…

News about lawyers and law firms in the product liability field.

Features

Highlights of the latest product liability cases from around the country.

Part One of this article discussed the <i>Philip Morris</i> decision and prior Supreme Court decisions addressing punitive damages. Part Two continues the discussion of prior decisions and considers whether <i>Philip Morris</i> is a logical step in the evolution of due process or a potential turning point in awarding punitive damages.

As litigation grows more complex, the costs of defending tort lawsuits continue to rise. Defendants frequently settle such cases, not to avoid potential liability, but to avoid the high costs of discovery and other litigation expenses. Motions for summary judgment reduce those costs, but only to a certain degree. Consequently, defendants in tort suits are constantly searching for strategies and defenses that will result in dismissals early in the litigation. One such defense is the 'political question' doctrine, a longstanding legal principle that has enjoyed a resurgence in recent years.

During a recent product liability trial, the plaintiff's expert opined in his original disclosure that the subject machine was defective because it lacked a clutch safety mechanism. Trial counsel, retained just weeks before jury selection, learned from the same expert that no machine in the industry contains such a mechanism. They concluded that cross-examination of the expert on this point would probably outweigh any benefit that such testimony might add to the plaintiff's case, and that a simpler explanation for the accident was the manufacturer's failure to place conspicuous warnings to the user on how to operate the device properly. They decided that it would be wise to have the expert testify about the missing warnings instead of the design defect. The problem was that the expert's design defect theory had been presented in the plaintiff's pretrial disclosure statement, which had been served on the defendants, but nothing was disclosed about the failure to warn.

Asbestos litigation finally may be winding down, and personal injury mold litigation seems to have been stopped in its tracks. That means something else must rise and be the next wave of inhalation litigation, and it looks like it is the emergence of engineered nanoscale materials. Venture capitalists and the government itself predict that engineered nanoscale materials will transform the field of engineering. Such engineering proclamations have been made in prior generations; Henry Adams once warned that 'every day nature violently revolted, causing so-called accidents with enormous destruction of property and life, while plainly laughing at man, who groaned and shrieked and shuddered.'

Features

Many attorneys ask us, 'What is the ideal prospecting plan for attorneys? Can't my associates and younger partners just follow our top rainmakers for a few days and then just do what they do?' These are two of the initial questions that we hear when we begin working with law firms. Many attorneys assume that there is an easy magic formula for developing new clients, and if they can just get their hands on this secret formula their business development problems will be solved forever. Unfortunately, our experience tells us that a 'one-size-fits-all' magic formula for success does not exist.