- “Sources: Trial lawyers expect tax break from Treasury Department” [Legal NewsLine, PoL, earlier; measure would reportedly replicate contents of bill that didn’t pass Congress]
- No doubt totally unrelated: eight Dem Senate candidates journey to Vancouver for AAJ fundraiser [The Hill, David Freddoso, ShopFloor, more]
- Report: elderly man jailed after making “bomb” joke about carry-on at airport [NBCNewYork]
- New York debt collection law firm files 80,000 actions a year, critics say errors and lack of documentation inevitable [NYT]
- Kimberly-Clark: quit letting asbestos plaintiffs forum-shop against us [SE Texas Record] How a new asbestos defendant can get “passed around” among claimants [Global Tort, scroll] Prosperity of one Cleveland asbestos law firm I’d never heard of [Briefcase]
- North Carolina court of appeals: employee rushing to bathroom after getting off work not acting within scope of employment [Matthews v. Food Lion, PDF]
- “Curse of the greedy copyright holders” [Woodlief, WSJ, via de Rugy, NRO; TechDirt]
- Update: “Ninth Circuit suspends Walter Lack, reprimands Thomas Girardi” [famed California lawyers tripped up in Dole suit; Legal Ethics Forum, PoL, earlier]
Posts Tagged ‘asbestos’
July 8 roundup
- Federal preemption of state law: compare and contrast illegal-immigration control with auto and drug design [Ted and Carter at PoL; upcoming (Jul. 21) Cato panel discussion in DC]
- Authorities in Scotland let Lockerbie bomber off on doctor’s note. How’d that work out? [Bainbridge]
- Pay for your rescue: “French tourists may be billed if high-risk trips go wrong” [Guardian]
- Must revoke honorific California-state-rock status of serpentine! It contains asbestos! [L.A. Times “Booster Shots” via Amy Alkon]
- “Zero tolerance for bullying” — nice slogan, but think before endorsing [Helene Guldberg, Daily Mail via Skenazy]
- “The New Black Panther Case: A Conservative Dissent” [Abigail Thernstrom, NRO; earlier]
- $113,800 in damages in pregnancy-bias suit against Lucasfilm, but demand for attorney’s fees could reach $1.2 million [SF Chronicle]
- Trial lawyers fear being cut out of BP TransOcean pie [WSJ Law Blog, Bainbridge, Calif. Civil Justice]
June 3 roundup
- I’ve got a new post at Cato at Liberty tying together prosecutors’ demands for business forfeiture for immigration violations with proposals to criminalize employee misclassification;
- I can’t believe it’s not a lawsuit: margarine class action melts away [Cal Biz Lit]
- Guess what, your asbestos trial is scheduled in 11 days [Korris, MC Record]
- “This website has to be removed”: mayor of Bordentown, N.J. wants to shut down online critic [Citizen Media Law]
- What is a think tank and what does it do? I and others contribute answers at Allen McDuffee’s Think Tanked blog;
- No surprise here: Insurer offers policy to cover things that go wrong in medical tourism, but won’t cover USA residents or facilities [Treatment Abroad via White Coat]
- Pennsylvania law curbing med-mal forum-shopping disappoints lawyers who used to head for Philly or Wilkes-Barre [Sunbury, Pa. Daily Item via, again, White Coat]
- New Haven pizzeria busted: owners let their kids work at restaurant [Amy Alkon]
Lawyer ads that look like VA hospital sites
The sleaziest asbestos-suit-marketing practice yet? You decide. In what is unfortunately not an April Fool’s joke, Roger Parloff at Fortune exposes a network of client recruitment sites that would fool many casual visitors into thinking they are sponsored by the federal government’s Veteran’s Administration, under headings like “VA Medical Center Palo Alto” and corresponding domain names. A founding partner of well-known New York plaintiff’s firm Seeger Weiss expressed regret about his firm’s listing as a sponsor of the site. The full story is here (& welcome Legal Blog Watch readers).
New at Point of Law
Things you’re missing if you’re not following my other site:
- Rick Esenberg on health care reform and the Constitution (with Mark Steyn link, no less). And Peggy Little on shifting views of state AGs’ role;
- A first: attorneys nailed in asbestos fraud (more: Law.com)
- Jonathan Wilson: Georgia high court strikes down medical malpractice damages cap, while upholding offer of judgment rule and emergency room liability standard.
- “That nice Mr. Smith does not have to pay this personally, does he?” Jurors and insurance;
- James Copland on the friends of Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid;
- Lawyers up, lobbyists down, which creates opportunities for arbitrage in D.C.
March 16 roundup
- Are you a member of Tyson chicken or H&R Block Express IRA class action settlements?
- Jim Copland on Harry Reid and the trial bar. [NRO]
- Jim Copland on the Ground Zero settlement, which may pay lawyers $200 million—but the judge plans fee scrutiny. [NY Post; NY Daily News]
- Kevin LaCroix interviews the Circle of Greed authors. [D&O Diary]
- Judgeships: Rhode Island lead paint trial lawyer in despite mediocre rating, but Sri Srinivasan out because of his clients—not Al Qaeda, but, heaven forfend, eeeevil corporations like Hertz.
- There’s no evidence that workers on automotive brakes (which sometimes contain asbestos) get mesothelioma at a greater rate than the rest of the population, but auto companies still get sued over it. Ford fought one in Madison County, rather than settle, and won. [Madison County Record]
- Overview of defensive medicine at work. [AP]
- Pantsless Rielle Hunter on John Edwards: “He’s very honest and truthful.” [GQ]
U.K.: “The widow who refused to sue”
73-year-old Gillian Chapman has made headlines by saying “she does not want compensation from the NHS [National Health Service] over the death of her husband, a GP who contracted cancer after working in a hospital that was built using asbestos.” Notes Telegraph columnist Jemima Lewis: “The cult of compensation has had no obvious improvement on [NHS] services.”
May 14 roundup
- Yielding to pressure from state AGs, Craigslist will close “erotic services” section and replace with more highly moderated “adult services”; New York’s Cuomo is furious the site took unilateral action “in the middle of the night” rather than negotiating with him [NY Times, Hartford Courant, office of Connecticut AG (and longtime Overlawyered bete noire) Richard Blumenthal, Citizen Media Law, Above the Law] More: Ambrogi.
- Or they could absorb it and move on: “Bounty sues Brawny in paper towel tilt” [Atlanta Journal-Constitution]
- Was granting patents relating to diagnostic analysis of human genes a mistake? Should courts undo it? Via constitutional law? Three different questions there [Ars Technica, Doc Gurley/San Francisco Chronicle]
- Canadian Human Rights Commission wants new ban on discrimination based on “social condition” (with concomitant penalties for hurtful speech premised on such condition) [Ken at Popehat]
- Luxury-goods makers’ suits against eBay over sale of counterfeits may be petering out [Frankel, American Lawyer]
- Today must be exotic-dancer-litigation day at Overlawyered: Trademark Trial and Appeal Board denies trademark protection for “Cuffs and Collar Mark” of Chippendales male exotic dancers [TTA Blog via Lowering the Bar, Ron Coleman, opinion in PDF]
- Allegations fail to stick: “Judge drops class-action suit on Teflon cookware” [AP/Des Moines Register, WSJ, American Lawyer; earlier here and here]
- Asbestos litigation ramps up against Detroit automakers after bankruptcy of many earlier defendants [five years ago on Overlawyered; up-to-the-minute report from Kirk Hartley]
Jury acquits W.R. Grace and execs in Libby, Mont. asbestos case
A high-profile federal environmental prosecution has struck out following charges of prosecutorial misconduct as well as disputes over the quality of the evidence [Montana’s News Station, Van Voris/Bloomberg] Carter Wood and others have been blogging the case at Point of Law, and a joint blog effort of the University of Montana’s law and journalism schools has given the case extensive coverage. See also Kirk Hartley.
New at Point of Law
If you’re not reading my other legal site, Point of Law, here’s some of what you’re missing:
- Taft-Hartley and the secret ballot in union-representation elections, part of a new category on labor law;
- Also, a new category on international law and international human rights law with coverage of such topics as the Harold Koh nomination, other lawprofs joining the Obama administration, the Alien Tort statute, the proposed Spanish prosecution of Bush administration lawyers, and piracy and international law;
- One form of executive pay they don’t care to limit: Senate rejects proposed $50 million ceiling on bounties paid to informants (“relators”) in federal whistleblowing suits;
- Pay-for-play in state drug-recoupment litigation: Pennsylvania, New Mexico furors just the start of much more to come;
- We’ve heard the line, “Want less litigation after the fact? Then support more regulation before the fact.” Here’s one of many reasons to take that with a grain of salt;
- “File case in Texas. Take plaintiff deposition. Dismiss case, and refile in California.” Asbestos litigation has some of the best forum-shopping gamesmanship;
- Plaintiff’s lawyers in California spent more than $4.1 million in that state’s 2007-2008 election cycle;
- Miranda warnings for company counsel?