Free Republic

"Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!" -- Emma Lazarus, "The New Colossus" (engraved on pedestal of Statue of Liberty) Foreign litigants suing American companies for torts committed abroad hope the golden door swings open into American courtrooms, even when the conduct and events underlying their claims occurred in far-off lands and have no effect on U.S. citizens. With increased frequency, American companies conducting operations abroad face lawsuits in American courts by...

The Federal Court of Canada has awarded $12,000 in damages to an inmate who received minor injuries when he was stabbed in the buttocks with a plastic weapon after a dispute over telephone use at an Ontario prison. Barry Carr, 38, said he suffered Post Traumatic Stress Disorder after the 2005 attack by an unidentified prisoner at Millhaven Institution in Bath, following an argument over the use of one of the five phones that are located next to the recreation area in the prison's assessment unit. Carr received two stitches and there were superficial abrasions to his arms. All prisoners...

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) -- Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world's largest retailer, said Tuesday it will pay as much as $640 million to settle 63 lawsuits over wage-and-hour violations, ending years of dispute. (read more at link...excerpted AP article)

WASHINGTON (Legal Newsline)-Efforts to restore fairness and balance to the nation's courts could take a step backward if Democrat Barack Obama is elected president today, tort reform advocates said Tuesday. An Obama win coupled with Democrats' likely gains in Congress would spell disaster for legal reform efforts including pushes for damage award caps, experts told Legal Newsline. James Copland, director of the Manhattan Institute's Center for Legal Policy, said tort reform activists have already been placed in a defensive posture.

The huge fees that Weiss and Scruggs were able to pocket stemmed from their technique of gathering very large groups of plaintiffs to sue corporations for damages. Weiss's genius was getting in the door first as lead counsel, using a ready-made stable of clients who, it turned out, were receiving kickbacks in what a federal judge described this week as a "nationwide conspiracy that continued for decades." Scruggs was also adept at enrolling long lists of plaintiffs -- whose damage claims were so sizable that corporations often settled rather than run the risk of multibillion-dollar payouts and possible bankruptcy. Scruggs's...

-- snip --In 2003 and in 2005, Texas enacted a series of reforms to the state's civil justice system. They are stunning in their success. Texas Medical Liability Trust, one of the largest malpractice insurance companies in the state, has slashed its premiums by 35%, saving doctors some $217 million over four years. There is also a competitive malpractice insurance industry in Texas, with over 30 companies competing for business. This is driving rates down...

Tort reform: a political issue that never fully succeeds in the Oklahoma Legislature, but never dies. Year after year, the Republican caucuses in the state Senate and House of Representatives announce their intent to pass a comprehensive tort reform bill during the current legislative session. And year after year, the legislative session ends with the exchange of harsh press releases between Republicans and Democrats, and the promise to fight again the following year. The debate over tort reform is so contentious, opposing groups can’t even agree on what to call the issue. “Lawsuit reform” is the term preferred by many...

HOUSTON, Oct. 4 — In Texas, it can be a long wait for a doctor: up to six months. That is not for an appointment. That is the time it can take the Texas Medical Board to process applications to practice. Four years after Texas voters approved a constitutional amendment limiting awards in medical malpractice lawsuits, doctors are responding as supporters predicted, arriving from all parts of the country to swell the ranks of specialists at Texas hospitals and bring professional health care to some long-underserved rural areas.

Latino organizations have created a network of hotlines for incidents of racial profiling. They say it's in response to Sheriff Joe Arpaio's hotline that encourages people to report information on undocumented immigrants. Leaders of the Hispanic community say their hotlines will ensure the preservation of civil and constitutional rights and again called for Arpaio's hotline to be taken down. The four hotline numbers staffed by Hispanic advocacy groups will be activated Monday. When a call is received through the hotlines, lawyers on a volunteer basis will review the claims to see whether they are valid. If they are deemed valid,...

A Jacksonville mother filed suit Monday against Orange Park Medical Center after she developed complications during pregnancy that left her permanently disabled. Natasha Meeks said her health problems started during the first trimester of her third pregnancy with frequent bouts of severe vomiting. She was hospitalized Jan. 12, 2006, after her condition showed no signs of improvement. Doctors at Orange Park Medical Center treated her for malnutrition, but it was later discovered she was suffering from far more than the aftereffects of vomiting. She said she first knew something was out of the ordinary when she went to a bathroom...

When attorney Roy Pearson filed suit demanding $67 million from the Chung family, whose Washington dry cleaners had mishandled his pair of trousers, he must have felt he was sitting pretty. Menacing a merchant who's annoyed you with terrifyingly high legal penalties--that's the way to show who wears the pants, right? Mr. Pearson probably had no idea that his Great American Pants Suit--the trial of which just wound up in a Washington courtroom last week, with a verdict expected this week--would stir commentary around the world and come to symbolize the extent to which lawsuits in America can serve as...

Independent tests by ConsumerLab.com revealed that of 21 brands of multivitamins on the market in the US and Canada, only 10 met the stated claims on their labels or satisfied other quality standards.Of particular interest to dog owners: Pet-Tabs vitamins for dogs (made by Pfizer) were found to be contaminated with 1.4 micrograms of lead per tablet.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A closely divided U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday overturned a $79.5 million (40.7 million pound) punitive damages award won by the widow of a longtime smoker against Philip Morris. By a 5-4 vote, the high court ruled the huge damages award was unconstitutional because it was intended to punish the tobacco company for harming not just the plaintiff but other smokers as well. The court ruled that the company, a unit of Altria Group Inc., could not be punished for harm to other smokers in a case involving Mayola Williams, an Oregon woman whose husband died of...

WASHINGTON - Milberg Weiss is particularly active in New York. Melvyn Weiss was a guest at a glittering 2003 Manhattan fundraiser for then-New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer that raised more than $2 million for his gubernatorial bid. Following the Milberg Weiss indictment in May, Spitzer returned $124,000 in donations from the firm and related individuals. The donations flap was barely noticed and did nothing to dent gubernatorial candidate Spitzer’s image of unsullied rectitude. A Spitzer Web site notes that he was named “Crusader of the Year” by Time magazine and the “Sheriff of Wall Street” by 60 Minutes....

WASHINGTON - In some legal and government circles the case of Milberg Weiss Bershad & Schulman is shaping up as the trial of the century. In May, a federal grand jury in Los Angeles indicted the king of class-action law firms in an alleged conspiracy scheme of staggering proportions. The 20-count indictment included charges of obstruction of justice, perjury, bribery and fraud. The government claims that the firm itself, as well as senior partners David Bershad and Steven Schulman, participated in a decades-long conspiracy that distributed more than $11 million in “secret kickback payments” to people to serve as plaintiffs...

Scalding hot coffee that wound up in someone's lap cost McDonald's $480,000, but a somewhat similar mishap is not worth a dime in the New York Court of Claims, or so says Judge James J. Lack. Judge Lack recently dismissed a case in which a woman visiting her sister at a state hospital was burned when a wheel mysteriously fell off a rolling cart and the hot coffee she had placed there spilled in her lap. The judge, applying a res ipsa loquitur analysis, said the event was clearly of the sort that would not normally occur absent someone's negligence,...

Michael Teixiera took one for the team. He lost his personal injury case against the New Britain Baseball Club, Inc., after he was struck in the testicles by an errant ball. But if Connecticut continues to follow the "limited duty rule" applied by New Britain Superior Court Judge Dan Shaban, the traditional proximity of ballplayers and spectators can be preserved. ADVERTISEMENT "[O]ne of the great lures of the game that still remains to bring spectators to the park, young and old alike, is the anticipation and hope that by the end of the game they will leave with a souvenir...

What would you do if a lawyer threatened, "Give me a million dollars or my client and I will publicly brand you as a rapist and destroy your life?" On July 27, the California Supreme Court expanded the range of choices possible to one man who was presented with that threat.

At long last, there's good news in the fight against "jackpot justice" tort claims and the nefarious law firms that file them. In courts and legislatures across the country, fraudulent lawsuits are being exposed, and the abusive tort lawyers that file them are finally getting a taste of their own medicine. Most notable is the recent indictment of Milberg Weiss Bershad & Schulman, the nation's most notorious class-action law firm. For four decades, Milberg Weiss has filed hundreds of dubious class-action lawsuits and wrung billions of dollars from terrified companies. Now, a federal grand jury in Los Angeles has indicted...

About 40 percent of the medical malpractice cases filed in the United States are groundless, according to a Harvard analysis of the hotly debated issue that pits trial lawyers against doctors, with lawmakers in the middle. Many of the lawsuits analyzed contained no evidence that a medical error was committed or that the patient suffered any injury, the researchers reported. The vast majority of those dubious cases were dismissed with no payout to the patient. However, groundless lawsuits still accounted for 15 percent of the money paid out in settlements or verdicts. The study's lead researcher, David Studdert of the...