I drove to Atlanta last night so that I could attend two days of meetings preparing for an upcoming class certification hearing in St. Louis. We are going to work at polishing our team’s arguments for the hearing and testing our visual aids. On Thursday night I will be coming…
The American Trucking Associations has petitioned the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to limit the maximum speed of large trucks at the time of manufacture to no more than 68 miles per hour. ATA also petitioned the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration to prohibit the tampering or adjustment of the…
Philadephia Federal District Judge Stewart Dalzell has rejected Novartis Pharmaceutical Corp.’s claim that the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act and FDA regulations preempt state failure-to-warn tort claims. In an opinion issued in the Perry v. Novaritis Pharma Corp., NO. 05-5350 (USDC, ED PA October 17, 2006), Judge Dalzell rejected…
I saw this and it reminded me of a recent conversation I had. I was having dinner with several judges and was complaining about what I felt have been some rather meager fee awards in consumer protection action cases. (Note: I had no pending cases before these judges on any attorneys’ fee issue and I…
My friend Bill Marler is THE man when it comes to food poisoning cases. His firm, based out of Seattle but with a nationwide practice, knows the science of food poisoning inside out. We worked together on an e coli case in East Tennessee that we wrapped up earlier this…
The Tort Deform Blog is offered by the Drum Major Institute of Public Policy. They say that they blog "confronts and transcends the arguments put forth by the tort ‘reform’ movement, working to ensure that all Americans can access the courts." The blog is well-written and provides a lot of information…
Donald Matthews fell off a "loft" bed (similar to a bunk bed) and hurt his shoulder. He sued the manufacturer of the bed, saying that he should have been warned about the risk of falling. Oh yeah, by the way, he was a senior. In college. (His GPA at the…
We had our hearing on the subrogation issue mentioned in last Friday’s post. Judge Bivins ruled that the made-whole doctrine survived the adoption of no-fault insurance in Michigan and also found that our clients were not made whole from our prior settlement with the defendants. Accordingly, he declined to enforce the…
Mark Zamora (of A Georgia Lawyer ) and David Swammer (of the South Carolina Trial Law Blog) have been working on a group blog for nearly a year and went live about ten days ago. It’s called the Trial Lawyer Resource Center with a shorter URL of TLRCBlog.com. I am…
Scientific papers are often difficult to understand. The fact that they are often poorly written doesn’t help matters, but many of us lack the scientific background to quickly grasp and analyze scientific literature. Here is an excerpt from an article published in the British Medical Journal that provides some help…