court 7 articles

The New Jersey Supreme Court’s Appellate Division last year decided to revive a whistleblower lawsuit against Johnson & Johnson’s Ethicon unit, triggering a backlash from state business groups who argue that the case effectively would allow employees in watchdog positions to file improper whistleblower lawsuits. Law360 reports that the New Jersey Business & Industry Association and the New Jersey Civil Justice Institute filed a brief June 2 urging the high court to overturn the Appellate court’s decision. They are the latest tort-reform minded groups to push back against the decision, saying that it improperly broadens the state’s whistleblower law by ... Read More

A former Ethicon executive who claims he was fired in retaliation for voicing concerns about product safety and efficacy has had his case upheld and remanded for jury trial by a judicial panel in New Jersey Superior Court. Joel Lippman, former vice president of clinical trials for Johnson & Johnson‘s unit Ethicon, claims he was fired in May 2006 for raising concerns about the safety and effectiveness of several medical products, which resulted in delayed product launches, recalls, and other setbacks for the medical products conglomerate. Mr. Lippman alleges Ethicon retaliated against him even though calling out safety and efficacy ... Read More

Lawyers for Patrick Juneau, the oil-spill claims administrator appointed by BP and the court, lashed out at the oil giant Tuesday, accusing BP of attempting to undermine the claims process by cutting his budget and halting the payment of valid claims to individuals and business harmed by the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill. BP has repeatedly pushed the court to invalidate terms of the settlement agreement it reached with plaintiffs’ lawyers in March 2012, asserting that the Mr. Juneau’s office has been paying fictitious and exaggerated claims. U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier, who is overseeing the BP’s oil spill litigation ... Read More

The federal judge overseeing BP litigation in New Orleans has struck down BP’s latest effort to freeze payments made to claimants harmed by the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The court’s decision means the oil giant could be running out of options to suspend payments being made under the terms of the settlement it agreed to last year. BP had asked Judge Carl Barbier to stop claimant payments while an investigation of two lawyers connected to claims administrator Patrick Juneau is underway. BP alleges that Lionel Sutton and his wife Christine Reitano, who were helping ... Read More

Alarmed by the corporate lobby’s aggressive efforts to undermine the U.S. civil justice system, the American Association for Justice (AAJ) has launched a new website and blog called Take Justice Back. The aim of the website is to keep U.S. citizens informed about how their rights and protections, guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution, are being eroded by powerful corporations and lobbying groups trying to escape accountability. Armed with hundreds of millions of dollars, these corporate interests have infiltrated Congress and are using their financial might “scheming up ways to avoid accountability when they hurt someone,” the AAJ says. The “Tort ... Read More

In what appears to be a move to keep potentially damaging cases from trial, Toyota Motor Corp. has agreed to settle a sudden-acceleration lawsuit filed by the families of two people killed in a 2010 crash in Utah. The case had been scheduled to go to trial February 19 as the first of three bellwether cases involving runaway Toyota vehicles. The cases were selected to represent the larger body of wrongful death and personal injury litigation the Japanese auto giant faces over allegations that its vehicles contain a defect that can cause them to accelerate suddenly and unexpectedly. Details of ... Read More

A federal judge in Santa Ana, California dealt Toyota a major legal blow when he rejected the automaker’s petition to have all class-action lawsuits seeking damages related to sudden-unintended-acceleration (SUA) issues thrown out. Toyota argued that many plaintiffs did not state specific losses in dollars and that many of them did not experience any malfunctions that caused their vehicles to speed out of control and were suing on the basis of the loss in resale value. In his Nov. 19 ruling however, Judge James V. Selina said that specific damages are not required at this stage in the legal process ... Read More