Anyone who bought shares from Aug. 14, 2003, to Dec. 6, 2006, of EVCI Career Colleges Holding Corp., the Yonkers company that runs career colleges, may be eligible to share in a proposed $7.73 million class-action settlement, a New York law firm said this morning.

A federal judge in U.S. District Court in Manhattan must still approve the settlement and has scheduled a hearing a for July 27, the firm of Bernstein Litowitz, Berger & Grossman LLP said.

The lawsuit filed in December 2005 by a shareholder named Geoffrey Glauser alleged the company misrepresented its business conditions, financial results and prospects.

A New York-based iron workers union will pay $800,000 to settle allegations that it violated a court order by discriminating against minority workers in Westchester County and New York City when it came to referring them to jobs.

The money will provide back pay for 45 workers. It will also pay for training and tools workers need to perform work in the city and Westchester, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission said yesterday.

The case stretches back to the civil rights era. Johnnie Louis Johnson III, a senior trial attorney for the EEOC, said the U.S. Justice Department sued Local 580 of the Ornamental Ironworkers and other trade unions in the New York area in 1971, alleging they discriminated against minority workers. Those actions resulted in a number of court orders intended to put a halt to the discrimination, he said.

The EEOC charged in June 2001 that Local 580 violated that order starting in 1992 and should be held in contempt. The EEOC said the union’s actions resulted in a “substantial disparity� between the number of hours worked by whites and minorities.

The union provided few opportunities for the minority workers because of both their race and national origin, the EEOC said.

The settlement announced today does not settle all of the issues the EEOC has with Local 580, Johnson said. The sides are still in court over questions relating to the number of apprentices the union places on jobs and the racial makeup of the groups of apprentices.

Dennis Lusardi, the business manager for the local, could not be reached at the offices in New York yesterday. A lawyer for the union did not return a phone call.

The settlement was approved by U.S. District Court Judge Robert L. Carter in lower Manhattan.
In 2003, the union agreed to a $4.5 million settlement with the EEOC after failing to keep required numbers of apprentices on job sites.

IBM Corp. of Armonk and Internet marketplace company Amazon.com said this morning they have settled their legal dispute over IBM’s patents. The companies said IBM will receive an undisclosed amount of money to settle the litigation.

The companies also reached agreement on how Amazon can use IBM’s patented processes in the future. IBM filed a pair of lawsuits against Amazon in federal court in Texas last October.

The computer giant said IBM was successful largely because of patents IBM owned. The patents covered processes like ordering items off an electronic catalog, recommending products to customers and placing ads.

Dan Cerutti, the general manager of software intellectual property for IBM, said: “At IBM, we place a high value on our IP assets and believe this agreement substantiates the value of our portfolio. We’re pleased this matter has been resolved through negotiation and licensing. We look forward to a more productive relationship with Amazon in the future.�

IBM shares closed yesterday at $103.16, up 20 cents.

Pernod Ricard USA LLC, the Purchase company that sells alcoholic drinks, has succeeded in ousting a Stamford, Conn.-based distributor of Seagram’s Coolers in the United States, the Caribbean and U.S. military bases worldwide.

The company said High Falls Brewing Co. LLC of Rochester has been named the exclusive distributor for the drinks. High Falls will also make and pack the drinks, which are currently made at a Pernod facility in Indiana. United States Beverage, the distributor since 2002, will remain the distributor until the end of June.

Pernod sued United States Beverage, arguing that the supplier’s five-year contract to buy and sell Pernod’s Seagram’s Cooler low-alcohol drinks expired at the end of March.

Pernod Ricard wanted to replace United States Beverage with the High Falls Brewing Co. United States Beverage countered that it paid Pernod more than $30 million in fees and spent additional tens of millions of dollars to market the drinks based on Pernod’s promises of a long-term relationship.

The sides settled their lawsuit in March but did not announce terms of the settlement at that time.

In court papers, Pernod indicated it was important for it to have a clear picture as to who the supplier would be before warm weather hit.

The company said most of the sales take place from May to August and that by insisting that it would still be the supplier during those months United States Beverage was causing “great confusion� in the marketplace, making it hard for High Falls to take over the job smoothly and harming the brand.

The company said it considered 2007 a particularly important year for the brand, since sales of the drinks fell last year.

USI Holdings Corp. of Briarcliff Manor, which is being sold to an affiliate of Goldman, Sachs & Co. for about $1.4 billion in cash, has won a round in a court fight over copyright infringement that could limit its damages in the case.

USI, a distributor of financial products and services, lost a jury trial when the plaintiff, William A. Graham Co., successfully argued that USI MidAtlantic Inc. and a former Graham employee used information from copyrighted insurance manuals to get insurance business.

The jury ruled that USI MidAtlantic owed $16.6 million and former employee Thomas P. Haughey owed $2.2 million.

In November, a judge ordered a second trial in the case.

Today, a federal court granted USI’s request to limit damages to a three-year period, rather than the 13-year period considered by the jury in the original trial. A date for the new trial has not been set.
USI expects to complete the transaction with the Goldman, Sachs affiliate by April 30.

MBIA Inc., the Armonk-based bond insurer, announced today that it will incur $20 million in losses in the first quarter after the settlement of a five-year-old lawsuit related to a dispute over student loans.

MBIA said that the settlement covers litigation that it filed in 2002 to enforce insurance policies that Royal Indemnity Co. issued guaranteeing the student loans. There were losses on eight of the bonds backed by the loans. That hurt MBIA because it had insured repayment of the bonds.

“We are pleased to resolve this longstanding matter and to eliminate the additional expense and risks associated with further litigation,� MBIA General Counsel Ram Wertheim said in a written statement.

Royal’s payments under the settlement will be enough to repay $362 million of the bonds insured by MBIA as well as to reimburse MBIA for part of the claims that it has paid under its insurance policies, MBIA said. The expected first-quarter loss represents a reduction to MBIA’s expected recoveries for claims it has paid, the company added. Royal is based in Charlotte, N.C. The case was handled in U.S. District Court in Delaware.

MBIA’s profits dropped 1 percent during the fourth quarter as the world’s largest insurer of municipal bonds faced greater competition to write new business.

The company’s shares rose 21.4 percent last year while it earned $819.3 million on revenues of $2.71 billion.

Its shares closed at $64.88 today, down 61 cents, or 0.9 percent.

Debt Resolve Inc., a White Plains-based operator of an online debt collection system, announced that it has filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Apollo Enterprise Solutions LLC, a company in Irvine, Calif., that describes itself as a provider of Web-based payment and collection technology.

Debt Resolve said it has filed the lawsuit against Apollo because two patents give Debt Resolve the “exclusive rights� to web-based consumer debt collections worldwide. “Debt Resolve intends to vigorously defend its patent rights and intellectual property against any infringer,� Debt Resolve Chairman James Burchetta said in a written statement. Debt Resolve filed the suit in the U.S. District Court of New Jersey. In the lawsuit, Debt Resolve said it seeks damages from Apollo for the loss of profits and royalties. Apollo could not immediately be reached for comment.

A former PepsiCo Inc. employee alleges in a lawsuit that the Purchase-based soft drink giant defrauded the U.S. government out of more than $101 million in import duties on Pepsi beverage concentrate shipped from Ireland.

Scott Winslow, who filed the suit, worked as a distribution analyst in the company’s concentrate operations office in Valhalla from July 2002 to February 2005, according to the complaint filed in U.S. District Court in White Plains.

PepsiCo imported $1.59 billion of soda beverage concentrate from Ireland from Jan. 20, 2004, through March 9, 2005, under a classification that allowed duty-free imports, according to the complaint. But the correct classification called for an importation duty of 6.4 percent, the suit said. The total amount of duties avoided by PepsiCo during the period was more than $101.9 million, according to the complaint. The concentrate is used to make soft drinks.

The complaint alleges that PepsiCo “never used reasonable care in identifying the proper classification for the importation of its soda concentrate from Ireland� but continued to use the wrong classification “because it was highly profitable.�

Winslow is pursuing the complaint under the False Claims Act, a federal statute that allows whistleblowers to receive financial rewards in cases of proven fraud against the government. Carey & Associates, a law firm in Southport, Conn., representing Winslow, announced the case yesterday.

PepsiCo denied the allegations.

“This is a totally frivolous lawsuit from a former employee,� said Dave DeCecco, a company spokesman. “U.S. customs has reviewed our concentrate shipment classifications from Ireland on multiple occasions and has raised no objections. We believe we’ve classified these shipments properly since the very beginning.�

The case was originally filed on Nov. 1, 2005. But the court did not unseal the case until Dec. 21 after the U.S. government declined to intervene in the case, according to a court document.

A study Rye Brook-based Snapple Beverage Corp. has presented in court “apparently establishes� that the company used questionable distribution practices to meet a sales quota, a lawyer for 60 distributors suing the company said in a recent letter to the judge.

The letter by Howard B. Cohen to U.S. District Court Magistrate Judge Mark D. Fox says the study seems to show Snapple “engaged in a pattern and practice of channel stuffing. …â€? The letter says the study — which is not part of the court file in White Plains — also seems to show that the company sold product at greatly reduced prices to certain distributors — but not to those who brought the lawsuit.

Channel stuffing, also known as “trade loading,� involves sending customers more product than they want in the hope they’ll eventually pay for it.

By doing this, a company can increase its cash receivables. The risk is that the customers will not sell extra product and will return it, forcing the company to make a later downward adjustment in its cash receivables.
Snapple apparently used these tactics even though they had a “serious impact� on the 60 distributors suing the company, Cohen said. The tactics also violated contracts and statutes, Cohen said in the letter.

Cohen represents Mitchell Camarda of Bronxville and other current and former Snapple distributors who allege that the company granted exclusive rights to sell juice to stores, restaurants and other retailers in certain territories but then let other distributors — called “transshippers� in the court papers — sell in those areas.
Bart G. Van de Weghe, a Manhattan lawyer defending the company, would not comment yesterday on Cohen’s letter. Spokespeople for Snapple and its parent company, Cadbury Schweppes PLC, could not be reached for comment.

The company has said in court papers that it does all it can to prevent distributors from selling in sales regions that it has granted to others.

The issue has been raised before. Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. LLC beverage analyst Andrew Wood said in a 2004 research report that the company might have reported sales figures higher than they should have been.
Wood pointed to written statements Cadbury issued and said the statements were indications Snapple had “destocked� or “de-loaded� product. Wood said that meant the company had previously loaded product to artificially boost its sales.

The letter also discloses that a former Snapple employee, identified only by his last name, complained to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission about the company’s activities. The SEC investigated but did not take any action.

In another development in the 2004 lawsuit, U.S. District Court Judge Charles L. Brieant dismissed the claims of eight distributors after lawyers for the plaintiffs reported the eight did not respond to letters sent to them. Sixty distributors are still pursuing the lawsuit.

General Nutrition Corp. of Pittsburgh acknowledged in a court settlement that three patents held by Nutrtion 21 Inc. of Purchase are valid, the companies said this morning. The sides did not disclose other terms of their agreement to settle patent litigation that was pending in federal court in Texas. Nutrition 21 was claiming in the litigation that General Nutrition was advertising products containing chromium picolinate for uses that Nutrition 21 patents covered. Nutrition 21 shares were trading at $1.65, up 15 cents, at 9:45 a.m.

A federal judge has set a timetable for both sides to exchange information in a shareholder lawsuit against Prestige Brands Holdings Inc. of Irvington, but a trial is unlikely to start before the spring of next year.

Prestige Brands sells a variety of well-known household consumer products, such as Compound W wart remover, Comet and Spic and Span cleaners, Murine eye drops, and Chloraseptic cough syrup.

Lawsuits emerged after the initial public offering of Prestige Brands stock in February 2005. Chief Executive Officer Peter C. Mann and Chief Financial Officer Peter J. Anderson were among those selling 28 million shares of stock at $16 a share.

In July 2005 the shares lost nearly half their value after the company missed sales estimates. The following November Prestige Brands said it would restate its financials for the three preceding fiscal years and the first quarter of fiscal 2006.

Shareholders who subsequently sued the company include individual investors, some union and municipal pension funds, and a brokerage. The individual lawsuits were consolidated into a single case in U.S. District Court in White Plains.

The lawsuits included an allegation that Mann and Anderson had touted an expected increase in Prestige Brand sales despite their knowledge that Wal-Mart had bought Compound W in quantities that it likely wouldn’t need and would end up returning.

In a pre-trial ruling last July, however, U.S. District Judge Charles Brieant dismissed claims that management acted fraudulently.

Among other things, Brieant said that shareholders had failed to offer any factual evidence for a prospective jury that managers had manipulated Compound W sales. Shareholders also failed to show that Mann and Anderson had any fraudulent motives; each man retained more than 80 percent of their stock in the company after putting the rest up for sale in the IPO.

Brieant let stand claims by shareholders that the registration statement and prospectus for the IPO were not prepared according to generally accepted accounting principles, and that the documents misstated market demand for certain key Prestige Brands products.

Brieant set an attorneys’ conference for May 18. Mann and a Prestige Brands attorney could not be reached for comment.

The company stock closed yesterday at $12.25, up 30 cents.

Debt Resolve Inc. of White Plains said today that the U.S. Federal District Court in New Jersey has upheld the company’s patent on its system for settling consumer debts online.

The patent infringement case was between another company, Cybersettle of White Plains and a third company, National Arbitration Forum. Debt Resolve is involved because it has rights under the same patent as Cybersettle. Cybersettle’s rights are for insurance and Debt Resolve’s are for settlement of consumer debt.

National Arbitration Forum, based in Minnesota, is in the business of settling disputes concerning consumer and commercial debt.

James D. Burchetta, chairman and chief executive of Debt Resolve, said the court’s decision enhances his company’s position as the “undisputed leader in online debt collection.�

Debtors who use Debt Resolve’s patented system make offers that settle their debt more than 50 percent of the time, the company said.

The case involved a dispute over U.S. Patent No. 6,330,551. The company’s business is also protected by U.S. Patent Nos. 6,954,741 and 6,850,918. To see the patents, go to the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office on the Web (www.uspto.gov).

Debt Resolve, which was founded in 2003, raised $12.5 million through an initial public offering on Nov. 1 on the American Stock Exchange.

Its shares closed at $4.14 yesterday, down 16 cents, or 3.72 percent.

USI Holdings Corp. of Briarcliff Manor said this morning that a federal court ordered a second trial to review a $16.6 million copyright infringement judgment against a company subsidiary.

In June, a jury in Pennsylvania decided that USI MidAtlantic Inc, should pay the award to plaintiff William A. Graham Co. The plaintiff sued USI MidAtlantic Inc. and a former Graham employee, alleging that they had used information from copyrighted insurance manuals to get insurance business.

USI, which had 2005 profits of $7.8 million on sales of $504.43 million, said in a written statement that the court’s latest ruling vacates the jury verdict.

The new trial will also examine statute of limitations issues, USI said.

The company’s stock was trading at $15.20 a share, down 13 cents, at 10:25 a.m.

Cybersettle Inc., a White Plains-based company that provides an Internet platform for parties to settle legal disputes, said today it has won a patent case.

The company said a federal judge in New Jersey ruled that two versions of the National Arbitration Forum’s online dispute resolution system in the Garden State violated a Cybersettle patent. That patent covers an online dispute resolution system that can handle multiple bids from the parties trying to settle.
Charles Brofman, the president of Cybersettle, said: “We basically staked out a claim that has now been supported by this federal district court decision and that’s pretty powerful.�

But Curtis Brown, a vice president with National Arbitration Forum, said his company has stopped using the platform covered by the patents in its work for the state of New Jersey. Brown’s company provides the technology that allows parties to settle health-care claims that arise out of auto accidents.

The platform covered by the patents allows each party to submit multiple bids until they reach a settlement, he said. The technology his company is using with New Jersey allows each party to submit only one bid.

Brown said National Arbitration may appeal the ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Mary Cooper.