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Cosmetic Talc Litigation Media Coverage 12/16/2016
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[Video] America’s Lawyer
Dec 15, 2016 | RT
By Mike Papantonio
On this premiere episode of America’s Lawyer, attorney Mike Papantonio exposes pharmaceutical company, Johnson & Johnson for ignoring evidence of a link between its baby powder and ovarian cancer in women. -
'Hellholes' Report Takes Aim at California in Full and Fla. High Court, Among Others
Dec 15, 2016 | The National Law Journal
By Miriam Rozen,
... Four of the top six products liability verdicts in the United States this year came out of St. Louis Circuit Court—drawing in out-of-state plaintiffs, the report states. Its authors call special attention to three verdicts in talc-related cases, totaling $197 million, which had plaintiffs from Alabama, South Dakota and California. -
St. Louis court tops list of ‘judicial hellholes’ by tort reform group
Dec 15, 2016 | Legal News Line
By Jessica Karmasek
...The Missouri trial court hosted three huge verdicts this year in cases asserting that talcum powder causes ovarian cancer.
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Dec 15, 2016 | RT
By Mike Papantonio
On this premiere episode of America’s Lawyer, attorney Mike Papantonio exposes pharmaceutical company, Johnson & Johnson for ignoring evidence of a link between its baby powder and ovarian cancer in women. Mike then discusses the numerous lawsuits that have been brought against the company with attorney Kim Adams. Mike then speaks with environmental activist and consumer advocate, Erin Brockovich about the continuing water crisis in Flint, Michigan and the thousands of children who have been impacted by lead poisoning. Mike then talks to Farron Cousins, Executive Editor of The Trial Lawyer Magazine about the Department of Justice breaking its promise to end private prison contracts. Mike wraps up the show by highlighting a federal climate change lawsuit filed by children against the federal government.
https://www.rt.com/shows/americas-lawyer/370367-baby-powder-cancer-flint/
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'Hellholes' Report Takes Aim at California in Full and Fla. High Court, Among Others
Dec 15, 2016 | The National Law Journal
By Miriam Rozen,
Deploying at times over-the-top rhetoric and a healthy dose of sarcasm, the American Tort Reform Association Thursday issued its annual report on what it calls the country's "judicial hellholes," denouncing overly plaintiff-friendly conditions in a variety of jurisdictions of every size from coast to coast.
The tort reform group aimed its ire at the entirety of the nation's largest state, California as well as the more modestly-sized jurisdictions of Madison and St. Clair counties in Illinois, perennial targets of the report despite their population sizes of less than 300,000 each.
It identifies what ATRA views as the "worst" jurisdictions, and cites a mix of states, court districts, individual courts and court programs, cities and regions.
Ranked in descending order, the top nine locales named in the report as "judicial hellholes" are: St. Louis; California; New York City (which was noted for its asbestos litigation); the Florida Supreme Court and South Florida; New Jersey; Cook, Madison and St. Clair counties in Illinois; Louisiana; Newport News, Virginia; and Hidalgo County, Texas.
The report, which the Washington-based nonprofit has dispatched annually since 2002, draws its conclusions based on "feedback gathered" from its related association's members and "firsthand sources." It is compiled by staff members of the American Tort Reform Association with spokesman Darren McKinney serving as editor in chief.
In a written statement in response to the tort reformers' report, Linda Lipsen, the CEO for the American Association for Justice, an advocacy and membership organization for plaintiff lawyers, belittled the annual report as a "publicity stunt."
Lipsen said it "has been ridiculed, debunked, and exposed as nothing more than propaganda paid for by corporations seeking to evade accountability for wrongdoing."
McKinney took the comment in stride. "They are entitled to their opinion. Our report is based on the facts. We are not making up the court cases that we are citing. Any reader can click and go find the original sources," he said.
If plaintiffs' lawyers believe the reports generate publicity, McKinney couldn't agree more. He notes last year's report received 60 million media impressions.
The rhetoric of the report is designed for public consumption.
In this year's report, the California courts come in for a particular tongue-lashing.
"A lengthy book could be written every year about the inexorable expansion of civil liability in the once Golden State," the report's authors state.
"California judges and lawmakers seem perfectly happy to host tens of thousands of out-of-state plaintiffs in courts paid for by California taxpayers," the authors write.
To bolster that statement, the report cites the Civil Justice Association of California's data as showing 2,919 products liability cases filed against pharmaceutical companies in Los Angeles and San Francisco between January 2010 and May 2016—two-thirds of which included "not a single Californian."
In one instance, the report's approach to California is graphic.
A California Supreme Court decision refusing to strike down as "unconscionable" an arbitration-provision used-car sales contract was juxtaposed with a photograph that apparently depicts a beheading. ATRA was trying to make the point that the justices had to rein in trial courts that were much too loose in their definition of "unconscionable."
In the case, captioned Sanchez v. Valencia Holding, the report's authors write the "high court found that a bad bargain was not necessarily an unconscionable bargain in finding a similar arbitration provision enforceable. So here's hoping the high court's guidance slows the hysterical misuse of previously well-defined words in so many lower California courts. ISIS beheadings are unconscionable. Used car sales contracts are not," the narrative concluded.
The report also focuses on the Big Apple for its asbestos litigation, declaring: "[T]he justices presiding over New York City's Asbestos Litigation (NYCAL) court also seem to be rather well educated in the corrupting politics of the crumbling former Empire State. They've been taught that trial judges aspiring to appellate court appointments dare not displease certain members of the plaintiffs' bar."
Barbs were also are aimed at the Florida Supreme Court.
"No state high court in recent years has been more brazenly inclined to disregard the will of the legislative and executive branches of government, and thus disregard the will of the voters who elect those lawmakers, than has the Florida Supreme Court," the report's authors conclude.
"A relentlessly liability-expanding majority of the high court's justices show no compunction whatsoever when it comes to rewriting duly enacted statutes to suit their own political and ideological preferences," the report's authors argue.
South Florida isn't spared. According to the report, "aggressive personal injury lawyers wait like hungry gators to seize upon the litigation opportunities the high court so predictably provides."
In the report, the authors rapped the knuckles of St. Louis, a venue, which they said Bloomberg Businessweek also identifies as well known for "fast trials, favorable rulings, and big awards.'' Four of the top six products liability verdicts in the United States this year came out of St. Louis Circuit Court—drawing in out-of-state plaintiffs, the report states. Its authors call special attention to three verdicts in talc-related cases, totaling $197 million, which had plaintiffs from Alabama, South Dakota and California. What's the attraction of the city? Missouri is one of a shrinking minority of states that have not adopted more rigorous rules for evidence provided by experts—known as Daubertstandards, the report's authors concluded.
But Hidalgo County, Texas, gets an oversized portion of the report's wrath. Timing may be a factor in its prominence. It's only one month before Texas lawmakers are scheduled to start a new session, and tort reformers expect to lobby in Austin to curb hail damage lawsuits filed against insurers. Also earlier this month, a Texas federal judge issued a stern warning to Steve Mostyn, a well-known Houston plaintiffs lawyer who files such suits.
The report notes that earlier this year, its association issued a "hailstorm lawsuit warning" for Hidalgo County. The association may do so for additional counties in Texas, the report predicted.
When severe storms and extensive damage come to Texas, the report concludes: "so do the contractors, public adjusters and lawyers who use questionable solicitation and business tactics to insert themselves into the insurance claims settlement process. They hijack the process by seeking claims that are beyond the actual losses and taking legal actions that delay settlements and generate large legal fees."
Hidalgo County is the eye of the storm, the report declares.
"More than half of the roughly 21,000 hailstorm suits filed in Texas between 2012 and 2015 were filed in this largely agricultural county at Texas's southern tip along the Rio Grande," the report noted, singling out Mostyn and his firm.
"A self-described pit-bull, Mostyn persists in his hailstorm practice even as insurers have begun to fight back."
In a terse Dec. 13 ruling, a McAllen, Texas, federal judge described Mostyn's firm and its actions in far from flattering terms, but stopped short of sanctioning it as an insurance industry defendant had requested.
"In a bout of cosmic irony, the Mostyn Law Firm has unleashed a hailstorm of its own upon the court in the form of baseless claims," wrote U.S. District Judge Micaela Alvarez for the Southern District of Texas in an opinion issued Monday in Dizdar v. State Farm Lloyds.
Alvarez, a George W. Bush appointee, added about the Mostyn firm: "Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 11 authorizes sanctions when the Rule is violated. While the Court here is not imposing sanctions, the Court cautions the Mostyn Law Firm that future violations will subject it to sanctions," Alvarez wrote.
In a written statement in response to Alvarez' ruling, Rene Sigman, head of litigation and a senior attorney for the Mostyn firm, said: "We have successfully litigated and resolved many similar cases in both state and federal courts. While we certainly respect Judge Alvarez's view and will be mindful of her position in cases in her court in the future, we respectfully disagree with her opinions on some of the controlling issues under Texas law."
http://www.nationallawjournal.com/id=1202774858544/Hellholes-Report-Takes-Aim-at-California-in-Full-and-Fla-High-Court-Among-Others?mcode=0&curindex=0&curpage=ALL
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St. Louis court tops list of ‘judicial hellholes’ by tort reform group
Dec 15, 2016 | Legal News Line
By Jessica Karmasek
WASHINGTON (Legal Newsline) - The City of St. Louis, in part because of Missouri’s standard for expert testimony, has topped the perennially litigious California to become the nation’s No. 1 “judicial hellhole,” according to an annual report issued by the American Tort Reform Association Thursday.
The city’s circuit court ranked as the “most unfair” in the nation in its handling of civil litigation, according to the tort reform group’s 2016-17 report.
California, New York City’s asbestos court, Florida’s Supreme Court and South Florida, and New Jersey ranked second, third, fourth and fifth, respectively.
According to the ATRA report, the St. Louis court is a “magnet” for product liability lawsuits and consumer class actions.
“This year, thanks to the Show Me Your Lawsuits State’s lax standard for expert testimony, ‘junk science’ is driving groundless lawsuits and monstrous verdicts that have made the Circuit Court for the City of St. Louis the No. 1 ranked Judicial Hellhole,” ATRA President Tiger Joyce said in a statement. “The overwhelming majority of plaintiffs filing these suits are not from St. Louis, or even from Missouri. They travel from across the country to exploit a weak venue law as their lawyers spend heavily on television advertising that works to prejudice potential jurors against defendants.”
The Missouri trial court hosted three huge verdicts this year in cases asserting that talcum powder causes ovarian cancer.
“Using what some defense counsel have come to call ‘trap, trash and trick’ tactics, plaintiffs’ lawyers through the summer of 2016 had engineered about 2,100 individual claims, grouped in roughly 260 separate lawsuits nationwide, alleging with no scientifically sound evidence that talcum powder causes ovarian cancer,” according to the ATRA report. “Noteworthy is the fact that two-thirds of these claims have been filed in the City of St. Louis Circuit Court. And three gigantic talc verdicts there this year, totaling $197 million, were for plaintiffs from Alabama, South Dakota and California.”
Now, as a result, the court is being flooded with product liability claims from out-of-state plaintiffs who are “eager” to take advantage of Missouri’s lax standard for expert testimony and laws allowing easy forum shopping, the report explained.
Missouri is one of a minority of states that have yet to adopt the Daubert standard for expert testimony.
Named for a 1993 U.S. Supreme Court precedent, Daubert is the standard now used in all federal courts and about 40 state court systems. It effectively requires judges to act as gatekeepers in reviewing the substance of expert testimony before it is presented to a jury to weed out evidentiary theories that haven’t passed peer-review muster.
Personal injury law firms also have made “sizeable” investments in local television advertising to trash defendants and their products, the tort reform group found.
“Ostensibly packaged as client solicitations, the incessant ads more practically function as a means to influence potential jurors,” the ATRA report states. “To wit, talc defendants filed a motion in late July seeking to have a trial moved ‘outside the St. Louis media market and at least 100 miles away in order to minimize the jury taint’ from such ads.”
Right behind the St. Louis court is California, which has floated between the No. 1 and No. 2 slots in recent years.
According to ATRA, a “poorly reasoned” state high court decision -- Bristol-Myers Squibb Company v. Superior Court -- has invited even more out-of-state plaintiffs to clog the state’s dockets further.
“It’s a dubious honor to be a judicial hellhole,” said Kim Stone, president of the Civil Justice Association of California. “While many of our lawsuits are funny (too much ice in my iced tea; Chipotle made me fat), the effects on citizens, taxpayers and the California economy are serious.”
She added, “When the legal system becomes more about a trial lawyer’s payday than about true justice, we all lose.”
While New York City’s Asbestos Litigation court, often referred to as NYCAL, continues to drop down ATRA’s annual list, the tort reform group contends it is still very much an area of concern.
“Despite early signals that Justice Peter Moulton might carry out needed reforms, he has since shown his determination to ignore balanced procedural trends in asbestos litigation nationwide by reestablishing punitive damages and normalizing the consolidation of cases at the expense of defendants’ due process rights,” Joyce said.
According to the ATRA report, Florida’s Supreme Court isn’t far behind, at No. 4, with “liability-expanding decisions that ignore state lawmakers’ prerogatives and motivate South Florida’s plaintiffs’ bar to become even more aggressive.”
At No. 5, New Jersey’s high court also has issued bad decisions that have boosted consumer litigation and undermined arbitration agreements in seemingly lawful contracts, the tort reform group found.
Like St. Louis, the state’s lax standard for expert testimony attracts many products liability plaintiffs from other states, according to the report.
Coming in behind New Jersey: Cook, Madison and St. Clair counties in Illinois; Louisiana; Newport News, Va.; and Hidalgo County, Texas.
The ATRA report also calls attention to eight additional jurisdictions that “bear watching” due to their histories of abusive litigation or “troubling developments.”
On the Watch List: the supreme courts of Georgia, Montana and Pennsylvania, as well as courts in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and McLean County, Illinois. Also on the list of “marginally less severe” jurisdictions are the Northern District of Texas and West Virginia.
The report also includes a number of Dishonorable Mentions, which typically recognize poorly reasoned court decisions. This year’s include “unsound” high court decisions in Arkansas, Indiana and Maryland.
However, the report does highlight some “good news” in its Points of Light section.
This year’s highlights include what ATRA felt were fair and balanced court rulings from 11 states, including Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Florida, Indiana, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Oklahoma and Oregon.
In addition, legislatures in five states -- Mississippi, New Mexico, Tennessee, Utah and West Virginia -- enacted significant, positive civil justice reforms, ATRA says.
The ATRA report also includes a special section, Closer Look, examining litigation under the federal False Claims Act’s “qui tam” provision, which allows private individuals to sue on behalf of the federal government and obtain a “bounty” if successful.
The report explains that as a result of a series of legislative expansions and judicial rulings, this law, originally enacted to battle fraud in contracting during wartime, has morphed into a “plaintiff lawyers’ dream.”
“Penalties available under the law have dramatically increased while it’s become much easier to bring these claims, and the promise of more federal funding has enticed states to enact similarly problematic laws,” Joyce said. “And a recent decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, upholding a lower court award even though the whistleblower flagrantly violated the law’s 60-day seal requirement, is likely to encourage more questionable claims.”
To read the full text of the 2016-17 report, click here.
The annual Judicial Hellholes report compiles the most significant court rulings and legislative actions over the course of the year as documented in real-time online.
The report also reflects feedback gathered from ATRA members and other firsthand sources.
The group says it also receives tips and additional information, which it then researches independently through publicly available court documents, judicial branch statistics, press accounts and various studies.
The Judicial Hellholes program considers only civil litigation; it does not reflect in any way on the criminal justice system.
http://legalnewsline.com/stories/511058029-st-louis-court-tops-list-of-judicial-hellholes-by-tort-reform-group
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