Day on Torts

The Illinois Supreme Court held that it was not appropriate to certify a class of personal injury plaintiffs who received injuries as a result of chemical exposure after a train derailment.

The holding:  "Although proof of the cause of the derailment will be relatively straightforward, this alone will not establish the Railroad’s liability. Proof of proximate causation and damages will be highly individualized and will consume the bulk of the time at trial. Because the statutory requirement of predominance cannot be met in this case, we hold that the circuit court abused its discretion in certifying the class."

The case is Smith v. Illinois Central Railroad Company,  Docket No. 102060 (Ill. S. Ct. 11/30/06);  read it here.

Well, yesterday I had to be a lawyer again, taking a deposition in a matter pending in Bankruptcy Court where we have been hired to represent the Trustee.  I find myself doing more and more commercial litigation and, quite frankly, it is quite enjoyable.  I majored in business and economics in undergraduate school and like to have the opportunity to put some of what I learned into use.  Of course, I will always love tort law, but the fact of the matter there is a good deal of that can be put to use in commercial litigation.

Today I am in court in Clarksville on some motions in limine for a trial I have next month.  Therefore, I lack the time to write a substantive post. 

I’ll have something for you on Friday.

Law.com has published an interesting article titled "Who Killed the Mass Tort Bonanza?"

The opening paragraph:  "The power of the plaintiffs bar is on the wane in this country, and will be for a long time to come."  Followed shortly thereafter by this:  "Neither [business interests or trial lawyers], however, would deny that the civil justice system looks drastically different than it did even two years ago. The true triumph (or tragedy, depending on your perspective) of the tort reform movement has been its ability to leverage the success of its public relations campaign into concrete and hard-to-reverse changes. State legislatures have passed laws that undercut the trial lawyers’ successes in Washington, D.C. — especially in the asbestos litigation, which has declined precipitously since the early 2000s. "

This article has done a nice job of explaining the current lay of the land in mass tort litigation.

In Pruitt v. Hancock Medical Center,  NO. 2005-CA-00132-SCT (Miss. S. Ct.  11/16/06),  Plaintiff had a personal injury claim that was not disclosed in a bankruptcy filing.  The injury occurred before the bankruptcy petition was filed.  She received a discharge of her debts in her Chapter 7 proceeding, and then took action in state court to seek damages from the alleged tortfeasor for the injury.  Her claim was dismissed for lack of standing, and the Supreme Court of Mississippi affirmed.

The Court said as follows:  "This Court concludes that the Pruitts’ cause of action accrued prior to the filing of the Pruitts’ voluntary petition for Chapter 7 bankruptcy on August 21, 2002. As this Court finds that the cause of action existed at the time of filing the bankruptcy petition, the cause of action became property of the bankruptcy estate under 11 U.S.C. § 541(a)(1). ‘If a cause of action belongs to the [bankruptcy] estate, then the trustee has exclusive standing to assert the claim.’" [Citation omitted.]

Read it here.