Recently added articles from Trial:
The good fight.(strengthen the right to trial by jury in civil cases)(President's page)
Sep 01, 2008; Weisbrod, Les ... As trial lawyers, fighting the good fight is what we do every day for those we represent. We fight for our clients' legal rights, for their safety and dignity, and for just compensation for their injuries. As an association, we have been fighting to preserve, enforce, and strengthen the ...
House bill would declare medical device claims not preempted.
Sep 01, 2008 ... Reacting to the U.S. Supreme Court's decision last term in Riegel v. Medtronic, Inc., dozens of members of the House of Representatives have signed on to cosponsor the Medical Device Safety Act of 2008, which would allow injured consumers and patients to hold medical device manufacturers ...
States move to limit mandatory arbitration clauses.
Sep 01, 2008 ... Chances are, readers of this article are bound by at least one predispute mandatory arbitration clause. Buried in the fine print of a credit-card billing insert, employee handbook, health insurance plan, or franchise agreement often lurks a binding mandatory arbitration clause ....
Allstate is worst insurer for consumers, new AAJ report finds.(American Association for Justice)
Sep 01, 2008 ... After a comprehensive investigation involving thousands of insurance company legal documents and financial filings, a groundbreaking original research report by AAJ has concluded that Allstate is the worst insurer for consumers. And AAJ is getting the message out. "While ...
Sexual abuse victim and lawyers win Steven Sharp award.
Sep 01, 2008 ... Manny Vega was abused as an altar boy by a Catholic priest. When he told his story to lawyers Jeff Anderson of St. Paul, Minnesota, and Ray Boucher of Los Angeles, they agreed to represent him in a suit against the church. At AAJ's annual convention in Philadelphia in July, the ...
Smokers trying to quit find drug brings suicide risk, other dangers.
Sep 01, 2008; Heylman, Susan ... Barely two years after the FDA first approved the prescription smoking-cessation drug Chantix for use in the United States, Pfizer, its manufacturer, faces lawsuits by plaintiffs claiming that the drug has caused users to commit suicide, experience manic and aggressive behavior, and suffer ...
Eighth Circuit upholds no-preemption amendment in rail suit.
Sep 01, 2008; Jablow, Valerie ... Ruling that a 2007 amendment to the Federal Railroad Safety Act (FRSA) was constitutional, a three-judge panel of the Eighth Circuit has held, 2-1, that plaintiffs may go forward with their lawsuits stemming from a 2002 derailment of a Canadian Pacific Railway train in Minot, North Dakota, ...
The perils of preemption: the Bush administration has strongly advocated preemption of state common law tort claims, seeking to deny civil justice to plaintiffs who are harmed by federally regulated products and activities. What should the next administration and Congress do to turn around those efforts?
Sep 01, 2008; McGarity, Thomas O. ... Hardly a week goes by without a report in the media of a new threat to public health and safety caused by corporate malfeasance. Consumers can no longer assume that the food they eat is free of deadly microorganisms, that the drugs they take are safe and effective, that the toys their ...
A watchful eye for consumers: too often consumers' rights fall through the cracks, and corporations can shirk responsibility for wrongdoing. One Texas organization is working to hold them accountable.(Texas Watch executive director N. Alex Winslow)(Interview)
Sep 01, 2008; Burtka, Allison Torres ... Texas Watch, a nonprofit advocacy organization, keeps its eye on insurance companies, corporations, and the courts, working with legislators to ensure that Texas laws reflect the needs of families and consumers rather than wealthy special interests. The group aims to strengthen protections ...
Do you speak tort 'reform'? Corporate America and its political allies have found clever ways to spin the tort 'reform' message: they speak a common language that is colored green.
Sep 01, 2008; Haber, Jon ... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] In an uncharacteristic slip during an interview with the Los Angeles Times in January, U.S. Chamber of Commerce President Tom Donohue declared: "We plan to build a grassroots business organization so strong that when it bites you in the butt, you bleed." ...
Banning class action bans: class action limitations, embedded in contracts for cars to phones to jobs, amount to a 'get out of jail free' card for corporations. By building a strong factual record and choosing the right legal strategy, you can battle the ban - and win.
Sep 01, 2008; Bland, F. Paul, Jr. ... Imagine that a long-distance phone company collects a tax that amounts to a few dollars per month from all its customers in one area--even though many of them do not owe the tax. Very few realize they've been cheated, and none can bring an individual lawsuit to recover a few dollars ....
The poor still pay more: the small-loan industry preys on low-income Americans who often have no choice but to accept their outrageous payment terms. But this big business may be facing trouble.
Sep 01, 2008; Mierzwinski, Ed ... Forty-five years ago, the sociologist David Caplovitz wrote a ground-breaking Expose, The Poor Pay More, about low-income households in New York City. He revealed that poor inner-city families were kept in perpetual debt by having to pay excessive prices for basic necessities like food and ...
Corporate neglect in nursing homes: over the years, government agencies and independent investigators have found rampant abuse and neglect in nursing homes. So far, nursing home owners have evaded responsibility, but that may be starting to change.
Sep 01, 2008; Couch, David ... We think of nursing homes as safe havens, places where people go when they can no longer be cared for at home. Federal law--and common decency--demands that these homes provide their residents with a comfortable and dignified existence. (1) While many facilities do live up to this ...
A right worth the fight.(mandatory and binding arbitration clauses in nursing home)(Tennessee)
Sep 01, 2008; Brooks, Brian G. ... In the early part of this decade, Tennessee nursing home conglomerate National Healthcare Corporation (NHC) became a strong proponent of the use of mandatory and binding arbitration clauses in nursing home admission agreements. In fact, NHC made entering into such an agreement a condition ...
Dignity restored.(racial and workplace discrimination )
Sep 01, 2008; Welch, Morgan E. "Chip" ... Eldorado, Arkansas, is a town of about 20,000, situated in Union County, close to the Louisiana border. It was the site of a large ConAgra poultry-processing plant, which had been there since 1969, where George Williams had worked for 32 years until he was fired in April 2001. ...
Seeking accountability, improving safety.
Sep 01, 2008; Masterson, Tom ... Patient safety should be of paramount concern to a hospital. If economic considerations or protecting physician or hospital relationships are a higher priority than patient safety, the public should know it. By exposing such derelictions of duty, we can help our clients and bring about ...
A narrow ruling on punitive damages.
Sep 01, 2008; Chemerinsky, Erwin ... The most important thing to know about the Supreme Court's recent decision in Exxon Shipping Co. v. Baker is that the decision is about punitive damages only in maritime cases. (1) In the ruling, the Court was clear and emphatic that it was not relying on the Constitution in its analysis ...
Comfortably Numb.(Book review)
Sep 01, 2008; Gallucci, Daniel N. ... Comfortably Numb Charles Barber Pantheon Books www.randomhouse.com 282 pp., $26 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] In Comfortably Numb: How Psychiatry Is Medicating a Nation, Charles Barber recognizes what lawyers who handle ...
The Importance of Being Honest.(Book review)
Sep 01, 2008; Nastri, Kathleen ... The Importance of Being Honest Steven Lubet New York University Press www.nyupress.org 272 pp., $27.95 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] There is not a decent, reasonable lawyer on the planet who would not agree that honesty is ...
Arizona law limiting med-mal experts is found unconstitutional.
Sep 01, 2008; Sileo, Carmel ... The Arizona Court of Appeals has ruled that a state law setting requirements for qualifying expert witnesses in medical malpractice cases is unconstitutional because it supplants the rule of evidence already in place in Arizona courts. In reversing a trial court decision, the appeals court ...