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The plaintiffs’ lawyers lined up shoulder to shoulder on a recent Friday in a Houston courtroom, filling every available bench, jury box and table. All had come to hear how they could get a piece of sprawling litigation emerging from the devastation wrought by Hurricane Harvey, the Wall Street Journal reported today. The lawyers have coalesced around a corner of eminent domain law they hope will lead to big payouts from the federal government. Dozens of lawsuits filed so far seek compensation for the damage homeowners say was caused when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers released water from two area reservoirs in the days after a Category 4 hurricane and historic rainfall flooded Houston in late August. With an estimated 10,000 homes or more affected by the reservoirs, the litigation has the potential to reach into the billions of dollars. But convincing a judge the controlled release counts as an improper “taking” of private property under eminent domain law could face challenges in court, and a payout isn’t a sure thing. The Addicks and Barker dams were built in the 1940s to reduce the risk of flooding in Houston. By ordering the controlled release, the Army Corps alleviated water levels that could have poured over or around the two earthen dams, potentially rupturing them and causing significant damage. The government said in a court filing the flooding was a 1,000-year event and that the release of water to relieve the Addicks and Barker dams doesn’t qualify as a taking under the Constitution’s Fifth Amendment. A “single flood — as opposed to an inevitably recurring flooding caused by the Government — is not a taking as a matter of law,” the filing says.

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.

Key Safety Systems has agreed to terms on the $1.6 billion purchase of assets of Takata Corp., stricken by a recall of its faulty vehicle air bags, and final documents will be signed in less than two weeks, a lawyer for Takata’s U.S. unit said on Monday, Reuters reported. Takata and its U.S. unit, TK Holdings Inc., filed for bankruptcy in June and the asset sale to Key Safety Systems, or KSS, is the cornerstone of its plan to raise funds to compensate automakers and drivers. <b>Marcia Goldstein</b>, a lawyer for TK Holdings, told a U.S. bankruptcy judge on Monday that a U.S. deal had been reached and was being reviewed by lawyers in Japan, Germany and elsewhere. The sale must be approved by the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Delaware, as well as regulators.

A U.S. bankruptcy judge last week ordered a hearing intended to map out the remaining settlement proceedings between the Great Falls-Billings Diocese and the 86 victims claiming they were abused by eastern Montana priests through the 1990s, the Great Falls Tribune reported today. Last month, settlement negotiations ended after a two-day session without resolution. The impasse reportedly came as the parties disagreed about whether or not certain church assets are available to the settlement fund. In the order setting the Nov. 2 hearing, Bankruptcy Judge Jim Pappas asked the diocese to provide a summary of the church's income and expenses since it filed for bankruptcy in March. Primarily, the judge hopes to discuss "the factors leading to the filing of this chapter 11 case; (the diocese's) objectives in the case, and the means by which (the diocese) hopes to achieve those objectives." The hearing also gives the diocese a chance to discuss any other topic of significance that affects the bankruptcy case.

The chairman and chief executive of Equifax, Richard F. Smith, stepped down yesterday in the aftermath of a data breach that exposed the personal information of as many as 143 million people, the credit reporting agency said, the New York Times reported. Equifax said that Paulino do Rego Barros Jr., most recently the president of its Asia-Pacific region, had been appointed interim chief executive. The company said it planned to conduct a search for a new chief executive and would consider candidates from inside and outside the company. Equifax, which is based in Atlanta, said this month that hackers had exploited an unpatched flaw in its website software to extract names, Social Security numbers, birth dates, addresses and other information about millions of people.

JPMorgan Chase & Co. scored a partial victory yesterday in a long-running dispute over the repayment of a $1.5 billion loan it made to General Motors’ bankrupt predecessor, known as ‘Old GM,’ Reuters reported. Bankruptcy Judge <b>Martin Glenn</b> sided with the bank against Old GM’s unsecured creditors, who have been trying to claw back the money, finding that most assets securing the loan, like robots and conveyor belts, were “fixtures” covered by a JPMorgan lien. Unsecured creditors had hoped to convince Judge Glenn the assets were not covered by the lien, which would have cleared the way for them to try to recoup money that Old GM repaid to the bank. JPMorgan said that it was reviewing the ruling. A lawyer for unsecured creditors declined to comment. In addition to determining if the assets were fixtures, Judge Glenn was also asked to determine the value of the equipment. The judge rejected the bank’s proposed valuation, although he also rejected the valuation method proposed by unsecured creditors.

Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey yesterday filed a lawsuit against Equifax over the company’s failure to protect consumers’ personal information, the first official enforcement action brought against the hacked credit-reporting company, the Wall Street Journal reported today. The complaint, filed in Suffolk Superior Court, alleges Equifax violated Massachusetts consumer protection and data privacy laws due to the massive breach that exposed vital personal information of potentially 143 million Americans. The attorney general alleges that nearly three million Massachusetts residents’ personal information was potentially compromised by the hack. The Massachusetts action is just the first part of what is expected to be a legal wave that will eventually hit the company. Dozens of attorneys general from other states, including Pennsylvania, New York, Illinois and Connecticut, have asked Equifax for information about the hack and its response. The Federal Trade Commission and Federal Bureau of Investigation are investigating as well.

A consumer regulator calculated it could have pursued a $10 billion penalty against Wells Fargo & Co. over its sales practices scandal before settling on a much smaller fine, according to government documents released yesterday by House Republicans, the Wall Street Journal reported. A July 2016 memo written by Consumer Financial Protection Bureau lawyers also said the bank had fired or disciplined around 10,000 employees related to its sales practices scandal, far higher than previously disclosed. The internal CFPB memo was written two months before regulators took action against Wells Fargo. In it, CFPB enforcement lawyers alleged that the bank had made “more than 2 million violations” of the consumer financial protection law related to opening of unauthorized customer accounts. Those violations, they said, opened the door to a huge fine based on the lowest penalties included in the law. The lawyers went on to recommend a $100 million penalty to “help resolve this case,” stating that the smaller amount would “sufficiently deter similar violations” and correct the bank’s behavior.

What Barbara Bernier found at the for-profit Charlotte School of Law was different from her prior teaching experiences, so she quit her tenured post in August 2016. A few months earlier, she had filed a federal claim that the school and its owner, the InfiLaw Corp., defrauded taxpayers of $285 million over a five-year period, the New York Times reported today. The whistle-blower lawsuit — which had been kept sealed under the federal False Claims Act — came to light in recent weeks, along with the disclosure that it had prompted a federal investigation. The fraud practices alleged in the lawsuit include evading federal requirements that for-profit schools receive at least 10 percent of revenue from sources other than federal student loans. Details of that and other practices, including providing stipends to at-risk students to delay taking the state bar exam, were cited in Bernier’s lawsuit. It was unsealed last month when the United States attorney’s office in Orlando, Fla. — where the lawsuit was filed, in InfiLaw’s state — filed a notice that it would not intervene in the lawsuit.

Ten years ago this week, the Roman Catholic Diocese of San Diego agreed to pay $198.1 million to settle the lawsuits filed by Lynch and 143 other adults, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported yesterday. As children, each had been sexually assaulted by a priest or, in one case, a layman supervising altar boys. This was a landmark moment in one the largest scandals in the church's 2,000-year-old history. From Dublin to Manila, Boston to Portland, Ore., Catholic officials were hauled into court and forced to account for shielding predatory clerics, often for decades. The San Diego settlement was the nation’s second largest, trailing only the Los Angeles diocese’s $660 million. By at least one measurement, though, San Diego’s settlement was more significant. After !legal fees, the 508 victims in L.A. averaged a payout of $780,000. In San Diego, the average was $825,000. Absorbing these damages led the San Diego diocese to file for chapter 11 bankruptcy. In the end, insurance paid $76 million and the Diocese of San Bernardino, which had part of this diocese, contributed almost $15 million. Selling properties and tapping its bank accounts, San Diego paid the remaining $107 million. Seven months after going to bankruptcy court, the diocese’s case was dismissed.