This year, Judge I. Leo Glasser of Federal District Court in Brooklyn approved a settlement requiring Mr. Kumar to pay nearly $800 million to victims of the fraud.
Without admitting wrongdoing, Quong Hop agreed to a settlement requiring it to pay $90,000 and prohibiting future violations of health safety laws.
The system has an entrenched constituency with origins in 1974, when Aspira, a civil rights group, sued and later signed a settlement requiring that students be taught at least partly in their native language.
A federal judge in Oakland has tentatively approved a settlement requiring the government to pay more than $500 million to tens of thousands of people wrongly barred from receiving Social Security payments.
Last year, Mr. Spitzer's office announced a settlement requiring Allied to sell six routes in northern Westchester to a single company, so there would be a third major competitor in the county, and to guarantee that company access to its transfer stations in Mount Kisco and Mamaroneck.
That law should be repealed, so that eventually, the gun industry can enter into a settlement requiring public education about the risks of guns, similar to the tobacco industry settlement.
The conservation group where I work as a biologist and lawyer recently reached a settlement requiring the EPA to analyze the impacts of malathion and diazinon on endangered species.
In the mid-2000s, as the city moved to expand the terminal used by China Shipping, local residents sued and won a settlement requiring the port to impose strict new environmental measures on the company, including significant increases in the use of shore power.
Instead, full engagement with all the parties to the conflict and the vision to see how all can grow to reach a new settlement, requires courage, patience, imagination.
Praising the Chancellor's plan for an inflation-plus rise in the national minimum wage, Mr Duncan Smith will argue: "A stable economic settlement requires a strong social settlement.
"More importantly, the national foreclosure settlement requires a significant amount of mortgage modifications, which, if Congress does not extend this exemption, will be made useless".
