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Arbitration is under judicial and legislative attack. Late last year, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals held an unexceptional arbitration agreement to be substantively unconscionable simply because it allowed the franchisor to litigate certain trademark-related claims and gave the franchisor home court advantage. <i>Nagrampa v. Mailcoups, Inc.</i>, 469 F.3d 1257 (9th Cir. 2006). On July 12, 2007, Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) introduced Senate Bill 1782, known as the 'Arbitration Fairness Act of 2007,' a key provision of which would invalidate pre-dispute agreements to arbitrate franchise disputes.
Features
News about lawyers and law firms in the product liability field.
Features
Highlights of the latest commercial leasing cases from around the country.
When Gwinnett County, GA, resident James Flynn bought a spray can of grout sealer from his neighborhood Home Depot in July 2005, he could not have imagined that his purchase would land him in the hospital and cost him the use of a lung. However, Flynn's attorney, Frank Ilardi, said that when his client bought Tile Perfect Stand 'N Seal Spray-On Grout Sealer, its manufacturer had been fielding complaints for more than a month about potentially devastating effects associated with its use.
A cursory review of the conflicting decisions being rendered across the country reveals that courts are fairly split over the issue of federal pre-emption of failure-to-warn strict liability claims in pharmaceutical litigation. The FDA directly addressed the issue in the Preamble to the Final Rule ('Preamble') published Jan. 24, 2006.
Features
Product liability plaintiffs are facing ever-growing barriers to filing suit in state and federal courts. Tort reformers have won significant victories at the state level, including restrictions on asbestos claims and caps on punitive damages. At the federal level, the Class Action Fairness Act ('CAFA') has allowed for easier removal of state class actions to federal courts. In addition to the impact of CAFA, a number of states have enacted legislation that makes it more difficult to file class actions in their courts. Several states also have initiated 'venue reform,' which limits the ability of out-of-state plaintiffs to file lawsuits in those states.
Features
Few subjects in the staid world of economics generate as much controversy as expert testimony quantifying hedonic damages: tort damages that attempt to compensate a plaintiff for the loss of enjoyment of life. Countless articles in forensics literature debate whether monetary value placed on a statistical life applies to a specific plaintiff. This controversy has spilled over into the courtroom. While most jurisdictions allow recovery of some form of hedonic damages, the trend, especially in the post-<i>Daubert</i> era, has been to exclude expert testimony that purports to calculate the amount of those damages. This article examines the trend against expert testimony quantifying hedonic damages and notes recent decisions that indicate the trend may be curbing, especially in jurisdictions that have refused to adopt <i>Daubert</i>.
In its 2006 report on 'Judicial Hellholes',' the American Tort Reform Association ('ATRA') identified the plaintiff bar's aggressive use of public nuisance theories in product liability litigation as one of the key 'rising flames' that is threatening traditional judicial protections for defendants in the country's most plaintiff-friendly jurisdictions. As ATRA explained, 'personal injury lawyers and some attorneys general have been trying to move public nuisance theory far beyond its traditional boundaries in order to avoid the well-defined strictures of products liability law.' American Tort Reform Association, <i>Judicial Hellholes 2006</i>, at 9. In so doing, they seek to tilt the playing field dramatically in their favor by writing out of the common law a plaintiff's obligation of establishing actual causation, proximate causation, and control.
News about lawyers and law firms in the commercial leasing industry.
Highlights of the latest commercial leasing cases from around the country.