When Dow Corning faced thousands of lawsuits in the 1990s from women saying they had become sick from the company’s silicone gel breast implants, its parent firm, Dow Chemical, turned to one of the country’s leading experts in corporate bankruptcies: then-Prof. Elizabeth Warren, the Washington Post reported. Warren, now a Senator and Democratic presidential candidate, has never publicly discussed her role in the case. Her campaign said that she was “a consultant to ensure adequate compensation for women who claimed injury” from the implants and that a $2.3 billion fund for the women was started “thanks in part to Elizabeth’s efforts.” But participants on both sides of the matter say that description mischaracterizes Warren’s work, in which she advised a company intent on limiting payments to the women. Kristen Orthman, a spokeswoman for the Warren campaign, said there’s nothing inconsistent about Warren’s corporate legal work and her campaign message. Bankruptcy is a way to address the interests of competing groups, and Warren advocated balancing those interests in an equitable way, Orthman said. In the Dow case, Warren’s role was limited to a period of time in which the interests of the plaintiffs and the companies were aligned because they faced a common goal of presenting an agreement to the bankruptcy court, Orthman said.
To amend title 9 of the United States Code to prohibit predispute arbitration agreements that force arbitration of disputes arising from private education loans, and for other purposes.
The "Honoring American Veterans in Extreme Need Act of 2019” (HAVEN Act) was included in the House-passed version of the National Defense Authorization Act for 2020 (the NDAA). The HAVEN Act was previously included in the Senate’s NDAA that passed on June 27. If not passed sooner as a standalone bill, the HAVEN Act should be part of the final version of the NDAA that will eventually become law. Timetable for ultimate passage is unclear as there are material differences between the Senate and House versions of the NDAA. The Senate and House will eventually conference to reconcile those differences. Once that’s done, that amended version of the NDAA will need to be approved, again, by both the full Senate and the House, after which it will go to the White House for signature. Meanwhile, efforts to enact the HAVEN Act on a standalone basis continue, according to ABI's Veterans' Affairs Task Force. The House Judiciary Committee “marked up” the HAVEN Act earlier this week, and reported it to the full House without any proposed amendments to it.
