A Las Vegas man has filed a $38 quadrillion complaint against an Alpine attorney. John Theodore Anderson, also known as John-Theodore:Anderson in his filings, claims attorneys Douglas Shumway, Benjamin Schramm and Michael Van fraudulently served him with a lawsuit, according to court records.

Marc Williams of Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough, LLP, the immediate past president of DRI, writes us: When the American Association for Justice looked over their agenda for the Obama administration, they not only saw the opportunities to overturn the Bush successes at tort reform, but also to deliver a...

Well, well, well. Look who?s back! Zach Scruggs, son of famed tort lawyer Dickie Scruggs, currently in the midst of serving time for conspiring to bribe a Mississippi judge, Henry Lackey.

A new study by Carol Kane from the AMA counts the number of suits doctors have faced, and finds that 61% of doctors over 55 have been sued in their lifetimes, raising the med-mal insurance rates of the other 39%.

If there's a lesson to be learned in Naiel Nassar v. University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center it is that a plaintiffs attorney who puts on a "superb" civil rights case can win nearly all of her requested attorney fees -- even when she charges $750 an hour.

Famed plaintiffs? Bill Lerach has pleaded guilty and done his time. But he hasn?t yet moved out of the crosshairs of the judge who presided over his case, Los Angeles federal judge John Walter.

Is the Tom Cruise hit Minority Report the future of justice? It's closer to reality than you might think, according to a panel that spoke Friday at the ABA?s 2010 Annual Meeting in San Francisco.

Chevron Corp.'s attorneys at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, who successfully fought for hundreds of hours of outtakes from the documentary "Crude," about the 17-year-old Ecuadorean environmental suit against their client, have asserted that in the footage they have viewed, they have found evidence of plaintiffs...

Lawrence McQuillan and Hovannes Abramyanof the Pacific Research Institute have been drawing on PRI's "2010 U.S. Tort Liability Index" for columns that connect the costs of the civil justice system with economic growth and jobs.

A study from the American Medical Association (AMA) reports that an average of 95 medical liability claims are filed for every 100 physicians, almost one per physician.

Cross-posted from Shopfloor.org. Now, THIS is a blockbuster. Footage from the documentary-style film, "Crude," reveals that U.S. trial lawyers strategized with a supposedly independent court-appointed expert in Ecuador who went on to recommmend penalizing Chevron $27.

WASHINGTON (Legal Newsline) - One-quarter of the U.S. Senate has expressed concern that the U.S. Department of the Treasury may be planning to issue an order giving trial lawyers tax breaks on contingency fee lawsuits.

A challenge to Nevada?s cap on medical malpractice damages has doctors in the state on edge. The measure in question limited non-economic damages in medical malpractice suits to $350,000, which doctors argued was critical to keeping physicians from fleeing the state due to sky-high insurance premiums.

Lester Brickman (Cardozo) has posted "Anatomy of an Aggregate Settlement: The Triumph of Temptation Over Ethics" on SSRN. The abstract provides: In an aggregate settlement, usually of a mass tort claim, a defendant agrees to pay a specific dollar amount to be divided up by the lawyer among her multiple...

The irony: Jim Hood consulted with Dickie Scruggs about how to complain to WSJ editorial noting how tight he was with Scruggs. [WSJ; Rossmiller] Fumento digs under the Skilled Healthcare case, finds a disturbing railroading that never should've gone to the jury.

Lode rockhounds bristle at bill to demote...

Friday, May 30, 2010 When trial attorneys pick juries, they try to identify potential jurors who will -- and will not -- be sympathetic to their clients.

A majority of Americans believe that laws allowing people to sue their own auto insurance company for punitive damages, in addition to receiving benefits for their insured claim losses, are not a good idea.

LawyersandSettlements.com, the premier publication for Online Legal Media, has expanded its legal news coverage of asbestos and mesothelioma activity in the United States by developing a "hot spot" map for easy reference.

JACKSON, Miss. (Legal Newsline) - Recently released documents show that Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood asked for the advice of plaintiffs attorneys who later became felons when crafting a rebuttal to a 2007 Wall Street Journal editorial.

Skilled Healthcare will pay now; the state's elderly will pay later.

The Wall Street Journal editorial page is no friend of Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood. An editorial today decries Hood's efforts to change federal law so he can sue oil spill companies in state court.

Federal securities class action activity continued to decrease in the first six months of 2010 to the lowest semiannual level since the first half of 2007, according to a report Wednesday by the Stanford Law School Securities Class Action Clearinghouse and Cornerstone Research.

How the plaintiffs bar-attorney general nexus works in the raw.

On Monday, the California Supreme Court endorsed the corruption of local government hiring contingent-fee lawyers to prosecute cases, notwithstanding its earlier precedent forbidding such a conflict of interest, siding with an appellate court that had reversed a trial-court disqualification of attorneys.

07.23.10, 05:06 PM EDT WASHINGTON, July 23 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Statement of Lisa A. Rickard, president of the U.S. Chamber Institute for Legal Reform, on the letter sent today by Senator Chuck Grassley and Congressman Dave Camp to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner regarding Treasury's consideration..

A San Diego lawyer has irritated business owners in the town of Redlands, Calif., by sending out letters on behalf of clients demanding $6,500 settlements for claimed violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act and related state law.

Post a Comment The obnoxious lawyer: Sure, it sounds redundant to the public at large, but if a lawyer uses the phrase to describe one of his own species, it takes on special meaning.

A bill that would have the federal government cover medical malpractice costs for physicians who volunteer at community health centers cleared the Energy and Commerce panel's health subcommittee on Thursday.

The midsummer political doldrums often generate a series of inanities and silly tempests, nonstories that can keep the talk-show hosts in full rant. This year's silliness is the quarry quarrel arising from serpentine, the ubiquitous rock of this age, the stone that can be found in 42 of California's 58...

la-fi-0722-99-cents-only-20100722 A fraction of a penny is amounting to one big headache for 99 Cents Only Stores. Two years ago, the City of Commerce retailer ? faced with rising inflation and higher costs ? raised the top price of its goods to 99.

Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye Image: Jason Doiy / The Recorder Calif. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger appointed Third District Court of Appeal Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye to be the state's next chief justice.

Bill to defrock state rock brings more intrigue to...

There are between 5,122-5,831 individuals with silicosis claims in a consolidated mass tort litigation in Harris County, Texas. But in 2005, the Texas legislature passed a law requiring such claimants to provide medical evidence of a "minimum level of impairment.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) - State Assemblyman Mike Villines has narrowly won the Republican nomination for state insurance commissioner.

The nation's trial lawyers are lobbying the U.S. Treasury Department to approve a potentially lucrative tax change, after they failed to move the proposal through Congress.

The lawmaker from Orlando wants to import to the District of Columbia a scheme that allowed lawyers in California to run a litigation protection racket against mom-and-pop businesses.

Updated: 07/16/2010 SACRAMENTO ? In 1965, California lawmakers named serpentine the state rock because it symbolized the Gold Rush years and contained a mineral being put to myriad industrial uses.

A federal judge in Washington state has thrown out a lawsuit filed by a man who claimed that he contracted a severe respiratory illness after eating up to seven bags of microwave popcorn each day for 11 years.

Treasury mulls a break for contingency fees.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) - In 1965, California lawmakers named serpentine the state rock because it symbolized the Gold Rush years and contained a mineral being put to myriad industrial uses.

A new study from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce shows that small businesses shoulder a sizable burden of the nation's tort liability costs, having paid $105.

July 09--For a lesson in how business ought to work, keep your eye on the insurance industry as it grapples with the Illinois Supreme Court's terrible decision on tort reform in medical-malpractice cases.

When The Bee published a blurb last month about legislation that would remove serpentine as California's "state rock," it was snidely portrayed by political bloggers and radio talkers as a symbol of the Legislature's foolish fiddling while ignoring more important matters.

Third-party litigation funding may be the new, new thing, but it has some unforeseen kinks. In a patent case against Facebook, a federal judge has ordered the plaintiff to turn over documents to Facebook's lawyers, ruling that if litigation funders saw the documents, they're not protected by privilege.

The tort liability price tag for small businesses was $133.4 billion in the US in 2008, according to a new study from the Institute for Legal Reform performed by NERA (press release).

07.08.10, 05:30 PM EDT U.S. Chamber Study: Cost of Lawsuits another Burden for America's Job Creators WASHINGTON, July 8 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- A new study released today by the U.

Tort lawyers lie. They say their product liability suits are good for us. But their lawsuits rarely make our lives better. They make lawyers and a few of their clients better off -- but for the majority of us, they make life much worse.

0 0 0 A new study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine shows that 91% of physicians practice defensive medicine to protect themselves from lawsuits.

-- A federal judge has tossed as "nonsense" a proposed class action against PepsiCo Inc. alleging that consumers were being misled to believe that the company's Cap'n Crunch's Crunch Berries breakfast cereal might actually contain real fruit.