Free Republic

Litigation: The Founding Fathers envisioned the states as laboratories for ideas and choices. If the administration needs a demonstration project for successful tort reform, it need look no further than Mississippi. When President Obama said during his health care speech to Congress that he would "look into" malpractice reform and support "demonstration projects" at the state level, Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi, a Republican, responded: "If they want a demonstration project, come down to Mississippi. I'll show you a demonstration project." Mississippi enacted tort reform in 2004, including caps on medical malpractice awards. As a result, the number of medical...

As yet more proof that Andree Mcleod not only has no respect for Alaskan law, nor the taxpayers wallets, this loser of human has now filed her sixth attempt to throw mud at Sarah to see if she can get anything to stick. To say hell hath no fury may be an understatement when it comes to this one... You might also recall Ms. Mcleod (photo to left) was also the same wacko that appointed herself the state government employees fashion facist... complaining there was just "too much cleavage" being shown by the staffers. Just a week before she walks...

Last month, the Statistical Assessment Service (STATS), a nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization affiliated with George Mason University, released "Science Suppressed: How America became obsessed with BPA," a report which accuses the media "of ignoring the extensive research of respected scientists and major health agencies in the United States and around the world, which found BPA was not only safe but played an important role in ensuring food safety."   It also confirms what countless previous studies have said; BPA is safe. If you're unfamiliar with Bisphenol A (BPA), it is a chemical used to make lightweight, versatile, durable, high-performance plastics.  It's...

Alexa Longueira Suffers Deep Cuts, Bruises After Landing In Raw Sewage, Blames DEP For Leaving Hole Unattended: Alexa Longueira, a high school sophomore, was walking along Victory Boulevard near Travis Avenue on Staten Island Wednesday evening when she felt the earth move and was plunged into smelly darkness. She said the manhole she fell in to was left open and unattended with no warning signs or orange cones. She said two workers with the New York City Department of Environmental Protection failed to secure the area as they prepared to flush the sewer. "It was just really gross and it...

We have seen quite a bit of Orly Taitz - derived material here on FR. The Taitz "crusade" was (as nearly as I can tell) based on original assertions by Phillip Berg -a Hillary Clinton supporter- about the eligibility of Barack Hussein Obama for presidential office. Disagreements between the Berg and the Taitz "camps" have come to a boil recently, and a lawsuit has been filed in Federal District Court by Mr. Berg and others. The link provided shows the details of the 85 (?) page complaint for any who may be interested.

Being dragged from a car by Calgary police brought back memories for a Chechen refugee of the civil war in which he lost both legs, a lawsuit says. The $350,000 claim, filed by Calgary resident Suleyman Salamov, alleges cops even broke one of his artificial legs before letting him go without even a charge. Salamov's lawsuit says he was a passenger in a car on Feb. 26, 2008, when it was pulled over and the driver arrested. Police stopped the vehicle being driven by Elcha Khazayev, smashed the driver's side window and removed him from the car, the claim says....

QUEBEC, April 9, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A Gatineau father lost an appeal Monday after a lower court ruled last June that he had issued a too severe punishment against his 12-year-old daughter. The case involves a divorced man who says that in 2008 he caught the girl, over whom he had custody, surfing websites he had forbidden and posting "inappropriate pictures of herself" online. The girl's father told her as a consequence that she would not be allowed to go on her class' graduation trip to Quebec City, even though her mother had already given permission for her to do...

If you were hit with an overdraft fee from Bank of America (NYSE:BAC) (or one of the banks it acquired) between 2000 and 2007, you may be in for a little cash. Bank of America recently settled a class-action lawsuit that alleged it (and by extension, Fleet Bank, LaSalle Bank and U.S. Trust Company, which it acquired during that period) changed the posting order of transactions and embarked on other activities in order to increase the revenue it received from non-sufficient funds fees, overdraft fees and similar charges. The lawsuit, which was settled for $35 million, also alleged that the...

Washington, D.C. (Vocus/PRWEB ) January 15, 2009 -- The nonprofit Center for Consumer Freedom said today that Cass Sunstein, the Harvard University Law School professor tapped by President-elect Obama to head the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, has a secret aim to push a radical animal-rights agenda in the White House. Sunstein supports outlawing sport hunting, giving animals the legal right to file lawsuits, and using government regulations to phase out meat consumption. In a 2007 speech at Harvard University, Sunstein argued in favor of entirely "eliminating current practices such as … meat eating." He also proposed: "We ought...

A former flight attendant for Continental Airlines who was fired for inappropriate behavior on a flight in 2002 has lost an attempt to sue the company for age discrimination. In a ruling released Monday, a state appeals court upheld a lower court ruling dismissing the lawsuit filed by Melissa Mersmann and ordering her to pay $2,500 in attorneys' fees to Continental. The lawsuit stemmed from events in early 2002, when Mersmann was fired for her conduct during a Feb. 17 flight from Aruba to Newark. In court filings, the company claimed Mersmann "as a result of being intoxicated, engaged in...

Even as the financial crisis has businesses, consumers and governments pinching pennies, litigation costs in America continue to swell. The direct costs of tort litigation reached $247 billion in 2006, and contract disputes cost many billions more. As a percentage of GDP, Germany spends only half as much on litigation as does the U.S., and France and the United Kingdom spend roughly one-third what we do. While some litigation is necessary, too many American lawsuits are filed by plaintiffs' attorneys who know they have no legal merit, but who hope to extract a settlement payment from the targeted defendant anyway....

The Ivory Bench by: Malcolm A. Kline, October 22, 2008 It turns out that another modern-day concept bizarre to some of us old-timers—that of judges acting as de facto school boards—also, like so many other exotic trends, has its roots in academia. “Judges commissioned studies when they could not find guidance on school funding issues in their state constitutions,” Wake Forest political scientist John Dinan told an audience at the American Enterprise Institute on October 15. “Judges are looking for a rationale on school finance in academic studies.” Dinan is the author of the book, The American State Constitutional Tradition....

Is Credit Default Swap Litigation the Next Big Thing? Robin Sparkman 10-03-2008 It seems that hardly a day goes by anymore without someone predicting with utmost confidence that boom times for litigators are just over the horizon. Thursday's prognostication, courtesy of a media lunch hosted Wednesday by Paul, Hastings, Janofsky & Walker: It's going to be all about the credit swaps. Robert Claassen, chair of the firm's derivatives group, and Keith Miller, chair of the credit crisis group, told reporters that the banking industry's implosion means that banks with a piece of the $43 trillion market in these unregulated instruments...

We have become a nation of second-guessing Hamlets. Shakespeare warned us about the dangers of "thinking too precisely." His poor Danish prince lost "the name of action" as he dithered and sighed that "conscience does make cowards of us all." With gas above $4 a gallon, the public is finally waking up to the fact that for decades the U.S. has not been developing known petroleum reserves in Alaska, in our coastal waters or off the continental shelf. Jittery Hamlets apparently forgot that gas comes from oil — and that before you can fill your tank, you must take risks...

At NRO, Victor Davis Hanson diagnoses our society as being in a chronic state of hesitation, a nation of “Jittery Hamlets:” The causes of this paralysis are clear. Action entails risks and consequences. Mere thinking doesn’t. In our litigious society, as soon as someone finally does something, someone else can become wealthy by finding some fault in it. Meanwhile, a less fussy and more confident world abroad drills and builds nuclear plants, refineries, dams, and canals to feed and fuel millions who want what we take for granted. There is an inverse side to all this dithering: the rush to...

WAYNE, N.J. — A New Jersey couple, whose son was struck in the chest with a line drive, is planning to sue the maker of a metal baseball bat used in the game. An attorney says Domalewski will need millions of dollars worth of medical care for the rest of his life.

Plaintiffs have filed approximately two private lawsuits a day related to subprime mortgages in the US this year, setting case volumes on course to exceed levels not seen since the aftermath of the savings-and-loan ­crisis, a study has found. During the first quarter of this year, 170 new civil cases were filed in federal courts, approaching the 181 filings made during the final six months of 2007, according to a review by Navigant Consulting, published on Wednesday. They were overwhelmingly dominated by class-action lawsuits, which accounted for 76 per cent of new cases. “Like the credit crunch itself, the litigation...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. -- An energy company has agreed to pay residents of a polluted waterfront neighborhood and to clean up the massive contamination that turned the soil under their homes blue, lawyers for the neighbors said Wednesday, though the company said a deal had not been reached. Attorneys Robert McConnell and Mark Roberts, who represent nearly 100 property owners, told The Associated Press they reached a tentative settlement with Southern Union Co., but said the terms were sealed so they would not discuss details. Jonathan Gasthalter, a spokesman for Houston-based Southern Union, said the case had not been resolved. The...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A Hispanic homeowner sued Lehman Brothers Bank on Thursday, accusing the lender of charging minority mortgage applicants higher fees and interest rates than white customers. Pedro Rivas, who described himself as a Latino homeowner living in Pecoima, California, filed suit in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, charging the wholly owned unit of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc with implementing a policy that causes "minority borrowers to pay subjective fees such as yield spread premiums and other mortgage-related finance charges at higher rates than similarly situated non-minority borrowers." Rivas said Lehman's "pattern of discrimination is not the result...

A western Pennsylvania couple has sued Google Inc., saying pictures of their home that appear on the Web site's "Street View" feature violated their privacy, devalued their property and caused them mental suffering. **snip** The couple's attorney, Dennis Moskal, said that is not the point. He said the Borings' privacy was invaded when the Google vehicle allegedly drove onto their property. Removing the image does not undo that damage — nor will it deter the company from doing the same thing in the future, he said. "Isn't litigation the only way to change a big business' conduct with the public?"...