The move to aggregate many pretrial proceedings near the home base of Ahold's U.S. Foodservice subsidiary, which headquarters in Columbia, MD, should "make the legal morass move faster," according to a Richard Booth, a University of Maryland School of Law professor quoted by the publication. However, "fast" is a relative term, according to Booth. Complex accounting suits can take years of "legal wrangling."
The centralized proceedings have been assigned to U.S. District Judge Catherine C. Blake. Cases pending in Maryland include a lawsuit by he City of Philadelphia's board of pensions and retirement, which claims a loss of more than $2 million on Ahold investments, according to this report.
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