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

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Last month, this column explored parts of The National Institutes of Health Web site, <i>www.nlm.nih.gov</i>; we continue to discover what it has to offer this month. ToxTown is an interactive guide in both English and Spanish about how the environment, chemicals and toxic substances affect human health. The link contains places to visit, such as factories, schools and homes, and the various toxic chemicals that might be found there, eg, arsenic, asbestos, benzene and carbon monoxide. Household Products Database contains information on the health effects of common household products under your sink, in the garage, in the bathroom and on the laundry room shelf. Medline/PubMed provides access to more than 12 million references from 4600 biomedical journals, many of which have links to abstracts and in some cases, the full text of articles.

FRCP 26(a)(2)(B) governing the disclosure of expert witnesses in federal court was adopted in 1993 with the hope that "the length of the deposition of such experts should be reduced, and in many cases the report may eliminate the need for a deposition" altogether. Advisory Committee Notes, Fed. R. Civ. Pro., Rule 26, 28 U.S.C.A. (1993).

For product liability practitioners, issues regarding liability historically have been won or lost in a battle of the experts. The reason: The plaintiff must show the product at issue contains a defect, which existed at the time it left the manufacturer's control, that caused the plaintiff's injury. Whether on the side of the plaintiff or the defendant, the most significant liability battle is waged over proving the existence of a defect, which usually requires reliance on expert testimony. With the increasing reliance of plaintiffs' counsel on the malfunction theory to establish product defect, the focus in some product liability cases has shifted from reliance on effective expert testimony to reliance on creative and effective lawyering.

In 1997, a company named Sun-It (a subsidiary of E&amp;B Giftware) manufactured and distributed some 47,000 citronella candles known as the "Money to Burn Torch." As it happened, the wrapper surrounding the candle collected superheated melted wax. Some consumers reported to Sun-It that they had suffered serious burns when they blew on the candles or bumped into them. Others said that they had been burned when the candles unexpectedly flared. In all, over a period of 5 months, Sun-It received notice of 14 incidents in which consumers claimed to have suffered serious burns and permanent scarring after having been scalded by hot wax from the candles. Sun-It responded to these reports by stopping sale of the candles and recalling candles that remained in retail inventories. Nearly 17,000 candles, including roughly 3300 in unshipped inventory ' more than a third of the total production ' were recalled and destroyed.

Qualified retirement plans that provide immediate 'cash-out' distributions to a terminated participant if the vested benefit is $5000 or less will have to be amended to comply with Department of Labor (DOL) final regulations.

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Several years ago, when I was working in a national legal services office that did research, consultations, and training in family law, it came to my attention that in custody cases involving domestic violence, custody was often being awarded to the abuser. Then, when I started actually representing low-income individuals in divorce and other family law cases, I got several battered women clients who had lost custody to their abusers. After investigation, it became apparent that the reason they lost custody was that the court-appointed child custody evaluators had recommended custody to the abusers, and the courts followed the recommendations. The forensic evaluators seemed to know little about domestic violence, and they paid virtually no attention to it when they conducted their evaluations. For example, some evaluators held joint meetings with the battered woman and her abuser, which further traumatized the woman. Many evaluators misdiagnosed battered women as having serious psychopathology, when the women were simply showing symptoms of the trauma they suffered at the hands of their abusers.

Rulings of importance to you and your practice.