions of U.S. consumers looking for loans, Bloomberg News reported. The suit, filed on Wednesday in federal court in Atlanta, alleges violations of the Fair Credit Reporting Act. It seeks financial damages and a court order requiring Equifax to notify all customers who were impacted by the score-reporting glitch, which the Wall Street Journal reported on Aug. 2. Erroneous scores were sent from mid-March through early April, and disclosures of the errors began in May, the Wall Street Journal reported. Equifax blamed a computer error that has since been rectified. Equifax, in a statement Thursday, said the three-week “technology coding issue” was fixed on April 6. The company said its analysis showed that during that period there was “no shift in the majority of scores” for consumers seeking credit.