Free Republic

$6.5 million awarded in job bias verdict Jury grants judgment to Sonoma County employee suffering from panic disorder By LORI A. CARTER THE PRESS DEMOCRAT In what may be the largest civil judgment in Sonoma County history, a jury awarded a county employee with fear of crowds $6.5 million in damages in an employment discrimination lawsuit. After a five-week Superior Court trial, the six-woman, six-man panel awarded $1.5 million in lost wages and $5 million in pain-and-suffering and other noneconomic damages to George Alberigi of Forestville. Alberigi, 52, a Medi-Cal eligibility case worker for Sonoma County's Human Services Department, argued...

RP man injured in crash sues Air France Individual lawsuit possible under 1999 treaty; landing called unsafe By MARY CALLAHAN THE PRESS DEMOCRAT Naim Ayat's back and neck still ache from the afternoon last summer when his flight skidded off a Toronto runway in a raging thunderstorm. All 309 people aboard survived and Ayat, a retired auto dealer from Rohnert Park, said he helped about 100 people escape before he went down an emergency chute. He choked up when he recalled women and children crying, screaming, practically clawing to get out of the burning jetliner. "I don't see this case...

Merck & Co. Inc. is seeking to sever the cases of two plaintiffs that a judge plans to try together in the Vioxx trial set to begin Monday in Atlantic City. While both plaintiffs allege to have suffered heart attacks after taking the drug for more than two years before, the drug maker argues that the facts, witness testimony and scientific and marketing evidence presented by each would confuse jurors to Merck's disadvantage. Merck's lawyers say the "threshold difference ... has to do with the length of each man's Vioxx usage." They argue that plaintiff Thomas Cona's pharmaceutical records show...

Lawyer claims some web fans get their kicks leering at Ms. Hicks FEBRUARY 22--Claiming that Internet surfers have been using her mug shot for "private sexual gratification," a convicted drug dealer is threatening to sue The Smoking Gun unless her booking photo is removed from our site. So meet Casey Hicks. Again. It's been a few years since we've thought about the comely 25-year-old Floridian, whose photo first appeared on TSG in 2002 as part of a collection of mug shots that we dubbed "Foxy Felons."

In a huge victory for pharmaceutical giant Wyeth, a Florida appeals court on Wednesday halted a class action suit that claimed its hormone replacement drug could harm hundreds of thousands of Florida women. A three-judge panel of the state's 3rd District Court of Appeal unanimously held in Wyeth Inc. v. Arlene Gottlieb that the claims were not common enough for the case to move forward as a class action. Instead, women who claim they may suffer future health problems because of their use of the drug Prempro will have to file individual suits against Wyeth. The Wyeth decision reverses a...

Mike Marlowe fully admits that he sometimes gave George Gillespie a hard time in that AOL chatroom. But never in his wildest imagination did he expect to be sued in court for what he characterized as "razzing." "We gave him crap," said Marlowe, a 33-year-old welder in Fayette, Ala. "I'm not going to deny it. I teased him and he teased me back. He gave it back better than he ever got it." A generation ago, such petty personal beefs might have been settled with fists outside the corner bar, but now it's the Internet age — and Ohio resident...

Some lawyers say fast food is dangerous. It can make you fat. I say some lawyers are dangerous. They can make you poor and take away your choices. But special privileges for favored industries, such as the bill the House recently passed to protect the fast-food industry, are the wrong cure.I like fast food. It tastes good, it's cheap, and it's, well, fast. That's why McDonald's, Burger King, Wendy's, KFC and Taco Bell are so popular. People aren't endlessly stupid, so companies serving nearly 100 million people every day must be serving their customers well.Of course, eating too much fast...

WASHINGTON -- The cellphone industry failed to stop proceedings in several state class actions over whether radiation emitted by the devices harms users. The Supreme Court rejected appeals from several wireless companies without comment, letting stand a Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals decision allowing five state-level class actions to proceed. The suits name several cellphone makers, including Nokia Inc., Philips Electronics North America Corp., a unit of Philips Electronics NV, Qualcomm Inc., AT&T Corp., Motorola Inc. and others. The circuit court reversed a federal trial judge in Baltimore and allowed consumers to sue the companies under Georgia, Louisiana, Maryland, New...

Retired Towanda, N.Y., Police Captain Peter Christ recently told members of the Concordville-Chadds Ford Rotary Club that the war on drugs wasn't working and that the prohibition on drugs should end. He has a point about the war on drugs, but instead of a blanket end to their restriction, how about we make their possession? Then we should add one more wrinkle. Now, regular readers will know I'm not a big fan of the trial lawyers, but I'll throw them a bone here. We allow users to sue the distributor -- and by distributors I don't merely mean sellers but...

<p>FOR the lawyers who file lawsuits against corporations, it looked like the next big thing — the next fen-phen, asbestos or even tobacco, the mother of all jackpots.</p> <p>Like the lawsuits involving asbestos, the fire-retardant material that when inhaled can cause a horrible lung cancer, the new suits involved a substance that under certain circumstances could harm the lungs: silica, a purified sand used as a cleaning abrasive as well as in making glass, paint, ceramics and other materials. Silica dust, when inhaled, can lodge in the lungs, causing silicosis, a disabling and often fatal lung disease.</p>

A congressional committee has asked more than a dozen doctors and screening companies to turn over information regarding their involvement in hundreds of silicosis lawsuits that are at the center of court proceedings in U.S. District Judge Janis Graham Jack's Corpus Christi courtroom. Rep. Joe Barton, R-Arlington, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and Rep. Ed Whitfield, R-Hopkinsville, Ky., chairman of the oversight and investigations subcommittee, sent letters to 12 doctors last week asking them to explain how a diagnosis of silicosis is made, the number of people they have diagnosed with the disease and the number of...

U.S. District Judge Janis Graham Jack issued a stinging rebuke of doctors and plaintiff lawyers involved in a massive set of silicosis lawsuits, a move that could send re-verberations throughout the nation in other tort class actions. In a 249-page ruling made public Friday, Jack determined the plaintiffs' attorneys and the doctors involved in diagnosing about 10,000 potentially sick workers hatched a scheme aimed at making money and had no interest in protecting their clients. "These diagnoses were about litigation rather than healthcare," she wrote. "It is apparent that truth and justice had very little to do with these diagnoses...

Decision Over Faulty Casket Upsets Son "HAWESVILLE, Ky. - Sherrol Sweeney has been dead and buried in the city cemetery at Lewisport, Ky., for nearly four years, but his son, Alan, is still troubled by his father's funeral. On Aug. 31, 2001, the funeral director and pallbearers were removing his father's casket when something went wrong. Pulling the wooden casket from the hearse, the bottom of the coffin came loose, allowing the departed's torso to drop down. The casket was not entirely out of the hearse. If it hadn't been for that fact, the son said, the father's body would...

MEMPHIS, TN - A Tennessee jury has awarded punitive damages of more than $48 million to the family of two Tennessee women killed in a 2002 crash near Corning, Arkansas. The woman was driving a Dodge Caravan, and her family sued the DaimlerChrysler Corporation, which made the vehicle. The judgement came in the second phase of a trial in which the family of Vickie Mohr and her mother, Maurine Heathscott, claimed the vehicle was unreasonably dangerous. The 38-year-old Mohr, of Cedar Grove, Tennessee, and 76-year-old Heathscott, of Lexington, Tennessee, were killed in a three-vehicle accident on July 5, 2002. The...

The Tyranny of Tort Reform by Yakov Bok 7 March 2005 On February 18, 2005, George Bush helped further erode our federal government by signing into law The Class-Action Fairness Act of 2005. My understanding of the bill is this: previously, if a company with lots of money gets sued, for example in a products liability case, by plaintiffs from many different states, the plaintiffs can choose which jurisdiction to sue in. The plaintiffs of course, would choose the venue they thought would be most favorable by finding the company liable and rewarding them with a large amount of money....

For Immediate Release > February 18, 2005 > Contact: Joseph Agostini > (850) 222-7920 > > BILL NELSON = JUST ANOTHER > OUT-OF-THE-MAINSTREAM LIBERAL > > *Democrat Florida Senator Joins Liberal Senate Colleagues > Clinton, Kennedy, Kerry, Boxer in opposing Tort Reform* > > TALLAHASSEE, FL - Republican Party of Florida Chairman Carole Jean > Jordan issued the following statement regarding Florida Senator Bill > Nelson's vote against tort reform: > > "Today, President Bush signed the landmark Class-Action Fairness Act of > 2005 into law and by this act, took a critical step towards ending the > lawsuit culture...

Bush Signs Bill Curbing Class-Action Suits By JESSE J. HOLLAND, Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON - President Bush on Friday signed a bill that he says will curtail multimillion-dollar class action lawsuits against companies and "marks a critical step toward ending the lawsuit culture in our country." The legislation aims to discourage multimillion-dollar class-action lawsuits by having federal judges take them away from state courts, a victory for conservatives who hope it will lead to other lawsuit limits. The president has described class-action suits as often frivolous, and businesses complain that state judges and juries have been too generous to plaintiffs....

Fairfax, VA - Today Sens. Larry Craig (R-ID) and Max Baucus (D-MT) introduced S. 397, “The Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act”, in the United States Senate. This critical legislation protects law-abiding firearms manufacturers from reckless lawsuits blaming them for the acts of criminals. Reps. Cliff Stearns (R-FL) and Rick Boucher (D-VA) introduced the companion House measure (H.R. 800) yesterday. “The Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act” enjoys support from organizations across the political spectrum, including U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers, the National Association of Wholesalers, and numerous labor unions. Thirty-three states have already...

Critics of federal tort reform have usually come from the political left and its allies among the trial lawyers, who favor a state-based system that can be exploited to redistribute income from deep-pocketed corporations to "deserving" individuals. We offer a totally different criticism--constitutional in origin--that embraces the need for reform but reaffirms this principle: The existence of a problem, however serious, does not justify federal remedies outside the scope of Congress's enumerated powers. We begin with the Commerce Clause but find that interstate trade does not, by itself, justify federalizing tort law. On the basis of examples involving fast food,...

New York Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) has long been rumored as desperately seeking the democratic nomination for president in 2008. And while many political observers fully expect the power hungry former First Lady to hit the campaign trail within only a few months of being re-elected as a US Senator in 2006, US News & World report claims to have a confirmation of sorts. From USNews.Com's Washington Whispers: Hillary's in… You don't have to take it from us about Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton 's desire to run for president. Her brothers, Hugh and Tony Rodham, say it's true. Friends...