In the News

A law professor at Roger Williams University School of Law said “lawsuit lenders are like sharks to shipwrecks” who “capitaliz[e] on tragedy” in a response to a defense of the industry in Crain’s New York Business.

It was a surprising opening move, to say the least. Arguing for the City of New York in its climate lawsuit against five major oil companies, attorney Michael Pawa cited AEP v. Connecticut, a 2009 decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, as “persuasive authority” in his clients’ favor.

Bird Rides Inc. and other scooter startups have drawn fire from pedestrian advocates, politicians and annoyed citizens. Now they have a new nemesis: personal-injury lawyers.

For many personal injury trial lawyers, the dream is to one day hit the next big litigation jackpot and land a multi-billion-dollar settlement, deploying lawsuits against one American industry after another in a scheme to strike it big. Now, some attorneys believe they’ve uncovered the City of Gold and are ready to cash in on climate change.

In May, Texas Watch, a self-labeled consumer advocacy group, released an opinion piece arguing an “assault waged by insurance companies” in the state legislature has left many Hurricane Harvey victims still unable to resume their lives eight months later.

Liberals want to use racketeering laws to prosecute so-called climate-change skeptics. But the real conspiracy may be between plaintiff lawyers and Democratic politicians who have ganged up to shake down oil companies.

The third season of the wildly popular show “Billions” premiered in March with a mention of an oddly arcane subject: asbestos bankruptcy trusts. The dialogue coming out of the mouth of prosecutor Chuck Rhodes, played by Paul Giamatti, becomes a little less mysterious when you look at who wrote it, however.

The top lawyers of 15 states are again asking a federal judge to reject the legal strategy used by public officials and the private attorneys with whom they’ve teamed to sue the energy industry over alleged effects of climate change.

Reform bills that would require asbestos plaintiffs to disclose all potential claims in court appear stalled in the New York legislature, three weeks after former Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver was convicted for a second time on charges stemming directly from the state’s scandal-prone asbestos court system.

When Hurricane Harvey made landfall in late August 2017, it was the first major hurricane to hit Texas since Hurricane Ike, nine years before, which spawned a wealth of litigation against carriers.

Most of these cases have been resolved by 2017, leaving many policyholder and carrier attorneys with extra time on their hands. Harvey litigation undoubtedly means these lawyers will be back in business, but several other significant events mean they now operate on a much different playing field than before.