LJN Newsletters

The World Health Organization has estimated that drug counterfeiting affects 5-8% of all drugs, representing approximately $10-$15 billion to the U.S. pharmaceutical market alone. The Food and Drug Administration has estimated that approximately 10% of the drugs in worldwide distribution are counterfeit, with most being sold in developing countries. Not surprisingly, the most commonly counterfeited drugs are those with the largest sales, as well as drugs with high profit margins and drugs that are easier to counterfeit.

Consumers often ignore product manufacturers' recalls of defective products despite manufacturers' best efforts. The unfortunate but inevitable result is that some consumers are injured. A reasonable defense for manufacturers is that the consumer's fault in ignoring the recall negates their liability. The limited authority available, however, indicates that a manufacturer probably will not be completely exonerated from liability. A consumer's failure to respond to a recall, nevertheless, can be raised as a comparative fault defense. This article reviews existing authority and suggests strategies for manufacturers and consumers when this situation occurs.

Lawyers involved in product liability cases are occasionally involved with child witnesses, either as plaintiffs or as percipient witnesses to the critical events in the lawsuit. As in other types of litigation, child witnesses present a number of difficult challenges in product liability cases.

www.HelpKatrinaLawyers.org has been launched to create a centralized, online resource for lawyers and law practices that have suffered as a result of Hurricane Katrina.

At a firm the size of Becker & Poliakoff, with more than 110 attorneys dispersed among 15 different offices throughout Florida, plus international and affiliate offices in Europe, the Middle East and China, the willingness to embrace technology and technological innovations has been a proven key to our ability to provide cost effective, high quality legal services to our clients. That's why we were very pleased when Equitrac introduced the latest version (v4.63) of its Equitrac Professional Enterprise Edition. Its ability to automatically synchronize Equitrac's cost-recovery solution with our time-and-billing software made integration seamless and has dramatically improved cost recovery at our firm.

As more documentation finds its way into an electronic format, companies must take into account the cost of producing and analyzing them in the discovery process. In particular, firms must address fundamental ways they conduct their pre-trial deliberations to remain in-step with recent judicial rulings and technological advances.
Ballooning sets of electronic files bring escalating costs as well as new priorities for managing them.

The saying "garbage in, garbage out" is often familiar to computer users. It means that computer systems are only as good as the information provided to them. The saying is a reminder of how important proper document selection is for any document retrieval system a firm chooses to deploy.

Several issues face those migrating from traditional document management systems to Matter-Centric Content Management Architectures. This first part of a two-part will series will review some of the key ones for IT professionals.