Toxic Torts Archives

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

[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!

Cognitive Shortcuts: Assessing Case Value & Litigation Risk with Homer Simpson and Spock

September 11th, 2018|Categories: Complex Business Litigation, Environmental Torts, HB Tort Notes|Tags: Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR), Arbitration, Emerging Litigation & Risk, Mediation, Risk Management, Toxic Torts|

By Jeff Trueman, Esq. Mediator The central question on the minds of counsel, their clients, and insurance professionals in civil litigation is, of course, “What’s the case worth?” Although lead paint litigation may be going through some changes, it remains a mature tort where enough historical settlement and verdict data exist for counsel to argue why a particular case should or should not fit within a certain settlement range. In the midst of these discussions, the human brain plays tricks on us. For example, litigators sometimes assume that their trial experience can determine how jurors will negotiate with one another and resolve factual discrepancies after closing arguments. This assumption is a “heuristic” – a cognitive shortcut called attributional error or illusion of control. Underneath the games of litigation “chicken” that are the hallmark of settlement negotiation, heuristics lead to erroneous valuations and assessments of risk. Although more than one hundred heuristics exist, approximately 15-20 occur commonly in the context of settlement negotiations. It is easy for potential clients to employ a heuristic similar to the illusion of control by imagining a connection between something they desire, such as a favorable case outcome, and the past successes of their prospective lawyer. Representative and confirmation biases influence how we connect “model” to “outcome.” When differences over case value intensify, litigators return to threats [...]