Two logos side by side with Critical Legal Content in a red square on the left and HB Litigation in blue on the right

Sandra Cianflone on Current and Emerging COVID-19 Litigation

June 3rd, 2021|Categories: ELP, HB Risk Notes, Insurance, Mass Torts, News|Tags: , , , , |

Sandra Cianflone on COVID-19 Litigation in 2021 and Beyond It’s now been more than 18 months since the world was besieged by the novel coronavirus pandemic. In addition to the human toll, it disrupted our lives in ways big and small, new and old, as it raced across continents, first visiting North America in January 2020. There are an estimated 15,000 lawsuits relating to the outbreak, with some 350 filings directed toward the healthcare and medical communities. The number of insurance coverage suits is fast-approaching 1,800. Litigation has been initiated against aging services, hospitals, and healthcare providers, with the next anticipated wave likely to  surround vaccines themselves. What will be the basis of these claims? What defenses will we see? And what can healthcare providers do now in anticipation of this onslaught? Joining me to discuss this out-of-the-blue rash of litigation is Sandra M. Cianflone of Hall Booth Smith, P.C.  Sandie counsels and defends hospitals, physicians, nurses and institutional employees in a broad spectrum of catastrophic injury and medical malpractice cases. She received her Juris Doctorate from Pace University School of Law and her undergraduate degree from Fairleigh Dickinson University. This podcast is the audio companion to the Journal on Emerging Issues in Litigation, a collaborative project between HB Litigation Conferences and the Fastcase legal research family, which includes Full Court Press, Law Street Media, Docket Alarm and, most [...]

Read More

Charlie Kingdollar on Sexual Abuse Claims

May 25th, 2021|Categories: HB Risk Notes, HB Tort Notes, Insurance, Mass Torts, News|Tags: , , , , |

Charlie Kingdollar on Sexual Abuse Claims and Litigation: Their Impact on the Insurance Industry Abstract The statistics surrounding childhood sexual abuse and molestation are staggering. Many make headlines such as the cases brought against clergy, athletic coaches, Boy Scout leaders, and actors and movie producers. This article attempts to size the impact of these cases on the insurance industry, and what measures are being taken that will allow more lawsuits to be filed on behalf of victims years after they were abused or molested. Author Charlie Kingdollar recently retired after 40 years with General Reinsurance Corp., where he was Vice President and Emerging Issues Officer. He is widely considered to be among the best resources for new liability risks, even called by one colleague as a “prescient and gifted industry futurist.” I recommend you follow him on LinkedIn. --Tom Hagy About The Journal on Emerging Issues in Litigation is a co-production of HB, Fastcase, and Law Street Media. You can also hear the complementary (and complimentary) Emerging Litigation Podcast wherever podcasts appear. For questions, contact Tom Hagy, Editor in Chief, at Editor@LitigationConferences.com.

Read More

Susan E. Brice and Vince Angermeier on Causation in Toxic Torts

May 20th, 2021|Categories: Environmental Torts, HB Risk Notes, HB Tort Notes, Journal, Mass Torts, News|Tags: , , , , |

Susan E. Brice and Vince Angermeier on Causation in Toxic Torts Abstract Concepts of “substantial factors,” “any exposure,” and “de minimis” contact have long-supported claims brought by toxic tort plaintiffs against manufacturers. They have furthered tort actions against defendants based on the “cumulative expo-sure” theory, particularly in the asbestos arena, even when a single fiber could not be connected to a specific defendant. But a 2017 Seventh Circuit decision dealing with Illinois law is part of a trend toward tightening up these standards. This article discusses the various cases on this threshold issue as the authors ponder whether this is a movement that needs some pushing. Authors Susan E. Brice (sb@nijmanfranzetti.com) is a partner at Nijman Franzetti, LLP. She has litigated state and federal disputes and has counseled clients on complicated scientific issues arising in environmental law, toxic torts, and product liability. Susan works with scientists on matters in the fields of genomics, toxicology, and epidemiology in industries such as chemical manufacturing, energy production, food, agriculture, and real estate. Vince Angermeier (va@nijmanfranzetti.com) is Of Counsel at Nijman Franzetti, LLP, where he concentrates his work on CERCLA, EPCRA, RCRA, and Clean Water Act matters, a practice enhanced by his environmental engineering experience. Vince has assisted on civil litigation, administrative rulemakings, regulatory and compliance matters involving water, solid waste, and [...]

Read More

Mass Tort Emotional & Psychological Claims

October 27th, 2020|Categories: Complex Business Litigation, Featured On-Demand, Mass Torts, Torts-On-Demand-CLE|Tags: , , , , |

Emotional & Psychological Claims in Multi-Plaintiff Toxic Tort Litigation: What attorneys need to know about the scientific and medical aspects of these injuries.  On-Demand | Recorded October 27th, 2020 ON DEMAND WEBINAR REGISTRATION Emotional injury claims often arise in toxic torts due to exposure to asbestos, mold, carbon monoxide, and environmental contamination, to name a few. And now, as large swaths of the nation are often engulfed in flame, what physical and emotional effect might manifest from prolonged smoke inhalation? Determining the validity of these injuries and any causal connection is difficult. It requires careful study by truly qualified experts often from various disciplines. When psychological harm exists, it can be debilitating. There is much an attorney should know when wading into these types of claims. How often is there a legitimate injury? What different types of injuries are there? What should attorneys know when working with or challenging psychological experts? How is causation proven or disproven? How are damages determined? Join our panel comprising a forensic neuropsychologist, an industrial and occupational physician, a forensic psychiatrist, and an experienced mass tort practitioner as they share their insights and experiences. Key Points Understanding the different types of psychological injury claims. Understanding the differences between objective injuries that are easy to identify and distinguish, versus subjective injuries such [...]

Read More

Washington AG Sues Juul, Minnesota Judge Tosses RJR’s Suit to Overturn City’s Flavored Tobacco Ban, Verus Reports

September 14th, 2020|Categories: Complex Business Litigation, HB Tort Notes, Mass Torts, News|Tags: , , , , |

Manager of Research Services Verus LLC klavin@verusllc.com 609-466-0427 Photo by Rubén Bagüés on Unsplash Litigation Update: Vaping and Flavored Tobacco Products Lawsuits The Washington state attorney general has filed a lawsuit in King County Superior Court against Juul Inc., alleging that the company knowingly targeted minors in its marketing campaign on social media in an effort to push its products on young consumers. In the suit, Attorney Bob Ferguson claimed that in using young models, brightly colored ads and candy-flavored vaping juice, Juul violated Washington state’s consumer protection laws and failed to meet state tobacco product licensing regulations which would make the sales of the company’s e-cigarettes unlawful between August 2016 and April 2018 .... In another tobacco-related case, U.S. District Judge Patrick J. Schiltz tossed out R.J. Reynolds’ lawsuit against Edina, MN over the city’s ban on flavored tobacco products.  The company had claimed that Edina had overstepped its authority with a ban that was aimed at curbing vaping by younger consumers. In his ruling, Judge Schiltz wrote that the ban fell under a provision of the federal tobacco laws granting local governments the authority to regulate the sale of certain products .... Read more at VerusLLC.com.

Read More

Progress of Roundup Settlement in Question, Verus Reports

September 2nd, 2020|Categories: Complex Business Litigation, HB Tort Notes, Mass Torts|Tags: , , , , |

Manager of Research Services Verus LLC klavin@verusllc.com 609-466-0427 Progress of Roundup Settlement in Question Judge Would Likely Not Have Agreed to a Stay Had He Known About the Contingency On August 27, plaintiffs’ counsel in the multi-district litigation involving Monsanto and its widely used weed killer Roundup, advised the court that parent company Bayer AG appeared to be going back on the settlement agreement announced in June. At that time, the company had agreed to settle about 75% of the 125,000 claims filed by plaintiffs alleging that their non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma was linked to Roundup use; the settlement was for an estimated $10 billion. At the hearing, Judge Vince Chhabria advised that he had received confidential letters from a number of plaintiffs’ counsel with cases pending in the MDL who were concerned that Bayer AG was going back on the settlement, noting that the company had terminated settlement term sheets and refused to execute master service agreements that would finalize their settlements; Bayer conceded that there were currently no final agreements. Bayer did advise Judge Chhabria that about 667 of the cases currently pending in the MDL had been resolved, a figure that the judge noted was only a fraction of the 4,000 currently filed.  The judge also pointed to Bayer’s June 24 announcement of the settlement, [...]

Read More

NJ Judge Overstepped in Striking Talc Plaintiff Experts, Verus Reports

August 21st, 2020|Categories: Class Actions, HB Tort Notes, Mass Torts|Tags: , , , , |

Manager of Research Services Verus LLC klavin@verusllc.com 609-466-0427 Judge Abused Discretion in Striking Expert Evidence, NJ Appellate Court Finds Reverses 2016 Summary Judgment in Ovarian Cancer Cases On August 5, a three judge panel from the New Jersey state appeals court reversed a 2016 summary judgment granted in favor of defendants, talc manufacturer Johnson & Johnson and talc miner Imerys Talc America in cases brought by two women who allege J&J’s talc products caused their ovarian cancer. In its opinion, the panel ruled that Atlantic County Superior Court Judge Nelson C. Johnson abused his discretion by serving as the fact finder in deciding the credibility of the plaintiffs’ experts’ opinions instead of merely assessing whether the doctors’ opinions were based on sound scientific methodology. The trial judge acknowledged that the experts, Dr. Graham Colditz and Dr. Daniel Cramer, were qualified but opined that their scientific studies and evidence were narrow and shallow, showing a preference for cohort studies and their larger sample sizes over the case studies relied on by the experts.  In overturning the ruling by the trial court and discussing the studies cited by Colditz and Cramer, the appeals court stated that those studies satisfied the criteria outlined in the Federal Judicial Center’s Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence and also noted that size and [...]

Read More

Monsanto, Bayer Paying Billions for PCB Cleanups

July 3rd, 2020|Categories: Class Actions, HB Tort Notes, Mass Torts|Tags: , , , , |

Read Baltimore Sun environmental writer Scott Dance's June 24, 2020, article titled, "A $550M national class-action settlement includes money for cleanup of PCBs in Baltimore waterways." He offers the Maryland angle on the $550 million class action settlement between Monsanto and 13 government agencies across the U.S., just part of a much larger agreement. "The settlement was one of several that Monsanto’s owner, German pharmaceutical company Bayer, announced Wednesday. Bayer said it’s paying up to $10.9 billion to settle current and potential future litigation over Monsanto’s weedkiller Roundup, which has faced numerous lawsuits over claims it causes cancer, and $1.22 billion to settle two further cases, including the class action focused on PCBs." Dance writes that the terms of this settlement are off to Judge Fernando M. Olquin of the Central District of California for his review. Judge Olquin was one of the presenters on multiple panels at the Class Action Law Forum presented by Western Alliance Bank and produced by my team at HB. Kenneth R. Feinberg, also a presenter, is the court-appointed special master in the case. The Baltimore Sun piece was one of many that gave the local perspective on this nationwide litigation and settlement in progress, like this one from the San Francisco Chronicle, with a Seattle dateline, and this one from the Washington State Wire quoting [...]

Read More

New Litigation Journal Coming January 2021

March 19th, 2020|Categories: Complex Business Litigation, HB Risk Notes, HB Tort Notes, Law Firm Operations|Tags: , , , , |

HB, Fastcase Partner to Publish Law Street Media’s Journal of Emerging Issues in  Litigation  FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE March 19, 2020 Media Contact: Jennifer Brand Ransom | Fastcase Media Relations 202.731.2114 | jbransom@brandsolutionsgroup.com Washington, DC (March 13, 2020) – Legal publisher Fastcase and partner HB Litigation Conferences today announced a journal partnership to provide firms with expert insights into emerging litigation. The new Law Street Media's Journal of Emerging Litigation will be led by Managing Director and Founder of HB Litigation Conferences Tom Hagy, former Publisher and Managing Editor of LexisNexis Mealey’s Litigation Reports. “There are many new areas of litigation emerging from vaping to mandatory arbitration, privacy breaches to drones and autonomous vehicles and our Docket Alarm service is in such a unique position to track the filing data. We wanted to focus on new types of suits and the experts who are leading the charge, before litigation completely unfolds. To do so, we needed a strong journalist and leader who could make sense of these new types of lawsuits and pick the best of the best to cover. Tom Hagy was the first and best choice for us,” noted Steve Errick, COO of Fastcase. Publishing its first issue this summer, the focus of the journal in many ways will parallel Hagy's career-long focus on emerging areas of litigation, supported with the valuable filing data from Docket Alarm. [...]

Read More

PTSD in Multi-Plaintiff and Mass Tort Cases | Webinar OnDemand

July 19th, 2019|Categories: Complex Business Litigation, HB Risk Notes, Mass Torts|Tags: , , , , |

[one-fourth-first]   Price: $47 When: On-demand Where: Your computer or mobile device CLE: 1 hour Speakers Mark I. Levy MD, DLFAPA Medical Director Forensic Psychiatric Associates Medical Corporation Associate Clinical Professor, Psychiatry University of California, San Francisco, School of Medicine 415.388.8040 mlevy@fpamed.com  Sarah A. Hall, PhD. Psychologist for Forensic & Neuropsychological Assessments Forensic Psychiatric Associates Medical Corporation shall@fpamed.com  [/one-fourth-first][three-fourths] What tort attorneys need to know about PTSD claims. Mass tort claims arise most frequently in man-made and natural disaster catastrophe litigation as well as personal injury, employment, product liability and toxic tort litigation. Frequently, these lawsuits include either primary or secondary allegations of emotional distress. PTSD is one of the most common emotional distress claims alleged within mass tort litigation, as well as allegations of depression and emotional stress (anxiety).  Join an experienced psychiatrist and psychologist who will cover the following topics relevant to the forensic psychiatric assessment of emotional damages within mass tort and complex litigation:  + Introduction: Defining PTSD. What it is and what it is not. + The methodological approach to assessing allegations of emotional distress in mass tort & complex litigation. + The importance and the methodology of psychological testing as part of the assessment of emotional distress claims in mass tort litigation. + Claimant population screening. Using psychological test instruments to differentiate claimants who [...]

Read More

CNN — Jury returns $2 billion verdict against Monsanto for couple with cancer — the biggest so far

June 5th, 2019|Categories: Class Actions, Environmental Torts, HB Tort Notes|Tags: , , , , |

[one-half-first] [/one-half-first] [one-half] A California jury returned a $2.055 billion verdict against Monsanto and their popular weed killer, Roundup. “The verdict in Oakland includes more than $55 million in compensatory damage and $2 billion in punitive damages.” The septuagenarian plaintiffs, represented by attorney Michael Miller of The Miller Firm, were a California couple that said long-term exposure to Roundup caused both of them to be diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma, a cancer that usually cannot be traced back to a source according to the American Cancer Society. The particular carcinogen in Roundup is glyphosate, which the EPA has stated was not a carcinogen in a 2015 assessment, which contradicts WHO’s statement that glyphosate is “probably carcinogenic to humans”. While a Monsanto spokesperson previously denied any manipulation, a jury found that a series of texts and emails between Monsanto and the EPA that proved Monsanto culpable of manipulating science. [/one-half] Read the complete post by Michael Nedelman on CNN.com here!

Read More

The Wrong-Headedness of Hindsight Standards — Michelle Yeary | Drug & Device Law Blog

May 27th, 2019|Categories: Complex Business Litigation, HB Risk Notes, Mass Torts|Tags: , , , , |

Dechert LLP attorney Michelle Yeary cautions against applying perfect hindsight to drug liability. "We all know hindsight is 20/20.  And, it’s easy.  There are dozens of television and radio programs that thrive on Monday morning quarterbacking.  There’s no risk in saying the coach should have called for a pass when you already know the run didn’t work.  It’s also dangerous because it’s easy.  People are often too quick to point out that you should have taken path B after everyone learns path A is full of potholes.  Pointing it out is one thing, holding you liable for it is another." Yeary takes a look at what happened in Holley v. Gilead Science, Inc., 2019 WL 2077845 (N.D. Cal. May 10, 2019). The case involves two of the main active ingredients in AIDS drugs: TDF and TAF. The plaintiff alleges that the defendant should be responsible for allegedly knowingly using TDF over TAF (allegedly a safer alternative). TDF was FDA approved first and TAF second.  Unfortunately, Yeary wrote, hindsight "can be used to demand perfection," allowing  plaintiffs to "proceed on what is essentially a stop-selling theory," that first-generation drugs should not be submitted to the FDA because, in hindsight, "later approved treatments were safer." That's what happened in Holley, she said. Read the complete post by Michelle Yeary on the Drug and [...]

Read More
Go to Top