junk science – Overlawyered

“Inside the Mass-Tort Machine That Powers Thousands of Roundup Lawsuits”

Walter Olson — Tue, 07 Jan 2020 11:01:20 +0000

Eye-opening investigation by Wall Street Journal reporters of the machine that markets injury lawsuits over Bayer/Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide: “Individual plaintiffs can become commodities that are bought and sold by marketers, with prices based on demand.” [Sara Randazzo and Jacob Bunge, WSJ/Morningstar] “Misinformation about one of the safest herbicides ever produced has created a lucrative business for ambulance-chasing lawyers and NGOs—at the expense of native species.” [Ted Williams, Slate; Geoffrey Kabat/Issues in Science and Technology; earlier] The U.S. Department of Justice along with several states and California medical, dental, and hospital associations are all supporting Bayer’s appeal of a $25 million verdict before the Ninth Circuit [Rich Peters, Legal NewsLine]

Tags: chasing clients, junk science, pesticides

“Inside the Mass-Tort Machine That Powers Thousands of Roundup Lawsuits” is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Liability roundup

Walter Olson — Fri, 13 Sep 2019 09:58:32 +0000

As one who wrote at length about the silicone-implant litigation at the time — founded as it was on junk science theories hyped to panic potential plaintiffs — I agree that Elizabeth Warren has nothing to apologize for about her bankruptcy work for Dow Corning. Move on to better criticisms, please [Darren McKinney, WSJ] Related: Federalist Society teleforum on mass tort bankruptcies with Steven Todd Brown, Ralph Brubaker, and Dan Prieto;
“What should be the duty of public retailers whose customers have bizarre or offensive clothing, appearance, demeanor or behavior but do not actually engage in or threaten violence on the retailers’ premises? To avoid risk, should the retailers exclude them from their stores?” [Eugene Volokh quoting federal court opinion in Budreau v. Shaw’s Supermarkets, Inc. (D. Maine)]
New York residents should brace for higher taxes as trial-lawyer-backed bill in Albany exposes public authorities to more road claims [John Whittaker, Jamestown Post-Journal]
“Kansas Supreme Court Throws Out Personal Injury Damages Cap” [Associated Press]
Whose proposal for joint trial counts as triggering removal of mass action under the Class Action Fairness Act? The court’s? Choice between federal and state courts implicates fundamental questions of fairness [Eric Alexander, Drug and Device Law on Supreme Court certiorari petition in Pfizer v. Adamyan]
Glyphosate, talc verdicts suggest juries may be paying more attention to purported smoking-gun documents than to scientific evidence on causation [Daniel D. Fisher, Northern California Record; Corbin Barthold, WLF] “Inconsistent Gatekeeping Undercuts the Continuing Promise of Daubert” [Joe G. Hollingsworth and Mark A. Miller, WLF]

Tags: bankruptcy, Class Action Fairness Act, Elizabeth Warren, junk science, Kansas, New York state, roads and streets, silicone breast implants, third party liability for crime

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

May 29 roundup

Walter Olson — Wed, 29 May 2019 09:57:32 +0000

Lawyer don’ts: Don’t steal your client’s book advance [Rebecca R. Ruiz, New York Times on Michael Avenatti indictment]
“This isn’t science, it’s witchcraft”: latest verdict against Bayer/Monsanto in Roundup weedkiller/non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma case rests on ultra-loose standards of causation [David Bernstein, related video, earlier]
Blazing sunset: Idaho legislature fails to reauthorize state’s code of more than 8,000 regulations, which expire. Between now and July 1, Gov. Brad Little “gets to pick and choose which ones to reinstate as emergency regs until legislature meets again.” [James Broughel, Mercatus]
News blackout on STEM Charter School shooting (Highlands Ranch, Colorado) has judicial origins: entire court file in murder case against older of the two shooters “is ‘suppressed’ from public inspection. This even over the express request of the prosecutor” to have the judge unseal most records [Eugene Volokh]
Baltimore corruption and development, red flag law, Montgomery Countyites for private toll lanes, Yuripzy Morgan show and more in my latest Maryland policy roundup;
A point I’ve been making for years about the Electoral College: one of its underrated benefits is in bolstering election integrity by much shortening the list of jurisdictions in which a material chance of fraud might throw overall result into doubt with consequences for legitimacy [Stephen Sachs and followup]

Tags: Baltimore, don't, Idaho, junk science, Maryland, regulation and its reform

May 29 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

A second California glyphosate verdict

Walter Olson — Tue, 09 Apr 2019 04:05:27 +0000

Our system lets trial lawyers win jackpot jury verdicts even when science is not on their side. Case in point: Roundup. “Glyphosate, the active ingredient in the world’s most widely used weedkiller, does not cause cancer. Yet, for the second time, a jury has recently sided with the plaintiff in a lawsuit alleging that glyphosate does and did cause cancer. What are we to make of this?” [Val Giddings, Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, Genetic Literacy Project graphic on what regulators and research agencies think, earlier here and here]

Tags: agriculture and farming, junk science, pesticides

A second California glyphosate verdict is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

At Commentary on the Roundup verdict

Walter Olson — Tue, 21 Aug 2018 09:57:59 +0000

My new piece at Commentary on a San Francisco jury’s verdict ordering Bayer/Monsanto to pay $289 million to a school groundskeeper who blamed Roundup herbicide for his cancer. It bids to go down in the history books alongside the lawsuits “claiming that silicone breast implants caused auto-immune disease, common childhood vaccines caused autism, the morning sickness drug Bendectin caused birth defects, one or another make of car suddenly accelerated without any input from the driver or gas pedal, and so forth.”

At the end it concludes: “Eventually, our liability system does often get around to rejecting baseless scientific claims of causation, especially since the improvement in the handling of expert evidence embraced by the U.S. Supreme Court in Daubert v. Merrell Dow (1993). Before it gets there, however, it sometimes redistributes large sums—often to claimants, even more reliably to lawyers—and often destroys large amounts of value. In the days after the San Francisco verdict, the value of Bayer stock dropped by more than 10 billion euros. It’s expensive when error prevails.” More: The Logic of Science (“Courts don’t determine scientific facts.”) Earlier on glyphosate here. And a note on the perhaps-surprising tax implications under perhaps surprising provisions of the 2017 tax reform: Robert Wood.

Tags: Daubert, junk science, pesticides, toxic torts, WO writings

At Commentary on the Roundup verdict is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

“Outrage is easy. Science is hard.”

Walter Olson — Sun, 02 Jul 2017 16:03:33 +0000

Daniel Gold in the New York Times and Kenneth Turan in the L.A. Times review “Food Evolution,” a new documentary on fear of GMOs directed by Scott Hamilton Kennedy and narrated by Neil DeGrasse Tyson. Trailer here.

Tags: eat drink and be merry, food safety, junk science

“Outrage is easy. Science is hard.” is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Environment roundup

Walter Olson — Fri, 10 Mar 2017 11:03:14 +0000

Here come big, beautiful eminent domain cases over condemnation of land for the US-Mexico wall [Gideon Kanner, Ilya Somin]
Judge greenlights “public trust” climate change suit, an exercise in court- and lawyer-empowerment [Samuel Boxerman, WLF]
Next Friday, Mar. 17, Cato will host panel on pending SCOTUS case of Murr v. Wisconsin (property rights, regulatory takings) with Roger Pilon (Cato), J. Peter Byrne (Georgetown Law), and Ilya Somin (George Mason Law), with opening remarks by Todd Gaziano (Pacific Legal) and moderated by Ilya Shapiro (Cato) [register or watch online]
Swallowing dubious health claims, Maryland advisory panel urges schools to turn off wi-fi. Plenty wrong with that [ACSH]
By 31-69 margin, Los Angeles voters crush anti-development Measure S, “NIMBYism on steroids” [City Observatory, earlier]
Tackling WOTUS is just the start: “The Clean Water Act Needs A Reset” [Reed Hopper, Investors, Jonathan Wood, related]

Tags: climate change, eminent domain, environment, junk science

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

“Uncle Sam is a horrible nutritionist”

Walter Olson — Fri, 13 Feb 2015 10:56:06 +0000

They’re finally letting the egg back into the good graces of government nutritionism, long after it had become clear that the cholesterol scare was unfounded [Washington Post] Again and again, health guidelines promoted by Washington have pushed Americans from safer toward less safe food choices, and from long-familiar foods that came to seem too rich or indulgent (butter, animal fat) toward alternatives about which far less is known. [Michael Brendan Dougherty, The Week] More: “Worth remembering that, if they had the power in the 1980s, the public health lobby would have forced us to eat a diet they now say is bad.” — @cjsnowdon

However bad a nutritionist Uncle Sam may be, of course, he is unlikely ever to be as bad as the science-impaired, self-proclaimed Food Babe Vani Hari [The Atlantic (“There is just no acceptable level of any chemical to ingest, ever.”), Orac/Respectful Insolence, Advertising Age, earlier] If only the public health establishment worked as hard to counteract the notions spread by Hari as it does to inscribe whatever its current set of food enthusiasms may be into coercive government policy! More: Michelle Francl, Slate.

P.S. At Scott Greenfield’s suggestion:

Tags: eat drink and be merry, food safety, junk science, obesity

“Uncle Sam is a horrible nutritionist” is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Science bloggers vs. Food Babe

Walter Olson — Tue, 17 Jun 2014 10:15:47 +0000

David Gorski at Science-Based Medicine and Trevor Butterworth at Forbes take a dim view of Food Babe, “a young, telegenic, clever but scientifically ignorant blogger” who’s turned her campaign sights from Subway to beer makers.

Tags: beer and brewers, food safety, junk science

Science bloggers vs. Food Babe is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system