Judge John Shepard Wiley reluctantly concurred with a recent California appellate decision allowing a Los Angeles Unified School District teacher to sue for failure to accommodate her claimed disability: Acute sensitivity to wi-fi signals. But his concurrence lays out the risks of allowing such cases to proceed, especially in California, Read more…
MDLs were supposed to be a more efficient way of handling mass-tort lawsuits but unethical practices and the incentives of corporate defendants combine to deliver poor results to plaintiffs. As reported on Legal Newsline: PHILADELPHIA, Dec. 11 (Legal Newsline) – Federal multidistrict litigation, a procedure intended to resolve mass-tort lawsuits Read more…
“For a case where the plaintiffs got zero, we feel the plaintiffs’ lawyers shouldn’t get anything more.”
In a pattern seen previously in settlements over the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, NFL concussion suits and other large MDLs, the lawyers representing real, living clients negotiated an additional settlement on behalf of anyone else who might sue in the future.
As published on Legal Newsline: NEWARK, N.J., May 8, 2020 – A litigation finance company whose colorful history includes a federal criminal investigation and a multiyear battle over millions of dollars in legal fees stemming from a Siberian plane crash has sued a prominent New Jersey personal injury lawyer for Read more…
As published on Legal Newsline’s Northern California Record: SAN FRANCISCO, July 22, 2019 – On one coast, Bayer AG is fighting to reverse eye-popping jury verdicts based on a contested theory Roundup herbicide made by its Monsanto unit causes cancer. On the other, Johnson & Johnson begins hearings this week Read more…
As reported on Legal Newsline: San Francisco, May 14: On April 30, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency declared glyphosate, the active ingredient in the widely used weedkiller Roundup, to be safe. Less than two weeks later, a California jury ordered Bayer AG to pay $2 billion to a couple who Read more…
The third season of the wildly popular show “Billions” premiered in March with a mention of an oddly arcane subject: asbestos bankruptcy trusts. The dialogue coming out of the mouth of prosecutor Chuck Rhodes, played by Paul Giamatti, becomes a little less mysterious when you look at who wrote it, 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 of Law obtained retainer and closing statements for nearly 300,000 Read more…
(Note: The jury ultimately tossed this case on Aug. 22, refusing to find the railroad responsible) NEW HAVEN, Conn. (Legal Newsline) – The facts in Colon v. Metro-North Commuter Railroad are as clear as a jolt from a high-tension power line: Plaintiff Omar Milton Colon trespassed on a railroad right-of-way Read more…