SAN FRANCISCO (Legal Newsline) – The private lawyers who engineered the latest round of municipal lawsuits over climate change hoped they’d found a path through the thicket of precedents blocking their way by suing oil companies for selling hydrocarbons instead of burning them and by citing state instead of federal Read more…
The latest wave of state lawsuits over the opioid crisis illustrates sharp differences emerging in how governments litigate these cases, both in whom they choose to sue and whether private lawyers stand to get a piece of the action. Five of the six states announcing lawsuits earlier this month focused on Read more…
An old story has it a Southern defense attorney, confronted with photographic evidence of his client’s guilt, turns to the jury and says “who you gonna believe? Me, or your own lyin’ eyes?” A quick Google search reveals the line was actually first uttered by Chico Marx, disguised as Groucho, Read more…
A public fight between the Tennessee attorney general and counties that have filed separate lawsuits against the opioid industry could be the first of many similar conflicts as state AGs try to assert control over mushrooming litigation over the addiction crisis. Tennessee AG Herbert Slatery is seeking to intervene in lawsuits filed Read more…
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 and even the federal government while spreading the cash evenly 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 said that the judiciary branch wasn’t the right place to 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 biggest payday since the $200 billion tobacco settlement in 1998 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 coal could hardly have any more impact on global climate 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, on Nov. 24, CFPB Director Richard Cordray named Leandra English 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 a single legal decision that could eliminate thousands of those Read more…