- Hold on to your hat: Litigation Lobby ally and Grade A business-basher David Michaels — who founded a project purportedly advancing the cause of scientific integrity with money furnished by, of all groups, the silicone breast implant bar — named to head OSHA [Wood/PoL; more on SKAPP]
- City of Clearwater, Florida bans playing catch on beach or in park [Popehat]
- In wake of Kindle “1984” episode, watch for lawyers to start demanding remote line-item deletion of allegedly defamatory or infringing matter from books after publication [Moshirnia, Citizen Media Law]
- Amicus brief exposes more free-speech problems with that federal law banning depictions of animal cruelty [Volokh, earlier]
- “Crocs settles safety suits over escalator injuries” [Matthew Heller, OnPoint News, earlier]
- Was he planning to drive somewhere? MADD official objects to Obama’s appearing on TV drinking a beer [Sullum, Reason “Hit and Run”]
- Air crash lawsuit charges Oklahoma City didn’t do enough to keep Wiley Post Airport free of birds [NewsOK.com/The Oklahoman]
- Many dubious things in health care bill, but “mandatory end-of-life care discussions” not among them [C.B. Brown, Politico]
Posts Tagged ‘aviation’
USAir Hudson-landing emotional distress, cont’d
Press coverage has been rather hostile toward AIG, which insures USAir, for its reluctance to cut large checks for therapy and the like to passengers aboard the miracle flight. (One major reason for it to balk may be the lack of any showing that the airline was negligent; also, passengers got $5,000 checks right after the rescue.)
Given the insurer’s status as public relations pariah, it’s interesting to note that at least one voice has been raised in its defense from a perhaps unexpected quarter: Ron Miller of Maryland Injury Lawyer. His “plea to every lawyer in the United States: please don’t file a lawsuit in these cases to get your name in the paper.” Earlier here and here.
June 16 roundup
- Legal hazards of beachcombing: “Keeping bald eagle feather could result in a $100,000 fine and year in prison” [BoingBoing; our Sept. 1999 post]
- “E.U. Condemns America’s Online Gambling Crackdown” [Sullum, Reason “Hit and Run”]
- Much-loved Stockton, Calif. eatery Chuck’s Hamburgers is menaced by ADA serial litigator, and friends rally to save it [Stockton Record, 4000-member Facebook group]
- Doomed AF Flight 447 had multiple connections with France (airline, aircraft maker) and Brazil (takeoff, many passengers’ nationality), so of course some American lawyers are hoping to get resulting suits heard in U.S. courts [Bloomberg]
- Sure takes a lot of lawyering to bring a movie like “Bruno” to the screen [Althouse, WSJ Law Blog, Legal Ethics Forum]
- Form vs. substance: U.K. historic-preservation edict saves increasingly impractical Victorian bell frames, at expense of 650-year-old bell ringing tradition [Telegraph via Never Yet Melted]
- All in a day’s (double) work: take city retirement or even disability, then come back in second job [Al Tompkins, Lowell (Mass.) Sun]
- Can it be? In just about another two weeks your favorite source of legal consternation will turn ten years old [nine years and eleven months or so ago on Overlawyered]
It’ll never get off the ground
Paul Breed, Unreasonable Rocket:
A long time ago a normal mortal could buy rocket grade peroxide. Then someone crashed their rocket pack and sued the peroxide supplier. They won and the supplier lost more on that suit than they had ever made on the small rocket grade peroxide sales. So they did the smart thing and stopped selling rocket grade peroxide to anyone that did not have a government contract.
Result: he decides to try making his own. (That sounds like a step forward for safety, doesn’t it?) What happened next, as well as commenter reactions, at the link.
“Witnesses feared being killed if they testified about the fraud”
Explosive testimony in a Los Angeles courtroom after a judge begins digging into indications of possible fraud in lawsuits by Nicaraguans against Dole Food alleging toxic harms from banana pesticides (L.A. Times via Cal Biz Lit, WSJ law blog; earlier at Overlawyered). The fraud went on for decades, a Dole lawyer charged, and included recruiting and coaching poor Nicaraguan men to pose as having been rendered sterile, even if they had children and had never worked on banana plantations. A California jury had awarded millions of dollars in one of a string of cases that drew controversy over the competence of stateside courts in evaluating claims over injuries that took place in foreign countries. According to the L.A. Times, one lawyer representing the plaintiff’s side in the litigation expressed regret over the actions of a co-counsel and said “all parties were in a nightmare situation.” Bloomberg:
Most of the employment records of Dole workers in Nicaragua were destroyed in the aftermath of the Sandinista revolution, opening the door to the fraudulent claims, Edelman said at the hearing.
Nicaraguan witnesses for Dole whose faces were hidden and whose voices were distorted to prevent identification, said in videotaped statements shown in court that they feared retribution if it became known they provided information to company investigators.
“They even would set fire to my house, even with my family in there,” one witness said. “These people don’t care.”
The cases of thousands more plaintiffs from poor banana-growing countries are waiting for trial in Los Angeles; Dow Chemical is also a defendant, because it manufactured the pesticide. [Update Apr. 24: judge tosses two consolidated lawsuits against Dole]
For another dramatic episode in which poor Latin American plaintiffs have surfaced in U.S. courts with hard-to-disprove claims, see the case of purportedly illegitimate Guatemalan children left fatherless by international air crashes (Nov. 29, 2000).
April 4 roundup
- The wages of addiction: former basketball star Roy Tarpley settles his $6.5 million ADA lawsuit against NBA and Dallas Mavericks [Randy Galloway, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Sports Law Blog]
- One result of litigation-fed “vaccines cause autism” scare: parents turn to dangerous quack treatments [Arthur Allen, Slate; in-depth coverage at Kathleen Seidel’s and Orac’s sites]
- Julie Hilden on First Circuit “true statements can be defamatory” ruling [FindLaw, earlier here and here]
- More coverage of conviction of Kentucky lawyers for grabbing much of fen-phen settlement [Louisville Courier-Journal, earlier]
- Judge dismisses most counts in lawsuit against Richard Laminack of Texas’s O’Quinn law firm [Texas Lawyer, earlier; FLSA overtime claims remain]
- All but three of the outstanding 9/11 airline suits due to settle for $500 million [AP/NorthJersey.com]
- One needn’t make the Community Reinvestment Act a scapegoat for unrelated credit woes to recognize it as an ill-conceived law [Bank Lawyer’s Blog]
- U.K.: Woman who plays classical music to soothe horses told she must pay for public performance license [Telegraph]
March 31 roundup
- Litigation over high-tech products is rife, but major benefits for consumers can be hard to discern [Low End Mac]
- “United settles with female ex-pilot who found p0rn in cockpits” [Obscure Store]
- California suit charges negligent “laying on of hands” at church service [Lowering the Bar]
- UN resolution against “defamation of religion” imperils free speech [Paula Schriefer, Freedom House/CSM, Steyn/NR “Corner”, National Secular Society (U.K.), Ilya Somin @ Volokh
- DivorceNetwork.com, social networking for those caught up in family law battles? [Ambrogi, Legal BlogWatch]
- Prosecutors behaving badly in Wayne County (Mich.), Miami, Santa Clara County [Radley Balko, Reason “Hit and Run”]
- After nine years, the notorious Bill Lerach California-unfair-competition-law suit against Kwikset (over several screws from Taiwan in a lock marked “Made in America”) finally winds down [California Civil Justice, earlier]
- Oklahoma AG Drew Edmondson to poultry companies: my pals will bankrupt you with massive verdicts unless you settle [Rizo/Legal NewsLine; more]
March 25 roundup
- Driver on narcotic painkillers crashes car, lawyer says pharmacists liable [Las Vegas Review-Journal]
- Who’s that cyber-chasing the Buffalo Continental Air crash? Could it be noted San Francisco-based plaintiff’s firm Lieff Cabraser? [Turkewitz]
- Axl Rose no fan of former Guns N’ Roses bandmate or his royalty-seeking attorneys [Reuters]
- Cheese shop owner speaks out against punitive tariff on Roquefort, now due to take effect April 23 [video at Reason “Hit and Run”, earlier]
- Too many cops and too many lawsuits in city schools, says Errol Louis [NY Daily News]
- Law professor and prominent blogger Ann Althouse is getting married — to one of her commenters. Congratulations! [her blog, Greenfield] Kalim Kassam wonders when we can look forward to the Meg Ryan film “You’ve Got Blog Comments”.
- “Louisiana panel recommends paying fees of wrongfully accused Dr. Anna Pou” (charged in deaths of patients during Hurricane Katrina) [NMissCommentor]
- U.K.: “Privacy Group Wants To Shut Down Google Street View” [Mashable]
Schrenker’s fender-bender splendor
After your low-speed accident outside New York City’s Port Authority, you suspect there’s something a tad suspicious about the resulting $15 million neck-and-back-injury claim against you by the occupant of the limo you hit, a man named Marcus Schrenker. And then one day he turns up on all the front pages…
$55 million in Marine helicopter crash
Curt Cutting at California Punitive Damages takes note of a jury’s very large verdict against San Diego Gas and Electric last month, including $40 million in punitive damages, after a helicopter fatally collided with a 130-foot utility tower located on the base at Camp Pendleton. “The plaintiffs claimed that SDG&E was negligent for not installing safety lights on the tower. SDG&E says the tower had been on the base for 25 years and they would have installed lights if the Marine Corps had asked. They contend the crash was the result of errors by the crew and they plan to appeal.” (Sept. 3; Tony Perry, “$55.6 million awarded in fatal Marine helicopter crash”, Los Angeles Times, Sept. 4). Bruce Nye at Cal Biz Lit calls the verdict a “stunner” (Sept. 8).