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A Spokane man is the first customer to file a lawsuit against Conagra Foods for their microwave popcorn. The product in question was pulled from store shelves three years ago. That’s because a chemical inside was making its workers sick. It involves an artificial flavoring called diacetyl. For years it was put in popcorn to give it a nice smell but the aroma is allegedly what made one Spokane Valley man sick. A man who loves popcorn. Attorney Richard Eymann says the man had it in a bowl and sometimes “he’d lap it out of the bowl like a dog...

Legal news for Washington personal injury attorneys. A man was killed after urinating on live power line in Grays Harbor County. Washington personal injury lawyers alert- A man was killed by electrocution after urinating on a live wire in Montesano, WA. Montesano, WA—A Washington man who escaped a single vehicle collision without any serious injuries, was then killed by electrocution while waiting for a family member to come pull his car from a ditch. The Grays Harbor County Sherriff’s Department reported that the man was killed on Friday, February 26, 2010, as reported by MSNBC. According to deputies, Roy Messenger...

<p>A federal lawsuit has been filed against the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago alleging that church officials discriminated against African-American victims of sexual abuse by trying to silence their claims and proposing smaller settlements than those offered to white victims.</p>

Doctors and nurses should be more honest and open when things go wrong and offer an apology to the patient or their family under new guidance to the NHS. Clinicians are often fearful of saying sorry when a patient has been harmed by a blunder because it may influence any future legal action, but it is the 'right thing to do, the head of the National Patient Safety Agency has said. When patients file complaints or litigation, their aim is often for the people involved to say sorry and to ensure the same thing does not happen to someone else,...

The ABA Journal has this interesting thought attributed to Justice Scalia. Asked to comment on whether the quality of advocacy before the U.S. Supreme Court was too low, Justice Scalia is quoted as saying: “I used to have just the opposite reaction. I used to be disappointed that so many of the best minds in the country were being devoted to this enterprise. “I mean there’d be a … public defender from Podunk, you know, and this woman is really brilliant, you know. Why isn’t she out inventing the automobile or, you know, doing something productive for this society? “I...

IS it over between John Edwards and his wife, Elizabeth? "The wedding band is missing," the Washington Post reported yesterday after covering a speech the cancer-stricken mother of two gave in DC on Monday night. Edwards, the former North Carolina senator who ran for president twice, finally acknowledged three months ago that he had an affair with campaign videographer Rielle Hunter. He denies he's the father of Hunter's baby girl, although he has been spotted visiting mother and child. A source said Edwards is no longer living with Elizabeth and that the couple have separated. But reps for Elizabeth Edwards...

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.

WASHINGTON (AP) - Elizabeth Edwards says avoiding the "Made in China" label on toys is not exactly child's play. With millions of recalls rolling in this year because of lead in toys, Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards vowed during a debate there would be no Chinese made gifts under his Christmas tree. But, the former North Carolina senator says he immediately had to check with his wife to make sure he was right. The Edwards campaign says the kids will be unwrapping U.S.-made toys, but wouldn't get into the specifics as not to spoil anyone's gifts.

Augusta, GA: A plane crash that took 10 lives in October probably could have been prevented if alleged known faults inherent with the plane had been addressed prior to the fateful flight. Two lawsuits have been launched in recent weeks at the behest of the families of two skydivers killed in the October 7th airplane crash that left no survivors. A party of nine skydivers was returning from a sky diving event in Star, Idaho when the plane went down in rugged terrain west of Yakima, in the Cascade Mountains. The pilot was also killed, and there were no survivors...

LOS ANGELES Kathleen Holtz only got her driver's license two years ago. Now, at 18, she's got a law license. Holtz learned Friday that she passed the California bar exam. "It's not a big deal to me," Holtz said of her age. Eighteen is the minimum age to practice law in California but 30 is the average age of admission to the state bar. Holtz was 15 when she entered law school at UCLA, where she was a Law Review editor. "If you sat in the same class with her for a whole semester, you would never know she was...

Melbourne Mills' face went from shock to disbelief yesterday as he and co-defendants Shirley Cunningham Jr. and William Gallion were ordered out of a Covington federal courtroom to jail. Just seconds earlier, U.S. District Judge William Bertelsman granted the three suspended lawyers' request to delay a criminal trial until January but immediately revoked the suspended lawyers' bond. As Bertelsman walked off the bench, Hale Almand Jr., a lawyer for Gallion, began to protest as the courtroom erupted. Bertelsman cut him off. "I told you that's what I was going to do," Bertelsman said as he left the courtroom. Mills, Cunningham...

Five Democratic presidential candidates are planning to pay homage to America's leading trial lawyers' group, the American Association for Justice, by turning out at its annual convention in Chicago this weekend. Senators Clinton, Obama of Illinois, and Biden of Delaware are scheduled to speak to the lawyers on Sunday, as are a former senator, John Edwards of North Carolina, and Governor Richardson of New Mexico.

VAWA Casts a Long Shadow over the Duke Fiasco April 24, 2007 at 4:55 pm · Was prosecutor Michael Nifong simply an over-rated ambulance chaser who rose to his level of incompetence? Was he a scheming opportunist who needed to boost his flagging re-election chances? Or did his dogged prosecution of the Duke Three reflect a deeper, more systemic problem in our criminal justice system? Here’s the dirty little secret of D.A.s who prosecute sexual assault and domestic violence cases: many of the claims they pursue are as flaky as a pie crust and their chances of winning a jury...

Former vice presidential candidate John Edwards attended a corn roast for Congressman Ron Kind over the weekend, telling reporters he's thinking of running for president in 2008. The former North Carolina senator who was John Kerry's running mate in 2004 said he's hesitant to say anything for sure. "I'm seriously thinking about running for President, but I haven't made a final decision," he said Saturday night. He told the crowd of about 700 the national minimum wage should be raised and laws should be changed to make it easier for unions to organize. He joked about having sleepless nights worrying...

(AP) WASHINGTON A federal judge ruled Thursday that the nation's top cigarette makers violated racketeering laws, deceiving the public for years about the health hazards of smoking, but said she couldn't order them to pay the billions of dollars the government had sought. U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler did order the companies to publish in newspapers and on their Web sites "corrective statements" on the adverse health effects and addictiveness of smoking and nicotine. She also ordered tobacco companies to stop labeling cigarettes as "low tar," "light," "ultra light" or "mild," since such cigarettes have been found to be no...

A nun who spent six months blessing human remains in the rubble at Ground Zero says she is dying of lung disease and wants her body autopsied to prove that she and her fellow 9/11 workers were sickened by the poisonous air at the site. Sister Cindy Mahoney, 54, summoned David Worby, the lawyer representing thousands of sick Ground Zero workers, to her Aiken, S.C., hospice last week and requested that he act as her guardian and fulfill her dying wish by overseeing her autopsy after she's gone. "I can still do God's work," Mahoney said Thursday in Aiken, her...

SEATTLE (AP) — The Association of Trial Lawyers of America voted during its convention this week to change its name to the American Association for Justice. Spokeswoman Chris Mather said there was overwhelming support for the change, and that the new name "reflects whose side we're on in the fight for justice." The U.S. Chamber Institute for Legal Reform, a critic of the trial lawyers group, called it "an astounding admission of the unpopularity of trial lawyers in America." The 60-year-old association has 65,000 members.

An attorney specializing in suits related to aviation disasters has died after crashing his vintage plane at the Oregon International Airshow. Robert Guilford, 73, crashed his plane shortly after taking off Sunday at the airshow, the Portland (Ore.) Oregonian reported Monday. Guilford, a former federal prosecutor, was a licensed pilot and vintage airplane expert who worked at California law firm Baum Hedlund, which handles serious personal injury and wrongful death cases related to commercial transportation accidents, the Oregonian reported. The law firm was employed in the cases of more than 55 airline crashes, including the 1996 wreck of TWA Flight...

The industry's VIPs mingle at political galas and Super Bowl parties. Their product is available on cell phones, podcasts, and particularly the Internet _ there it's an attraction like no other, patronized by tens of millions of Americans. It's pornography. And if you're a consumer, John Harmer thinks you're damaging your brain. Harmer is part of a cadre of anti-porn activists seeking new tactics to fight an unprecedented deluge of porn which they see as wrecking countless marriages and warping human sexuality. They are urging federal prosecutors to pursue more obscenity cases and raising funds for high-tech brain research that...

NASHVILLE -- Despite a massive lobbying effort and doctors declaring that Tennessee faces a "crisis," legislation to put new state limits on medical malpractice lawsuits has been killed for another year. The bill backed by the Tennessee Medical Association (TMA) and a coalition of 46 other organizations was defeated in the five-member Civil Practice subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee. Two members voted for it; three against. Rep. Rob Briley, D-Nashville, who chairs the subcommittee, said proponents simply had not presented any objective evidence that lawsuits have really caused a problem in Tennessee and that the proposed limits would be...