Take this recent decision by the Montana Supreme Court, reported today by Mass Tort Defense.
FORBES: Montana Court Says Pitcher Needed Warning About Aluminum Bat
In December the first two welding cases in a mass tort with 5, 300 claimants imploded amid charges of faked injuries.
The charge is similar to those made by defendants in a mass tort involving silicosis, where a federal judge last June found that thousands of the cases were based on flimsy diagnostic work.
The fen-phen case, in all its turns, illustrates the conflicts and collusion that are inherent in mass-tort litigation.
FORBES: Superlawyer Chesley Sucked Into Kentucky Disciplinary Probe
The case is interesting not only because it highlights a nasty little conflict that mass-tort lawyers would prefer not to talk about.
FORBES: Nextel Labor Settlement Was Great Deal For Lawyers, If Not Their Clients
Defendants in medical malpractice lawsuits might have the cards stacked against them in a court that tends to favor defendants in mass-tort suits.
In March 2003 Tinseltown darling Erin Brockovich filed a mass toxic tort claiming that drilling on the field had created air contaminants that caused a cancer cluster among students, teachers and residents.
That's what happened in mass-tort settlements involving asbestos, Vioxx, fen-phen and other products, where lawyers cleverly bundled hundreds or even thousands of claims that might not stand a good chance in court with a few that threatened blockbuster verdicts.
"Given the experience of fen-phen, it would border on malpractice if Merck's lawyers allowed the same kind of 'litigation doctors' to provide evidence for claims, " said Lester Brickman, professor at Yeshiva University's Cardozo School of Law and expert on mass-tort litigation.
"Even a company as big as BP can, and will, be driven into bankruptcy" if lawyers can convince judges to allow mass-tort lawsuits over, say, exposure to toxic chemicals in the oil, said Lester Brickman, a professor at Yeshiva University's Cardozo School of Law.
Relatively few countries even allow class actions (Brazil and Canada do, although few cases are filed) and the track record of jailed mass-tort and class action lawyers like Dickie Scruggs, Bill Lerach and Mel Weiss speaks to the deep corruption that is always lurking around this form of litigation.
FORBES: The U.S. Legal System: Good At Some Things, Wretched At Others
That shoves the ever-spreading Gulf spill firmly out of what we know about traditional tort law and into the strange world of mass torts like asbestos, fen-phen and Vioxx.
应用推荐