In the News

The House Judiciary Committee is holding a subcommittee hearing today on a one-sided bill that would have a chilling effect on innovation and small businesses by unfairly stacking the deck in favor of corporate giants and impairing the value of intellectual property. 

On March 11, 2013, the Wall Street Journal published an article that fits neatly in the play book of Big Asbestos’ campaign to avoid compensating the asbestos victims they deliberately harmed by vilifying the victims and accusing them and their families of “fraud.”  The goal of this campaign, led by asbestos corporations, their insurers and their front groups, is to delay and deny until asbestos victims die.  

Col. Adele Connell served our country for 34 years in the Army and National Guard.  Connell learned she had breast cancer while still active duty and this meant she had no choice on where the surgery would be done or who would do it; it would be handled in a military hospital.  

The U.S. Supreme Court will hear a case known as Mutual Pharmaceutical v. Bartlett on March 19, 2013.  It centers around a woman who suffered devastating side-effects after taking the generic drug sulindac for shoulder pain.

This post was originally published on the Alliance for Justice’s blog and can be found here.

As they suffered in sweltering heat, walked through sewage and defecated in plastic bags, some of the passengers aboard the Carnival Cruise Lines ship Triumph probably were thinking “At least when we finally get home we can sue the b-----ds.”

The Carnival Triumph in happier times (including working toilets) Well, they can try – and some already have. But the U.S. Supreme Court has made it a lot harder than it should be.

Avery de Groh, now 9 years old, is facing an all too familiar anguish: her life saving heart defibrillator has again been recalled. Stuck with the impossible decision of leaving a faulty device in their child or risk an intense surgery to take it out, the de Groh’s are wrestling with what to do. While unnecessary shocks and a second recall are alarming enough, more so is the fact that the de Groh’s learned about this recall a year after the fact through a chance newsletter. But the medical devices industry enjoys near total immunity from being taken to court if their devices were once approved by the FDA.  The result is a financial and emotional burden for the de Groh’s, who have already paid once for such a removal surgery and will be forced to pay out of pocket yet again.

This post was originally published on Media Matters for America’s blog and can be found here.

While the “fiscal cliff” negotiations continued in the wee hours, Congress did pass one piece of legislation that got very little national attention: legislation that would set standards for drywall.  It might seem trivial, but not for the thousands of homeowners who have lost their homes or suffered significant drops in their home values because of dangerous Chinese drywall that was used after hurricane Katrina created shortages in the South.

This post was originally published on the Alliance for Justice’s blog and can be found here.

The REAL danger in Instagram's new Terms of Use: forced arbitration

Perhaps you’ve read about the controversy over new “Terms of Use” from the photo-sharing service Instagram, which now is owned by Facebook.  Under the terms, if you use Instagram it is free to sell your photos, your likeness and pretty much anything else it knows about you to advertisers – without any further consent on your part, and without compensating you.  And if, by some chance, you’re under 18, Instagram assumes that when you click “accept,” at least one parent has read over the terms and agreed to them on your behalf.

Should those who make and sell guns be immune from lawsuits?  One prominent legal analyst argues the law needs to change.  Check out Andrew Cohen’s article for The Atlantic.