In the News

The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear an appeal of a lower-court decision sending Baltimore’s climate lawsuit back to state court, potentially resolving where the politically controversial litigation will be decided. The Supreme Court’s interest cheered the energy industry, which is facing a growing number of lawsuits by cities and states, many of them represented by private lawyers who stand to earn billions of dollars in fees if they are successful.

As the U.S. continues to recover from the COVID-19 downturn, it’s important for politicians to take a long, hard look at how trial lawyers can so easily squeeze multi-million dollar verdicts from private businesses that serve as the backbone of the American economy. Litigation reform is needed for the future of American innovation.

Negotiations over yet another coronavirus relief bill are picking up again. With them comes the possibility that Congress will pass legislation shielding businesses from civil lawsuits alleging they exposed consumers or workers to COVID-19. Liability protections have long been a demand of the business community, which has said that, absent congressional action, a “litigation wave” could delay economic recovery.

Garrison, 54, was shot dead Tuesday night, four days after a federal grand jury indicted him in a group of nine defendants accused of orchestrating scores of staged car accidents into moving buses, tractor-trailers and other large commercial vehicles for insurance settlements that can run well into six figures. The indictment says Garrison was a “slammer” whose job it was to collide with those big vehicles, and prosecutors allege he staged more than 50 accidents in exchange for $150,000 from an unnamed co-conspirator.

Cornelius Garrison grew increasingly concerned for his safety as federal authorities zeroed in on him for allegedly having a hand in a sprawling scam involving staged car accidents, according to his attorney. Four days after the U.S. Attorney’s Office in New Orleans filed charges accusing Garrison of staging over 50 wrecks in exchange for $150,000, he was shot to death Tuesday inside an apartment in the St. Bernard neighborhood of Gentilly, his lawyer, federal public defender Claude Kelly, said late Wednesday.

Virtual court hearings could be here to stay if a Texas Judicial Council resolution passed Thursday finds success with lawmakers and judicial leaders. The Texas Supreme Court has passed COVID-19 emergency orders that allowed courts across the Lone Star State to use videoconferencing to conduct court hearings and even virtual jury trials. But those emergency orders rely upon Gov. Greg Abbott’s declaration of a state of emergency because of the pandemic.

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?