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.

The Dallas-based law firm Fears Nachawati has been retained by the Calvert County Board of County Commissioners in Maryland to pursue a lawsuit against opioid manufacturers and distributors over their role in the epidemic of addiction to these painkillers, the firm said in a release.

Representing the southern Maryland county is a legal consortium that features Matthew McCarley and Jonathan Novak of Fears Nachawati, along with attorneys from Ferrer, Poirot & Wansbrough in Dallas; Motley Rice in Washington, D.C.; and The Kane Law Group and McNamee, Hosea, Jernigan, Kim Greenan & Lynch in Maryland.

Just southeast of the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area, Calvert County has seen its public resources overburdened by the societal, health and public safety demands created by the reckless proliferation of prescription opioids, plaintiffs say.

“The opioid epidemic has continued at a horrifying pace, taking a tremendous human toll and creating intense financial and social services pressures on local governments such as Calvert County,” said McCarley. “There is no single, simple solution, but recovery cannot begin until those who knowingly created the problem are held responsible for their actions.”

Fears Nachawati currently represents 61 counties, cities and hospital systems in Texas, Florida, Kentucky, Maryland, Mississippi, New Mexico and North Dakota in lawsuits seeking to hold 30 of the nation’s largest pharmaceutical manufacturers and distributors liable for their role in the opioid addiction crisis that resulted from deceptive and illegal marketing schemes.

“While we fight to recover some of the financial costs related to the public health emergency caused by the overuse of prescription opioids, this is also about stopping these illegal and unethical practices,” said Novak.

A former partner at Jones Day’s Silicon Valley office who accused the law firm of forcing her out after she raised concerns about its “boys’ club” culture has dropped her lawsuit in exchange for a return of capital she put into the firm, reports Bloomberg Law.

“Wendy Moore’s suit claimed the firm’s leadership retaliated against her after she voiced misgivings about its culture, pay transparency, and treatment of female attorneys,” writes Bloomberg’s Mike Leonard. “The complaint described Jones Day as a ‘fraternity’ where women are marginalized and objectified while male lawyers attend business meetings at strip clubs and sporting events.”

Read the Bloomberg Law article.

Image by Sean P. Anderson

Courthouse News Service reports that a Connecticut judge has slapped conspiracy theorist and defamation suit defendant Alex Jones with sanctions after he posted a 20-minute tirade against plaintiff’s attorney.

The video rant came after files turned over by the defense were found to contain images of child pornography.

In the video, Jones pounded on a photo of Chris Mattei, a lawyer for the families suing Jones for defamation over his statements that the Sandy Hook shooting was a hoax. “You’re trying to set me up with child porn, I’ll get your ass,” Jones said, as he beat on the Mattei photo.

“The court has no doubt that Alex Jones was accusing plaintiffs counsel of planting child pornography,” Bridgeport Superior Court Judge Barbara Bellis said.

CNN reports that, under the sanction, the defense will be denied the opportunity to pursue special motions to dismiss moving forward in the lawsuit. The court will also award attorneys fees and filing fees to the Sandy Hook families’ lawyers related to the issue that Jones went off about in his broadcast: child pornography that Jones’ team inadvertently turned over to the plaintiffs.

Read the Courthouse News article.

Reuters reports that a federal appeals court has determined that Amazon is not liable for facilitating the sale of a defective product manufactured by another company.

It’s the second time in just three weeks that courts have found Amazon not be liable for the defective products of their suppliers.

Reuters’ Alison Frankel reports that the 6th Circuit held in Fox v. Amazon that Amazon cannot be held responsible under state product liability law because it was not the seller of the defective product – even though the product was advertised on Amazon’s platform and Amazon shipped and collected payment for it.

Read the Reuters article.

In a class action complaint filed last week, the plaintiffs’ firm Mazie Slater Katz & Freeman alleges that several New Jersey and Texas law firms committed procedural violations and overcharged clients in about 1,450 mesh cases brought in New Jersey state courts, reports Reuters.

Alison Frankel of Reuters explains:

According to the complaint, the law firms – including Nagel Rice, the Potts Law Firm, Bailey Cowan Heckaman, Annie McAdams and Junell & Associates – failed to sign clients to retainer agreements or purported to bind clients to contracts that don’t comply with New Jersey laws and ethics rules. The complaint, filed in Superior Court in Bergen County, New Jersey, asserts claims for malpractice, breach of fiduciary duty and unjust enrichment.

Read the Reuters article.

Above the Law reports that Pepper Hamilton is potentially in some hot water for failing to produce documents pursuant to a court order.

“The discovery kerfuffle comes as a result of Doe v. Baylor University, a Title IX lawsuit in which students allege the University did not do enough about their allegations of sexual assault, and created an environment which allowed sexual attacks to flourish,” explains senior editor Kathryn Rubino.

The firm is opposing an order to produce some documents responsive to discovery requests. The judge cited the firm’s “untimely objections” to complying with discovery and pointed to multiple discovery issues over the last two years of the litigation when he said sanctions are on the table.

Read the Above the Law article.

For the first time in John Roberts’ 14 years as chief justice of the United States, he will likely be the deciding vote on several final, tense cases — a total of 24 over the next two weeks, according to CNN.

“Two of the most politically charged cases awaiting resolution, testing 2020 census questions and partisan gerrymanders, could lead to decisions favoring Republican Party interests and reinforce the partisan character of a court comprising five GOP appointees and four Democratic ones,” writes CNN’s Joan Biskupic.

Read the CNN article.

A recent decision by the New Hampshire Supreme Court, Pro Done, Inc. v. Basham, provides an illustration of the benefits in a private equity deal of an independent covenant not to sue in addition to a release agreement, writes Glenn D. West in Weil, Gotshal & Manges’ Global Private Equity Watch.

The New Hampshire Supreme Court reversed the trial court and held that there was “no reason why we should treat parties who suffer damages as a result of a breach of an express promise not to sue differently from those who suffer damages for a breach of other types of contractual terms.”

Read the article.

The Ninth Circuit upheld the district court’s grant of a motion to compel individual arbitration in a case that “tests the outer limits of what constitutes a ‘reasonably conspicuous’ provision” in an online contract, according to Ballard Spahr.

The article says Holl v. United Parcel Service, Inc. “contrasts with prior Ninth Circuit rulings, arguably involving less extreme facts, which denied motions to enforce online arbitration clauses. Holl, however, was decided on a petition for mandamus, a remedy that requires the petitioner to establish clearly and indisputably that ‘extraordinary circumstances’ exist to overturn the district court’s decision.”

The class action complaint in Holl alleged that UPS systematically overcharged its retail customers.

Companies with online terms of use that include an arbitration clause must still exercise great care in designing the website so that users become contractually bound to arbitrate, the firm advises.

Read the article.

Bloomberg Law reports that a federal judge has ruled that Nationwide Mutual Insurance Co. may have discriminated against an in-house attorney who had portions of both legs amputated after developing vascular disease.

The case now will go to a jury trial.

Nationwide pointed to Kevin Greenwood’s documented performance problems, but there’s evidence a non-disabled attorney with similar performance deficiencies wasn’t discharged, the court said, and there’s also evidence the other attorney was given more than a year to do better while Greenwood only got a few months before and a few weeks after receiving accommodations to improve his performance.

Greenwood testified that a reason he was behind in one of Nationwide’s performance criteria was because it took him longer to get to and from court following his leg amputations, the court said.

Read the Bloomberg Law article.

Ninth Circuit Judge William A. Fletcher had some harsh words for lawyers from DLA Piper and Munger Tolles & Olson when he told them that he had “serious concerns with the integrity of your brief.”

Above the Law reports on the case, adding that Fletcher told the lawyers: “There are statements and representations that we view as inaccurate and misleading to an unusual degree.”

The appellate court took issue with the lawyers’ brief in a case in which their client, BNSF Railway Co., sued the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community over shipping crude oil through reservation land. The judge said the firms glossed over or tried to hide key context in the firms’ referrals to some prior cases.

Read the Above the Law article.

JPMorgan Chase said on Thursday that it agreed to pay $5 million to settle a class-action lawsuit filed on behalf of male employees who contend they were denied access to the same paid parental leave as mothers between 2011 and 2017.

The Washington Post‘s Samantha Schmidt reports the American Civil Liberties Union, which represented named plaintiff Derek Rotondo, said “this marks the first settlement of its kind stemming from a class-action lawsuit on behalf of male employees claiming they were denied the same equal paid parental leave as women. The settlement comes amid growing pressure on employers to adopt gender-neutral paid-leave policies that encourage more equitable caregiving roles in the home.”

While not admitting liability, the company pledged to train those administering the policy and pay $5 million to male employees who claim they were denied additional paid parental leave as primary caregivers.

Read the Post article.

The Aldous\Walker law firm has earned a place on The National Law Journal’s 2018 list of Top 100 Verdicts for securing a $25 million verdict against a former Dallas Cowboys player and the nightclub that over-served him, leading to a fatal DWI crash.

The firm represented Stacey Jackson, mother of former Cowboys practice squad player Jerry Brown, who died in the 2012 crash. Brown was a passenger in the car driven by former star defensive lineman Josh Brent. Both had visited Privae Lounge in Dallas the night of the accident, and tests showed Brent’s blood-alcohol content was twice the legal limit at the time of the crash, according to a release from the law firm.

The Aldous\Walker team successfully argued that the club shared responsibility for continuing to serve alcohol to Brent after he was intoxicated. The jury found Privae Lounge’s owners and Brent were equally liable for Brown’s death.

The verdict is among the largest in Texas for this kind of case. The full list of the NLJ Top 100 Verdicts for 2018 appears in the publication’s June issue.

“This is a very tragic case. But I was pleased we were able to bring Ms. Jackson the justice she deserved,” said Aldous\Walker co-founder Charla Aldous, who along with Brent Walker, represented Ms. Jackson at trial. “The owners of that club did everything they could – including filing for bankruptcy – to avoid their responsibility. But we stuck with it because we knew we were right.”

The win was the first of three courtroom verdicts the firm earned on behalf of its clients in less than three months, including:

• Sarah Milburn, who was left quadriplegic in a collision involving a Honda Odyssey van. In February 2019, Aldous and Walker won a $37.6 million verdict on her behalf after a jury found Honda’s design of a third-row seat belt defective.
• Isabella Fletcher, who was sexually assaulted by former Hebron High School football players when she was 14. A Denton County jury awarded her $32 million, just weeks after the Milburn victory.

The firm’s release said the courtroom wins represent just the latest high-profile legal successes for Aldous and Walker, both of whom also represented nurse Nina Pham, who contracted Ebola in 2014 while working at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas. And in 2011, they won a $9.3 million verdict on behalf of a female student who was sexually assaulted by a teacher at the Episcopal School of Dallas.

The U.S. Supreme Court has turned away an appeal of a ruling against the widow of a Reed Smith partner who blamed the labeling of the antidepressant Paxil for her husband’s suicide.

The court denied the appeal petition from plaintiff Wendy Dolin in her lawsuit against pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline, reports the Cook County Record.

“Dolin had sued GSK over the death of her husband, Stewart Dolin, who had committed suicide in a downtown Chicago transit station in 2010,” writes the Record‘s Jonathan Bilyk. “Dolin alleged her husband’s suicidal behavior was caused by the drug paroxetine, the generic version of GSK’s Paxil. The warning label for paroxetine is identical to the label for Paxil.”

Read the Cook County Record report.

Harvey Weinstein

Image by David Shankbone

Disgraced movie mogul Harvey Weinstein may owe his former lawyers nearly $500,000 for work they did in four cases brought against him by insurance companies, reports the New York Post‘s Page Six.

Court documents show that Abelson Herron Halpern LLP is seeking $420,495 in the suits brought against Weinstein by insurance companies who say they shouldn’t have to pay for the costs of his civil and criminal defenses in the sexual misconduct and assault cases brought against him.

Page Six’s Priscilla DeGregory writes that the firm is staking a claim to the money they say they are owed by putting a lien on the ongoing litigation with the insurance companies in the event that Weinstein recoups money from any of them.

Read the Page Six article.

A Thompson & Knight trial team earned a unanimous verdict for BP America Production Company in a retrial of a 12-year-old lease termination dispute brought by Laddex, Ltd., an Amarillo-based oil company. Absent further appeals, this verdict could be the final chapter in over a decade of contentious lease termination litigation, according to a release from the law firm.

The release tells the history of the litigation:

In 2013, BP took two lease termination disputes to trial within one month of each other: Laddex v. BP America and Red Deer Resources v. BP America. In each case, the plaintiffs sought termination of large BP leases in the Texas Panhandle. Both cases involved the hot Texas litigation topic of “production in paying quantities,” a doctrine that allows a typical oil and gas lease to continue after its primary term only if the well or wells on that lease produce enough oil and gas to turn a profit.

Laddex was originally tried in June 2013. In that trial, the jury found that the lease failed to turn a profit from August 2005 to October 2006 and further found that a reasonable operator would not continue to operate the Mahler D-2 well for the purpose of making a profit. The effect of these answers was the termination of BP’s lease.

Red Deer went to trial one month later. In that case, the jury found that the well had produced in paying quantities at all relevant times, but that it was not capable of producing in paying quantities at the time it was shut-in on June 12, 2012.

Both cases eventually found their way to the Texas Supreme Court. In Red Deer, the court determined in its 2017 opinion that the only material question asked of the jury was whether the lease produced in paying quantities—and BP prevailed on that question. The result was a reversal and judgment rendered in favor of BP. In Laddex, also in 2017, the Texas Supreme Court ruled that the jury charge in the 2013 trial erroneously instructed the jury to limit its analysis only to a specific 15-month period and held that the length of the time period to be considered for determining profitability was for the jury to decide. The court therefore remanded the case for a new trial.

The focus of Laddex is whether the Mahler D-2 well produced enough oil and gas to maintain BP’s almost 50-year-old lease. In order for the 1971 lease to remain valid, it needed to produce oil and gas in profitable quantities. Laddex’s suit claimed that the Mahler D-2 failed to turn a profit for over a year starting in the summer of 2005, and therefore the lease terminated on its own terms. It was undisputed that the well experienced a significant slowdown for about 15 months, but BP maintained that the lease was still profitable during that time. The well recovered to more normal levels of production in November 2006 and continues to produce near those levels to this day.

BP hired Thompson & Knight for the retrial, which began on April 15, 2019, and concluded mid-day on April 23. The jury ruled unanimously for BP.

The Thompson & Knight retrial team in Laddex v. BP was led by Rob Vartabedian, with support from Alix Allison, Rich Phillips, Conrad Hester, and Connor Bourland. Thompson & Knight’s Rob Vartabedian and Conrad Hester assisted with all aspects of Red Deer, from trial to the Texas Supreme Court. M. Coy Connelly, BP America managing counsel, supervised the successful litigation efforts in both the Laddex and Red Deer suits.

A Houston-area utility worker has filed a lawsuit against CenterPoint Energy Houston Electric, LLC, after he was severely injured in a fall from a company utility pole.

On March 15, 2019, near Tomball, Texas, Garrett Wilder, an employee of electrical contractor L.E. Myers Co., went with his co-worker to the utility pole owned by CenterPoint Energy Houston to do maintenance work, according to a post on the website of Androvett Legal Media & Marketing.

The lawsuit says a CenterPoint employee on the site told him to climb the 100-foot pole to install hand and foot bolts with fall protection eyelets. The contractor had climbed approximately halfway up the pole using fall protection gear when one of the handholds that was supposed to be permanently attached to the pole became separated, causing him to fall 40 feet to the ground. Upon impact, Wilder stopped breathing and his heart stopped beating. He was revived by his co-worker before being taken to the hospital. After multiple surgeries to his lower extremities and back, Wilder has been transitioned to a long and arduous physical therapy regime, according to the lawsuit.

Provost Umphrey attorney Matthew Matheny is representing Wilder. “Our client has suffered severe, permanent injuries which would have cost him his life if it had not been for the swift action of his fellow employee,” he said.

Wilder is seeking in excess of $1 million in damages for physical pain and suffering, mental anguish, lost wages, disfigurement, physical impairment and future medical bills. He is also asking for punitive damages. The lawsuit is Garrett Wilder vs. CenterPoint Energy Houston Electric, LLC in the 269th District Court, Harris County, Texas.

CenterPoint Energy Houston Electric, LLC, is owned by Utility Holding, LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Houston-based CenterPoint Energy, Inc.

Jones Day is objecting to the use of pseudonyms for four of the six plaintiffs who have sued the Biglaw firm for allegedly discriminating against female partners and associates in compensation.

Above the Law reports that the firm told the judge hearing some of the cases that “the court’s approval of the pseudonyms itself impugns Jones Day’s reputation by implying, without basis in evidence, that Jones Day would improperly retaliate against the Jane Does if their identities were made public.”

The firm’s motion said that “pseudonyms prevent the public—including clients, potential clients, lateral recruits, and law students—from fully evaluating the Does’ allegations and credibility.”

Read the Above the Law article.