Lawyers meeting in a federal courtroom in Cleveland today to discuss a settlement of opioid litigation face the difficult task of crafting a deal that will not only pay their clients — mostly towns and cities — but include states Read more…
First they tried suing the utility companies. Then they tried suing the automakers. They even tried suing oil companies on behalf of an Alaskan village in danger of being inundated by oil-fueled rising sea levels. Each approach ended when courts Read more…
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals just threw out a proposed class-action settlement over inflated Hyundai mileage estimates, in a decision that also criticized the common practice of basing attorney fees on inflated estimates of what a settlement is worth. Read more…
There will be a lot of familiar faces in U.S. District Judge Dan Polster’s courtroom in Cleveland on Jan. 31, when lawyers gather for a hearing on multidistrict litigation against the nation’s opioid manufacturers and distributors. The prospect of the Read more…
On Sept. 23, 2016, a group of protesters blocked a Burlington Northern Santa Fe freight train carrying coal in Spokane, WA, to prevent the earth from warming up. From a scientific standpoint, the action was absurd: Stopping a single trainload of Read more…
The comic-opera overtones of the Trump administration often mask serious constitutional questions with big implications for American business. Take, for instance, the battle for control of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. After more than two years without a Deputy Director, Read more…
The ostensible purpose of a Maryland Senate hearing last month was to discuss solutions to the stubborn backlog of more than 30,000 asbestos lawsuits in the Baltimore courts. But plaintiff lawyers spent more time asking for a legislative fix to Read more…
Koch Industries has put a division of its Georgia-Pacific unit in Chapter 11 bankruptcy after failing to stem a rising tide of lawsuits by mesothelioma victims who attribute their disease to asbestos-containing drywall compound. Georgia-Pacific’s Bestwall business manufactured the joint Read more…
A trove of data revealing the contingency fees charged by New York City lawyers suggests that in virtually every tort case, lawyers charge the full one-third allowed under state regulations. Researchers at Claremont McKenna College and the USC Gould School Read more…
It wasn’t a good enough case for the U.S. Supreme Court to hear, but that didn’t stop Justice Neil Gorsuch from using Scenic America v. Department of Transportation to weigh in on one of his favorite topics: The need to Read more…