Free Republic

The Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation agreed to consolidate the litigation over the oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico in federal court in New Orleans before Judge Carl J. Barbier. "Upon careful consideration, we have settled upon the Eastern District of Louisiana as the most appropriate district for this litigation. Without discounting the spill's effects on other states, if there is a geographic and psychological 'center of gravity' in this docket, then the Eastern District of Louisiana is closest to it," the panel ruled.

CORPUS CHRISTI — Mauricio Celis’ expired reserve deputy credentials were part of the state’s efforts years before to clean its rosters of uncertified deputies, a state official testified Wednesday. Celis, 38, is being tried on a charge of impersonating a public servant, a third-degree felony punishable by two to 10 years in prison and as much as a $10,000 fine. Prosecutors say he used a Duval County reserve deputy badge in 2007 after his law enforcement commission was suspended in 2003. Defense attorneys have said the badge was issued to Celis by former Duval County Sheriff Santiago Barrera and that...

A Houston husband-and-wife lawyer team is planning to donate more than $3 million this year toward knocking Republican Gov. Rick Perry out of office and helping Democrats win control of the Texas House. Attorney Steve Mostyn said Tuesday he and his wife, Amber Anderson, are committed to putting a "substantial" amount of money that likely will exceed $3 million into ending hard-right Republican politics in Texas government. The pair already has put $1.3 million into committees that can help Democrat and former Houston Mayor Bill White win the governor's office, making them far and away his biggest benefactors in this...

Payday: Trial lawyers could get major tax cut despite major federal deficit By Chris Moody - The Daily Caller 12:49 AM 07/15/2010 After years of filling Democratic coffers with massive campaign donations, trial lawyers are cashing in their chips with a sweetheart deal from the government that will save the industry billions of dollars over the next few years. According to a Legal Newsline report from the annual meeting of the American Association for Justice, the nation’s lobbying arm for trial lawyers, the industry may get a tax break from the U.S. Treasury Department that would give trial lawyers the...

The nation's trial lawyer group, the American Association for Justice, revealed Tuesday that it expects the U.S. Department of Treasury to soon give its members a tax break on contingency fee lawsuits. The tax break could be similar to proposed legislation that didn't make it through Congress last year. That proposal, sponsored by U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter, D-Pa., would have allowed attorneys to deduct fees and expenses up-front for filing contingency fee lawsuits. John Bowman, the Director of Federal Relations for the AAJ, said in response to a question from a state delegate regarding recruiting new members that an administrative...

The Illinois Democrat candidate for Senate, Alexi Giannoulias, wasn't too keen of admitting it but he was in Vancouver, Canada over the weekend at a fund-raiser at a trial lawyer's convention. Along with a dozen other Democrats, the candidate was in Canada to rake in thousands in donations from trial lawyers who know what side of their bread is buttered, for sure. Chicago Sun-Times reporter Lynn Sweet has all the details at her Scoop blog. But suffice to say that the Giannoulias campaign did not report the whereabouts of their candidate until the National Republican Senatorial Committee sent out a...

Harry M. Reid needed money, and lots of it. Last spring, the Senate majority leader was looking ahead to a tough reelection fight. Polls showed that the voters back home in Nevada who sent him to Washington four times had tired of him. Republican Party fundraisers had all but declared him their No. 1 target for defeat. Taking them on would be expensive, and he wasn't drawing nearly enough cash from contributors inside Nevada. So Reid did what politicians in his position do: He picked up the phone. The senator began dialing old and new friends across the country,...

Lane v. Facebook, Case No. 08-3845 RS (N.D. Cal.) (Order re Attorney Fees) The lawsuit over Facebook's ill-fated Beacon program generated three lawsuits, a lot of wrangling by class action lawyers, and more than a few blog posts (e.g., "Beacon Class Action Settlement Approved;" "Stop Saying 'We Can Amend This Agreement Whenever We Want'!;" "Texas Class Action Aims to Derail Facebook Beacon Settlement"). Judge Seeborg recently approved the settlement, which included the formation of a privacy foundation funded by Facebook. (Here's an earlier post of mine summarizing the then-proposed terms of the settlement.)The one item pending was the amount of...

If there is one thing we should all be able to agree about health care it's this — health care is an enormously complicated issue. (One of many reasons that I think the government needs to stay far away from health care, by the way). Rising health care costs is also a complicated issue, but that doesn't mean you can't identify some of the main drivers of increased health care costs. Right now in Las Vegas, you can see for yourself one of those drivers — out of control liability lawsuits. A lawyer for a Henderson man infected with hepatitis...

The last month has seen a blizzard of new sex abuse accusations against the Catholic Church from across the United States. Almost all of them--and the intense media attention they've garnered--can be traced to one man: a Minnesota lawyer named Jeff Anderson. Last week, an alleged victim of priest abuse in Wisconsin announced a lawsuit against the Vatican itself. Anderson is representing the alleged victim. A couple of days earlier, a Mexican man who alleged abuse by a priest years ago filed suit against Mexico's top Catholic cleric in a U.S. court. The plaintiff is another Anderson client. And throughout...

A routine morning Metrorail ride turned into a frightening experience for one man on Friday, who said the train doors closed right on his neck while he was trying to exit the train. “I was in shock,“ said passenger Oscar Lujan. “I [was] wondering, ‘Is this actually happening?‘“ Lujan was getting off the train at the New York Avenue station around 8 a.m. when got trapped between the doors. He said the doors closed so fast that he felt he didn’t have enough time to get out of the way. After that, he feared the train would take off while...

California trial lawyers and their political action committees have given far more money to sway public policy than a recent state-issued report indicates, a tort reform group said Monday.

Blacks account for about 1.5 percent of all farm operators in this country - and apparently a lot higher share of the civil rights lawsuits against the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). On February 18, lawyers for the USDA and thousands of black farmers reached a $1.25 billion class-action agreement resolving, for now, claims that the department had engaged in willful racial discrimination in managing its loan and other aid programs.  Think you've seen this headline before? You have. Back in 1999, black farmers, armed with similar claims of racial bias, snagged a federal guarantee of $50,000 per plaintiff plus...

As the Toyota Scion of Scranton dealership continues to replace gas pedals on Toyotas recalled for unintended acceleration, managing partner Greg Gagorik depicted the automaker as a victim of a political hit. At a media event on Thursday at the dealership's new Scranton showroom and service center, Mr. Gagorik handed out lists of contributions by trial lawyers and the United Auto Workers union to congressmen who grilled Toyota executives last month over acceleration problems blamed for dozens of deaths. Mr. Gagorik attended those hearings, where the U.S. government's majority stake in General Motors hung heavy in the hall. "One day,...

VICTIMS of Hurricane Katrina from Mississippi are seeking to sue carbon gas-emitting multinationals for helping fuel global warming and boosting the devastating 2005 storm, legal documents showed. The class action suit brought by residents from southern Mississippi, which was ravaged by hurricane-force winds and driving rains, was first filed just weeks after the August 2005 storm hit. "The plaintiffs allege that defendants' operation of energy, fossil fuels, and chemical industries in the United States caused the emission of greenhouse gasses that contributed to global warming," say the documents, seen by AFP. The increase in global surface air and water temperatures...

WASHINGTON (Legal Newsline)-A U.S. Supreme Court ruling this week could put a damper on the trial lawyer practice of filing lawsuits, particularly class actions, in vaguely related jurisdictions where judges are seen as plaintiff-friendly.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (Legal Newsline)-Amid dwindling state resources, it will largely be up to California's trial lawyers to enforce consumer protection laws, a leading state lawmaker and candidate for attorney general said.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — Calling it a “red-letter day,” a federal judge Thursday approved settlements earmarked for more than 300 victims of the 2003 Station nightclub fire and the mechanism through which payments will be made. The action taken by Senior U.S. District Court Judge Ronald R. Lagueux makes it likely now that the victims of the fourth-deadliest nightclub fire in U.S. history will get money from a $176-million settlement fund in a matter of months. But much remains to be done before payments are made. Probate judges have to approve the settlements in the 100 cases of those who died...

Many experts have pointed to tort reform as a key element of any effort to hold down the costs of health care: Old Democratic presidential aspirant John Edwards won $175 million in judgments over a 12-year period suing doctors, hospitals and insurance companies, everyone but the candy stripers, over infant cerebral palsy cases allegedly caused by mishandled deliveries. As the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists noted in a study in 2003, cerebral palsy could not be blamed on delivery trouble in the “vast majority” of cases. Using bad science, Edwards enriched himself by bankrupting innocent physicians. The effect is...

got a kick out of this article in the Washington Times on Sept. 28. The point of the story is that the trial lawyers' lobby might be having financial difficulty. The part I find interesting is that AAJ says they lost $670,000, but they sought $120,000,000 in the lawsuit. The article offers no explanation for the 17,900% mark up. "...AAJ lost a lawsuit against Wachovia Bank over the collapse of a 2007 loan deal to finance the association's purchase of an office building as its new Washington headquarters. The association lost more than $670,000 when Wachovia backed out of the...