In the News

Nine more people have been indicted on federal charges in a scheme to crash vehicles into buses and big trucks in the New Orleans area, in order to defraud insurance companies. They join 19 other defendants already under indictment. Insurers have paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to settle the fraudulent claims, the U.S. attorney’s office said.

The trucking industry is making gains in its fight against the plaintiffs bar and the increasing size of jury verdicts levied against motor carriers, but those in the trenches say the battle is not over. Last year, American Trucking Associations President Chris Spear announced that the trucking industry was waging war against excessive jury verdicts in accident litigation.

It’s just a fact of life that companies can get tangled up in expensive litigation that goes on for years before they can start defending themselves. That’s the opinion expressed at an Aug. 7 hearing by South Carolina federal judge Richard Gergel, who showed his unwillingness to grant motions to dismiss in the multidistrict litigation concerning chemicals known as PFAS.

As a result of fears of COVID-19 liability claims, businesses large and small are turning to liability waivers to try to protect themselves. But do waivers really offer the protection that business owners think it does? How can a business owner be sure that the waiver a customer is signing is more valuable than the price of the piece of paper it’s printed on?

The pandemic has made it hard for many businesses to stay afloat, and sadly, many have not. The last thing businesses, schools, teachers and health care professionals need are lawsuits further slowing their efforts to fight the pandemic and restore our economy.

The idea that the public had lost trust and confidence in the justice system greatly concerned the chief justices in state courts across the U.S., said Texas Supreme Court Chief Justice Nathan Hecht.

Litigation funders charged their clients more than 60% a year in interest on loans against mass tort cases and earned even more on loans to plaintiffs who had already agreed to settle their cases, a new study involving thousands of actual case files found.

Throughout Texas, wrongful death suits alleging COVID-19 exposure are being filed – perhaps a sign of things to come. While virus-related lawsuits aren’t commonplace yet, a Houston attorney is warning employers to prepare for a wave of wrongful death litigation.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office in New Orleans late last week indicted 11 individuals in connection with a scam to create crashes between cars and 18-wheelers and cash in on insurance payments. The indictment, handed down by U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Louisiana Peter Strasser is for alleged “staged” accidents with tractor-trailers going back to 2017.

It will take a few years before we know the extent of the effectiveness of laws approved in 15 states, and executive actions in 23 more, shielding health care providers and businesses from Covid lawsuits, says Cary Silverman, partner with Shook, Hardy & Bacon, and expert in product liability and tort law, and civil justice reform.