Free Republic

All the plaintiffs’ bar really needs is a single precedent-setting victory with a public nuisance case. This means that even confronted with long-shot odds, firms like Motley Rice are willing to gamble on the outcome because the ultimate payoff would be astronomical. In Rhode Island, they rolled the dice and they lost. However, those tempted to think that this nearly decade-long pursuit of former lead paint manufacturers ends in the Ocean State, think again. There are numerous “elsewheres” for Motley Rice and other plaintiffs’ firms to look for mega payouts.

Investors seem to be betting that Congress will fix the asbestos mess this coming year.... We suspect they're too optimistic, and for now we take more heart from last week's landmark decision by the Third Circuit Court of Appeals to reject the $1.2 billion Combustion Engineering settlement. ...[O}ur view is that the judiciary is finally exercising some adult supervision over a mess of its own making. Combustion Engineering, a unit of European construction giant ABB, had become a model of how trial lawyers abuse "prepackaged" bankruptcies to rake in millions for their unimpaired clients, while leaving real cancer victims with...