ALI Changed Expert Testimony Standard, But Should States Follow It?
The authors are both members of the American Law Institutes (ALI), an institution that's been around since 1923. Membership is made up of judges, practicing attorneys and legal scholars from both the United States and the international legal community. The ALI employs a deliberative process to gain insights into its various members' understanding and opinions of the law, then it drafts and publishes Restatements of the Law, model codes, and legal studies to promote, as the ALI Web site home page states, 'the clarification and simplification of the law and its better adaptation to social needs, to secure the better administration of justice, and to encourage and carry on scholarly and scientific legal work.' In this article, they take issue with a recent ALI Tentative Draft on the expert testimony standard.
Case Briefs
Highlights of the latest insurance cases from around the country.
The Applicability of the Absolute Pollution Exclusion to Welding Fumes Claims
Litigants and courts are struggling with whether the polution exclusion encompasses "non-traditional" claims that, on their face, would appear to fall within the exclusion's definitions, <i>e.g.</i>, lead paint, carbon monoxide poisoning, and other toxic exposure claims. This article first describes the split among the courts on this issue and then looks at the question in the specific sub-context of welding fumes claims.
Supreme Court to Reconsider Patent Exhaustion
May a patent owner sue its own licensee's customers when those customers purchase essential components that have no reasonable non-infringing use from the licensee, and then combine those components with others to form a patented product? The answer may be decided by the Supreme Court in <i>Quanta Computer, Inc. v. LG Electronics, Inc.,</i> U.S., No. 06-937, <i>cert. granted</i> Sept. 25, 2007.
A Look At FIN 48
In an effort to increase comparability and consistency in how companies report income tax positions on financial statements, the Financial Accounting Standards Board ('FASB') issued FASB Interpretation Number 48 ('FIN 48'), Accounting for Uncertainty in Income Taxes on July 13, 2006. FIN 48 changes the way companies must account for uncertain tax positions taken on federal, state and local, and international income tax returns for financial reporting purposes.
The Roberts Court on Antitrust
By the end of its last term, the Supreme Court decided four significant antitrust cases, resulting in one of the most antitrust-focused terms in the Court's history. In rendering decisions favorable to the defendants in all four cases, the Court quickly drew the dreaded 'pro-business' label. Commentators on the left criticized the decisions as marking a hard-right turn on antitrust policy, while those on the right lauded the Court's restoration of free-market principles to competition analysis. These broad pronouncements overstate the similarities among the cases, which arose in a wide range of industries and raised quite different legal issues.
Case Notes
Highlights of the latest product liability cases from around the country.
Prescription Drugs: Consumer Fraud in Sales and Marketing
Claims of consumer fraud are difficult and rarely succeed in the context of a pharmaceutical product liability action. They are, however, troublesome, because the pleading of such a claim often opens the door to extensive discovery of the company's sales and marketing departments. If the defendant cannot succeed in obtaining a dismissal prior to trial, it may still permit the jury to hear evidence of sales tactics and strategies that often paint the manufacturer in a less-than-favorable light. Companies should be aware of the potential for such claims and plan their sales and marketing strategies accordingly.
