NEW ORLEANS (Legal Newsline) – A federal appeals court has affirmed a bankrupt company’s request for summary judgment, arguing the asbestos claim filed against Placid Oil Company was discharged as claimants were given sufficient notice of the 1987 bar date.
“Toyota Escapes to Texas” was the headline on a Wall Street Journal article last week, with the subhead: “Another engine of middle-class jobs flees California.”
I thought 2013 was one of the strangest years yet for wackiness in the legal system, with some of the weirdest lawsuits and litigants we’ve seen in years. But judging from the legal stories that have emerged so far in the new year, 2014 is shaping up to be a banner year for legal oddities.
NEW ORLEANS – In the wake of continued revelations of possible corruption in the settlement program form the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, BP has published a new advertisement in the Wall Street Journal chronicling law firms seeking payouts for themselves through the settlement program.
The title character in the 1986 TV cop show parody Sledge Hammer, played to perfection by David Rasche, was a comically alarming combination of Dirty Harry, Maxwell Smart and Fearless Fosdick. His catch phrase (“Trust me. I know what I’m doing.”) inevitably preceded his next foray into mayhem and inspired confidence in no one.
The recently-released movie “The Company You Keep,” directed by and starring Robert Redford, examines what happens when an investigative journalist reveals the hidden Weather Underground past of a mild-mannered Albany attorney implicated in a botched bank robbery in the 1970s during which a security guard was killed.
NEW ORLEANS -- The judge overseeing the litigation from the BP oil spill has determined that at least one of the contracts with Brent Coon and Associates has a forged client signature.
We commented recently on the perils of bad publicity and how press reports highlighting Beaumont’s reputation as a plaintiff-friendly forum tend to scare away prospective employers, leading to fewer job opportunities for our citizens, a weaker local economy, and a smaller local tax base.
In June 2010 we commented on this famous quote about publicity, attributed to P.T. Barnum and others: “I don’t care what the newspapers say about me as long as they spell my name right.”
Beaumont’s high profile plaintiffs’ attorney Brent Coon might have committed fraud when submitting his clients’ claims to asbestos trusts, according to an investigation by the Wall Street Journal.
Coffman A Beaumont resident has filed a class action claiming Google inserted code into Google Ads that allowed Google to install tracking cookies on iPhones, iPads and Mac computers.
After years of litigation, The Dole Food Co. Inc. and Beaumont's Provost Umphrey Law Firm LLP have reached an agreement to settle all the litigation the firm filed on behalf of more than 5,000 foreign farm workers claiming injuries from pesticides.
Landry NEW ORLEANS, La. - It is hard to imagine, but not very long ago, Texas was described by the Wall Street Journal as the "lawsuit capital of the world." Frivolous lawsuits and settlements were out of control. Plaintiff-friendly laws, judges and juries made it virtually impossible for defendants to get a fair trial. Meanwhile, businesses, doctors and, most importantly, jobs were leaving the state in droves.
In a recent column, I discussed the often-outrageous attorney fee claims in class action lawsuits, where lawyers pocketed huge sums while achieving little, if anything, for the consumers in whose names they waged war in the legal trenches.
