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GlobalTort

The Intersection Among Torts, Science, Corporate Law, Insurance & Bankruptcy

Dr. Egilman as Quantification Expert in Ongoing Talc Trial

By Kirk Hartley on Posted in Asbestos, Litigation Industry, Talc Litigation

A news source reports interesting testimony last Thursday at the ongoing 22 plaintiff talc trial. According to a June 15, 2018 summary from the St. Louis Record,  Mark Lanier (lead trial counsel for plaintiffs) used Dr. David Egilman to do some ostensible form of quantification of exposure to asbestos said to be present in the talc. Dr. Egilman has testified in hundreds of asbestos cases, usually for plaintiffs, but very occasionally for a defendant. According to the summary:

“Egilman told the jury he had determined the powder dosage and cancer risk of the 22 women by conducting personal interviews with 18 of them, or looking at the testimony of the others who had died since the suit was filed.

The information gathered from each woman included the number of years the J&J baby powder was used, the number of times used each day (including child diapering), and an estimate of the total number of asbestos fibers breathed in by each woman. The number of estimated fibers for each plaintiff was measured in the billions.

The end-result conclusion Egilman agreed was that the women had a “baseline”risk-factor greater than twice that for a normal person.

“Greater than twice the risk?”Lanier asked.

“It was,”Egilman said. “They all have exposure levels higher than that permitted by OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) for a worker working with asbestos.”

In addition, the summary states that Dr. Egilman quantified the studies about the alleged presence of asbestos in talc:

“There were 960 studies of J&J powder that showed asbestos in talc out of 1,400 studies,” responded Dr. David Egilman, medical doctor and an expert in asbestos exposure measurements. “Some of the studies were performed by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), by Johnson & Johnson, competitors of J&J and companies like Johns Manville.”

 

When Is a Person an Employee – the UK Supreme Court Version

By Kirk Hartley on Posted in Comparative Law, Litigation Industry

As work continues to change, it seems more and more cases are litigated to define when a person is an employee. The UK Supreme Court recently provided an an answer that deemed a person an “employee,” despite arguments to the contrary. The UK Supreme Court blog covered the case in a helpful June 13, 2018 post, with abundant links to the opinion, the press summary and the argument. The case happened to involve a plumbing and heating engineer, which brings to mind the possible implications of the ruling for tort law, worker’s compensation and insurance purposes.

Concussion Trial Underway In Texas – What Did the NCAA Know and When Did It Know It, Featured in Opening Arguments

By Kirk Hartley on Posted in Concussion, Litigation Industry, Science

Trial is now underway in a football player’s concussion case against a college (Texas). A June 11, 2018 article at Quartz recaps some of the facts about the plaintiff, and possible implications for the sport at the college level.

LAW360 is covering the trial, as is Courtroom View Network. A June 13, 2018 article from LAW360 includes the following excerpts about opening arguments:

Law360 (June 13, 2018, 10:54 PM EDT) — The NCAA has known since the 1930s that football could lead to brain damage, counsel for the widow of a former University of Texas defensive lineman who had chronic traumatic encephalopathy told a Dallas jury during Wednesday opening statements in the first-ever trial concerning the NCAA’s alleged responsibility for a football player’s CTE.

During the first day of the trial before District Judge Ken Molberg, Eugene Egdorf of Shrader & Associates LLP told the jury his client Debra Hardin-Ploetz’s late husband, Greg Ploetz, was never given this crucial information before he made the decision to play college football, even though the NCAA, as the sport’s governing body, had promised to protect its athletes.

***
The NCAA had access to medical literature 90 years ago discussing “punch drunk syndrome” and the long-term, deleterious effects of concussions and repetitive head trauma, and even hired medical experts in 1933 to create a medical handbook — and then ignored the recommendations those experts gave about minimizing head trauma.”

Molecular Biomarker Revolution and Torts – “Blood Tests Developed That Identify Women at Risk of Preterm Birth”

By Kirk Hartley on Posted in Litigation Industry, Science

The molecular biomarker revolution continues and will reshape many topics at the intersections between science and law. A recent example lies in an article explaining that  researchers are moving fruitfully down apath to developing a cheap, non-invasive test to predict risk of pre-term birth. How did they do that? To simplify, tesearchers took a continuing series of blood samples from women who delivered at full term, and also took a set of continuing blood samples from two groups of women expected to have early labor because of prior pregnancy events in their lives. The researchers then compare  the patterns of RNA (related to DNA) in the blood from the three groups. And, voila, they found a pattern of RNA differences that was correct 80% of the time in predicting preterm deliveries and falsely predicted preterm delivery in 17%.

The numbers in the studies are fairly small, and so the study should be viewed as proof of principle. More studies will be needed to refine the analysis. Nonetheless, the point here is that the biomarker revolution is continuing, and almost certainly will prompt many future changes in the standard of care for physicians, hospitals and others.  Going further and thinking about product liability and torts, imagine the implications if studies of this sort are joined with “organ on a chip” studies about the impacts for fetal development of foods consumed and the many types of “exposures to chemicals” that occur during pregnancy. In that vein, consider the possible implications of studies about the impacts when a pregnant mother takes prescription drugs, vitamins or “supplements.”

A summary article is here; it is a June 8, 2018 article from Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News.

First NCAA Concussion Trial Underway

By Kirk Hartley on Posted in Concussion, Litigation Industry, Science

The mass tort news of the week is today’s start of the first trial against the NCAA regarding concussions. The trial is in Dallas, and features prominent plaintiff and defense lawyers. A detailed story about the plaintiff, Greg Ploetz, is provided by a May 24, 2018 post at Deadspin. Live coverage of the trial is available on Courtroom View Network for those willing to pay to watch. Meanwhile, some concussion issues are up in the Ohio Supreme Court.

These cases are important for a range of reasons, including the reaction of jurors to the science that will be presented, including biomarkers.

Update on Springer v. Nohl: Fraudulent Conveyance Claims Arising from Shut Down of Company

By Kirk Hartley on Posted in Asbestos, Fraudulent Conveyance, Litigation Industry, Mass Tort Issues

The Springer v.  Nohl fraudulent conveyance/asbestos case in Wisconsin highlights dubious corporate side activities, and  is finally over, for now, after producing a very narrow ruling.

The Springer case arose out of the shut down and asset sale of a business that sold asbestos-containing products. See this December 9, 2016 GlobalTort  post for summaries of the lower court proceedings in the case. In short, true insiders (including lawyers) bought the assets and sought to limit or avoid any obligation to pay persons injured by previously sold products.

As of early this year, the case was still dragging on even though the briefs were fully submitted as of December 2016; see online here at a Wisconsin court web site. Oral arguments were in October 2017, and are online in video format. The court decided the case on May 15, 2018. 

The narrow, narrow ruling is that Wisconsin’s version of the UFTA does not control common law claims in a tort case.  That outcome is hardly surprising. Various summaries provide more specifics and perspectives. For example, here. 

“Art Imitates Life: ‘Billions’ Describes Six-Figure, Part-Time Jobs On Asbestos Trusts”

By Kirk Hartley on Posted in Asbestos, Asbestos Bankruptcy, Litigation Industry, Mass Tort Issues

It seems to be a week for articles highlighting the more tawdry side of the plaintiff side in mass torts. In this instance, a new Forbes article (June 6, 2018)  by Daniel Fisher highlights a “sinecure” obtained by an asbestos trust trustee who appears not qualified for his role.  The article is insightful in some ways, but also should be taken with a grain of salt for a range of reasons. Among others, some asbestos trust trustees (e.g Eric Green) plainly are eminently qualified and were pioneers in ADR in general and in establishing asbestos trusts and their processes. On the other hand, it appears not so much can be said for a trustee who is highlighted in the article. A teaser excerpt is as follows:

“Koppelman, 78, runs CAK Entertainment, where he negotiates merchandising and finance transactions for stars like Wendy Williams, Pitbull, Nicki Minaj and Jennifer Lopez. He got his start in the entertainment industry as an Adelphi University undergraduate in the Ivy Three, a pop group whose only hit single “Yogi” made it to the Top Ten in 1960. He later became a producer of acts like Jerry Lewis and the Playboys and then rose to the top of EMI Music before branching out into other businesses, including running the eponymous businesses of Steve Madden and Martha Stewart after each was convicted of securities fraud.

Koppelman, a non-lawyer, declined to say how he came to be a member of asbestos trust boards, but he and [Perry] Weitz both sit on the board of Counsel Financial, a litigation finance firm run by former asbestos lawyer Joseph DiNardo.”

“Mass Torts and Mass Frauds” – With Fraudulent Conveyances

By Kirk Hartley on Posted in Litigation Industry, Mass Tort Issues

For an outlier  example of some of the worst of mass tort claiming, proceed directly to Mass Torts and Mass Fraud, the June 6, 2018 post at the Drug and Device Law blog. Part of the introduction is pasted below to entice readers to go read it in full:

“Wouldn’t you know it that the day after our post last week the Sixth Circuit issued a decision, McGirr v. Rehme, ___ F.3d ___, No. 17-3519, 2018 WL 2437184 (6th Cir. May 31, 2018), that reminded us of another fraud associated with the diet drug mass tort litigation – this time involving the legal profession in a very ugly way.  The case was an effort by diet drug plaintiffs to recover money from a plaintiff lawyer who had stiffed them.  Their entitlement to the money had already been established.  The problem was collecting on the judgment, because the plaintiff lawyer was doing a nifty job of moving his assets around.  Because any further characterization by us will likely elicit accusations of schadenfreude on our part, we will rely on direct quotes from the Sixth Circuit’s opinion as much as possible.

Here is how the opinion begins:  “For years, plaintiffs’ attorney Stanley Chesley appears to have been orchestrating a high-stakes shell game in an effort to escape a long overdue multi-million dollar judgment. In the process, he has defrauded hundreds of judgment creditors, many of whom are plaintiffs here.”  2018 WL 2437184, at *1.  And we’re off.”

 

“Woman Who Was Raped as a Teenager Is Awarded $1 Billion in [Compensatory] Damages”

By Kirk Hartley on Posted in Litigation Industry, Mass Tort Issues, Policy Issues, Punitives

A $1 billion compensatory damages verdict last week seems to be another signal of significant unhappiness among the people who are serving on juries. An April 23, 2018 article in the NYT provides more specifics. According to the article, the trial was only on damages, perhaps after a default judgment. As described in my prior post of February 20, 2018. There, I highlighted a jury research report that emphasized that jurors are seeking to use their verdicts to send messages. According to the researchers:

“The most telling thing about the shift in attitudes is the message potential jurors want to send with their verdicts. While some core opinions may have remained somewhat stable, recent respondents are less willing to compromise, and they are more willing to use damage awards to voice their discontent with vigor.”