Asbestos News Roundup: 11.5.10

November 5th, 2010. By LucyC

A roundup of recent asbestos-related news and information that you should be aware of.

Asbestos Settlements

Charleston, WV: A liability verdict was issued Wednesday against industrial manufacturer John Crane, Inc. after jurors found that the company’s asbestos-laden products caused a retired pipefitter to contract the deadly lung disease mesothelioma. 

The unanimous verdict was handed down following two hours of jury deliberations. The case was settled for a confidential amount after the liability verdict was announced based on an earlier agreement between the Wood family and representatives from Morton Grove, IL-based John Crane. 

Mr. Robert L Wood, a resident of Wheeling, WV, was diagnosed with mesothelioma two weeks before Christmas in 1999. He had worked as a pipefitter for a local union for more than 41 years. Jurors heard how Mr. Wood handled John Crane gaskets that contained dangerous levels of asbestos, the leading cause of mesothelioma, and how company executives knew about the dangers of asbestos as early as the 1930s. 

In the verdict, the six-member jury found that John Crane was negligent for failing to warn Mr. Wood about the dangers of its products, and that the company’s gaskets were defective. (wvirginiarecord.com)

Asbestos Law

Austin, TX: On October 22, the Supreme Court of Texas ruled that legislators improperly granted bottle cap maker Crown Cork and Seal retroactive protection from asbestos lawsuits. 

Although Crown never made products with asbestos, it still faces liability because it merged in Read the rest of this entry »

Guardians Gone Bad: Elder Abuse Report Reveals Startling Stats

November 3rd, 2010. By LucyC

At the end of October, Lawyers and Settlements reported on a government investigation into hundreds of allegations of elder abuse. Sadly, the investigation found that court appointed guardians of incapacitated seniors are not screened or monitored, with serious, if not life threatening consequences.

The probe by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), an investigating arm of the US Congress, looked into review practices in 45 states. The GAO report was done at the request of the US Senate’s Special Committee on Aging, which has been studying allegations of abuse and diversion of federal benefits from elderly and disabled wards of the court for some time.

Their findings? Nothing short of shocking. Hundreds of allegations were discovered by the federal auditors, allegations of physical abuse and mistreatment by guardians entrusted with the physical, emotional and financial well-being of elderly and disabled people. For example, 20 cases involved criminal or civil penalties against guardians who had stolen at least $5.4 million in assets from some 158 seniors. According to a report on CNN.com a case in Missouri involved a convicted bank robber who had been appointed guardian of an elderly man who developed Alzheimer’s disease. As the senior’s condition deteriorated, the guardian was able to steal over $640,000 from him by writing checks out of the senior’s estate to pay for exotic dancers and a new Hummer. 

With respect to physical abuse and neglect, an attorney for the National Guardianship Association provided the investigators with information on over 300 cases of alleged abuse, neglect and exploitation by guardians nationwide between 1990 and 2009. And, an advocate in Houston, who had personal experience of abuse of guardianship through her mother, provided information on 30 different families that submitted cases of abuse, with her help. “As Read the rest of this entry »

Eckenrode Maupin: Serving up Dinner at Ronald McDonald House

November 3rd, 2010. By BrendaC

This new LawyersandSettlements.com column looks at a side of lawyers you don’t hear too much about—the side that gives back…pays it forward..and shares the love. We’ve found quite a number of attorneys who log non-billable hours helping others—simply because they believe it’s the right thing to do. Their stories are inspiring, and hey, who knew lawyers were so…good? If you’ve got a story to share about an attorney who’s doing the right thing, let us know—we’d love to let others know, too. Today, we talk with John Fischesser of Eckenrode Maupin…

Attorney John Fischesser: “It’s important for us to give back”

These are difficult times for many people in the US–and because of that, lawyers and support staff at one medium-sized law firm in St. Louis are more committed than ever to using their extra time to help out wherever they can. “It’s just the culture that exists here,” says attorney John Fischesser of Eckenrode Maupin, “everyone in our office has been blessed with a job, an education, and it’s important for us to give back to people who find themselves in situations that are out of their control.” 

The firm does not mandate that attorneys and staff do volunteer work. “An email just goes out asking who’s available to help with a particular project and if they can they sign up,” says Fischesser who estimates that the firm donates hundreds of personal hours to everything from picking up litter with the Adopt-a-Highway program to hammering nails for Habitat for Humanity projects to raising money for cancer research. 

At least four times a year, the firm serves dinner at Ronald McDonald House in St. Louis. “There are usually ten of us there. We go out and buy the food—we probably contribute about 150 hours of volunteer time on that project alone each year,” says Fischesser. 

“You get time to interact with the people at the Ronald McDonald House dinners,” says Fischesser. “When you think about what those families are going through, just the fact that they are willing to share their time with us and take time to thank us—it’s really rewarding.” 

The Ronald McDonald house program provides families with a home-away-from-home while their child may be hospitalized at a non-local treatment center. The goal is for families to be able to put complete focus on the needs of the child without having to worry about finding an affordable place to stay, or where they may find their next meal. 

Eckenrode Maupin is a general civil litigation firm that handles both plaintiff and defense work. It defends doctors, nurses and healthcare providers caught in medical malpractice suits. On the plaintiff side, the firm handles everything from non-medical personal injury claims to wills and estates. 

“There are more people than ever who are in need during these difficult economic times,” says Fischesser, “and I think it would be easy for anyone to just focus on their own needs. But I think it’s important to realize that there are lots of people out there who need help—and volunteering is one of the things I enjoy doing with others from our firm.” 

Fischesser also works with the Bar Association of Metropolitan St. Louis (BAMSL) which offers Wills for Heroes. According to Fischesser, “It’s a pro bono wills and estates clinic for police officers, firefighters and others. We hear from Wills for Heroes program coordinators that people who have more dangerous jobs are often reluctant to discuss their own mortality and sometimes don’t do the estate planning they should to ensure their loved ones are taken care of. It’s an ongoing project that BAMSL does once or twice a year.” 

John Fischesser is an attorney with Eckenrode Maupin in St. Louis, Missouri. His work focuses on civil litigation, including representing injured workers in worker’s compensation lawsuits, plaintiffs in personal injury matters, and defending insurance claims. Fischesser has tried over a dozen bench trials and is licensed to practice in Missouri, Illinois, and Louisiana.

Suing the Sippy Cup Set: it’s Tortelicious

November 2nd, 2010. By LucyC

Sweetie, can you even spell N-E-G-L-I-G-E-N-C-E? This is one of those ‘the truth is stranger than fiction’ moments. A six-year old girl can be sued, a New York Supreme Court justice has ruled, for her actions when she was four—yes, four years of age—which involved running her training bicycle into an elderly woman. The incident resulted in 87-year Claire Menagh falling, breaking her hip and subsequently undergoing hip surgery. However she died three months later (not related to the bike accident).

So, who’s to blame? Well according to Justice Paul Wooten, then four-year old Juliet Breitman could be, and the courts should decide. The ruling by Justice Wooten also clears the decks for Juliet’s partner in crime, Jacob Kohn, who was also 4 years of age at the time, to face a similar lawsuit, as both of them allegedly struck the woman.

Juliet’s mother was present and reportedly supervising the children at the time of the incident, and based on that fact and Juliet’s tender age, the lawyer representing the child argued, unsuccessfully, that that the case against his client should be dismissed. (Can a five-year old legally retain a lawyer? She’s not even old enough to vote or drive…)

Justice Wooten’s ruling, made public last Thursday, reportedly ruled Juliet is old enough to be sued and the case can proceed. “For infants above the age of four there is no bright-line rule,” he wrote, adding that the girl had been three months from turning five.

“A parent’s presence alone does not give a reasonable child carte blanche to engage in risky behavior such as running across a street,” Wooten wrote. He added that “the term ‘supervising’ is too vague to hold meaning here.” Those seem like reasonable statements to me.

In his concluding remarks Justice Wooten wrote that there was no indication or evidence that Read the rest of this entry »

Whistle while you Work? Sad Reality in American Business

November 2nd, 2010. By Hunter West

Anyone who is aghast at the recent $750 million GlaxoSmithKline (Glaxo) whistleblower judgment to settle manufacturing deficiencies at a former plant in Puerto Rico shouldn’t be surprised that such things are going on. Happens all the time, it seems. And not just to Glaxo, either. 

In actual fact, that $750 million—of which the whistleblower earns a share of the penalty totaling a whopping $96 million—pales in comparison to the $3.1 billion that the US Department of Justice has recovered under the federal False Claims Act so far in just this fiscal year alone. 

Last year the haul was almost twice that—$5.6 billion. 

Some will say that the whistleblower is an opportunist hoping for a big payday in the end, and will take any amount of criticism and crap en route to the pot at the end of the rainbow. Hell, I’d put up with a lot of grief to collect $96 million. 

I would even eat liver. 

But to those who view whistleblowers as ambulance chasers, consider the amount of fraud and wrongdoing that serves as a persistent blight on the business landscape. Somebody has to expose such misdeeds—and if the government can’t route out the evil-doers (sorry ‘W’…) on their own, then they have to provide incentive for those who can. 

We would all wish that whistleblowers were not necessary. In a perfect world every business and corporate entity would operate with integrity and play by the rules.

Sadly, that’s not the case. 

According to Taxpayers Against Fraud, a not-for-profit that supports whistleblower lawsuits, Read the rest of this entry »