Six years of litigation fizzled out in July when one of the plaintiffs dropped a bombshell at a breakfast meeting with opposing counsel, effectively ending a $30 million federal lawsuit filed against a Saudi businessman over a California wildfire.

The Los Angeles Times tells the story of the now-dismissed case over the fire than burned more thann 25,000 acres. The government originally contended that an electrical junction box on Tarek Al-Shawaf’s property had malfunctioned, sparked and started the Mountain fire.

Recently, one of the private plaintiffs mentioned to Al-Shawaf’s lawyer that his own investigation turned up the fact that the fire probably started hundreds of feet from the Saudi’s property, writes the Times‘ Joseph Serna.

“To be honest, at the time I didn’t realize it was this crucial,” plaintiff Lawrence Goda said in hindsight. “I figured the feds … would have definitely factored that into the case.”

Read the Lost Angeles Times article.

The ABA Journal reports that two former mobile home owners have filed a malpractice suit against Jones Day that claims that the law firm’s work on their eviction case was a “fiasco.”

Two California residents allege that Jones Day pressured them to accept a “burdensome settlement” without asserting legitimate defenses and then dropped them as clients a few weeks after the deal was signed, writes the Journal‘s Debra Cassens Weiss. The two say they couldn’t navigate the deal themselves, and they became “permanently homeless” after being evicted.

Read the ABA Journal article.

If a contract is too one-sided, it can be ruled illusory and unenforceable, warns Shepard Davidson in the Burns Levinson In-House Advisor blog.

That is exactly what happened to the defendant in McNamara v. S.I. Logistics, Inc. when it tried to enforce its contractual right to arbitration he writes.

In that case, the defendant sought to compel arbitration based on an agreement that  purported to grant the company the unilateral right to modify its terms without any prior notice to McNamara, a former affiliate.

The court found in favor of McNamara, finding that the agreement was illusory.

Read the article.

Image by Mitch Barrie

Gun manufacturer Remington Arms asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday to overturn a ruling from Connecticut’s high court allowing the company to be sued by one survivor and the families of nine victims killed in the 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School, reports Courthouse News Service.

The North Carolina-based company argued in a petition for a writ of certiorari that the 2005 federal Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act shields firearm makers from liability in every circumstance when their products are used in acts of violence, reports Courthouse News’ Christine Stuart.

The Connecticut Supreme Court in May refused to strike arguments regarding the marketing of the XM15-E2S weapon, a type of AR-15 semiautomatic gun that killed 20 first graders and six educators in 264 seconds.

Read the Courthouse News article.

Lawyers with Houston-based Heard Law Firm achieved a settlement for an offshore pipeline technician who was blown into the air, suffering back injuries and burns in an explosion on an oil and gas production platform in the Gulf of Mexico.

Donald Champion, who lives near Lake Charles, Louisiana, was working on the Garden Banks Gas Pipeline owned by Enbridge Offshore LLC more than 100 miles south of New Orleans. In November 2017, an explosion caused by equipment failure knocked him through the air into a stack of pipe, injuring his back and leaving him with serious burns to his face, arms and hands.

In addition to the treatment for his burns, Champion underwent back surgery and may require more operations in the future.

See details and a video.

The first Texas trial addressing the role of pharmaceutical manufacturers, distributors and physicians in creating and fueling the state’s opioid crisis has been scheduled for Dallas County next year.

Judge Robert Schaffer, who will preside over Texas’ opioid multidistrict litigation (MDL), announced the initial county cases will include Dallas, Angelina, Freestone and Kendall counties. The first, Dallas County, will be heard in the fall of 2020. Dallas County is represented in its opioid-related case by the law firms of Simon Greenstone Panatier, P.C., The Lanier Firm and The Cochran Firm.

“The public nuisance these drug companies have created is of epidemic proportions, destroying countless lives and families, and costing Dallas County taxpayers far too much. There must be a reckoning, and through this case, there soon will be,” said Jeffrey Simon of Simon Greenstone Panatier, P.C.

The Dallas County MDL seeks to hold several prescription opioid manufacturers, wholesale distributors and certain doctors responsible for their role in the opioid painkiller epidemic.

“Recently uncovered records reveal that more than 461 million prescription pain pills were supplied to Dallas County residents from 2006 to 2012. That’s enough for every man, woman and child in Dallas County to consume 28 narcotic pills a year,” said Simon.

A release from the firm states:

Once tightly regulated, the pharmaceutical industry made a dedicated push to encourage doctors to expand the prescription of the powerful painkillers beginning in the late 1990s, promoting claims that opioids were a safe, non-addictive means to treat even moderate chronic pain on a long-term basis. The resulting epidemic caused significant increases in addiction and overdose deaths, skyrocketing health care costs and demands on community services, such as courts, child services, treatment centers, emergency response and public safety.

“Records also show that as the opioid epidemic grew worse, defendants supplied more of them,” said Simon. “They profited by flooding Dallas County with narcotic pills that were manufactured from the same base molecule – morphine – as heroin, but these pills were often sold in doses more powerful than heroin.”

Image by Mike Mozart

A California judge on Thursday reduced a $2 billion jury verdict, slashing the award for a couple who blamed Bayer AG’s glyphosate-based weed killer Roundup for their cancer to $86.7 million, according to a Reuters report.

A California Superior Court judge in Oakland said the jury’s billion-dollar punitive damages awards were excessive and unconstitutional, but rejected Bayer’s request to strike the punitive award outright, writes Reuters’ Tina Bellon.

The order could result in plaintiffs Alva and Alberta Pilliod receiving $17 million in compensatory and $69 million in punitive damages, down from $55 million and $2 billion, respectively.

Read the Reuters report.

The National Law Journal has honored The Law Offices of Frank L. Branson as a top law firm in the nation for product liability litigation based on the firm’s large jury verdicts and track record of excellence going back more than three decades.

The firm founded by Frank L. Branson was chosen for the prestigious Elite Trial Lawyers award based on exceptional product liability litigation work. The award was presented at a reception in New York on July 18. The firm was honored as part of a three-way tie in the product liability category.

The NLJ recognition follows a string of high-profile legal victories for Branson and his team, including:

A $242 million product liability jury verdict against Toyota in August 2018. Jurors agreed Toyota was grossly negligent for failing to correct or warn consumers about seatback design flaws in the Lexus ES 300. The award included $144 million in punitive damages awarded a Dallas family whose two young children suffered serious injuries in a collision. The verdict was recognized as the No. 1 product liability verdict in Texas in 2018.

A $10.9 million jury verdict resulting from the crash of a charter bus en route to the Choctaw Casino & Resort in Oklahoma. The 2016 verdict was affirmed on appeal and settled recently. The firm represented the estate and children of an 83-year-old woman who was killed in the accident. The verdict was awarded to Mr. Branson’s client and a second victim who was represented by separate counsel and who joined the case as an intervenor.

Branson also has won multimillion-dollar verdicts and settlements in all types of transportation crashes. He has been recognized for top verdicts multiple times by VerdictSearch and the NLJ – four alone in the last six years.

“I feel honored every day to have the opportunity to put our clients on a level playing field with corporate America,” said Mr. Branson. “The results we’ve been able to secure reflect decades of hard work and our team of great lawyers.”

Trial law firm Martin Walker has earned honors for winning the largest medical malpractice verdict in Texas in 2018 for the $43.32 million jury award against Tyler-based East Texas Medical Center and one of its doctors. The editors of Texas Lawyer included the verdict in the magazine’s listing of Top Verdicts and Settlements, 10th Edition, based on research gathered by VerdictSearch.

A jury found ETMC grossly negligent for allowing Dr. Gary Boyd to treat 61-year-old Billy Pierce, despite having been placed on probation by the Texas Medical Board. Pierce was admitted in April 2014 with stomach pain and vomiting.

During the trial, Martin Walker attorneys argued the hospital bylaws should have prevented Boyd from practicing at the facility. Testimony showed that Boyd diagnosed Pierce with an abnormality he said would make surgery to remove bile duct stones impossible. For more than a month, the firm said, Pierce was in a medically induced coma during which time Boyd and the hospital abandoned him, according to testimony. Once the hospital sought a second opinion, a new doctor rejected Boyd’s diagnosis and operated without complication.

Jurors agreed that Boyd’s improper care led to the loss of Pierce’s quality of life and his ability to provide for his family. The $43 million verdict included $18.57 million for past and future pain, anguish, loss of earning capacity, and medical care and expenses. The jury also awarded $25 million in punitive damages, after concluding the hospital’s conduct involved an extreme risk of potential harm to others.

Pierce was represented by Martin Walker name partners Reid Martin and Jack Walker and attorney Marisa Schouten. The case is Billy Pierce v. East Texas Medical Center and Dr. Gary Boyd and the ETMC Digestive Disease Center, Cause No. 16-0853-C in the 241st District Court in Smith County.

The firm is based in Tyler, Texas.

Each year, VerdictSearch conducts a comprehensive review to produce the list of top verdicts in Texas. The full list is published in the July 2019 issue of Texas Lawyer.

Appellate lawyers with Houston-based Wright Close & Barger scored a 9-0 decision from the U.S. Supreme Court in a closely watched religious discrimination case that made national headlines and carried big implications for employers and state and local governments.

The ruling in Fort Bend County vs. Davis united both conservative and liberal justices with an interpretation signaling that employers must be expeditious when challenging a worker’s claim of job bias. The opinion also cemented the authority of the courts in discrimination cases like this one, the firm said in a release.

“We are grateful for this important decision, which ensures a fairer system for all victims of employment discrimination. It also clarifies the process for employers and governments,” said appellate specialist Raffi Melkonian who delivered oral arguments on behalf of plaintiff Lois Davis. The case marked his first time making oral arguments before the Supreme Court.

Read details about the case.

The ABA Journal reports that a lawyer who sued Monster Energy in the cardiac death of a teenager can be sued for allegedly violating a confidentiality clause that was part of the case settlement.

The California Supreme Court has ruled that Monster Energy could sue Bruce Schechter and his firm, the R. Rex Parris Law Firm, based on language in the agreement that could be construed to bind the attorneys, reports the Journal‘s Debra Cassens Weiss.

Schecter argued that he and the firm weren’t bound by the confidentiality clause because he signed the agreement under the preprinted notation “approved as to form and content.” Schechter said the notation meant he was approving the agreement only for his clients’ signatures.

Read the ABA Journal article.

Two verdicts won by Provost Umphrey Law Firm earned recognition among the Top Texas Verdicts & Settlements for 2018 based on a comprehensive review by VerdictSearch.

A $6.34 million Harris County negligence verdict against a suburban Houston apartment complex in connection with the 2014 murder of a 15-year-old girl was the largest premises liability verdict in Texas last year. Testimony showed Corriann Cervantes was tortured and murdered, her body left in an abandoned apartment in a Clear Lake area complex. Two young men were convicted of capital murder for their roles in the attack. Provost Umphrey attorneys Joe Fisher, Guy Fisher and Taylor Thompson as well as Andrew Bender of The Bender Law Firm prevailed in the civil suit filed by the girl’s family against the apartment complex owners.

Also last year, jurors in Denton County returned a $4.8 million verdict against ladder manufacturer Werner Co., after finding the company liable for the faulty design and marketing of an aluminum ladder that collapsed and permanently injured John DeVallee’s hand. The verdict is the fourth-largest product liability award and ranked 33 overall on the Top Verdicts list. Provost Umphrey’s Joe Fisher and Edward Fisher were on the trial team with attorney Brian Zimmerman of Zimmerman, Axelrad, Meyer, Stern & Wise, P.C. and David L. Cook of Harris Cook LLP.

The Texas Top Verdicts annual list is developed from research compiled by VerdictSearch, a recognized leader in U.S. verdict information. The full list will be published in the July 2019 edition of Texas Lawyer.

A federal court in Seattle has appointed Christopher J. Cormier and a legal team at Burns Charest LLP as co-lead counsel in a proposed federal class action against a group of manufacturers of cedar shakes and shingles, and the industry’s trade association.

The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for Western District of Washington, alleges that the companies conspired to artificially inflate the price of Certi-Label cedar shakes and shingles sold to indirect reseller plaintiffs, such as contractors, construction companies and roofers, in the U.S. The litigation includes detailed evidence of improper pricing discussions among the defendants as well as detailed economic analysis showing that the price of the materials has increased substantially since early 2011.

“The public must be protected when companies conspire to fix prices because this conduct harms not only cedar shake and shingle purchasers in particular but also fundamental principles of fair competition in general,” said Mr. Cormier. “We allege that the proposed class we represent has been forced to pay inflated prices for already expensive building materials for a number of years, and we are eager to roll up our sleeves and get to work in seeking recovery for them in this case.”

The class action claim, originally filed in April 2019, alleges that the price increases cannot be explained by ordinary market forces and instead are a result of the defendants’ anticompetitive pricing conspiracy. The lawsuit also claims that the companies conspired with the Washington-based Cedar Shake & Shingle Bureau, the industry’s trade association, to muscle out upstart and discount competitors from the market, thus preserving the defendants’ ability to charge artificially high prices for their products.

U.S. District Judge Marsha Pechman has also appointed the firm of Portland-based Stoll Berne to serve as co-lead counsel for the plaintiffs with the Burns Charest team.

The case is Fraser Construction Company et al v. Cedar Shake & Shingle Bureau et al. Case No. 2:19-cv-00451-MJP in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington.

The firm has offices in Dallas, Denver, and New Orleans.

Delta Air Lines scored a victory when a California federal court granted the company’s motion to dismiss a putative class action based on a data breach, primarily by arguing that its publicly posted privacy policy is not a contract and Delta did not have any enforceable obligation to keep the plaintiff’s data secure, reports Manatt, Phelps & Phillips.

A Delta passenger sought to represent a nationwide class of consumers alleging breach of contract after the airline suffered a data breach, explains Jesse M. Brody.

The court found that the plaintiff could not assert a breach of contract based on Delta’s privacy policy, because it expressly disclaimed that it constitutes a contract, stating, “This Privacy Policy is not a contract and does not create any legal rights or obligations.”

Read the article.

A new guide published by Zapproved details a series of real-world best practices for getting ediscovery costs under control. The new guide can be downloaded from the Zapproved website.

The company says the cost of ediscovery is skyrocketing as data volumes and complexity expand. At the same time, your team is being asked to do more with less.

“Driving Down the Cost of Ediscovery” will show readers how to create a comprehensive litigation response plan, preserve and collect the right data from the right places, conduct early case assessment (ECA), reduce the volume of documents for review, and improve the efficiency of the process from end to end.

Download the guide.

PactSafe’s legal experts — after studying more than 1,000 cases from 2002 to 2018  — have identified trends and best practices for defending clickthrough terms of service in court.

The results of that research are available from PactSafe in a free download from the company’s website.

As the rate of litigation around terms of service increases (notably 626% from 2002 to 2018) businesses are increasingly aware of what they need to cover, PactSafe says on its website. While the content of online legal terms may be bulletproof, the way that companies currently track acceptance may leave them at risk.

The report covers:

• Aggregate data complied from the last 15 years of clickthrough cases
• The three different ways of forming online contracts and the success rate of each type.
• The factors that influence the court’s decision as to the validity of an online agreement.
• The types of evidence you should be prepared to bring to court

Download the report.

U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts cemented his new role as the Supreme Court’s swing vote, angering people on the political left and right in the process, as he decided the outcomes of major rulings on the census and electoral map manipulation, according to a Reuters report.

In two 5-4 votes, Roberts sided with his fellow conservative justices in rejecting challenges to a practice called partisan gerrymandering but joined the court’s liberals in dealing to a damaging blow to President Trump’s plan to add a contentious citizenship question to the 2020 census.

The votes illustrate how Roberts now is the court’s center, a role he inherited following the retirement last year of Justice Anthony Kennedy, writes Reuters’ Lawrence Hurley.

But seeing a chief justice taking the middle road hasn’t gone down well with some “deeply disappointed right-leaning lawyers and pundits who had been counting on near-certain victory from a court now stocked with a pair of Trump-appointed justices handpicked by conservative legal activists,” according to a Politico report.

Read the Reuters article.

The $166 million jury verdict secured by Fears Nachawati for the son of a North Texas woman killed for the proceeds of her life insurance policies has been recognized by The National Law Journal as 2018’s largest intentional tort award in Texas.

The May 2018 jury verdict in Tarrant County’s 141st Judicial District Court was also ranked the sixth largest among all verdicts in Texas and the 14th largest nationally for the year. Rankings are based upon national court records compiled by the NLJ’s research affiliate, VerdictSearch, coupled with its own research of online news sources and databases.

Read more about the case.

As concern mounts over health risks from so-called “forever chemicals,” environmental trial lawyers at Dallas-based Fears Nachawati Law Firm are investigating water contamination cases on behalf of states, counties and cities across the nation.

In a release, the firm said groundwater contamination from fluorine-based PFAS compounds has been reported at hundreds of sites across the U.S., threatening the drinking water of millions of Americans. Industrial chemicals including PFAS, PFOA and PFC have been widely used by corporations to make nonstick and stain-resistant consumer and industrial products. They are also found in fire-retardant foam, which has led to large-scale groundwater contamination at military sites.

Environmental trial lawyers at Fears Nachawati are actively involved in litigation seeking to hold industrial manufacturers accountable for groundwater contamination.

“Sadly, we’ve seen the regulations move in the wrong direction when it comes to protecting Americans from this serious health threat,” said environmental trial lawyer Bryan Fears, co-founder of Fears Nachawati. “Instead of increasing oversight and forcing polluters to take action and clean up these sites, regulators are loosening deadlines and sending the wrong signals to polluters. We all have a collective responsibility to get to the bottom of the cause of weakened environmental standards. This is about the future of our children’s drinking water.”

Called “forever chemicals” because they never fully degrade, polyfluorocarbons (PFC) are a group of synthetic chemicals that include PFAS and PFOA that have been in use since the 1940s, the firm said. The compounds have been found in drinking water used by 110 million people across the nation and is estimated to be in the bloodstreams of 98 percent of Americans. The compounds have been linked to immune system problems and cancer. Recently, the Food and Drug Administration reported the discovery of PFAS compounds in grocery store meats, milk and seafood as well as in off-the-shelf products such as chocolate cake.

“When corporations fail to accept responsibility for the damage they’ve caused and when regulators decline to protect our most precious resources, it’s up to state and local governments and the American people to demand action,” said Fears Nachawati co-founder Majed Nachawati.

President Donald Trump’s fondness for the U.S. Supreme Court could be tested by a series of legal disputes targeting him personally – from his taxes and businesses to his 2016 election campaign – that ultimately may be decided by the justices, according to a Reuters report.

Reuters reporters Andrew Chung and Lawrence Hurley write that some legal experts speculate that “as the focus of some of the major legal challenges shifts from his policies to Trump himself, there could be disappointments in store for him, … in particular if the Supreme Court stoutly defends the ability of Congress to pursue investigations of the president.”

J.W. Verret, an expert in corporate and securities law at George Mason University in Virginia, told the reporters that conservative justices “won’t feel any loyalty to Trump, but will instead support strong separation of powers” as delineated in the U.S. Constitution.

Read the Reuters article.