asbestos – Overlawyered

Liability roundup

Walter Olson — Tue, 18 Feb 2020 11:02:31 +0000

“Syracuse woman sued for not letting adopted cat sleep in bed with her” [CNYCentral]
St. Louis talc cases: “Thus, in order to vindicate their Due Process rights regarding personal jurisdiction…, the defendants had to litigate with over $5 billion in potential liability hanging over their heads. Not too many defendants [can] do that.” [Jim Beck on Johnson & Johnson win]
Allegation: “instructed Thomas to get behind the wheel of Thomas’ Avalanche to make it appear that Thomas was driving the vehicle at the time of the staged accident.” [WDSU on indictment of five in New Orleans car-crash scheme] “Those cameras right there saved between $150,000 and $200,000 just by capturing the fraud and us not having to go and defend it.” [Mike Perlstein, WWL] “Don’t listen to the lawyers, take tough action to curb [Louisiana] car insurance costs” [R.J. Lehmann and Marc Hyden, The Advocate; earlier here, here, and here]
Washington Legal Foundation monograph on judicial oversight of expert testimony [Evan Tager et al.; related webinar] “Stupid expert tricks,” pharmaceutical edition [Jim Beck]
“Art Imitates Life: ‘Billions’ Describes Six-Figure, Part-Time Jobs On Asbestos Trusts” [Daniel Fisher, Legal Newsline, 2018]
“DOJ eyes requirement that False Claims Act whistleblowers disclose litigation funding” [Alison Frankel, Reuters, remarks by Deputy Associate Attorney General Stephen Cox]

Tags: animals, asbestos, claims fraud, expert witnesses, problem jurisdictions, qui tam, whistleblowers

Liability roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

November 6 roundup

Walter Olson — Wed, 06 Nov 2019 10:59:24 +0000

In the greater Oklahoma City area next Tuesday, Nov. 12? Come out to my lunchtime law school talk at the U. of O. on employment law, sponsored by the school’s Federalist Society chapter [details]
A Sixth Circuit opinion thus begins: “This court once observed, ‘[w]hen a party comes to us with nine grounds for reversing the district court, that usually means there are none.’ Steven Hank comes to us with twenty-seven.” [Hank v. Great Lakes Constr. Co., Court Listener]
Elizabeth Warren tale of “two cents” wealth tax Hallowe’en costume doesn’t quite add up [my Cato post; another point]
Speaking of Warren, when asked what would happen to displaced health insurance workers once private insurance is done away with — not, to be sure, the strongest objection to her plan, but still one worth having an answer for — saying they can go work for auto or life insurers makes about as much sense as saying displaced workers from dance studios can go work for recording or graphic design studios [The Hill]
No good deed: Brad Pitt, others on charitable foundation can be sued over alleged flaws in New Orleans homes [AP/WDSU]
“Coincidentally or not, current and former members of the Baltimore Orioles, which the Angelos family owns, were dispatched to the [Maryland] State House for a good will visit while the [Angelos asbestos] bill was under consideration.” [Josh Kurtz, Maryland Matters]

Tags: asbestos, celebrities, Elizabeth Warren, live in person, Maryland, New Orleans, Oklahoma

November 6 roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Liability roundup

Walter Olson — Fri, 07 Jun 2019 10:02:27 +0000

Court of appeals throws out class action against provincial lottery Loto-Quebec: “[The lead plaintiff] said she wouldn’t have bought the tickets had she known the odds were so slim.” [Canadian Press/CBC]
And there was much rejoicing: Florida high court finally adopts Daubert, meant to curb use of faulty and unproven science in litigation [Karen Kidd, Florida Record, Beck]
Fake car-crash claims alleged: “5 SoCal Chiropractors Busted In $6M Insurance Fraud Scheme” [CBS Los Angeles] “Three Men Found Guilty Of $31 Million Slip-And-Fall Scheme Involving Homeless People” [Jen Chung, Gothamist] Cambridgeshire, England: “Footage shows moment car ‘runs over foot’ of binman accused of crash-for-cash scam” [Alex Matthews, The Sun (U.K.)]
If appellate review somehow leaves intact the scientifically baseless $2 billion Oakland verdict over glyphosate/Roundup, new changes in federal tax law might cut into plaintiffs’ winnings [Robert Wood, Forbes]
Tamper proof? Old bottles of baby powder bought on eBay are central to plaintiffs’ claims that Johnson & Johnson baby powder may have contained asbestos fibers, a theory that has underlain several large verdicts [Daniel Fisher, Legal NewsLine; John O’Brien, same; Jef Feeley and Margaret Cronin Fisk, Bloomberg]
“Michigan’s lawmakers have passed legislation to reform the state’s worst-in-the-nation auto insurance market.” [Ray Lehmann, R Street/Insurance Journal, earlier]

Tags: asbestos, claims fraud, crash faking, Daubert, Florida, gambling, Michigan, taxes

Liability roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Liability roundup

Walter Olson — Fri, 17 May 2019 09:58:01 +0000

Oakland jury tells Monsanto to pay $2 billion over claim that Roundup caused non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, though the consensus among scientists is that it doesn’t [Tina Bellon, Reuters, earlier] Both sides in glyphosate trial bombarded Bay Area residents with local paid messaging; did Monsanto use geofencing to run ads on phones inside the courthouse itself? [Scott Greenfield, ABA Journal] Was judge in previous Bay Area glyphosate case swayed by P.R. campaign aimed at her? [Daniel Fisher, Legal NewsLine]
“Police say Rodriguez was looking at her phone while walking across tracks” [AP/KOIN; Oregon woman suing rail companies over injury]
Liability reform in Florida, so often stymied in the past, may have clearer road ahead with arrival of new state high court majority [John Haughey, Florida Watchdog]
Not just mesh, either: “Top 5 Eyebrow-Raising Provisions in Mesh Attorneys’ Retainer Agreements” [Elizabeth Chamblee Burch]
What is a Maryland General Assembly session without a special fast-track bill to hot-wire money to the benefit of asbestos lawyer Peter Angelos? But this year’s ran aground [Josh Kurtz, Maryland Matters; John O’Brien, Legal NewsLine]
Car accident scam in eastern Connecticut reaped estimated $600,000 from as many as 50 staged crashes [AP/WTIC]

Tags: asbestos, attorneys' fees, Bay Area, crash faking, Florida, jackpot justice, junk science, Maryland, railroads

Liability roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Supreme Court OKs asbestos suits against non-asbestos manufacturers

Walter Olson — Thu, 21 Mar 2019 04:05:30 +0000

Tuesday’s 6-3 decision in Air & Liquid Systems v. DeVries took an expansive view of asbestos liability in the maritime context. I discuss at Cato at Liberty:

…By requiring makers of components to pay for damages they did not cause in the name of warnings that the U.S. Navy almost certainly would not have heeded, the Court yields to an impulse to round up deep pockets lest a sympathetic set of litigants otherwise go uncompensated….

In his dissent, Gorsuch points out that [the new standard formulated by Justice Brett Kavanaugh for the majority] not only has no evident grounding in existing tort doctrine but is not in fact easy to apply or predict. …

But it seems almost quaint to ask whether a newly announced legal standard can readily be applied and predicted in the context of asbestos law, a sui generis creation in which the courts regularly extract vast sums from defendants on the basis of legal standards assuredly not recognized in law at the time those defendants acted in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. The implications of assigning retrospective liability to actions lawful at the time loom large and disturbing over continuing expansions of liability like the one announced in today’s case.

Tags: asbestos, Supreme Court

Supreme Court OKs asbestos suits against non-asbestos manufacturers is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Liability roundup

Walter Olson — Mon, 11 Feb 2019 10:52:01 +0000

“Illinois Supreme Court Allows No-Injury Biometric Information Privacy Act Claims in Complete Victory for Plaintiffs’ Bar” [Locke Lord] Google’s “which museum portrait is your selfie like?” an early local casualty [Illinois Policy and generally on the law]
“Class action reform isn’t dead. It’s just not coming from Congress” [Alison Frankel, Reuters]
To get around Daimler v. Bauman line of cases, state statutes now provide that by registering to do business in the state an out-of-state business consents to general personal jurisdiction. Is that consistent with due process? [Anand Agneshwar and Paige Sharpe, WLF, and on Mallory v. Norfolk Southern Railway case in Pennsylvania; Beck with survey of state statutes]
“As Pelvic Mesh Settlements Near $8 Billion, Women Question Lawyers’ Fees” [Matthew Goldstein, New York Times, earlier and more]
More on Department of Justice crackdown on fraud and mismanagement in asbestos bankruptcy trusts [ABA Journal, AP, Alison Frankel/Reuters, Sen. Chuck Grassley statement, earlier]
Judge: Port Authority not liable over George Washington Bridge jumpers [Julia Marsh, New York Post]

Tags: asbestos, class actions, Google, Illinois, suicide, technology

Liability roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

“Science Favors J&J in Talcum Powder Lawsuits”

Walter Olson — Tue, 08 Jan 2019 05:05:14 +0000

For years lawyers have been suing Johnson & Johnson claiming that its baby powder has caused ovarian cancer, a theory that has mostly met with failure in court. This summer, however, a St. Louis jury found liability and ordered the company to pay $4.69 billion, on a related theory that asbestos contaminants in the product (as opposed to talc itself) caused the disease. On December 14 Reuters followed with a lengthy piece laying out, and implicitly siding with, the plaintiff lawyers’ accusations; the piece drew wide publicity, and the company’s shares sank by about $50 billion. Some analysts have written that J&J’s lawsuit payouts on the issue could reach $20 billion.

Now a leading business columnist has explained why he doubts that outcome. “Why? Because whether or not the company’s talcum powder contains asbestos, and whether or not it hid that fact from the public, the science remains firmly on J&J’s side.” [Joe Nocera, Bloomberg] How so? “There is no evidence that women who use talcum powder are any more likely to get ovarian cancer than women who don’t. In both California and New Jersey, judges have tossed out cases on exactly this basis.” So while plaintiffs make the most of their dark imputations of a cover-up, what they haven’t shown is that women who used the baby powder are any more likely to contract cancer than those who did not. Nocera: “And this is one mass tort where I’m convinced the science is going to win.”

Meanwhile, Mark Lanier, the Texas-based lawyer who won the St. Louis verdict, freely agrees that his efforts have helped affect J&J’s stock price. “It serves my purposes as a litigator to say, ‘Yes, get their attention; keep driving the stock down.'” [Matthew J. Belvedere, CNBC] And: “New York’s specialized court for asbestos lawsuits could become a pivotal battleground for litigation over talcum powder as plaintiff lawyers seek to establish a record of wins in a court system known for liberal rules and big jury verdicts.” [Daniel Fisher, Forbes]

Tags: asbestos, Mark Lanier, product liability, toxic torts

“Science Favors J&J in Talcum Powder Lawsuits” is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Supreme Court hears “bare-metal” asbestos case

Walter Olson — Sun, 30 Dec 2018 19:10:15 +0000

Modern asbestos litigation has been described as an unending quest for the solvent defendant. Air and Liquid Systems v. DeVries, argued in October before the Supreme Court, presents the question of whether to permit suits against companies that made products containing no asbestos, “on the grounds that they had reason to foresee that the mineral would be used in conjunction with the products they did make.” I discuss the case in this new Reason piece.

More coverage of the oral argument from Brandi Buchman, Courthouse News and Ronald Mann, SCOTUSBlog reporting before and after. See also Robert H. Wright, Washington Legal Foundation; Federalist Society link roundup and video with Justin Torres of King and Spalding (& welcome SCOTUSBlog readers).

Tags: asbestos, Supreme Court, WO writings

Supreme Court hears “bare-metal” asbestos case is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Feds: we’ll be watching for asbestos-bankruptcy chicanery

Walter Olson — Tue, 02 Oct 2018 04:05:43 +0000

For well over a decade it’s been apparent that the distinctive arrangements by which asbestos plaintiff’s lawyers acquire control of the bankrupt remains of defendant corporations they’ve sued, and then exercise control over those firms’ claims, disbursements, and general management, is fraught with self-dealing and sometimes fraud, ranging from the charging of unnaturally high fees to the concealment of double- and triple-dipping by claimants. Business interests have pursued a campaign in the states and Congress to require more transparency and better judicial oversight of asbestos bankruptcy trusts. Now they may have a powerful ally indeed in the federal government, which has weighed in with an early statement of interest in one such bankruptcy to insist on better controls against fraud and abuse. Its standing for such an intervention arises in part from its role as Medicare and Medicaid payor (entitled by law to recoup some health-related outlays) rather than merely from any interest it might have in heading off fraud generally. [Daniel Fisher, Forbes; Daniel Gill, Bloomberg Law] Fisher:

In the Trump administration, at least, the government will no longer look the other way as asbestos lawyers negotiate lenient terms that make it easy for their current clients to get money at the expense of future claimants and federal entitlement programs….

The government’s unusually blunt statement of interest in the Kaiser Gypsum bankruptcy, long before any plan of reorganization has been approved, warns lawyers against including terms that make it hard to ferret out fraud and abuse, including confidentiality requirements that make it impossible to determine how much claimants have been paid and the basis for their claims….

The Justice Department also warned it will be looking for excessive fees and may not allow claimants to deduct those fees from reimbursement due the government for Medicare and Medicaid expenses.

Sequel: Feds object to trustee candidate in Duro Dyne bankruptcy.

Tags: asbestos, bankruptcy, Department of Justice

Feds: we’ll be watching for asbestos-bankruptcy chicanery is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Liability roundup

Walter Olson — Mon, 25 Jun 2018 12:01:02 +0000

“Now the Personal Injury Lawyers Have Scooters in Their Sights” [Anousha Sakoui and Edvard Pettersson, Bloomberg]
Jury orders Rams to pay $12.5 million for Reggie Bush injury [AP/Valley Morning News; St. Louis Post-Dispatch]
“Lawsuit Against Snapchat Encouraging Speeding Can Proceed” [Eugene Volokh]
“Art Imitates Life: ‘Billions’ Describes Six-Figure, Part-Time Jobs On Asbestos Trusts” [Daniel Fisher, Legal Newsline/Forbes]
Lawsuit by insurer State Farm accuses prominent Michigan attorney of maintaining covert ties to medical imaging provider [JC Reindl, Detroit Free Press]
“California Court Rejects Warranty Claims Where Rats Allegedly Chewed Through Soy-Coated Auto Wiring” [Neal Walters and Casey G. Watkins, Ballard Spahr]

Tags: asbestos, autos, cellphones, football, Michigan

Liability roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system