class action bak

capt 519

this is a new category,see tort reform

and possibly slapp

SEE TEFLON PFAS FOREVER 3M

MILLER AM 1ST LEGAL

GIBSON CRUTCHER

legal suppression?

RICO?

UFW UNION?

primary 5/16 on pcb

616 capt 219

new cat 519 CLIMATE LAWSUITS

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evil b/c pervert class action

https://www.rawstory.com/jim-jordan-2661556363/

no lnx raw 6 23

Jim Jordan leads GOP push to cripple 'fight against disinformation': report

Matthew Chapman

June 19, 2023,

Republican lawmakers are joining forces with far-right activists to attack universities and even private businesses that are investigating the spread of disinformation online — claiming that this amounts to an effort to silence conservatives on the internet, according to a report.

The New York Times posted a details of the actions they are taking on Monday.

"The effort has encumbered its targets with expansive requests for information and, in some cases, subpoenas — demanding notes, emails and other information related to social media companies and the government dating back to 2015. Complying has consumed time and resources and already affected the groups’ ability to do research and raise money, according to several people involved," reported Steven Lee Myers and Sheera Frenkel.

"They and others warned that the campaign undermined the fight against disinformation in American society when the problem is, by most accounts, on the rise — and when another presidential election is around the corner. Many of those behind the Republican effort had also joined former President Donald J. Trump in falsely challenging the outcome of the 2020 presidential election."

The House Judiciary Committee, under Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), has been leading the charge. Meanwhile, a group founded by far-right former Trump adviser Stephen Miller has filed a class-action lawsuit in federal court going after the same entities.

"Targets include Stanford, Clemson and New York Universities and the University of Washington; the Atlantic Council, the German Marshall Fund and the National Conference on Citizenship, all nonpartisan, nongovernmental organizations in Washington; the Wikimedia Foundation in San Francisco; and Graphika, a company that researches disinformation online," said the report.

"In a related line of inquiry, the committee has also issued a subpoena to the World Federation of Advertisers, a trade association, and the Global Alliance for Responsible Media it created. The committee’s Republican leaders have accused the groups of violating antitrust laws by conspiring to cut off advertising revenue for content researchers and tech companies found to be harmful."

The new push is part of a broader, years-long conspiracy theory among right-wing activists that the government and "big tech" companies are colluding to silence conservative speech on the internet. There is no evidence of any such conspiracy; in fact, research shows conservative content actually spreads more easily on Facebook and Twitter.

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LNX

There is no evidence of any such conspiracy; in fact, research shows conservative content actually spreads more easily on Facebook and Twitter.

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pow

Attack on Environmental Court Access

House Roll Call Vote 459

Issue: Other

Representative Jason Smith (R-MO) offered an amendment to H.R. 5538, the Department of the Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2017, which would prohibit funds from being used to pay legal fees for settlements in Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, or Endangered Species Act cases.

Congress long ago recognized that the government needs citizens to be partners in enforcing America’s laws, including environmental protection laws, and this principle is enshrined in numerous federal laws that provide reasonable fee recovery for successful plaintiffs. This amendment would alter this principle by prohibiting payment of citizens’ legal fees when parties avoid costly litigation by agreeing to a settlement. Failing to pay citizens’ legal fees would make it harder for all but the wealthiest Americans and corporations to hold violators of America’s environmental laws accountable through legal channels. On July 13, the House approved the Smith amendment by a vote of 226-202. (House roll call vote 459). NO IS THE PRO-ENVIRONMENT VOTE. The House passed H.R. 5538 on July 14, but the Senate took no action on this legislation.

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http://web.archive.org/web/20180705200611/https://publicintegrity.org/2014/12/04/16320/benzene-and-worker-cancers-american-tragedy

no lnx pix

Bloated and bed-ridden, his skin browned by blood transfusions, John Thompson succumbed to leukemia on November 11, 2009.

A carpenter by trade, Thompson, then 70, had spent much of his life building infrastructure for the petrochemical industry in his native Texas — synthetic rubber plants in Port Neches, chemical facilities in Orange. Throughout the 1960s and early 1970s, he often encountered benzene, stored on job sites in 55-gallon drums, which he used as a cleaning solvent. He dipped hammers and cutters into buckets full of the sweet-smelling liquid; to expunge tar, he soaked gloves and boots in it.

Thompson never figured the chemical could do him harm. Not when it stung his hands or turned his skin chalky white. Not even when it made him faint. But after being diagnosed with a rare form of leukemiain 2006, relatives say, he came to believe his exposure to benzene had amounted to a death sentence. Oil and chemical companies knew about the hazard, Thompson felt, but said nothing to him and countless other workers.

“They put poison on his skin and in the air he breathed,” said Chase Bowers, Thompson’s nephew. “He died because of it.”

Thompson died before a lawsuit filed by his family against benzene suppliers could play out in court, where science linking the chemical to cancer could be put on display. Over the past 10 years, however, scores of other lawsuits, most filed by sick and dying workers like Thompson, have uncovered tens of thousands of pages of previously secret documents detailing the petrochemical industry’s campaign to undercut that science.

Internal memorandums, emails, letters and meeting minutes obtained by the Center for Public Integrity over the past year suggest that America’s oil and chemical titans, coordinated by their trade association, the American Petroleum Institute, spent at least $36 million on research “designed to protect member company interests,” as one 2000 API summary put it. Many of the documents chronicle an unparalleled effort by five major petrochemical companies to finance benzene research in Shanghai, China, where the pollutant persists in workplaces. Others attest to the industry’s longstanding interest in such “concerns” as childhood leukemia.

Exposed: Decades of denial on poisons

Taken together, the documents — put in context by interviews with dozens of lawyers, scientists, academics, regulators and industry representatives — depict a “research strategy” built on dubious motives, close corporate oversight and painstaking public relations. They comprise an industry playbook to counteract growing evidence of benzene’s toxic effects, which continue to command the attention of federal and state regulators and be fiercely debated in court.

benzene graf

What is benzene?

Benzene is a highly flammable, colorless (light yellow at room temperature), liquid, volatile organic compound with a sweet smell. It evaporates into the air quickly and dissolves only slightly in water. It comes from both natural and industrial sources, and can be found in water, air and soil. It is a known human carcinogen.

How common is benzene?

Benzene is the 17th most-produced chemical in the U.S. and is used in the manufacturing of common household items such as plastics, lubricants, dyes, adhesives and pesticides. The main sources of human exposure to benzene are gasoline and cigarette smoke exposure.

How harmful is benzene?

There is an association with leukemia at a chronic exposure level of 10 parts per million, or lower. A worker exposed at 10 ppm of benzene for 40 years is 155 times more likely to die from leukemia than an unexposed worker.

Benzene is found in:

Cigarette smoke

Solvents

Crude Oil

Diesel exhaust

Gasoline

Styrofoam

Ingredients used to make synthetic rubber, lubricants, dyes, detergents, drugs and pesticides

Occupations linked to benzene exposure:

Steel workers

Refinery workers

Printers

Shoe makers

Laboratory technicians

Gas station employees

Firefighters

"The conspiracy exists, and the conspiracy involves hiding the true hazards of benzene at low doses."

Robert Black, a Houston plaintiff's lawyer who has filed benzene lawsuits

“The conspiracy exists, and the conspiracy involves hiding the true hazards of benzene at low doses,” said Robert Black, a Houston lawyer who represents plaintiffs in toxic tort cases. Since 2004, while handling dozens of lawsuits filed on behalf of workers sickened byleukemia, lymphoma and other diseases associated with benzene, Black has obtained 16,000 pages of internal records detailing the industry’s research tactics, which he shared with the Center. Other lawyers provided an additional 5,000 pages.

The documents may represent the tip of the iceberg. For decades, the petrochemical industry has employed what one litigation guide calls a “comprehensive strategy” for defending against workers’ legal claims. Penned by a senior attorney at Shell Oil, the undated document lays out a coordinated “industry response” aimed at shielding internal company records on benzene. It warns defense attorneys to “avoid unnecessary or inadvertent disclosure of sensitive documents or information,” for instance, and to “disclose sensitive benzene documents only on court order.”

“We don’t know what the health effects are because they’re not going to let us know,” Black said. “It’s an American tragedy.”

Five million Americans at risk

Benzene emissions in the United States have declined sharply since 1987, when federal regulators set the occupational exposure limit at 1 part per million. Over roughly the same period, there has been a66-percent drop in releases of the chemical into the environment.Yet experts say it remains a formidable threat. “You’re still seeing elevated risks of leukemias and lymphomas among occupational groups exposed to benzene,” said Peter Infante, a former director of the office that reviews health standards at the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, who has studied the pollutant for 40 years, “as well as populations being polluted from these benzene sources.”

In May, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimated that 5 million Americans — not counting those with workplace exposures — face heightened cancer risks from benzene and 68 other carcinogens spewed into the air by one such source: the nation’s 149 oil refineries. “We are concerned about benzene,” said Kelly Rimer of the EPA’s Office of Air Quality Planning and Standards, which has proposed a rule that would require refinery operators to monitor for the chemical along their fence lines.

Internal documents reveal industry 'pattern of behavior' on toxic chemicals

By David Heath and Jim Morris December 4, 2014

A dozen dirty documents

By Kristen Lombardi and Jared Bennett December 5, 2014

New battlefront for petrochemical industry: benzene and childhood leukemia

By Kristen Lombardi December 8, 2014

“It’s a known human carcinogen,” Rimer said, “and it’s emitted from lots of sectors.”

One month later, California officials lowered the long-term exposure level for benzene from 20 parts per billion to 1 ppb — among the lowest in the country— setting the stage for further emissions cuts at refineries and bulk-oil terminals in that state. Melanie Marty, of the California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment, said regulatory limits are now “getting lower and lower for [benzene’s] non-cancer risks” — dizziness, rapid heart rate, neurological problems, anemia — and not just its carcinogenic effects.

“We have to make sure we’re not exposing people to things we can do something about,” she said.

A naturally occurring component of crude oil, benzene is used to make household products such as plastics, pesticides and dyes. It remains a key ingredient in gasoline, a source of exposure for workers as well as the public: In 2006, the EPA found benzene to be such a “significant contributor to cancer risk from all outdoor air toxics” that it limited levels in fuel. Even oil executives acknowledge its ubiquity;in documents, they call it “universal” and “a basic petrochemical building block.” Benzene ranks 17th among the top 20 chemicals produced in the United States, according to the federal government.

The petrochemical industry’s decade-long research effort on benzene echoes those launched by other industries — asbestos, tobacco, plastics — that used science tocreate doubt. These industries have employed a host of tactics to try to convince courts and regulators that a chemical or product causes no harm. At times, they funded their own studies in an attempt to show the lack of adverse effects. Experts say the petrochemical industry has bankrolled more research — at greater cost — than anyone but Big Tobacco, which coined the phrase “manufacturing doubt.”

“The more they feel threatened by the outcome of independent research, the more they will quote-unquote invest in their own,” said Celeste Monforton, a public health researcher and lecturer at George Washington University, who has written about corporate corruption of science. Monforton considers the petrochemical companies’ study of workers exposed to benzene in Shanghai to be the most expensive and elaborate effort by any industry to try to refute damning scientific evidence.

The reason, in her mind, is clear: “Litigation is continuing and potential for environmental exposures is still significant,” she said. “They need to protect their economic interests.”

Underwritten by the biggest names in petrochemicals — British Petroleum, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil and Shell Chemical — and administered by the powerful APIlobby, the Shanghai Health Study purported to examine how benzene exposure affects workers’ health.It consisted of three inquiries: The first investigated the link between benzene and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma as well as acute myeloid leukemia, or AML; the second, progression of diseases caused by the chemical; and the third, the exposure level at which such biological markers as lower blood cell counts indicate benzene's toxicity.

But the study’s outcome seemed to some like a foregone conclusion. Documents suggest oil companies set out to counter U.S. government research tying benzene to more types of cancer and at lower exposure levels than previously known. They show how company executives and scientists plotted objectives and “expected” results before the study began, banking on conclusions that would play down health hazards.

“This is just appalling,” said Carl Cranor, a philosophy professor at University of California, Riverside, who has read some of the Shanghai documents. “This does not sound like a scientific inquiry where you’re not sure what the outcome will be.”

Infante, the former OSHA official, who now testifies for plaintiffs in benzene litigation, put it more bluntly: “It’s called potential bias.”

Study’s authors: No bias

Industry representatives and the scientists they paid to do the Shanghai work say such criticism is unwarranted. Some oil executives, they say, may have been seeking an alternative to government research; others may have wanted to better understand benzene’s connection to disease. Whatever the impetus, they argue, scientific integrity was not compromised.

“There could have been the best intentions or the worst intentions,” said Harvey Checkoway, an epidemiology professor at University of California, San Diego, who served on a scientific review panel created by the petrochemical companies to review the study. “We set that aside for the research.”

Richard Irons, one of the study’s two principal investigators and now head of a consulting firm that does research for the petrochemical industry, said that “if you’re ignorant, it’s a logical conclusion” to view the work as biased. “But it’s an accusation not founded in fact.” Irons acknowledged that he has never testified for a plaintiff in a benzene exposure case. The API has financed his work on benzene since the early 1990s, documents show. Irons said he’s no longer receiving money from the institute but has gotten $100,000 for a small benzene project from the American Chemistry Council, the chemical industry’s main lobby group.

Defenders of the Shanghai study stress the independence of its design. Scientists, they say, have operated under the guidance of not just the scientific review panel, but of two Chinese government ministries and two university boards, all ensuring a proper inquiry. Many of the results — positive and negative, they say — have been published in peer-reviewed journals.

“The results don’t support the presumption of bias,” Irons said, explaining that, so far, the research has confirmed benzene’s association with AML as well as myelodysplastic syndrome, or MDS, a cancer of the bone marrow.

The study’s co-principal investigator, Otto Wong, who directed the work on AML and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, said, “I was interested in doing a cutting-edge study and I was confident I had control over our [portion]. The rest is really not a concern.” Wong acknowledged that he has never testified for a plaintiff in a benzene exposure case. His ties to the oil industry date to the 1970s. Now retired, Wong said he has “no contact with the API people at all.”

Representatives of BP, Chevron and ConocoPhillips all declined to comment for this article, referring questions to the API, which did not respond to repeated interview requests. In a one-paragraph statement, Shell said the company’s financial “support for the study reflects our ongoing commitment to health, safety, and product stewardship,” stressing that “the study was wholly independent of Shell.”

ExxonMobil, whose scientists participated in the Shanghai study, said in a written statement that it “supports scientific research through funding and technical support,” painting its involvement in this project — as well as a 2012 ExxonMobil-sponsored study of benzene-exposed workers showing adverse health effects at levels below legal occupational limits — as part of a longstanding corporate commitment to better understanding the chemical. The 2012 results in particular prompted ExxonMobil to “voluntarily reduce allowable benzene exposure limits to one-half of OSHA legal limits” at its workplaces, it said — or 0.5 ppm for an eight-hour shift.

By contrast, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, recommends that workers limit their benzene exposure to an average of 0.1 ppm during a shift.

“Our conservative approach to setting workplace benzene exposure limits is influenced by the most up-to-date scientific evidence, which includes the 2012 study,” ExxonMobil said, noting that its short-term limit is five times lower than OSHA’s.

As the Shanghai findings seep into the scientific literature and, ultimately, the courts, the petrochemical industry generally admits that benzene causes AML and MDS at higher doses. But other blood and bone marrow cancers continue to kill — at lower and lower exposures to the chemical.

Michael Boley in April, 1994. Courtesy of the Boley family

On February 27, 2012, Michael Boley, 68, died of a disease Shanghai researchers say can’t be tied to benzene: chronic myelomonocytic leukemia, a form of MDS, combined with another bone-marrow condition known as “myeloproliferative disease.”

Strong and industrious, with a knack for avoiding even the flu, Boley spent 23 years at a Goodyear Tire & Rubber plant in St. Marys, Ohio, site of a seminal benzene study by NIOSH in the 1970s. The research quantified for the first time the leukemia risk for workers exposed to the chemical in the plant’s Pliofilm unit, prompting OSHA to work on the benzene standard that took effect in 1987.

Michael Boley worked at a Goodyear plant in St. Mary's, Ohio, for 23 years. His 15th anniversary with the company appeared in Goodyear's newsletter. Courtesy of the Boley family

Boley didn’t make the benzene-soaked rubber film for which the unit was named; rather, he was a plant electrician, supervisor and engineer who worked there for an hour or two daily. Still, he knew benzene was in the air: While in the unit he noticed “Authorized Personnel Only” signs for Pliofilm workers who, he testified in a deposition, “were monitored on a regular basis.” At times, he complained about the unit’s “sweeter-than-gasoline” smell. Once, Boley asked a supervisor if he could have the same blood test the company administered to Pliofilm workers.

“His comment was, no, we wouldn’t require monitoring,” Boley testified. “Our levels would be safe.”

Four decades later, after enduring the fatigue, feebleness and shortness of breath accompanying a diagnosis of chronic monomyelocytic leukemia, or CMML, Boley sued Goodyear and its benzene suppliers, including ExxonMobil. “He wanted them to know what had happened to him,” said his widow, Cheryl. But the suit went nowhere: In 2011, Boley settled the litigation in a confidential mediation. His still-pending workers’ compensation claim has seen little traction.

“He couldn’t prove it,” Cheryl said, alluding to the companies’ claims that benzene couldn’t have caused her husband’s illness. Those claims were supported by Irons and other scientists affiliated with the Shanghai study, who reported in a journal article last year that “benzene exposure does not appear to be a significant predictor of CMML.”

Mounting evidence against benzene:

1928

First case

The first case of benzene-induced leukemia is reported.

1948

Only safe concentration is zero

The American Petroleum Institute concludes that “the only absolutely safe concentration for benzene is zero.”

1977

Goodyear study

The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health launches a study of two Goodyear plants in Ohio where workers are exposed to benzene at high levels — 10 parts per million to 100 ppm. Responding to the study, theOccupational Safety and Health Administration issues an emergency temporary standard for benzene of 1 ppm, down from 10 ppm.

1978

Final standard

OSHA issues its final benzene standard of 1 ppm, sparking alegal challenge from API that lasts nearly a decade and goes to the U.S. Supreme Court.

1981

Ohio results

NIOSH researchers examining the two Ohio plants establish that theexposures increased five-fold the workers’ risk of developing leukemia.

1990

Benzene Task Force

The API’s Benzene Task Force kicks off an industry campaign to counter the Ohio study. The oil lobby acknowledges that “high doses of benzene can cause some forms of cancer,” but not necessarily “low concentrations.”

1994

National Cancer Institute study

A National Cancer Institute study of benzene-exposed workers in Shanghai, China, appears on the petrochemical industry’s radar.

1997

National Cancer Institute study

The first NCI paper reports significantly elevated risks of leukemia, myelodysplastic syndrome and non-Hodgkins lymphoma at levels of benzene exposure around the OSHA limit of 1 ppm.

2000

A new Shanghai study

The Benzene Task Force outlines the strategy for the industry’s own Shanghai study as well as other benzene research efforts “designed to protect member company interests…” Documents paint the research as a counterweight to the NCI study.

2001

"Benefits" to bottom lines

BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips and Shell Chemical sign an agreement with the task force and API launching what will become the Benzene Health Research Consortium to fund what’s expected to be a five-year study costing approximately $20 million.

2003

Project unveiled

The Shanghai study is publicly unveiled at China’s Fudan University, home to the project’s multi-million-dollar, state-of-the-art laboratory.

2004

No safe exposure

The NCI releases its second major study of benzene-exposed Chinese workers. It shows that workers who inhaled less than 1 ppm of benzene had fewer white blood cells than unexposed workers, strongly suggesting there is no safe exposure threshold for the chemical.

2005

Shanghai costs soar

Shanghai project expenses soar to more than $26 million.

2006

Benzene regulations launched

The EPA launches what some experts consider its most substantive effort to regulate benzene in years — a rule requiring the reformulation of fuel to reduce benzene content. “Benzene is the most significant contributor to cancer risk from all outdoor air toxics,” EPA officials state.

2007

"Risk management"

An API memo details the lobby group’s benzene “risk management” program, which aims to “develop scientific data . . . for use in science advocacy, risk management, litigation support.” The memo states that benzene is “of particular concern to the industry” because “tighter regulation . . . could impose substantial costs.”

2009

Shangai project ends

The Shanghai project officially ends, though articles about the research will continue to appear in scientific journals and be used by industry to defend lawsuits by U.S. workers exposed to benzene.

2014

Continued impact

As of October, 30 papers have been published with consortium funds; in general, the Shanghai study has found that only certain subtypes of acute myelogenous leukemia (AML) and myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS) show statistically significant associations with the chemical. It also has shown “a possible association” between benzene and a subtype of non-Hodgkins lymphoma — a controversial finding that some industry scientists dispute.

Only safe level ‘is zero’

The petrochemical industry has known about benzene’s dangers since the turn of the last century. As far back as 1948, the API’s toxicological profile of the chemical discussed “reasonably well documented instances of the development of leukemia as a result of chronic benzene exposure,” cautioning that “the only absolutely safe concentration … is zero.”

Later, as scientific evidence of benzene’s hazards accumulated and regulatory limits on workplace and environmental levels tightened, the industry took a different stance. By 1990, the API and member companies such as BP, Chevron, Mobil and Shell had launched a research program meant to keep further restrictions at bay — or, minutes from an API meeting in 1992 state, research “that will be most useful in improving risk assessment and influencing regulation.”

Within years, the catalyst for the Shanghai Health Study appeared. In 1995, company representatives turned their attention to work by the National Cancer Institute, which was repeating the Pliofilm study in China to examine the effects on workers exposed to benzene at levels below the OSHA limit. Exxon, which had yet to merge with Mobil, even sent company scientists on a fact-finding visit to interview government researchers.

“We are monitoring the NCI studies,” an Exxon memo explained, “because of their potential impact concerning the health risks at low benzene exposures.”

In 1997, the NCI published a landmark study on benzene-exposed workers in Shanghai. The results reinforced past research showing the chemical causes leukemia, said Richard Hayes, a former NCI epidemiologist and the study’s lead author, but “what moved the science forward” were two findings: That workers with chronic benzene exposures had an increased risk of developing MDS and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma — i.e., diseases other than leukemia — and that such effects could be triggered by doses of the chemical as low as the OSHA limit.

In 2004, the NCI released the results of a second study. It found that Chinese shoe makers inhaling benzene in amounts below the OSHA limit had fewer white blood cells than unexposed workers, suggesting the chemical has no safe threshold.

“In general,” Hayes said, “we found benzene was a larger problem than we originally thought.”

The industry quickly attacked the NCI’s work. Documents show that the API commissioned a $25,000 “critical review” of the government research from California epidemiologist Wong. In a 10-page paper, Wong challenged the NCI study from every conceivable angle. “The findings,” he wrote, “are unreliable.”

Wong insists today that his corporate funding had no influence on this conclusion. “My critique of the NCI study was comprehensive and specific,” he said. “I was responsible for every comment.”

For the industry, the review had the desired effect: It cast enough doubt on the NCI’s first study to convince the EPA, in 2000, not to rely on the research for estimating benzene’s carcinogenic effects. “We thought there were methodological issues that might be questionable,” said Bob Sonawane, of the EPA’s Office of Research and Development, who has overseen agency assessments of benzene’s health risks. The agency did use the NCI work to assess non-cancer effects in 2002, Sonawane said.

By then, industry representatives were already thinking beyond conventional critiques. Wong remembers reaching out to Chinese scientists about a possible benzene study before broaching it to industry contacts. “I knew quite a few people at API and member companies,” he said. “We just started a conversation.” The campaign to finance an alternative study in China was kicked off in earnest in the late 1990s, when the API approachedIrons, then a pathology professor at University of Colorado, Boulder.Irons said API officials asked him to visit Shanghai in 1999 and consider doing a study similar to the NCI’s, which examined workers’ diseases and estimated their benzene exposures after the fact and “had some provocative findings.”

Irons went to China. Upon his return, he urged the API to instead conduct what he calls “a real-time clinical study,” in which researchers examine workers’ diseases as they occur. Within a year, he, Wong and ExxonMobil scientists had drafted proposals for the Shanghai study, which the API circulated among its members to drum up financing.

API representatives went from company to company, giving what amounted to a sales pitch for the Shanghai study. They laid out just what executives might anticipate in return.

A 2001 document listed the following “expected” results:

Provide strong scientific support for a lack of a risk of leukemia … at current ambient benzene concentrations to the general population.

Establish … current occupational exposure limits do not create a significant risk.

Refute the allegation that Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma can be induced by benzene exposure.

Other documents show that the industry was counting on such findings to combat stringent regulation and stave off “tremendous” costs that would come from having to cut benzene emissions. “Significant issues of concern” identified in a 2001 PowerPoint include potential requirements to reformulate gasoline and “control emissions from stationary sources.”

Liability also was a worry. Documents warned of “litigation costs due to perceptions about the risks of even very low exposures to benzene” and lawsuits “alleging induction of various forms of leukemia and other hematopoietic diseases,” including more commonly diagnosed lymphomas.

For some in the industry, the bait proved enticing.

“Given the magnitude of [health, safety and environment] issues surrounding benzene as well as the litigation claims we continue to see, I believe it would be worthwhile to participate,” a Shell executive wrote in an email in 2000, a year before the company and its four counterparts formed the Shanghai study’s official sponsor: the Benzene Health Research Consortium.

Later, as consortium members tried to plug an ever-increasing budget gap — boosting the research’s price tag from $19 million in 2001 to more than $35 million in 2008 — their argument turned repeatedly to economics. One 2003 script for a CEO-level phone call states, “This study will positively impact our global business concerns.”

Critics say such documents expose the Shanghai study for what it is: An industry attempt to buy scientific evidence. “It’s all about influencing science to get what industry wants,” said Myron Mehlman, formerly chief toxicologist at Mobil, who became a whistleblower in 1989 after the company fired him for complaining about benzene levels in its gasoline. He sued Mobil, winning a $7 million judgment.

Mehlman remembers hearing about the Shanghai study in 2005 and immediately firing off letters to 45 executives at sponsoring companies. “I knew the scientists would do whatever it takes and whatever the industry needs done,” he said. In response, he said, he got a consortium form letter that “just re-confirmed how the study is being done for a single purpose — to get desirable outcomes.”

Industry-funded researchers bristle at the science-for-sale accusations.

“I didn’t see refuting anything as my charge,” said Irons, the study’s co-principal investigator, “and I wouldn’t have responded favorably to that.”

In depositions, however, Irons conceded that oil companies had a vested interest in the project.

“The oil companies … expected … it would be used for regulation, litigation, and for understanding the health effects of benzene,” he testified in 2010, adding that he didn’t believe a “funding source or the amount of money necessarily impacts on the [study’s] objectivity.”

Wong sounds a similar note. “We didn’t know what the results were before the study began,” he said, claiming he wasn’t privy to “any discussion” among the sponsoring companies. He considers it “just unthinkable” that critics would suggest “all those outside scientists, together with us, tried to create some results.”

Noting that the study relied on actual cases from 29 Shanghai hospitals, Wong explained, “It’s very difficult to argue that we have influenced our data one way or another.”

Members of the Shanghai study’s scientific review panel echo this sentiment. They saw no signs of overt bias in the design, they say, no way to yield preconceived results. “That wasn’t my experience,” said John Cherrie, a former panelist now heading occupational health research at a British nonprofit that has worked for the petrochemical industry. “The studies were designed to investigate the true situation without any obvious bias.”

Some would-be funders weren’t so sure, documents show.

In 2002, consortium members landed a meeting with seven scientists from Dow Chemical Company to pitch the Shanghai study. The meeting came after the scientists had voiced what one described as “specific technical concerns” about its design. Dow eventually opted not to contribute.

In a deposition two years later, Dow’s head of epidemiology, James Collins, testified that the company feared the study could generate inaccurate risk estimates and thus “be biased.”

‘Independent’ review panels

Documents suggest the Shanghai study’s sponsors were keenly aware of such perceptions. To deflect criticism, they set up “independent” review panels consisting of 10 ethicists and scientists, reputable leaders in fields like epidemiology, clinical medicine and bio-statistics. By 2001, panelists were meeting investigators and reviewing protocols — “essentially quality control,” said Jerry Rice, who chaired the scientific panel. Advisory in nature, the boards have remained involved in nearly every aspect of research.

Industry representatives viewed the boards as essential for lending credibility to the study. “There are going to be people out there who will want to misinterpret and criticize the study,” one argued in a 2003 email. “It is important that ‘the integrity’ … be maintained” with the panels.

Panelists insist the boards weren’t simply for show. They say industry representatives routinely encouraged them to offer criticisms and recommendations, and they obliged. Documents show investigators incorporated so many panel suggestions that research costs soared $3 million in one year alone.

“I never felt there was any desire to muzzle or tone down criticism,” said Rice, formerly with the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer, who oversaw the agency’s evaluations of chemicals for carcinogenic risks from 1996 to 2002. At IARC, Rice had come to know oil industry executives, who recruited him for the panel. “If there had been any of that, we’d have all quit.”

Still, company executives maintained tight control over the study. Documents indicate the consortium operated like a corporation, replete with committees governing research, finances and communications. Once a year, it hosted a meeting of 50 or so participants, flying American and Chinese scientists as well as review panelists to a two-day retreat to discuss the work as executives observed. Twice a year, consortium members combed through detailed progress reports filed by investigators.

The consortium also required industry review of draft manuscripts until 2005, when Irons penned his first. In it, Irons announced preliminary results linking a previously unrecognized form of myelodysplastic syndrome -- MDS -- to benzene exposure. The draft set off debate within ExxonMobil and Shell, both of which alerted the EPA — as the law required — to what was vaguely described in a consortium email as “health findings reported in a draft publication.”

At the time, Irons expressed reservations over the manuscript-review requirement.

Consortium members dropped it but kept the review boards. For years, panelists kept circulating “ready-for-submission manuscripts” for “feedback,” documents show.

Consortium members have worked especially hard on controlling their message. Before the Shanghai study began, the communications committee was crafting its marketing strategy. Documents reveal reams of “if asked” statements and media-relations plans, listing objectives such as “counter activists’ negativity.” Among the committee’s tasks, according to a 2001 email:

perception needs to be that this is not being done to protect against litigation

use a consulting attorney to address these issues of perceived motivation

Consortium sales pitches to prospective contributors, expressed in recruitment briefs, “call sheets” and “adaptable” slideshows, epitomize this corporate spin. Publicly, members have claimed altruistic motives for backing the Shanghai study. During a presentation in 2002 at PetroChina, a Chinese oil firm targeted for sponsorship, one Shell scientist proclaimed, according to a company email, “We believe it is important to understand the hazards of the products we make and sell, and we believe it is the right thing to do!”

Privately, consortium members betrayed less charitable motives. A draft of a 2002 recruitment brief reminded potential sponsors that “there is continued concern with the potential health effects of benzene as it relates to worker exposure … and personal injury claims.”

In response, a Shell executive urged colleagues to “delet[e] the reference to legal liabilities” and emphasized that “the only reason we are doing this is in support of protecting workers.”

Widows like Carolyn Wright have trouble processing such statements. Her husband, Eric, was a consummate company man whose closets brimmed with Shell awards, buckles, hats and magnets. Wright spent 34 years, from 1976 to 2010, working on offshore vessels for five oil companies — 18 at Shell. A trained “gun shooter,” he repaired sonar equipment, breaking down air guns. He soaked parts in benzene-laced solvents in a diesel-engine room, breathing in the chemical at exposures estimated to be two to five times greater than the legal limit.

Eric Wright guiding a seismic streamer cable in 1976, his first of 34 years working on offshore rigs. Courtesy of the Wright family

Wright died, at 63, of leukemia in 2010, exactly five months after receiving an MDS diagnosis.Most of that time he remained hospitalized, beset by body sores, eye infections and a failing gall bladder. Within weeks, he couldn’t feed or bathe himself; eventually, he couldn’t hold up his head. Carolyn remembers leaving her husband’s bedside twice — first, to get clothes and then to visit a funeral home.

“They took away my best friend,” she said, referring to Shell and eight other petrochemical companies she and her husband sued 14 days before his death. “They were responsible because they made the benzene.” She settled the case for an undisclosed amount, most of which went toward her husband’s outstanding medical bills and legal fees. Shell admitted no liability.

“I’d rather have my husband,” Carolyn said. “There is not another one like him.”

Seeding the literature

The petrochemical industry’s research strategy had another key component: publication. Oil and chemical companies have long seeded the scientific literature, paying consultants to publish in peer-reviewed journals. They often use the published articles to advance their positions in regulatory and legal arenas. Infante, the former OSHA official, considers benzene “a good example of how the general scientific literature is being polluted by people working for industry.”

A 2002 Shell summary of the Shanghai project defined a “Key Measure/Indicator of Success” as a “Cost effective study reported in public literature … [that would] support … advocacy.”

By the time the research consortium disbanded in 2009, Irons and his colleagues had released results in 20 journal articles as well as at an “international benzene symposium,” in Germany. Industry-funded scientists have added to the literature since; according to Irons, the consortium’s dollars have yielded a total of 30 papers.

Such publications can play a critical role in benzene litigation. The Shanghai study has helped companies deny liability by casting doubt on causation, the central issue in a toxic-tort lawsuit. One tactic the industry has employed — with aid from the study — is to separate cancers into subsets, making it harder to prove a specific link between benzene and the disease. David Eastmond, a toxicology professor at University of California, Riverside, said that the petrochemical industry “gets sued on a fairly regular basis” over “a wide range of diseases.”

“If [it] could narrow down which subtypes are caused by benzene,” he explained, “the industry could eliminate a number of lawsuits.”

Industry-funded Shanghai researchers found that only certain subtypes of MDS and AML are significantly linked to benzene.

Now, in claims involving auto mechanics, gas station attendants and printers, plaintiff’s lawyers are seeing this claim play out in court. There is the case, for example, of a contract worker for southeast Texas refineries and chemical plants who washed his tools in benzene and later developed MDS. Citing a 2009 article by Irons, defense lawyers argued that the worker didn’t have the subtype of MDS associated with benzene exposure. The worker’s family resolved the case under terms that remain confidential.

In another case, a refinery technician who used benzene in laboratory experiments developed the very MDS subtype the 2009 article tied to the chemical. In testimony, however, defense experts used the Shanghai research not to affirm this link, but rather to debate whether his MDS was, in fact, properly diagnosed. The case settled in 2010 as part of a confidential agreement.

"You don’t want to find out you have cancer at that age because of somebody else’s wrongdoing."- Brian Milward

Some find such defenses scientifically disingenuous. Hayes, the former NCI scientist, who is now head of epidemiology at New York University’s medical school, explained that scientists cannot eliminate a disease subtype simply because a study doesn’t show an association with benzene exposure. “It doesn’t mean there isn’t any effect,” he said. “The end result is to sow the seeds of doubt.”

Wong said that all he and his fellow researchers can do is report their findings — positive and negative. “I’m sure some people use the results in their own way,” he said, referring to defense lawyers. “I can’t really speak to that.”

Acknowledging that “no study can prove a negative,” Irons defends the Shanghai research as “the best available evidence” benzene causes only certain disease subtypes. That “doesn’t reduce the fact that benzene is associated with MDS,” he said — or, for that matter, AML. And ultimately, some say, these findings aren’t as conclusive as oil executives may have wanted.

“In terms of something that would once and forever cause the petroleum industry’s legal liability problems to go away,” said review panelist Rice, “it didn’t do that.”

In fact, some outcomes have hurt defendants in court. In 2004, after 30 years fixing refrigerators at ice-skating rinks and meat-packing plants — receiving a daily dose of petroleum-based products — Brian Milward developed a rare condition known as acute promyelocytic leukemia, or APL. At the time, he was 47 years old.

“You don’t want to find out you have cancer at that age because of somebody else’s wrongdoing,” Milward said, explaining he had no idea the solvents and paints he used to clean and seal pipes contained benzene until after he was diagnosed.

Brian Milward with his granddaughter while Milward was receiving chemotheropy treatment. Courtesy of Brian Milward

In 2007, he filed suit against Rustoleum Paints and 20 other manufacturers, whose experts argued no epidemiological studies show a link between benzene and APL. Experts hired by Milward countered that evidence linking benzene to AML essentially links it to all subtypes, including APL. The judge disagreed, ruling for the defendants. But the debate has stymied the case, fueling appeals on both sides, and sparking a brief signed by 27 preeminent scientists affirming benzene can cause any leukemia.

Meanwhile, the Shanghai study affirmed the very link Milward’s lawyers tried to draw. In a 2010 article confirming benzene’s tie to “an increased risk of AML,” Wong discussed the relationship by disease subtype. APL was the “most strongly related” to benzene exposure, he wrote.

While the ruling against Milward eventually was struck down, he has yet to appear before a jury. After settling with every defendant but Rustoleum, he has watched the company challenge the science again. This time, defense experts question whether his workplace exposures could have caused his cancer. A second appeal is pending.

Now in remission, Milward must grapple with cancer’s lasting effects. Nearly a decade of chemotherapy, along with diabetes and a rare bowel disorder, have left him battling what he calls “absolutely ridiculous” fatigue. Retired and on disability, he remembers returning to work twice. First, he resorted to napping to endure an eight-hour shift. When his boss assigned him to office duty, pushing paper and making calls, he still fell asleep at his desk.

“I can’t really do anything,” said Milward, 57 — at least, not what he loves: repairing race cars, working in his yard, playing with his grandchildren. “It just sucks when you get a cancer like this.”

‘He never complained’

To family and friends in Deweyville, Texas, a pine-shaded town along the Louisiana border, John Thompson was “John” — a life-long resident, church deacon and carpentry teacher who reinforced souls as much as structures. To Irons, the Shanghai study investigator who charged $600 per hour as an expert witness, he was “John H. Thompson” — deceased, one of three case referrals from a corporate-defense firm, all in lawsuits alleging cancers caused by benzene.

Thompson had built scaffolding for refineries and chemical plants in the 1960s and early '70s. At the end of most workdays he'd be covered in a thick adhesive known as mastic and would use pure benzene to get it off his hands, clothes and tools. In 2010, three months after Thompson’s death, Irons flew to Houston from China to testify in the benzene litigation, armed with what he has called “the largest single study of AML in history” —the Shanghai study. In a deposition, the scientist touted the research, saying it “inform[ed] with respect to disease specificity to a much greater degree than other previous epidemiological studies.”

“Assumptions and presumptions,” Irons testified, “have to be modified and re-assessed.”

The comment proved prescient in Thompson’s case.

In 2006, the former contract worker was mowing his lawn when he mentioned feeling fatigued. A pillar of a man, Thompson, then 66, had gotten two heart stents without uttering a gripe. “He never complained,” said Chase Bowers, his nephew. Not when he broke both arms on an oil rig, or lost his left eye in a shop accident. Bowers, who, as a teenager, was raised by Thompson and his wife, Carol, remembers watching a tree branch rip open his uncle’s ear. One emergency-room visit and Thompson returned to work.

“That’s the kind of guy he was,” Bowers said.

Within days of the lawn-mowing episode, Thompson learned he had acquired AML — specifically, a subtype of AML known as “inversion 16.”

"If oil companies are willing to spend $36 million to fund research, how much are they afraid of losing?"- Chase Bowers, nephew to John Thompson

In the contentious world of toxic-tort litigation, Thompson’s case seems like a classic: The only leukemia the petrochemical industry has admitted benzene can cause is AML — especially at higher doses.According to the Shell benzene-litigation defense guide, the industry might have classified Thompson’s case as “high risk”: He not only suffered from AML, but, as the guide states, “pure benzene is involved,” and his “exposure took place prior to OSHA involvement.” Experts hired by the family estimated Thompson’s cumulative benzene exposures were five times greater than the legal limit.

At trial, however, the case turned out to be anything but a slam dunk. Citing the Shanghai study, Irons worked to debunk a link between benzene and the type of AML afflicting Thompson. The Shanghai research has shown approximately two of the 20 AML subtypes are significantly associated with the chemical, he testified — neither of them “inversion 16.”

“We found many cases of inversion 16,” Irons said in court. “We did not find an association between benzene exposure and inversion 16.” Other scientists disagree, arguing that if benzene causes one subtype of AML, it likely causes all of them.

Keith Hyde, a Beaumont, Texas, lawyer who represents plaintiffs in toxic-tort cases, including the Thompsons, remembers Irons highlighting one Shanghai article after another at trial, raising doubt. “You have doubt here and there through all these industry studies,” Hyde said. “Let’s just say they do their job.”

After two weeks of testimony, the Thompson case ended in mistrial. The suit ultimately was resolved under terms that remain confidential.

In April, Carol, Thompson’s widow, died of liver cancer. In the years after the benzene trial, she rarely mentioned the ordeal — too many painful memories. She had to relive her husband’s death daily in court, watching videos and hearing testimony on his decline. “It was devastating for my aunt,” Bowers said. In his view, she never understood the extent to which oil and chemical companies hid benzene’s hazards and tried to spin the science.

“There’s obvious vested interest here,” Bowers said of the Shanghai study. “If oil companies are willing to spend $36 million to fund research, how much are they afraid of losing?”

Ashley Schwartz contributed to this story.

Disturbingly Kafkaesque': Judge slams Betsy DeVos for denying 94% of student debt forgiveness claims

Igor Derysh Salon

October 22, 2020

Arguing that Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos had undermined the agreement, a federal judge on Tuesday denied approval for a class action settlement over the Trump administration's handling of a student debt forgiveness program.

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gorsuch pro corp like brett? tort? class action?

https://www.scotusblog.com/2017/03/closer-look-judge-neil-gorsuch-class-actions/

A closer look at Judge Neil Gorsuch and class actions

When Justice Antonin Scalia died on February 13, 2016, one of the petitions for review awaiting the Supreme Court’s consideration was an appeal by Dow Chemical Co., which had asked the court to review the billion-dollar judgment against the company in a price-fixing case. But less than two weeks later, Dow announced that it was settling the case for $835 million. The company maintained that it “was not part of any conspiracy and the judgment was fundamentally flawed as a matter of class action law.” But, Dow explained, that the settlement was nonetheless “the right decision for the company and its shareholders” in light of uncertainty stemming from “recent events within the Supreme Court and increased likelihood for unfavorable outcomes for business involved in class action suits.”

Dow pointed to two important class-action decisions, both authored by Scalia and decided by a vote of 5-4, on which it had relied. In Wal-Mart v. Dukes, the court struck down a lower-court ruling that approved the certification of a class of roughly 1.5 million Wal-Mart female employees, who had argued that the leeway over pay and promotions that the store gives to its local supervisors discriminates against women. The court ruled that the women lacked the kind of common legal claim that would allow them to bring a lawsuit collectively, because they were suing “about literally millions of employment decisions at once.” And in Comcast v. Behrend, the justices held that the lower courts were wrong to certify a class of cable-television subscribers in an antitrust lawsuit against the cable company because the subscribers could not show that their damages could be measured on a classwide basis. Although Dow emphasized that, in its view, the judgment against it violated both of those decisions, it opted to settle the case rather than take its chances with a Scalia-less court.

Covering the Wal-Mart decision for this blog, Lyle Denniston described Scalia as the court’s “most dedicated skeptic about the class-action approach to litigation.” Whether Gorsuch, if confirmed, would follow in Scalia’s footsteps remains to be seen. During his decade on the bench, Gorsuch has participated in relatively few class action cases. In the cases involving class action issues in which he has participated, he has generally, but not always, ruled for the defense. Notably, both in cases in which he has ruled for the defense and those in which he has ruled for the plaintiffs, Gorsuch has emphasized the need for courts to stay in their lane, so to speak – that is, not to exceed their authority, particularly when it comes to decisions that are in his view best left to Congress.

Gorsuch adhered to this principle just a few months ago in ruling for the defense in Hammond v. Stamps.com, a case in which the on-demand postage company had wanted to remove a proposed class action against it, in which the plaintiffs alleged that the company’s monthly subscription costs were misleading, from a New Mexico state court to federal court. The district court ruled that the company could not remove the case because the Class Action Fairness Act’s “amount in controversy” requirement – more than $5 million – had not been met: The company could not show how many of its customers who cancelled their accounts had actually been misled, rather than cancelling for other reasons.

In an opinion by Gorsuch, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit reversed, emphasizing that the district court’s conclusion that the “amount in controversy” requirement had not been met “rests on a legal error about the meaning of a key statutory term” – “in controversy.” In other contexts, the court explained, the phrase “has never required a party seeking to invoke federal jurisdiction to show that damages ‘aregreater’ or will likely prove greater ‘than the requisite amount’ specified by statute.” Instead, it has “required a party seeking federal jurisdiction to show only and much more modestly that ‘a fact finder might legally conclude’ that the damages exceed the statutory amount.” With no reason to believe that Congress intended the term to have another meaning in the CAFA, Gorsuch concluded, “[o]ur job is to abide Congress’s policy directions, not replace them with others of our own hand.”

Gorsuch thus agreed with the district court “that it is unlikely all 312,000 persons who cancelled service” will actually be entitled to damages, and he acknowledged that the district court had articulated “the correct legal test for jurisdiction (focusing on what’s legally possible, not what’s likely).” But the district court failed to actually apply the correct test to the facts of the case, instead “mistakenly focusing not on the legally possible but the factually probable. And that is an error of law we are not free to disregard.”

In McClendon v. City of Albuquerque, Gorsuch once again relied on the idea of the court’s limited authority, but this time to rule in favor of the plaintiffs in what he described as a “long-running” class action challenging the conditions in city’s jails. The question before the court was whether an order withdrawing approval of a class action settlement was a “final decision” that would allow the defendants – city and prison officials – to appeal....

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/trump-says-hes-aiming-to-shield-corporations-from-legal-liability-for-workers-who-contract-covi-19-on-the-job

no lnx

Trump says he’s aiming to shield corporations from legal liability for workers who contract COVI-19 on the job

Written by Jake Johnson / Common Dreams April 21, 2020

President Donald Trump said during a press briefing Monday evening that his administration is aiming to shield corporations from legal responsibility for workers who contract the novel coronavirus on the job, a move that the Chamber of Commerce and right-wing advocacy groups are aggressively lobbying for as the White House pushes to reopen the U.S. economy against the warnings of public health experts.

“We are trying to take liability away from these companies,” Trump said in response to a reporter’s question on the subject. “We just don’t want that because we want the companies to open and to open strong. But I’ll get you a legal opinion on that.”

The president claimed that his administration has not previously discussed the issue of corporate liability, but the New York Times reported that business executives raised the matter with Trump in a conference call last week.

An “issue of great concern to the executives on the call,” according to the Times, “was the need to address the liability companies could face if employees got sick after returning to work, given the possibility that workers who felt that they were brought back too soon—or were not placed in a safe environment—could sue en masse.”

Additionally, the Washington Post reported earlier this month that Trump administration officials discussed including in the next stimulus package “a waiver that would clear businesses of liability from employees who contract the coronavirus on the job.”

Watch Trump’s remarks:

JM Rieger

@RiegerReport

REPORTER: [If companies] have employees come back to work and they get sick will these companies be liable?

…

TRUMP: I’ll give you a legal answer to that when we look it up.

…

REPORTER: You guys haven’t discussed that yet?

TRUMP: Nobody’s discussed it, no. But we will now.

Embedded video

In a memo to its members last week, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce—the most powerful business lobbying group in the nation—said that legal action from workers who are infected by Covid-19 on the job is “perhaps the largest area of concern for the overall business community.”

The Chamber of Commerce “argues the sheer number of lawsuits could overwhelm businesses,” Roll Call reported.

“Businesses say they keep their workplaces safe,” Roll Call noted, “but the memo indicates that major corporations privately acknowledge that many so-called essential employees will get sick or die.”

Americans for Prosperity, a Koch-backed organization, is also urging lawmakers to protect corporations from responsibility for exposing their workers to the coronavirus.

As Common Dreams reported last week, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has been flooded with thousands of complaints from workers in recent weeks accusing employers of violating federal coronavirus guidelines and failing to provide adequate protective equipment.

Justin Wolfers, an economics professor at the University of Michigan, wrote in a series of tweets last week that “the whole point of making employers liable for risking the lives of their staff is to prevent them from exposing their staff to undue risk.”

“Businesses are asking for the right to expose their workers to fatal risks with no consequences. It’s bad economics and bad policy,”said Wolfers. “If this tweet sounds to you at all anti-business, let me be clear: I am absolutely against businesses profiting by exposing their workers to unconscionable risks of death.”

new 20 no vetted

Brian Fitzpatrick, "The Conservative Case for Class Actions"Vanderbilt University professor Brian Fitzpatrick offered his thoughts o

https://theintercept.com/2019/08/29/lake-erie-bill-of-rights-ohio/

no lnx

HOW OHIO’S CHAMBER OF COMMERCE KILLED AN ANTI-POLLUTION BILL OF RIGHTS

H. Claire Brown

August 29 2019, 5:00 a.m.

In partnership with

EARLIER THIS SUMMER, environmental activists in Ohio were alarmed by the passage of a mysterious state budget amendment that would close a new avenue for residents to sue polluters. The provision invalidated a landmark anti-pollution initiative passed by Toledo voters just a few months before. Now, emails obtained in a public records request reveal that theOhio Chamber of Commerce secured the cooperation of a key Republican lawmaker in a successful effort to slip the amendment into an appropriations bill at the eleventh hour.

The emails depict the chamber’s environmental policy director requesting a last-minute meeting with state Rep. Jim Hoops to discuss the Lake Erie Bill of Rights, the newly minted ballot initiative allowing citizens to sue polluters on behalf of Lake Erie. A legislative aide responded quickly, scheduling a same-day meeting. Despite the chamber director’s admission that his proposal would need to be submitted after the legislature’s deadline, the aide produced draft amendment language to share with him three weeks later. The chamber’s subsequent revisions made their way into the final bill, effectively nullifying the Lake Erie Bill of Rights.

“This shows the influence of the Chamber of Commerce writing our laws and undermining the democracy of the people of Toledo,” said Bill Lyons, a board member of the Ohio Community Rights Network, an environmental advocacy organization. After the May vote, Lyons filed a series of public records requests to try to figure out which lawmaker introduced the amendment. The emails were provided to The Intercept and The New Food Economy by the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, an affiliate of the Ohio Community Rights Network.

[pix FILE - In this Aug. 3, 2014 file photo, a sample glass of Lake Erie water is photographed near the City of Toledo water intake crib on Lake Erie, off the shore of Curtice, Ohio. Scientists are predicting a "significant" algae bloom will form this summer on western Lake Erie, a continuing health hazard in a region where algae toxins forced a temporary tap water shutdown in 2014. (AP Photo/Haraz N. Ghanbari, File) A glass of water sampled near Toledo’s water intake crib on Lake Erie, off the shore of Curtice, Ohio, on Aug. 3, 2014. Photo: Haraz N. Ghanbari/AP]

IN FEBRUARY, MORE than 60 percent of participants in a special election in Toledo voted to establish a Bill of Rights for Lake Erie. It was a unique ballot question that would grant Lake Erie the right to “exist, flourish, and naturally evolve.” The intent was to give Lake Erie and its human allies legal standing to file lawsuits against polluters.

Organizers in Ohio launched their efforts to pass the initiative after a toxic algal bloom — caused by fertilizer and manure runoff from upstream farms — rendered Toledo’s water undrinkable and largely unusable (some residents were advised not to shower) for a few days in 2014. Tish O’Dell, a state organizer for the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, said residents spent two years trying to persuade the state government to take action to prevent future issues.

In Ohio, however, the farm runoff largely responsible for polluting Lake Erie is minimally regulated. Farmers in the state also benefit from key legal protections that limit their vulnerability to pollution-related lawsuits.Ohio has a so-called right-to-farm law, which dramatically limits neighbors’ ability to win lawsuits alleging that farm pollution unfairly impacts their quality of life. (Hoops appears to have introduced another amendment that expands the definition of farmland protected under the state’s right-to-farm law; that amendment passed this summer as well, further narrowing the legal pathways advocates might use to limit agricultural runoff.) And at the federal level, the Clean Water Act has long exempted most agricultural operations from robust regulation.

For all these reasons, advocates came to believe that existing legal frameworks would never sufficiently protect the lake and those who live near it. By 2016, they were ready to try something new. After O’Dell and her colleague Thomas Linzey gave a presentation on so-called rights-of-nature laws at Bowling Green University, Toledo activists approached them about devising a plan for Lake Erie. The group headed to a nearby pub.

“That’s actually how the Lake Erie Bill of Rights hatched,” O’Dell said. “It was on a cocktail napkin at the bar.”

After its passage, the Lake Erie Bill of Rights was immediately challenged in federal court. The next day, the Drewes Farm Partnership had filed a 24-page lawsuit arguing that protections for the lake could mean financial ruin for the farm’s business. That lawsuit is ongoing. Then, in May, the eleventh-hour amendment invalidating the lake’s rights found its way into the House version of the state’s budget.

The Chamber of Commerce asked for the addition of text that would more directly refute the Lake Erie Bill of Rights.

It all started with an email from the Ohio Chamber of Commerce. The chamber’s director of energy and environmental policy, Zack Frymier, wrote to request a meeting with Hoops, the state House representative, on April 11, a few weeks before the vote. (Hoops is chair of the Ohio House Finance Subcommittee on Agriculture, Development, and Natural Resources.)

“I’m hoping to find some time (like everyone else) to run something by Chairman Hoops regarding the Lake Erie Bill of Rights that passed in Toledo in February,” Frymier wrote. “We have some language that we’d request to be considered for the budget. Though obviously it would have to be submitted after tomorrow’s deadline we’d still like to have a conversation.”

A legislative aide replied promptly, arranging a meeting with Hoops for 4:00 p.m. that day. Despite the short notice — it was already nearly 3:00 p.m. — Frymier quickly and enthusiastically responded that he’d be there.

A few weeks later, the aide got back to Frymier with draft text of the amendment, asking if the wording made sense to him. Frymier then asked for the addition of text that would more directly refute the Lake Erie Bill of Rights.

“Language in this amendment stating that [nature and ecosystems] do not have standing is essential to what we’re trying to accomplish,” Frymier wrote on May 2.

The amendment’s final text includes the additional statement Frymier asked for: “Nature or any ecosystem does not have standing to participate in or bring an action in any court of common pleas.”

The amendment was reported by local media on May 8. The next day, the state House passed its version of the bill. Lyons, the Community Rights Network board member, later testified in front of the state Senate, asking legislators to strike the amendment from the final budget. His efforts were unsuccessful and, after a few weeks of negotiation, Republican Gov. Mike DeWine signed the measure into law.

Lyons said he was surprised by the degree of collaboration between the Chamber of Commerce and Hoops’s subcommittee. “The fact that they would run that language specifically by them — I mean, who else gets that opportunity?” he said. (Neither the Ohio Chamber of Commerce nor Hoops’s office responded to requests for comment.)

Business advocates — primarily the fossil fuel giant BP, which has fracking interests in the state — spent more than $300,000 to campaign against the Lake Erie Bill of Rights prior to its passage in Toledo. The coalition advocating in its favor, Toledoans for Safe Water, spent less than $6,000, according to Great Lakes Now.

Municipalities around the nation have been slowly adopting rights-of-nature ordinances for more than a decade. Pittsburgh banned fracking using this legal framework in 2010. More recently, a county in Oregon voted to ban aerial pesticide spraying the same way.

Rights-of-nature laws likely face a long road ahead. If the Lake Erie Bill of Rights is any indication, many may be tied up in lawsuits for years to come.

For O’Dell, the Ohio organizer, the Lake Erie Bill of Rights is already a win regardless of its fate. “The people kept fighting to get it on the ballot. They defeated big corporate money. They won, and they’re still fighting,” she said. “So I don’t care what happens — they have ignited interest all around the world.”

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WOW SCOTUS

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overview recap status:

prez steelworkers

Americans are not happy. And for good reason: They continue to suffer financial stress caused by decades of flat income. And every time they make the slightest peep of complaint about a system rigged against them, the rich and powerful tell them to shut up because it is all their fault.

One percenters instruct them to work harder, pull themselves up by their bootstraps and stop bellyaching. Just get a second college degree, a second skill, a second job. Just send the spouse to work, downsize, take a staycation instead of a real vacation. Or don’t take one at all, just work harder and longer and better.

The barrage of blaming has persuaded; workers believe they deserve censure. And that’s a big part of the reason they’re unhappy. If only, they think, they could work harder and longer and better, they would get ahead. They bear the shame. They don’t blame the system:the Supreme Court, the Congress, the president. And yet, it is the system, the American system, that has conspired to crush them.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, unemployment is low and the stock market is high. But skyrocketing stocks benefit only the top 10 percent of wealthy Americans who own 84 percent of stocks. And while more people are employed now than during the Great Recession, the vast majority of Americans haven’t had a real raise since 1979.

It’s bad out there for American workers. Last month, their ranking dropped for the third year running in the World Happiness Report, produced by the Sustainable Development Solutions Network, a UN initiative.

These sad statistics reinforce those in a report released two years ago by two university professors. Reviewing data from the General Social Survey, administered routinely nationally, the professors found Americans’ assessment of their own happiness and family finances has, unambiguously, declined in recent years.

But if Americans would just work harder, everything would be dandy, right?

No. Not right. Americans work really, really hard. A third of Americans work a side hustle,driving an Uber or selling crafts on Etsy. American workers take fewer vacation days. They get 14, but typically take only 10. The highest number of workers in five years report they don’t expect to take a vacation at all this year. And Americans work longer hours than their counterparts in other countries.

Americans labor 137 more hours per year than Japanese workers, 260 more than Brits, and 499 more than the French, according to the International Labor Organization.

And the longer hours aren’t because American workers are laggards on the job. They’re very productive. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics calculates that the average American worker’s productivity has increased 400 percent since 1950.

If pay had kept pace with productivity, as it did in the three decades after the end of World War II, American workers would be making 400 percent more. But they’re not. Their wages have flatlined for four decades, adjusting for inflation.

That means stress. Forty percent of workers say they don’t have $400 for an unexpected expense. Twenty percent can’t pay all of their monthly bills. More than a quarter of adults skipped needed medical care last year because they couldn’t afford it. A quarter of adults have no retirement savings.

If only Americans would work harder. And longer. And better.

Despite right-wing attempts to pound that into Americans’ heads, it’s not the solution. Americans clearly are working harder and longer and better. The solution is to change the system, which is stacked against workers.

Workers are bearing on their backs tax breaks that benefited only the rich and corporations. They’re bearing overtime pay rules and minimum wage rates that haven’t been updated in more than a decade. They’re weighted down by U.S. Supreme Court decisions thathobbled unionization efforts andkneecapped workers’ rights to file class-action lawsuits. They’re struggling under U.S. Department of Labor rules defining them as independent contractors instead of staff members. They live in fear as corporations threaten to offshore their jobs—with the assistance of federal tax breaks.

Last year, the right-wing majority on the U.S. Supreme Court handed a win to corporatists trying to obliterate workers’ right to organize and collectively bargain for better wages and conditions. The court ruled that public sector workers who choose not to join unions don’t have to pay a small fee to cover the cost of services that federal law requires the unions provide to them. This bankrupts labor unions. And there’s no doubt that right-wingers are gunning for private sector unions next.

This kind of relentless attack on labor unions since 1945 has withered membership. As it shrank, wages for both union and nonunion workers did too.

Also last year, the Supreme Court ruled that corporations can deny workers access to :{class-action arbitration. This compels workers, whom corporations forced to sign agreements to arbitrate rather than litigate, intoindividual arbitration cases, for which eachworker must hire his or her own lawyer. Then, just last week, the right-wing majority on the court further curtailed workers’ rights to **class-action** suits.}:

In a minority opinion, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburgwrote that the court in recent years has routinely deployed the law to deny to employees and consumers “effective relief against powerful economic entities.”

No matter how hard Americans work, the right-wing majority on the Supreme Court has hobbled them in an already lopsided contest with gigantic corporations.

The administrative branch is no better. Just last week, the Trump Labor Department issued an advisory that workers for a gig-economy company are independent contractors, not employees. As a result, the workers, who clean homes after getting assignments on an app, will not qualify for federal minimum wage (low as it is) or overtime pay. Also, the corporation will not have to pay Social Security taxes for them. Though the decision was specific to one company, experts say it will affect the designation for other gig workers, such as drivers for Uber and Lyft.

Also, the Labor Department has proposed a stingy increase in the overtime pay threshold—that is, the salary amount under which corporations must pay workers time and a half for overtime. The current threshold of $23,660 has not been raised since 2004. The Obama administration had proposed doubling it to $47,476. But now, the Trump Labor Department has cut that back to $35,308. That means 8.2 million workers who would have benefited from the larger salary cap now will not be eligible for mandatory overtime pay.

It doesn’t matter how hard they work; they aren’t going to get the time-and-a-half pay they deserve.

Just like the administration and the Supreme Court,right-wingers in Congress grovel before corporations and the rich. Look at the tax break they gave one percenters in 2017. Corporations got the biggest cut in history, their rate sledgehammered down from 35 percent to 21 percent. The rich reap by far the largest benefit from those tax cuts through 2027, according to an analysis by the Tax Policy Center. And by then, 53 percent of Americans—that is, workers, not rich people—will pay more than they did in 2017 because tax breaks for workersexpire.

The White House Council of Economic Advisers predicted the corporate tax cut would put an extra $4,000 in every worker’s pocket. They swore that corporations would use some of their tax cut money to hand out raises and bonuses to workers. That never happened. Workers got a measly 6 percent of corporations’ tax savings. In the first quarter after the tax cut took effect, workers on average received a big fat extra $6.21 in their paychecks, for an annual total of a whopping $233. Corporations spent their tax breaks on stock buybacks, a record $1 trillion worth, raising stock prices, which put more money in the pockets of rich CEOs and shareholders.

That’s continuing this year. Workers are never going to see that $4,000.

No wonder they’re unhappy.The system is working against them.

Leo W. Gerardis the international president of the United Steelworkers Union (USW).

This article was produced by the Independent Media Institute.

more scotus:

https://www.alternet.org/2019/05/fox-news-analyst-andrew-napolitano-stunned-by-kavanaughs-latest-ruling-i-did-not-see-this-coming/

Fox News senior judicial analyst Andrew Napolitano on Monday said he was surprised to see Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh siding with the court’s liberal members in a recent 5-4 decision.

“One would think it is in the weeds, but it’s not. We all have apps on our phones — some for free and some you buy from Apple. So people sued Apple saying why do I pay $99 for an app worth $20 or $30. And the courts threw the case out, saying you can’t sue Apple in a class-action. You have to sue the originator of the app,” Napolitano explained to Fox News host Bill Hemmer.

“This morning, the Supreme Court of the United States radically expanded plaintiff’s rights to commence class-actions against deep pocketed corporations. And what alliance was it? It was the four liberal members of the court and its newest member Justice Brett Kavanaugh, writing a decision that is a plaintiff’s lawyers delight.”

“I did not see this coming,” Napolitano continued. “All the indications about Brett Kavanaugh were that he was a monolithic conservative that wouldn’t even listen to the other side and during the course of the unfortunate hearings that he had, when he was allowed to talk about his political philosophy, he said I am not a monolithic anything, I listen to the facts and I apply the law. Today he and the four liberal members of the court radically expanded the rights of plaintiffs to bring class-actions.”

Watch the video below:

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chevron takes lead in defense (city/state level lawsuits for damage agw) b/c exxon and others KNEW; using 1st amend defense cf drilled season 2

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https://www.alternet.org/2019/04/federal-judge-says-flint-water-lawsuit-actually-can-target-the-former-governor-meaning-he-may-finally-be-held-accountable/

A federal judge on Monday—who agreed that allegations of “conscience shocking” conduct claimed by plaintiffs were “plausible”—reinstated Michigan’s former Governor Rick Snyder as a defendant in a class action lawsuit by the victims of the water crisis in the city of Flint that first captured national headlines in 2014.

After earlier removing Snyder from the suit, brought by city residents harmed by the poisoning of the municipal water supply, U.S. District Court Judge Judith Levy reversed that decision as she noted the plaintiffs had shown the allegations against Snyder and his fellow co-defendants “plausibly describe ‘conscience shocking’ conduct” as the people of Flint were stripped of 14th Amendment protections from bodily harm or injury.

The plaintiffs in the suit, Levy wrote in her ruling,

plausibly state that the Governor acted indifferently to the risk of harm they faced, demonstrating a callous disregard for their right to bodily integrity. This indifference manifested itself in two ways. Initially, the Governor was indifferent because instead of mitigating the risk of harm caused by the contaminated water, he covered it up. In private, he worried about the need to return Flint to DWSD water and the political implications of the crisis. But in public, he denied all knowledge, despite being aware of the developing crisis.”

As a result, plaintiffs were lured into a false sense of security. They could have taken protective measures, if only they had known what the Governor knew. Instead, the Governor misled them into assuming that nothing was wrong. Governor Snyder’s administration even encouraged them to continue to drink and bathe in the water.

The legal team representing the plaintiffs welcome the judge’s determination.

“We are grateful that the Court agrees former Governor Snyder should be held accountable for his role in the Flint water crisis,” said attorney Theodore J. Leopold, co-lead for the plaintiffs.

“The citizens of Flint were both forgotten and mistreated by those involved in the Flint water disaster,” Leopold added. “To this day, residents continue to suffer because of the reckless decisions of senior state and local officials, as well as private contractors, and we hope to provide a measure of justice and some much-needed relief to those still struggling to recover.”

According to a statement from the plaintiff’s legal team, the complaint submitted to the court alleged that Snyder and his staff were aware of the health risks associated with the city’s transition to Flint River water, including the risk of Legionnaires’ disease, for months before an official announcement was made and that they concealed this information from the public. Overall, the lawsuit charges that officials from the state of Michigan, the city of Flint, Genesee County, and two private engineering firms created the public health crisis and did so while making calculated decisions that “deliberately exposed” residents of Flint to the harmful health effects of lead and other toxins.

“Rather than moving swiftly to protect the children and families of Flint, the state engaged in a cover-up which tragically led to preventable injuries and deaths of innocent Flint residents,” added Michael L. Pitt, the other co-lead in the case. “Those responsible for creating and prolonging the Flint Water crisis will be held accountable.”

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non-hodg lymphoma 11k cases waiting

2 bif ct loss --> settle 5 bill?$

4 key epa sci oppose current legal status, one ed imp peer jrl

kpfa 3/12 jess roland rev dr to chem gp; dessicant on wht and oats (kids food, ~ ca bill)

Whitewash Bk USRTK Terry Gillam

40 mil lbs? to 300 m now, in rain

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https://www.desmogblog.com/2019/02/27/oil-manufacturers-accountability-project-trade-group-climate-suits

no lnx pix many lnx

Battling for Big Oil: Manufacturing Trade Group Leads Assault on Climate Suits

Read time: 12 mins

By Guest • Wednesday, February 27, 2019 - 11:09

By Karen Savage, Climate Liability News. Crossposted from Climate Liability News.

In its fight to stave off a wave of climate change-related lawsuits, the fossil fuel industry has found a vocal and unapologetic ally in the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM).The 123-year old trade group represents a wide range of the nation’s manufacturing companies, but it has frequently gone to bat for select segments of its membership during major liability battles. Currently, it is Big Oil’s staunchest defender.

The group has filed briefs defending oil companies in liability lawsuits, launched campaigns to discredit the communities filing them, and has worked to stop shareholders from pressing the oil companies to disclose climate risks. In these roles, NAM has put itself front and center in the effort to keep fossil fuel companies from being held liable for their role in climate change, and from paying for the related damages that will run in the hundreds of billions of dollars to communities across the country.

“Taxpayer resources should not be used for baseless lawsuits that are designed to enrich trial lawyers and grab headlines for politicians,” Lindsey de la Torre, executive director of NAM’s spinoff group, theManufacturers’ Accountability Project (MAP), said in a statement after Rhode Island filed one of the climate liability lawsuits last year. NAM launched MAP in 2017 as a response to the increasing number of climate liability suits.

Those suits, according to NAM, are a result of a coordinated campaign by activists “to disparage U.S. manufacturers with a focus on America’s largest energy manufacturers.”

MAP is now attempting to convince the American public — as well as judges who might hear those liability cases — that attempts to hold companies accountable for their role in climate change will harm business, said Richard Daynard, president of Northeastern University Law School’s Public Health Advocacy Institute and chair of its Tobacco Products Liability Project.

Manufacturers' Accountability Project logo

The Manufacturers' Accountability Project (MAP) was launched in November 2017 to push back against climate-change-related lawsuits affecting the manufacturing industry. ]

“This is essentially the PR front for the defendants in climate litigation,” Daynard said, adding that MAP is also working to discourage municipalities from filing future suits.

“This is all part of a long history of tort reformpropaganda,” he said, adding that NAM has worked for decades to reign in all types of liability litigation, including against the tobacco industry.

So perhaps it’s not surprising that NAM’s defense of fossil fuel companies has begun to look increasingly like its support for the tobacco industry in the 1980s. Similar tactics were used when tobacco companies were facing hundreds of lawsuits and were charged with racketeering by the federal government for deceiving the public about the catastrophic health hazards of smoking. NAM has even hired the same law firm that defended the tobacco industry to launch an assault on the climate liability lawsuits.

NAM recently named Phil Goldberg, a former coal lobbyist as special counsel for MAP. Goldberg is a managing partner in the Washington office of Shook, Hardy & Bacon, which gained notoriety for defending the tobacco industry, and is the co-chair of the firm’s public policy group.

Some say Shook, Hardy & Bacon went beyond defending tobacco companies, actively coordinating efforts by its clients to deliberately deceive the public about the ruinous health effects of smoking.

Judge Gladys Kessler, of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, who found 10 tobacco companies guilty of violating racketeering laws in 2006, said the company’s lawyers “played an absolute central role in the creation and perpetuation” of the companies’ “fraudulent schemes,” calling it a “sad and disquieting chapter” in the legal profession.

Even before Goldberg was hired, MAP had launched an offensive against climate suits, filing friend-of-the-court briefs and intervening in a landmark constitutional suit brought by 21 young people against the U.S. government. MAP has also submitted public records requests and coordinated a public relations campaign to discredit the municipalities behind the liability lawsuits.

Sharon Eubanks, a former Department of Justice lawyer who led the government’s racketeering case against the tobacco industry, said MAP is launching a direct attack on climate litigation suits.

“It’s very similar what they’re doing, only the tobacco industry at least didn’t come right out and say ‘We’re going to target these lawsuits directly,’” Eubanks said. “They did so indirectly. But NAM and MAP, they’re like, ‘We’re targeting the lawsuits.’”

Michael Barnett, a professor of management & global business at Rutgers Business School who has studied trade associations, said groups like NAM exist to defend the interests of their industry.

“It’s sort of an outsourced arm of those firms, rather than doing it all on their own, there’s strength in numbers,” Barnett said. “There’s some efficiency to having one centralized legal defense that attacks on behalf of the whole industry in addition to each of the individual firms taking on these issues.”

No Stranger to the Liability Battlefield

The addition of Goldberg to MAP’s legal team indicates a continuing commitment to defending NAM’s fossil fuel defendants. In addition to being the go-to law firm for tobacco companies, Shook, Hardy & Bacon has a long history with NAM, partnering as far back as 2007 to support firms facing product liability suits. The firm worked so closelywith the tobacco industry to attack the science showing the dangers of smoking it was named in several cases along with their clients, charging them with deceiving the public by fraudulently concealing the health effects of smoking. Oklahoma’s attorney general called Shook, Hardy & Bacon an “aider and abettor” of fraud in one suit.

“[The Department of Justice] considered suing them and making them defendants because they were so much a part of the RICO violations we alleged,” Eubanks said.

“They’re not even hiding from anything, they’re just saying ‘we want to influence what’s happening in these cases the best way that we can.’”

She said she’s seen no evidence that MAP’s tactics are illegal, but they are similar to some of what was alleged in the tobacco cases.

Goldberg did not respond to a request for comment. In a NAM press release he said, “The NAM and its Manufacturers’ Accountability Project are the tip of the spear in the fight against the wave of unfounded public nuisance lawsuits targeting America’s manufacturers.”

Goldberg said climate liability suits get in the way of finding real solutions and “are more about politics than addressing the global challenge of climate change.” He did not elaborate on what the solutions are or how municipalities will pay for the infrastructure needed to protect their residents, costs that are projected to run into the hundreds of billions of dollars nationwide.

A History of Advocating for Fossil Fuel Members

NAM, which was founded in 1895, describes itself as the largest manufacturing association in the United States. It doesn’t publicly disclose its membership list, but its board includes some of the oil and gas industry’s most powerful executives.

Exxon senior vice president and management committee member Neil Chapman joined NAM’s executive committee in 2015, taking over the position vacated by current Exxon chief executive Darren Woods. Chapman, who donated $10,000 to NAM’s political action committee during the 2018 election cycle, also serves as NAM’s southwest regional vice chair.

Chapman and Exxon did not respond to a request for comment.

For decades, the association has promoted climate denial, founding the Global Climate Coalition in 1989 and sharing offices until 1992 while the Global Climate Coalition and its members — primarily energy companies and automobile manufacturers — worked to cast doubt on what was fast becoming overwhelming scientific evidence that the burning of fossil fuels drives climate change. The goal was to change the public’s perception and cast doubt on climate science.

The Global Climate Coalition was disbanded in 2002 after several of its largest corporate members pulled out under public pressure to accept that climate change — and the projected catastrophic effects — was an undeniable global threat.

More recently, NAM’s focus has shifted from promoting climate deception to defending member companies from efforts to hold them accountable for years of deceiving the public and damaging the climate.

Along with the American Petroleum Institute and American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers, NAM in 2015 joined the landmark youth climate lawsuit Juliana v. United States as an intervenor on the side of the federal government.

Calling the suit a “direct threat to businesses,” the trade associations said the “significant reduction in [greenhouse gas] emissions would cause a significant negative effect on [their] members by constraining the sale of the product they have specialized in developing and selling.” When the court asked intervenors to explain their views on climate change, NAM quickly backed out.

When the liability lawsuits began — and now total more than a dozen from communities across the country and one state (Rhode Island) — NAM responded by launching MAP to “set the record straight and highlight foundations and other activists who have sought to undermine and weaken manufacturing in the United States” by engaging in climate change-related litigation.

MAP came out swinging, claiming that then-New York attorney general Eric Schneiderman’s use of the Martin Act to investigate Exxon for possible climate change-related fraud was “politically motivated.” It demanded New York Mayor Bill de Blasio apologize to New Yorkers for using an outside firm to file its suit against five major oil companies and launched a campaign to highlight what it called de Blasio’s “politically-motivated attacks on manufacturers.”

Eubanks said that rhetoric doesn’t add up.

“Lawsuits are to enforce the law, to ensure that people are following the law and it takes you out of a political process and puts you before a neutral person, a judge,” she said, adding that Shook, Hardy & Bacon also does a good bit of political lobbying.

“They say, ‘We think these matters should be handled by legislation, not litigation, and by regulations that will come out of any statutes that are enacted,” she said. “Then they fight real hard to make sure there are no statutes that come down the pike because regulations come out of regulatory authority, so it sounds real good, but that’s wholly inconsistent with their approach.”

NAM and MAP have made a big deal out of the potential for future RICO charges against the fossil fuel industry— the same racketeering laws that ultimately ensnared the tobacco industry — and contend that a conspiracy is being waged on the other side by a “group of politically motivated activists” who are “trying to take down America’s energy manufacturers.”

“Right now, there are groups of trial lawyers slinking around the country tantalizing elected officials in cities and states with unrealistic promises of jackpot justice if they will only agree to sue energy manufacturers over climate change,” said NAM president and chief executive Jay Timmons in NAM’s State of Manufacturing Address last week in Houston. “These lawyers — they want to get rich at the expense of manufacturing workers.”

Daynard said this type of messaging is used in an effort to control the narrative around — and media coverage of — climate litigation.

“They have this notion that if they can get continue to get news coverage and establish themselves, they can make sure when cases are filed journalists will look, go to them and they can then get in some comment on how this is all worthless crazy stuff stirred up by ‘greedy lawyers’ or ‘ideologically driven NGO’s,’” Daynard said.

To try and substantiate its view that litigation is part of a vast conspiracy — and in what some say is an attempt to have a chilling effect on municipalities that file lawsuits — MAP has also submitted extensive public record requests to plaintiffs in the suits, seeking documents and communication between the municipalities and their attorneys, prior records requests that include those attorneys, certain communication regarding the defendant companies and communication between the municipalities and billionaire Tom Steyer, founder of NextGen, a progressive organization working to stem the risks of climate change for future generations.

When Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Kilmartin filed the first state-level suit last July, MAP denounced it.

Eubanks said ensuring manufacturers abide by state law is exactly what attorneys general should do.

“We have consumer protection statutes, we have consumer protection agencies, that’s part of what makes this country great,” Eubanks said. “You can’t just come in and roll over people with deceptive and unfair methods of competition, you can’t just lie about things without consequences and we have organizations to protect that. That’s what I find so alarming about this — the whole idea that there’s something wrong with enforcing the law.”

NAM did not respond to a request for comment. De la Torre could not be reached for comment.

Perhaps NAM’s biggest attack on liability suits thus far has been its accusations against several California municipalities.

Not long after the suits were filed, Exxon went on the offensive,accusing plaintiffs of failing to disclose climate risks to their bond investors.

To try to bolster that allegation, NAM — along with the industry ally Competitive Enterprise Institute — asked the Securities and Exchange Commission to investigate whether several cities and counties that filed climate suits misled investors when they stated in bond offerings that they couldn’t predict the impacts of climate change.

A report by the former chief of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s municipal bonds division later found the municipalities did not mislead potential investors.

In another instance, NAM partnered with the Chamber of Commerce to back Exxon, filing a friend-of-the-court brief in the oil giant’s quest to stop investigations by the attorneys general of Massachusetts and New York.

New York has since filed a lawsuit against Exxon based on that investigation, alleging the oil giant for years deceived investors by deliberately downplaying the climate risks to its business and long-term financial health. The Supreme Court recently ruled against Exxon’s attempt to stop Massachusetts’ investigation, which now continues.

This is the first in a series of articles on the trade group coordinating opposition to climate liability suits.

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aha: unions are collective action in the workplace/economic world, but class action is collective use of courts (legal vs economic power). both are under attack, defund the left

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/14112018/crab-fishermen-climate-change-lawsuit-fossil-fuel-companies-ocean-algae-neurotoxin-fishery-closure

dunno if this is class action

Crab Fishers Sue the Fossil Fuel Industry Over Climate Change as the Ocean Warms

BY: DAVID HASEMYER

The West Coast's largest commercial fishing association is the latest group seeking to hold fossil fuel companies accountable for climate change as it damages lives and livelihoods.

Crab fishing on the West Coast has become so threatened by warming oceans that a coalition of commercial fishers has now joined the climate litigation fray with a lawsuit filed Wednesday to hold 30 fossil fuel companies accountable for losses caused by climate change.

The lawsuit, filed in San Francisco County Superior Court by the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations, seeks damages on behalf of crab fishers, their businesses and families, and local communities in California and Oregon.

It describes losses caused by the closing of crab fishing waters over the past four years because of algae blooms in the warming Pacific waters, and warns that these closures will keep happening as warming continues.

"These changes threaten both the productivity of commercial fisheries and safety of commercially harvested seafood products," the lawsuit says. "In so doing, they also threaten those that rely on ocean fisheries and ecosystems for their livelihoods, by rendering it at times impossible to ply their trade."

At the heart of the 91-page lawsuit are claims similar to those being used by several California cities that are suing the fossil fuel industry over sea level rise. It accuses some of the world's largest oil and gas producers, including ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell and BP, of negligence, defective-product liability, creating a nuisance, and failing to warn about the dangers of fossil fuel products that the companies knew would result in warming of the oceans and atmosphere.

But this case is unusual in pitting one industry against another.

Because of the ocean warming brought on by greenhouse gas emissions, the crab fishing industry has been deprived of fishing opportunities, and consequently suffered severe financial hardships, the lawsuit says. "These injuries derive from rising ocean temperatures in the eastern Pacific Ocean generally and periodic extreme marine heat waves—the results of anthropogenic ocean warming caused by the foreseeable and intended use of defendants' products," the suit says.

Significant portions of the Dungeness crab fishing region along the Pacific Coast have been closed repeatedly since 2015, including parts along the West Coast this year, according to the lawsuit.

Warming water can generate algae blooms that can cause a buildup in shellfish of domoic acid, a potent neurotoxin that is a health threat to people and an economic threat to the entire crab fishery. Earlier this month, the California Department of Public Health issued a warning not to eat the internal organs of Dungeness crab from the Bodega Bay or Russian River areas because of high levels of domoic acid.

'It's Obvious the Oceans Are Getting Warmer'

Although the lawsuit does not specify a damage amount, the federationestimates crab fishing contributes hundreds of millions of dollars to the economy in Oregon and California each year.

"We're out fishing all the time, and it's obvious the oceans are getting warmer," said John Beardon, who fishes for Dungeness crab out of Crescent City, California. "That's bad for crabs and other fish, and it's bad for those of us who make a living on the water.

"The last three years have been really hard. Our community came together and held a fish fry to help our crew members. But fish fries and disaster relief are no solution to these closures we're now seeing year after year after year."

Disaster relief approved by Congress in 2018 will aid crabbers who were harmed by the poor season three years ago, but it provides only partial relief for fishers like Beardon.

The crab fleet is responsible for thousands of jobs on the boats and thousands more in the local businesses that support the fishery, according to Noah Oppenheim, the Pacific Coast Federation's executive director.

"We're taking a stand for the captains and crew, their families, and the business owners that support the fleet," he said. "The fossil fuel companies named in our lawsuit knowingly caused harm, and they need to be held accountable. We are seeking to implement measures, at the fossil fuel industry's expense, that will help crabbers adapt to a world in which domoic acid flareup's will be increasingly common, and also help those crabbers who suffer financial losses as a result."

Latest in a Growing List of Climate Lawsuits

The federation's lawsuit adds to a growing list of municipalities that have turned to the courts in the last two years seeking to hold fossil fuel companies financially responsible for the threat posed by climate change.

The fossil fuel companies' legal teams have pushed back hard, and judges have dismissed some of the lawsuits, saying it's not up to the courts to decide climate policy but rather the job of the legislative and executive branches of the federal government.

"This case will face similar obstacles as the other cases," said Michael Burger, executive director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University. Beyond the lawsuit being filed by a private party and the particular harms cited to the crab fishing industry by warming oceans, the complaint appears to similar to other climate litigation, he said.

The federation, like many of the other litigants, alleges the fossil fuel companies knew for nearly 50 years that the production and use of fossil fuel created greenhouse gases responsible for global warming.

"Instead of working to reduce the use and combustion of fossil fuel products, lower the rate of greenhouse gas emissions, minimize the damage associated with continued high use and combustion of such products, and ease the transition to a lower carbon economy, defendants concealed the dangers, sought to undermine public support for greenhouse gas regulation, and engaged in massive campaigns to promote the ever-increasing use of their products at ever greater volumes," the lawsuit says.

PUBLISHED UNDER:

https://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/how-private-probation-companies-make-money-americans-they-trap-criminal-justice

Marietta Conner watched the judge expectantly. The 63-year-old assistant ministerhad just pled guilty to “fail[ing] to yield to a pedestrian”—a criminal misdemeanor in Georgia—and did not have enough money to pay her $140 fine. The judge ordered that she be put on probation. But instead of county probation, Conner was assigned a private probation company supposed to mimic normal court probabation: meet with her once a month through a probation officer, collect payments and confirm her work and address. In the end, the company sapped Conner of well over the original amount of the fine, andeven dangled an arrest warrant over her head when it erroneously claimed she had missed a payment.

Conner was lucky. She knew someone at the Southern Center for Human Rights who helped her escape the trap the correctional corporation tried to put her in. Yet for hundreds of thousands of others on probation through a private company, the experience routinely entails prolonged harassment, indebtedness and even imprisonment—and sometimes all with the blessing of a judge.

To be ensnared in America’s system of mass incarceration is to be in prison, on parole, or on probation. In 2012 1 in every 35 American adults was trapped in the criminal justice system. The surging number of people whose lives necessitate constant surveillance and management has exploded the coffers of state and federal budgets, and rather than reform heavy-handed laws to ease this burden on public funds, elected leaders have contracted incarceration services out to companies with a moneyed interest in jailing more Americans.

The private prison industry has stoked the outrage of progressives and civil libertarians for years, as has the practice of prosecutors pushing plea bargains with heavy parole, but an equally dangerous phenomenon is the rise of private probation businesses across the country. Since the 1970s, the private probation industry has expanded into at least 20 states—most concentrated in the South—and nearly all of its companies are entirely supported by the fees paid to them by the probationers they “serve.” In the last few years, many of these businesses have been given more power to pursue and imprison probationers, playing a starring role in what one federal judge called a “judicially sanctioned extortion racket.”

When someone is convicted of a misdemeanor crime, he or she is often placed on probation by a judge either in lieu of minor prison time or as part of a payment plan to pay off court fines levied for his charge. Traditionally, the purpose of probation has been to facilitate the rehabilitation of the probationer through constant contact with a representative of the court (a probation officer), although this concept may be farcical in an age when an adult can be placed under “community supervision” for jaywalking. With privatized supervision, the offenders are required to report monthly to a contractor acting in the same capacity as a probation officer, and they must also pay a monthly fee to the company on top of the fines they owe the court.

The distinction between fee and fine is important because, as noted by the Economist, it is through fees that private probation companies can afford to pay the salaries of their staff. A report from the Criminal Justice Review explained that “Private agencies…rely on the probationer’s paying a supervision fee to remain solvent.” Solvency, however, is hardly a concern for many of these corporations, some of which have amassed tens of millions of dollars annually off the fees they charge probationers.

One such company is Sentinel Offender Services, whose combined operations in four different states brought in $30 million in 2009, according to an investigation by NBC. The company has faced many legal challenges on the grounds that its employees demand payment for fees from poor probationers and then issue arrest warrants when they cannot pay, without consideration for their financial situation. Marietta Conner, the impoverished pastor, was under the supervision of Sentinel.

Although a 1983 federal ruling said that probationers cannot be jailed for being indigent, Sentinel has regularly issued arrest warrants for probationers delinquent on their payments, and has even extended the probationary sentences of thousands—illegally—in order to wrest more money from them. Sentinel has terrorized so many lives a Georgia court recently ruled that the company might have to refund thousands of payments to former probationers who had the unfortunate luck to be supervised by a company that “links its probation officers’ performance evaluations to the amount of money collected from probationers,” according to a 2010 ACLU report.

Sentinel is just one in a vanguard of 34 probation corporations in Georgia pushing to have more power to hunt down delinquent probationers. A new bill up for a vote in theGeorgia’s House of Representatives, greased for quick passage by funds from industry lobbyists would give private probation officers increased “immunity from liability” and grant them more discretion to extend a person’s probation—and by extension, prolong a probationer’s “payment period.”

Some courts have actually been complicit in the racket. A circuit court in Alabama ruled in 2012 that the local municipal judiciary in Harpersville, Alabamahad operated “debtor’s prisons” together with the private probation firm Judicial Correctional Services by turning over poor misdemeanor defendants to JCS and then allowing the company to fleece them for every cent they had.

In the event that the probationers couldn’t pay their monthly fees to the company—as was the case for many probationers in the nation’s fourth poorest state—they were thrown in jail without a trial at the behest of JCS and under the blessing of the Harpersville court, who would then doom already-indigent defendants to an inescapable pit of debt by piling even more fines and fees. The presiding judge who ruled against Harpersville was scandalized so deeply by the JCS-judiciary collusion that he accused the local court of “violating almost every safeguard afforded by the United States Constitution [and] the laws of the state of Alabama.” Meanwhile, JCS continues to operatein 69 cities throughout four different states.

Perhaps the most pernicious feature of these businesses is how they enable local municipalities to perpetuate debtor’s prisons across the country. In Florida, birthplace of modern privatized probation, courts permit correctional firms to tack on a 40% surcharge on top of the debt a delinquent probationer already owes, as detailed in an investigation by the Brennan Center for Justice. The investigation also found that courts in Missouri regularly condemn people to prison when they cannot pay off the fees imposed by probation companies, and in Illinois, corporations shakedown impoverished probationers for 30% more of their standing debt if they miss payments. In total, the report found that nine states charged probationers excessive fees “payable to private debt collection firms”—in other words, private probation companies.

Efforts to resist the abuses of the private probation system have been scattered and slow building. In addition to the class-action lawsuits filed against Sentinel in Georgia and JCS in Alabama, an Idaho-based probation company was sued in 2011 for perpetually increasing probationer’s sentences by manipulating the results of drug tests (testing positive for drugs is usually a violation of probation and can mean further penalties). That same year in Tennessee,a group of former probationer’s filed a successful lawsuit against the owner of a company called Providence Community Corrections for having “forced them to overpay” and holding them on probation “longer than necessary.”

Yet despite a proliferation of lawsuits across the country, municipalities seem to show no less willingness to contract out probation services. In addition to the 20 or so states that now allow some form of privatized probation, a state senator in at least one other place—Nebraska—has inquired with policy experts about implementing the correctional model in his home state.

It does not take a legal expert to discern how for-profit correctional services threaten the freedom of Americans. Private probationary companies exist only as long as there is a steady supply of probationers from whom to extract payment, and these companies grow only if the number of people on probation grows. As evidenced further by the case of prison contractors, some of which have compelled state governors to keep prisons 90% full, a privatized correctional model maintains the American system of mass incarceration by further building it into an industry.

https://www.propublica.org/article/kushner-companies-loses-a-key-motion-in-class-action-filed-by-baltimore-tenants

Am Immigration council class act against ppl being turned away b/c Am is full Harbury DN 7/9/18

https://litigationfinancejournal.com/chamber-commerce-ranked-2-top-30-tort-reform-hypocrites-list

U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Institute for Legal Reform (ILR) has ranked #2 on The New York Law School’s Center for Justice & Democracy’s 2018 ranking of the top-30 tort reform hypocrites. The report aims to reveal which tort reform advocates are the most litigious, and thereby hypocritical in their efforts to scale back the litigiousness of other entities. The ILR, which consistently advocates for numerous tort reform measures including mandatory disclosure of third party funding agreements and placing interest rate caps on Consumer Legal Funding transactions, placed second on the list behind only President Trump.

According to the report, the ILR was established in 1998 to pursue the Chamber’s tort reform agenda. Since its inception, however, the ILR “has spent millions on federal lobbying to in an effort to keep victims from having their cases heard before a civil judge or jury.”

The U.S. Chamber is the top lobbying spender in the country, having spent a whopping $109MM in 2017 alone ($22MM of which was spent by the ILR). Yet despite spending all of that money on efforts to scale back the ability of others to litigate, the Chamber itself is one of the nation’s top litigators. Over the last decade, “the Chamber has been involved in over 1100 lawsuits, either as a plaintiff or as an amicus curiae,” according to the report.

The Chamber’s President, Tom Donohue, told the Washington Examiner in 2015: “We spend half of our time trying to reduce the number of suits by class-action lawyers and the other half of our time suing the hell out of the government. We sue the federal government and units of the federal government and some state governments, 180-90 times a year.”

The report cites the Chamber for its hypocrisy, and notes that the Chamber is a longtime member of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC)’s Civil Justice Task Force, an entity “devoted solely to weakening or eliminating corporate liability for wrongdoing.” An investigative report by the Center for Media and Democracy found that bills proposed by ALEC “make it harder for average Americans to access the civil justice system” and “provide relief and protections for the industries who wrote them.”

The #1 tort reform hypocrite according to the report is President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly scaled back access to justice – his de-fanging of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is but one example – while simultaneously suing or threatening to sue anyone and everyone whom he perceives has done him wrong.

Rounding out the top-5 on the list are the National Rifle Association, the National Federation of Independent Business, and General Motors.

The entire report can be found here.

The entire report can be found here.https://www.almcms.com/contrib/content/uploads/documents/1/Critical-Mass-nts-6-13-Tort-Reform-Hypocrites-Report.pdf

. President Donald J. Trump...............................................................................................................2 2. U.S. Chamber of Commerce Institute for Legal Reform (ILR) .............................................................4 3. National Rifle Association (NRA) ...................................................................................................... 6 4. National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB)..........................................................................7 5. General Motors (GM) ....................................................................................................................... 9 6. Chrysler..........................................................................................................................................10 7. Uber...............................................................................................................................................12 8. Airbnb............................................................................................................................................13 9. Amazon .........................................................................................................................................14 10. Verizon ......................................................................................................................................15 11. Independent Community Bankers of America (ICBA)....................................................................15

Debt Collectors ..........................................................................................................................16 iv

State Farm.................................................................................................................................18 14. Liberty Mutual............................................................................................................................19 15. Farmers Insurance ..................................................................................................................... 20 16. Honeywell International............................................................................................................. 20 17. Covington & Burling ...................................................................................................................21 18. Texas Governors.........................................................................................................................23 19. U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX)......................................................................................................23 20. Retiring U.S. Representative Darrell Issa (R-CA).......................................................................... 24 21. Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin ...........................................................................................25 22. Ted Frank, Director, Center for Class Action Fairness................................................................... 26 23. Koch Industries/Georgia-Pacific.................................................................................................. 28 24. ExxonMobil/Rex Tillerson........................................................................................................... 29 25. Amway/parent Alticor.................................................................................................................30 26. Bayer Corporation......................................................................................................................30 27. Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad (BNSF).............................................................................31 28. Pfizer..........................................................................................................................................32 29. Teva Pharmaceutical ...................................................................................................................33 30. Procter & Gamble (P&G)..............................................................................................................33 About the Center for Justice & Democracy at New York Law School.....

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https://www.exposedbycmd.org/2018/06/19/alec-deadly-asbestos-agenda-benefits-koch-industries

The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) named Missouri Republican state Rep. Bruce DeGroot as a “Legislator of the Week” in June.

Why is ALEC so fond of DeGroot? Because he has cheerfully championed ALEC legislation to restrict the right of terminally ill, asbestos victims to sue over mesothelioma. In doing so, DeGroot is helping the many U.S. companies, including ALEC funders Koch Industries and Nationwide Mutual Insurance Company, that have asbestos-related liability.

NATIONWIDE, NOT ON YOUR SIDE

Mesothelioma is an aggressive type of lung cancer caused by exposure to asbestos. Even though the dangers of deadly asbestos have been known for over 100 years, industry worked hard to bury evidence that workers were being harmed by asbestos exposure. Three thousand people are diagnosed each year with mesothelioma in the United States and most die within a year or two. Most victims are public servants, veterans, firefighters, even teachers exposed to asbestos in schools.

In addition to being an ALEC politician, Degroot is an attorney for an insurance defense firm, Brown & James, which represents dozens of insurers who, in turn, have as clients companies responsible for mesothelioma-related claims. One of the firm’s clients is Nationwide. Sources tell the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) that Nationwide was actively pushing the bill in Missouri, although it was not publicly listed as a supporter of the bill.

In many states, a legislator who introduced a bill benefitting his firm’s clients could face ethics charges or worse. In Missouri, “it is unseemly, to say the least, and one of the reasons we need ethics reform in this state,” said deputy director Sharon Geuea Jones of the Missouri Association of Trial Lawyers.

Nationwide has long been a corporate sponsor of ALEC. In 2014 and 2015, for example, Nationwide incurred asbestos-related losses of $148 million and $98 million respectively, giving it one of the largest asbestos liabilities of any insurer for those years, according to Casualty Actuaries of Greater New York.

ALEC PROTECTIONS FOR ASBESTOS COMPANIES

At ALEC, corporate lobbyists and politicians vote as equals behind closed doors on “model” bills that advance corporate interests over consumers’ interests. DeGroot’s bill, HB 1645 or “The Asbestos Transparency Act,” bears a striking similarity to ALEC’s “Asbestos Claims Transparency Act.” The Missouri House passed the bill in March, but the Senate has yet to take action.

The bill would force victims of asbestos to search out bankrupt companies that made asbestos, not just companies still in business. The problem for the injured is that many companies that made asbestos or had asbestos products have sought bankruptcy protection and are now in trusts. These trusts are more difficult to sue, their assets are harder to determine, and the victims often die before their case is heard. The bill would also limit the time victims have to bring a case after diagnosis, even though it takes more time to prepare for a suit against bankrupt companies.

DeGroot can’t say enough about how awesome ALEC’s cookie-cutter corporate legislation is. “ALEC and ALEC model policy are a great resource. ALEC was able to put me in touch with an expert who was willing to travel to Missouri to testify in support of one of the bills I filed, Asbestos Transparency Trust,” DeGroot said in an ALEC interview.

That “expert” was Mark Behrens, a partner of the Kansas City law firm Shook, Hardy & Bacon. The firm has a national reputation for representing deadly industries like Big Tobacco. Behrens travels around the country lobbying on behalf of ALEC’s many asbestos bills, but tells the public that he is representing other clients like the U.S. Chamber Institute for Legal Reform.

EMOTIONAL FLOOR DEBATE

A cheerful DeGroot opened floor debate saying inaccurately that the bill simply stopped “double dipping” by asbestos victims, but the issue quickly turned emotional.

The first legislator to speak was Republican Rep. Steve Cookson, who is suffering from liver cancer. “I have been up here for eight years and most bills that we talk about are about protecting somebody’s money.… This bill is designed to protect out of state companies and insurance companies.”

Cookson went on to say that in the past he had been supportive of some tort reform bills. “I reflect back now, and you know I have a personal situation going on right here. I think a lot more about life and death. I would ask you, did you ever contemplate the way you want to die?” he asked of DeGroot.

“Well that is a bit personal,” responded DeGroot with a nervous laugh.

“Well, so do you want to die a slow death where you lay there in the bed and suffocate to death?” asked Cookson.

“I wouldn’t like that, no,” said Degroot.

Cookson went on to say that for the time he had left in the legislature, he wanted to make sure he was on the side of those “laying in the hospital for a long long time suffering, surrounded by their families…. I can’t bring myself to be in support of anything that would compromise a person’s ability to be made whole, and their family to be made whole because they had to leave this world in a horrible fashion in an abbreviated time they would have been expected to live.”

The ALEC bill offered by DeGroot would mean that many victims would not live to see their day in court. As one opposing legislator, Rep. Jay Barnes explained, “the best evidence in an asbestos case is the plaintiff, and when they die, that goes away.”

Similar bills based on the ALEC model have passed in 15 states: Ohio, Oklahoma, Wisconsin, West Virginia, Arizona, Texas, Utah, Tennessee, South Dakota, North Dakota, Iowa, Mississippi, Michigan, Kansas, and North Carolina.

KOCH INDUSTRIES LIMITS ITS EXPOSURE TO MESOTHELIOMA LAWSUITS

Koch Industries is the largest privately held company in America, with multiple subsidiary firms. When Koch acquired the paper company Georgia-Pacific LLC in 2007, it also became responsible for Bestwall LLC, which up until 1977 made a joint compound that contained asbestos. And because mesothelioma symptoms only appear after 10 to 50 years, Koch knew that when it purchased Georgia-Pacific, it also became responsible for thousands of asbestos lawsuits.

Koch Industries is a big financial supporter of ALEC and has served on the ALEC private enterprise board for many years, including in 2007 when the ALEC board approved the Asbestos Claims Transparency Act. Subsequently, in 2017, Koch Industries put Bestwall into bankruptcy to limit its exposure to mesothelioma lawsuits.

An affiliate of Koch’s Georgia-Pacific, Bestwall, joined “scores of U.S. manufacturers that have filed for bankruptcy due to asbestos litigation, and comes as the U.S. Congress mulls a bill that plaintiffs’ lawyers say would discourage asbestos claims,” wrote Reuters. The misnamed FACT Act is supported by ALEC, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and companies with billions of dollars of liability for asbestos claims, including Koch Industries.

Koch now argues that Bestwall was only a minor user of asbestos, but construction workers were exposed to multiple sources of asbestos, and since many of the responsible parties no longer exist, victims’ lawyers are forced to sue more than one company.

Koch complains it is spending $160 million a year defending its subsidiary against asbestos lawsuits. It could have set up a trust fund from the beginning when it acquired Bestwall to pay victims with that money instead of fighting every lawsuit, and is now slowing the process by putting the company into bankruptcy.

Americans for Tax Fairness estimates that the Kochs will get $1.4 billion from the Jobs and Tax Cut Act of 2017, money that could be used to pay asbestos victims before they die.

Instead, Koch and its allies are working hard to pass laws that run out the clock.

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game over tipping pt?! rbg v gorsuch

https://www.democracynow.org/2018/5/23/supreme_court_deals_blow_to_workers

a major blow to workers’ rights, the Supreme Court ruled 5 to 4 Monday that employers can use arbitration clauses to prohibit workers from banding together to challenge violations of federal labor laws in class-action lawsuits. Arbitration is often confidential. Many workers may agree to mandatory arbitration clauses without even being aware of it when they sign a contract with their employer. In a rare show of public displeasure, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg read her dissent from the bench, calling the majority opinion “egregiously wrong” and saying, “The court today holds enforceable these arm-twisted, take-it-or-leave-it contracts—including the provisions requiring employees to litigate wage and hours claims only one-by-one. Federal labor law does not countenance such isolation of employees.” For more, we speak with Terri Gerstein, former labor bureau chief for the New York State Attorney General’s Office

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bill to save class action on sex harrass cd be expended to other groups

nomi prins 12/17 AN

https://www.alternet.org/economy/next-financial-crisis-will-be-worse-last-one

...On the flip side of that euphoria however, is the fact that the median wage rose just 2.4 percent and has remained effectively stagnant relative to inflation. And although the unemployment rate fell to a 17-year low of 4.1 percent, the labor force participation rate dropped to 62.7 percent, its lowest level in nearly four decades—particularly difficult for new entrants to the workforce, such as students graduating under a $1.3 trillion pile of unrepayable or very challenging student loan debt. (Not to worry though: Goldman Sachs is on that, promoting a way to profit from this debt by stuffing it into other assets and selling those off to investors, a la shades of the subprime mortgage crisis.)

Those of us living in the actual world without billionaire family pedigrees possess a healthy dose of skepticism over the “Make America Great Again” sect that believes Trump has transformed America “hugely,” for record-setting markets don’t imply economic stability, nor do 40 percent corporate tax cuts translate into 40 percent wage growth. We can march forward into 2018 carrying that knowledge with us.

But first, a recap. For the U.S. financial system, 2017 was marked by five main themes: The GOP’s “You All Just Got a Lot Richer” Corporate Tax Reduction Plan; Big Banks Still Bad; The Fed’s Minor Policy Shift; Debt; and Deregulators Appointed to Positions of Regulatory Authority.

Banks Are Still Big and Bad

The Big Six banks have paid billions of dollars in settlements for a variety of frauds committed before and since the 2007-2008 financial crisis, but that didn’t keep them from tallying up new fines in 2017. The nation’s largest bank, JPMorgan Chase, agreed to pay $53 million in fines for scamming African-American and Latino mortgage borrowers with disproportionately higher rates than for white borrowers. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau fined Citigroup $28.8 million for not disclosing foreclosure-avoiding actions. Bank of America got fined $45 million for its foul treatment of a California couple trying to save their home.

But the Big Six bank that received the most attention in 2017, as it did in 2016, was Wells Fargo. The number of people affected by its fake-account creation scandal grew from 2 million reported in 2016 to about 3.5 million. That increase resulted in Wells Fargo expanding its associated class-action settlement to $142 million.

Wells Fargo was mired in smaller scandals, too. For instance, it charged 800,000 customers for auto insurance they didn’t need, raised mortgage rates for certain customers without properly disclosing it was going to, and made a bunch of unauthorized adjustments to people’s mortgages.

No Glass-Steagall Reinstatement, More Deregulation

The idea of reinstating the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 featured in both the Democratic and the Republican National Committees’ platforms during the campaign season. But Trump’s treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, made it clear multiple times there would be no such push from the administration, arguing against doing so before senators including Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders.

To emphasize his disdain for regulation and oversight, Mnuchin also pushed the Financial Stability Oversight Council, over which he presides, to vote 6 to 3 to rescind American International Group’s designation as posing a potential threat to the U.S. financial system. Thus, AIG will no longer be paying penance for its role at the epicenter of the last financial crisis by filing regular risk reports anymore. Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen also supported the move.

...

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/10/cfpb-mandatory-arbitration/543918/

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https://www.ecowatch.com/fracking-dimock-2474053132.html

Fracking Giant Sues Dimock Resident for $5M for Speaking to Media About Water Contamination

Ever since the dangerous consequences of natural gas extraction via hydraulic fracturing—popularly known as "fracking"—entered the national consciousness, the small town of Dimock, Pennsylvania has arguably been "ground zero" for water contamination caused by the controversial practice.

Now Cabot Oil & Gas, the massive energy company responsible for numerous fracking wells near Dimock, is suing one of the town's residents for $5 million, claiming that his efforts to "attract media attention" to the pollution of his water well have "harmed" the company. According to the lawsuit, Dimock resident Ray Kemble's actions breached an earlier 2012 settlement that was part of anongoing federal class action lawsuitover the town's water quality. Kemble has stated that Cabot's fracking turned his groundwater "black, like mud, [with] a strong chemical odor."

Earlier this year, Kemble filed a follow-up lawsuit against Cabot, which was based on new findings that could help him prove the link between Cabot's fracking operation and the contamination of his well. Cabot, at the time, argued that the case was built on "inflammatory allegations" intended to "poison the jury pool" and "extort payment" from the company.

Kemble eventually dropped his lawsuit, acting in response to new information that he thought might negatively affect the case. Kemble's lawyers have declined to comment on the nature of that information. Cabot alleged that this lawsuit was a breach of the 2012 settlement contract Kemble had signed, prompting them to counter-sue Kemble.

Cabot's decision to sue Ray Kemble may be motivated by more than their distaste for his now-dismissed lawsuit. In context, it appears meant to intimidate and "send a message" to Kemble and any other resident thinking of voicing similar concerns and objections. Days before Cabot's lawsuit against Kemble was filed, the U.S. Agency for Toxic Substance and Disease Registry (ATSDR) arrived in Dimock to examine the groundwater of several homes close to Cabot fracking wells, including Kemble's.

Kemble described the state of his groundwater to the Associated Press: "Take a skunk and every household chemical, put it in a blender, puree it for five minutes and take a whiff. It burns the back of your throat, makes you gag, makes you want to puke. It's all still bad. That's why they're back up here."

The ATSDR told the AP that it is testing Dimock's water for bacteria, gases and chemicals in order to "determine if there are drinking water quality issues that may continue to pose a health threat." Their previous study in 2012 found high levels of chemicals such as methane, cadmium, lead and arsenic. They also found that several residences were "at risk of explosion or fire" due to high methane levels. In the past, several drinking water wells in Dimock have exploded due to the high amount of methane now present in the town's water.

Dimock residents have been expressing concern over the quality of their water for nearly a decade. In 2009, Pennsylvania state officials determined that Cabot Oil & Gas was responsible for the contamination, though the EPA complicated this decision by announcing in 2012 that Dimock's water was "safe" to drink. The EPA arrived at this conclusion despite the fact that its investigators—along with the ATSDR—had found "significant damage to the water quality" due to the presence of nearby fracking wells.

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defense in DC inaug charges 80 yrs prision

http://www.alternet.org/activism/unprecedented-court-escalation-trump-protesters-could-be-facing-decades-prison-their

KEEPING UP WITH THE KOCHS AS OKLAHOMA ATTORNEY GENERAL

The stack of Pruitt emails received by CMD reveal email exchanges between Aaron Cooper, Director of Public Affairs for the attorney general’s office and Matt Ball, Oklahoma State Director for Americans for Prosperity (AFP), the right-wing political advocacy arm of the Koch political empire.

July 2013 emails show Ball organizing an August 22 event featuring Pruitt, Sen. James Lankford (OK-R), and William Yeatman, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI). Both Lankford and CEI have received Koch funding. In organizing the event, Ball helpfully instructs the AG’s staff on what he wants Pruitt to say,

“Frankly, I just assume the AG and Lankford talk sue and settle, how the EPA is deploying these tactics and what their respective offices have done on oversight and litigation, and let Yeatman from CEI give an objective analysis of costs to ratepayers from revised state implementation plan on regional haze (which includes the PSO rate increase). That way you guys don’t have to deliver those messages and can focus on what the AG does best, opposing the Obama administration and its nasty tactics on the environment.” Industry groups and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce claim that agencies like EPA are “regulating” outside the normal rule making process when they are sued by environmentalist groups, like Greenpeace and Sierra Club, for not following the law and then settle those lawsuits in legally binding, court ordered agreements without inviting states or industry to participate.

Cooper promptly responds, “I think that what be good from our standpoint.” Ball, on August 14, sends an email with the final schedule detailed in which he praises Pruitt for “all they are doing to push back against President Obama’s EPA and its axis with liberal environmental groups.” Pruitt led a group of state attorneys general in suing the EPA for its correspondence with environmental groups.

In another email, Ball requests a same day meeting with Pruitt’s Chief of Staff and Assistant Attorney General, Melissa Houston and she agrees to meet him the next day in the AG’s conference room. The fractured emails do not indicate what the meeting was about.

Yet another email from December 2013, invites Dean Kuckelman, Senior Counsel, Litigation and Discovery, for Koch Companies Public Sector to a conference call with two of Pruitt’s assistant attorneys general and the Solicitor General. The topic of the conference is not known. This email followed an email from Kuckelman to Houston with an attachment produced by the American Tort Reform (ATR) entitled, “Judicial Hell Holes.” The Kochs share ATR’s goals to make it harder for consumers to sueover products and services that kill or injure people. Judicial “hell holes” refer to states where it is easier for consumers to sue or unite in class action suits against giant, deep-pocketed corporations.

This is only a small sampling of the emails between Koch and ALEC staff and Pruitt staff, CMD is fighting for 1,600 pages withheld by Pruitt’s office in the lawsuit and additional emails, which will likely shed further light on these meetings and relationships.

The cozy relationship between Pruitt, the Kochs, ALEC crew, and the big polluters who fund ALEC will no doubt continue as Pruitt begins to dismantle the EPA.

Upon his appointment ALEC released a statement lauding Pruitt and claiming that Trump has “found just the right person to bring fresh leadership and much-needed reform to an agency currently out of control. Anyone who values striking a balance between sensible environmental regulations and the rule of law should delight in Pruitt’s appointment.”

While the corporate-fueled ALEC may be delighted, Americans concerned about the future of America’s lakes, bays, rivers, and more find Pruitt’s close relationship with polluters not very charming.

? relevant?

http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/aurora-shooting-survivors-paying-cinemarks-legal-bill

...While Holmes was found guilty in 2015, a group of survivors filed a state lawsuit against Cinemark in 2012, claiming lax security allowed the heavily-armed Holmes to enter the theater and carry out the shooting. Ultimately, a jury of six sided with Cinemark in the civil case in state court, finding that there was no way they could have foreseen the attack and that additional security would have done little to stop Holmes, who was wearing body armor and was armed with gas canisters and multiple firearms.”

A judge at the same time also dismissed a similar lawsuit in federal court, saying Cinemark’s lack of security was not a substantial factor in the deaths.

Colorado law allows the winning side of civil cases to seek costs. According to the Los Angeles Times, Cinemark’s lawyers at the time told a judge the money was needed to cover the costs of preserving evidence, retrieving and copying records, travel and other expenses – including $500,000 for expert testimony.

The judge in the case, District Judge R. Brooke Jackson, gave both sides 24 hours to come to a settlement agreement, urging the survivors to take a settlement from Cinemark. The company offered $150,000 split among 41 plaintiffs. The Times spoke to four people privy to the confidential negotiations:

They decided on a split of $30,000 each to the three most critically injured survivors. The remaining 38 plaintiffs would equally share the remaining $60,000.

...

House passes bills to rein in activist influence on regulations

By JOHN SICILIANO • 1/7/16 7:34 PM

The House passed two Republican-backed bills to roll back excessive regulations and prevent environmentalists from influencing regulations through so-called "sue-and-settle" tactics.

Business groups welcomed passage of the first bill the "Sunshine for Regulatory Decrees and Settlements Act of 2015," by a vote of 244 to 173, which takes aim at the use of class-action lawsuits to get federal agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency to agree to their terms in settlement agreements and defense decrees.

The House also passed, 245 to 174, the SCRUB Act, which would set up a special bipartisan commission to hunt down burdensome rules for repeal and put a damper on federal overreach.

The White House said earlier this week that President Obama would veto both bills.

Stay abreast of the latest developments from nation's capital and beyond with curated News Alerts from the Washington Examiner news desk and delivered to your inbox.

"Today we are one step closer to reforming our broken regulatory system after passage of this common-sense legislation," said William Kovacs, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's senior vice president for regulatory affairs and the environment, in response to passage of the sue-and-settle bill.

"The abusive 'sue and settle' practice has gone on long enough, with the public denied the right to weigh in on major policy decisions brought before courts under private agreements between agencies and advocacy groups," Kovacs added. "Regulations that arise from this secretive process cost businesses many millions of dollars and can stunt economic growth."

The House appears more emboldened than ever to chase down what the GOP sees as regulatory overreach by the president. The House is also expected to take up a resolution of disapproval next week nullifying the EPA's Waters of the United States rule, which has become a prime target by the leadership for repeal.

The water rules make ranchers and farmers subject to enforcement actions by designating ditches waterways, which lawmakers and federal judges have questioned in recent months.

Jim Tozzi, former head of the White House's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs under President Ronald Reagan, says more is needed to rein in regulations by establishing a regulatory cap.

Also from the Washington Examiner

"Basically we are beginning to convince advocates for less regulation that if they continue to place procedural constraints on regulators that although such actions will decrease the rate of growth in the regulatory state it will continue to increase but at a slower rate," Tozzi said in an email. "The fix is a regulatory budget, which is the key to kingdom. A regulatory budget puts a cap on the total costs that regulators can impose on the public."

Tozzi was involved with groups who advised lawmakers on the SCRUB Act. He is the head of the regulatory watchdog group Center for Regulatory Effectivenes.

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/house-passes-bills-to-rein-in-activist-influence-on-regulations/article/2579901

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http://ecowatch.com/2016/05/26/monsanto-losses-pcb-lawsuit/

Chow | May 26, 2016

A St. Louis jury has awarded three plaintiffs a total of $46.5 million in damages in a lawsuit alleging that Monsanto and three other companies were negligent in its handling of polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, a highly toxic and carcinogenic group of chemicals.

This case, which went on trial April 28, involved only three of nearly100 plaintiffs claiming that exposure to polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, caused non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

Yesterday’s 10-2 verdict in St. Louis Circuit Court awarded $17.5 million in damages to the three plaintiffs and assessed an additional $29 million in punitive damages against Monsanto, Solutia, Pharmacia and Pfizer, the St. Louis Dispatch reported.

PCBs were used to insulate electronics decades ago. Before switching operations to agriculture, Monsanto was the sole manufacturer of the compound from 1935 until 1977. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) banned PCBs in 1979, due to its link to birth defects and cancer in laboratory animals. PCBs can also have adverse skin and liver effects in humans. PCBs linger in the environment for many decades.

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flint water

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6/15

MONTREAL (AP) — A judge has awarded more than $15 billion Canadian (US$12 billion) to Quebec smokers in a case that pitted them against three giant tobacco companies. The case is believed to be the biggest class-action lawsuitever seen in Canada.

Superior Court Justice Brian Riordan said in his decision released late Monday that by choosing not to inform health authorities or the public directly of what they knew, the companies chose profits over the health of their customers.

chls Black is currently working with AT&T in its lobbying campaign to be given retroactive immunity against lawsuits for having assisted the administration in its warrantless wiretapping program.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Class_action

A class action, class suit, or representative action is where a group (a class) sues another party. It is pleonastic to refer to a class action as a "class action suit". Collective lawsuits originated in the United States and are still predominantly a U.S. phenomenon. But in several European countries with civil law, contrary to Anglo-American common law, changes have been made in recent years to allow consumer organizations to bring claims on behalf of consumers.

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Nationwide plaintiff classes are possible, but such suits must have a commonality of issues across state lines. This may be difficult if the civil law in the various states lack significant commonalities. Large class actions brought in federal court frequently are consolidated for pre-trial purposes through the device of multidistrict litigation (MDL).^[3] It is also possible to bring class actions under state law, and in some cases the court may extend its jurisdiction to all the members of the class, including out of state (or even internationally) as the key element is the jurisdiction that the court has over the defendant.

Typically, federal courts are thought to be more favorable for defendants, and state courts more favorable for plaintiffs. Many class actions are filed initially in state court. The defendant will frequently try to remove the case to federal court. The Class Action Fairness Act of 2005^[4]increases defendants' ability to remove state cases to federal court by giving federal courts original jurisdiction for all class actions with damages exceeding $5,000,000 exclusive of interest and costs.^[5] It should be noted, however, that the Class Action Fairness Act contains carve-outs for "inter alia", shareholder class actions covered by the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and those concerning internal corporate governance issues (the latter typically being brought as shareholder derivative actions in the state courts of Delaware, the state of incorporation of most large corporations).^[6]

The procedure for filing a class action is to file suit with one or several named plaintiffs on behalf of a proposed class. The proposed class must consist of a group of individuals or business entities that have suffered a common injury or injuries. Typically these cases result from an action on the part of a business or a particular product defect or policy that applied to all proposed class members in a typical manner. After the complaint is filed, the plaintiff must file a motion to have the class certified. In some cases class certification may require discovery in order to determine its size and if the proposed class meets the standard for class certification.

Upon the motion to certify the class, the defendants may object to whether the issues are appropriately handled as a class action, to whether the named plaintiffs are sufficiently representative of the class, and to their relationship with the law firm or firms handling the case. The court will also examine the ability of the firm to prosecute the claim for the plaintiffs and their resources for dealing with class actions.

Due process requires in most cases that notice describing the class action be sent, published, or broadcast to class members. As part of this notice procedure, there may have to be several notices, first a notice giving class members the opportunity to opt out of the class, i.e. if individuals wish to proceed with their own litigation they are entitled to do so, only to the extent that they give timely notice to the class counsel or the court that they are opting out. Second, if there is a settlement proposal, the court will usually direct the class counsel to send a settlement notice to all the members of the certified class, informing them of the details of the proposed settlement.

In federal civil procedure law, which has also been accepted by approximately 35 states (through adoption of state civil procedure rules similar to the federal rules), the class action must have certain definite characteristics (often referred to by the acronym CANT):

Commonality—there must be one or more legal or factual claims common to the entire class (in some cases, it must be shown that the common issues will predominate the proceedings over individual issues, such as the amount of damages due to a particular class member),
Adequacy—the representative parties must adequately protect the interests of the class,
Numerosity—the class must be so large as to make individual suits impractical (in other words, that the class action is a superior vehicle for resolution than numerous individual suits), and
Typicality—the claims or defenses must be typical of the plaintiffs or defendants.

State class actions

Since 1938, many states have adopted rules similar to the FRCP. However, some states, like California, have civil procedure systems, which deviate significantly from the federal rules; the California Codes provide for four separate types of class actions. As a result, there are two separate treatises devoted solely to the complex topic of California class actions.^[7] Some states, such as Virginia, do not provide for any class actions, while others, such as New York, limit the types of claims that may be brought as class actions. In 2013, several class action lawsuits have been filed under both the federal Fair Debt Collection Practices Act and similar Michigan state laws against some of Michigan's largest medical providers and collection agencies which may have a dramatic impact on the collection of unpaid medical bills and the collection industry as a whole.^[8][9]

History

The ancestor of the class action was what modern observers call "group litigation", which appears to have been quite common in medieval England from about 1200 onward.^[10] These lawsuits involved groups of people either suing or being sued in actions at common law. These groups were usually based on existing societal structures like villages, towns, parishes, and guilds. What is striking about these early cases is that unlike modern courts, the medieval English courts never questioned the right of the actual plaintiffs to sue on behalf of a group or a few representatives to defend an entire group.^[11]

As UCLA law professor Stephen Yeazell has pointed out, the most likely reason is that the abysmally poor transportation, communications, and administrative apparatus of medieval times made it impossible for the English sovereign to directly manage the entire country in terms of individuals; it was easier to structure society by imposing obligations upon groups which were enforced by the sporadic use of force.^[12] In turn, lawyers and judges who operated the king's system of justice in a society strictly organized into groups would not question the right of a group to sue or be sued because to do so would bring into question the entire group-oriented society in which they operated.^[12]

From 1400 to 1700, group litigation gradually switched from being the norm in England to the exception.^[13] The development of the concept of the corporation led to the wealthy supporters of the corporate form becoming suspicious of all unincorporated legal entities, which in turn led to the modern concept of the unincorporated or voluntary association.^[14] The tumultuous history of the Wars of the Roses and then theStar Chamber resulted in periods during which the common law courts were frequently paralyzed, and out of the confusion the Court of Chancery emerged with exclusive jurisdiction over group litigation.^[15]

Chancery cases on group litigation after 1700 were a totally incoherent mess, which Yeazell has explained by pointing to the trends towards fragmentation and individualism in English society during that period; the resulting societal pressures ultimately led to the Reform Act 1832.^[16]The problem which confounded Chancery was the shift from representation based on the presumed or implied consent of a group to representation based on a common interest, such as holding shares of a corporation.^[17] Group litigation has struggled with the tension between consent and interest ever since.

By 1850, Parliament had enacted several statutes on a case-by-case basis to deal with issues regularly faced by certain types of organizations, like joint-stock companies, and with the impetus for most types of group litigation removed, it went into a steep decline in English jurisprudence from which it never recovered.^[18] It was further weakened by the fact that equity pleading in general was falling into disfavor, which culminated in the Judicature Acts of 1874 and 1875.^[18] Group litigation was essentially dead in England after 1850.

Group litigation survived in the United States only thanks to the influence of Supreme Court Associate Justice Joseph Story, who imported it in a rather mangled form into U.S. law through summary discussions in his two equity treatises as well as his famous opinion in West v. Randall(1820). Although Story was highly intelligent and familiar with all the relevant English precedents, he merely summarized them in a confused fashion because he "could not conceive of a modern function or a coherent theory for representative litigation: why?"^[19] Like most Americans then and since, Story took individualism for granted; on that basis, he simply could not comprehend a rule that allowed a court to bind someone who had never been a party to litigation purportedly conducted on his behalf.^[20]

The oldest predecessor to the class action rule was Equity Rule 48, promulgated in 1833, which allowed for representative suits in situations where there were too many individual parties (which now forms the first requirement for class action litigation, numerosity).^[21] However, this rule did not allow such suits to bind similarly situated absent parties, which rendered the rule almost entirely useless and was a direct reflection of Story's inability to understand the old English Chancery precedents.^[22] Story's confusion was apparently typical of 19th-century American lawyers, as even the legendary Christopher Columbus Langdell also could not understand the old cases.^[20]

Within ten years, the Supreme Court interpreted Rule 48 in such a way so that it could apply to absent parties under certain circumstances, but only by ignoring the plain meaning of the rule.^[23] In the early 20th century, Equity Rule 48 was replaced with Equity Rule 38 as part of a major restructuring of the Equity Rules, and when federal courts merged their legal and equitable procedural systems in 1938, Equity Rule 38 became Rule 23 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.

A major revision of the FRCP in 1966 radically transformed Rule 23, made the opt-out class action the standard option, and gave birth to the modern class action. Entire treatises have been written since to summarize the huge mass of law that sprang up from the 1966 revision of Rule 23.^[24] Just as medieval group litigation bound all members of the group regardless of whether they all actually appeared in court, the modern class action binds all members of the class, with the exception of those who appear and object.

The Advisory Committee that drafted the new Rule 23 in the mid-1960s was influenced by two major developments. First was the suggestion of Harry Kalven, Jr. and Maurice Rosenfeld in 1941 that class action litigation by individual shareholders on behalf of all shareholders of a company could effectively supplement direct government regulation of securities markets and other similar markets.^[25] The second development was the rise of the African-American civil rights movement, environmentalism, and consumerism.^[26] As expected, the groups behind these movements, as well as many others in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, all turned to class actions as a means for achieving their goals. For example, a 1978 environmental law treatise reprinted the entire text of Rule 23 and mentioned "class actions" 14 times in its index.^[27]

Businesses targeted by class actions for inflicting massive aggregate harm have sought ways to avoid class actions altogether. In the 1990s, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a number of decisions which strengthened the "federal policy favoring arbitration".^[28] In response, lawyers have added provisions to consumer contracts of adhesion called "collective action waivers". In 1999 the National Arbitration Forum began advocating that such contracts should be drafted so as to force consumers to waive the right to a class action completely, and such provisions have become very popular among businesses.^[28] As of November 2007, the legal validity of contracts of adhesion with class action waivers is unclear, and courts have rendered mixed and sometimes contradictory opinions.^[29]

In the 2011 court case AT&TMobility v. Concepcion, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a 5–4 decision that the Federal Arbitration Act of 1925 preempts state laws that prohibit contracts from disallowing class action lawsuits, which will make it more difficult for consumers to file class action lawsuits. The dissent pointed to a saving clause in the federal act which allowed states to determine how a contract or its clauses may be revoked.^[30]

:{In two major cases in the 21st century, the:{ United States Supreme Court ruled 5-4 against certification of class actions due to differences in each individual members' circumstances; first in the 2011 case Wal-Mart v. Dukes and later in the 2013 case Comcast:(style="background-color:#ffff66ff"):}:Corp. v. Behrend.^[31]}:

Advantages

Class actions may offer a number of advantages^[32] because they aggregate a large number of individualized claims into one representationallawsuit.

First, aggregation can increase the efficiency of the legal process, and lower the costs of litigation.^[33] In cases with common questions of law and fact, aggregation of claims into a class action may avoid the necessity of repeating "days of the same witnesses, exhibits and issues fromtrial to trial." Jenkins v. Raymark Indus. Inc., 782 F.2d 468, 473 (5th Cir. 1986) (granting certification of a class action involving asbestos).

Second, a class action may overcome "the problem that small recoveries do not provide the incentive for any individual to bring a solo action prosecuting his or her rights." Amchem Prods., Inc. v. Windsor, 521 U.S. 591, 617 (1997) (quoting Mace v. Van Ru Credit Corp., 109 F.3d 388, 344 (7th Cir. 1997)). "A class action solves this problem by aggregating the relatively paltry potential recoveries into something worth someone’s (usually an attorney’s) labor." Amchem Prods., Inc., 521 U.S. at 617 (quoting Mace, 109 F.3d at 344). In other words, a class action ensures that a defendant who engages in widespread harm – but does so minimally against each individual plaintiff – must compensate those individuals for their injuries. For example, thousands of shareholders of a public company may have losses too small to justify separate lawsuits, but a class action can be brought efficiently on behalf of all shareholders. Perhaps even more important than compensation is that class treatment of claims may be the only way to impose the costs of wrongdoing on the wrongdoer, thus deterring future wrongdoing.

Third, class action cases may be brought to purposely change behavior of a class of which the defendant is a member. Landeros v. Floodwas a landmark case used to purposefully change the behavior of doctors, and encourage them to report suspected child abuse. Otherwise, they would face the threat of civil action for damages in tort proximately flowing from the failure to report the suspected injuries. Previously, many physicians had remained reluctant to report cases of apparent child abuse, despite existing law that required it.

Fourth, in "limited fund" cases, a class action ensures that all plaintiffs receive relief and that early-filing plaintiffs do not raid the fund (i.e., thedefendant) of all its assets before other plaintiffs may be compensated. See Ortiz v. Fibreboard Corp., 527 U.S. 815 (1999). A class action in such a situation centralizes all claims into one venue where a court can equitably divide the assets amongst all the plaintiffs if they win the case.

Finally, a class action avoids the situation where different court rulings could create "incompatible standards" of conduct for the defendant to follow. See Fed. R. Civ. P. 23(b)(1)(A). For example, a court might certify a case for class treatment where a number of individual bond-holders sue to determine whether they may convert their bonds to common stock. Refusing to litigate the case in one trial could result in different outcomes and inconsistent standards of conduct for the defendant corporation. Thus, courts will generally allow a class action in such a situation. See, e.g., Van Gemert v. Boeing Co., 259 F. Supp. 125 (S.D.N.Y. 1966).

Whether a class action is superior to individual litigation depends on the case and is determined by the judge's ruling on a motion for class certification. The Advisory Committee Note to Rule 23, for example, states that mass torts are ordinarily "not appropriate" for class treatment. Class treatment may not improve the efficiency of a mass tort because the claims frequently involve individualized issues of law and fact that will have to be re-tried on an individual basis. See Castano v. Am. Tobacco Co., 84 F.3d 734 (5th Cir. 1996) (rejecting nationwide class action against tobacco companies). Mass torts also involve high individual damage awards; thus, the absence of class treatment will not impede the ability of individual claimants to seek justice. See id. Other cases, however, may be more conducive to class treatment.

The preamble to the Class Action Fairness Act of 2005, passed by the United States Congress, found:

Class-action lawsuits are an important and valuable part of the legal system when they permit the fair and efficient resolution of legitimate claims of numerous parties by allowing the claims to be aggregated into a single action against a defendant that has allegedly caused harm.

Criticisms

There are several criticisms of class actions.^[34] The preamble to the Class Action Fairness Act stated that some abusive class actions harmed class members with legitimate claims and defendants that have acted responsibly, adversely affected interstate commerce, and undermined public respect for the country's judicial system.

Class members often receive little or no benefit from class actions. Examples cited for this include large fees for the attorneys, while leaving class members with coupons or other awards of little or no value; unjustified awards are made to certain plaintiffs at the expense of other class members; and confusing notices are published that prevent class members from being able to fully understand and effectively exercise their rights.

For example, in the United States, class lawsuits sometimes bind all class members with a low settlement. These "coupon settlements" (which usually allow the plaintiffs to receive a small benefit such as a small check or a coupon for future services or products with the defendant company) are a way for a defendant to forestall major liability by precluding a large number of people from litigating their claims separately, to recover reasonable compensation for the damages. However, existing law requires judicial approval of all class action settlements, and in most cases class members are given a chance to opt out of class settlement, though class members, despite opt-out notices, may be unaware of their right to opt out because they did not receive the notice, did not read it, or did not understand it.

The Class Action Fairness Act of 2005 addresses these concerns. Coupon settlements may be scrutinized by an independent expert before judicial approval in order to ensure that the settlement will be of value to the class members (28 U.S.C.A. 1712(d)). Further, if the action provides for settlement in coupons, "the portion of any attorney’s fee award to class counsel that is attributable to the award of the coupons shall be based on the value to class members of the coupons that are redeemed." 28 U.S.C.A. 1712(a).

...

Wal-Mart v. Dukes, 564 U.S. _ (2011), was a United States Supreme Court case. The case was an appeal from the Ninth Circuit's decision in Dukes v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., in which the Supreme Court, by a narrow 5-4 decision, reversed the district court's decision to certify a class action lawsuit in which the plaintiff class included 1.6 million women who currently work or have worked for Wal-Mart stores, including lead plaintiff Betty Dukes. Dukes, a current Wal-Mart employee, and others have alleged gender discrimination in pay and promotion policies and practices in Wal-Mart stores.^[1]

The Court agreed to hear argument on whether a Federal Rule of Civil Procedure, Rule 23(b)(2) that provides for class-actions where the defendant's actions make injunctive relief appropriate can also be used to file a class-action that demands monetary damages. The Court also asked the parties to argue whether the class meets the traditional requirements of numerosity, commonality, typicality, and adequacy of representation.^[2]

The Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the class should not be certified in its current form, although they disagreed 5-4 on the reason and on allowing it to continue in a different form.

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INDIA BHOPAL:

India

Main article: Public Interest Litigation

Decisions of the Indian Supreme Court in the 1980s loosened strict locus standi requirements to permit the filing of suits on behalf of rights deprived sections of society by public minded individuals or bodies. Although not strictly "class action litigation" as it is understood in American law, Public Interest Litigation arose out of the wide powers of judicial review granted to the Supreme Court of India and the various High Courts under Article 32 and Article 226 of the Constitution of India, respectively. The sort of remedies sought from courts in Public Interest Litigation go beyond mere award of damages to all affected groups and have sometimes (controversially) gone on to include Court monitoring of the implementation of legislation and even the framing of guidelines in the absence of Parliamentary legislation.^[48][49]

However, this innovative jurisprudence did not help the victims of the Bhopal Gas Tragedy,[citation ^needed] who were unable to fully prosecute a class action litigation (as understood in the American sense) against Union Carbide due to procedural rules that would make such litigation impossible to conclude and unwieldy to carry out. Instead, the Government of India exercised its right of parens patriae to appropriate all the claims of the victims and proceeded to litigate on their behalf, first in the New York courts and later, in the Indian courts. Ultimately, the matter was settled between the Union of India and Union Carbide (in a settlement overseen by the Supreme Court of India) for a sum of 760 crore(US$120 million) as a complete settlement of all claims of all victims for all time to come.

chamberwatch

Generally, plaintiffs’ attorneys represent consumers and workers to help them seek compensation in court for injuries caused by alleged corporate wrongdoing. In the late 1990s, the Chamber launched a well-financed campaign to malign plaintiffs’ attorneys as part of a wider crusade to implement national and international policies that shield corporations from lawsuits.

In 1998, the Chamber founded the Institute for Legal Reform (ILR), now the largest sub-group within the Chamber. More than half of the $44 million the ILR raised in 2012 came from just 21 large donors, with an average donation of more than $450,000. The Chamber does its anti-consumer work through the ILR and through its Coalition to Preserve Arbitration, led by AT&T and comprising trade associations in finance, insurance, car sales and other industries where contracts are complicated and companies often have an advantage in information and expertise.

One of the ILR’s apparent goals is to further entrench the use of pre-dispute binding arbitration clauses in corporate contracts with consumers and employees. The clauses deny individuals’ right their day in court and require them instead to resolve disputes with corporations in private arbitration proceedings. The ILR funds research that attempts to support the claim that consumers do better in arbitration than in the courts, but more credible research shows that consumersand employeesare less successful in arbitration than in the courts. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has found that arbitration clauses are prevalent in financial services contracts and that very few consumers use arbitration to resolve financial disputes. Arbitration is an unpopular choice for consumers because it tends to create an unbalanced playing field that favors corporations.

Arbitration clauses in consumer contracts frequently forbid consumers from participating in class actions against the company. As a result, consumer disputes with companies can be arbitrated only on an individual basis, a method that is often impractical because the individual amount at stake is often small, even where the corporation’s total benefit from the challenged conduct is significant. That means consumers are increasingly unable to challenge wrongful corporate conduct. And if consumers can’t seek redress, companies do not have to answer for predatory or illegal practices.

The ILR also works to place articles on “cases and actions that portend to have an impact on business” in widely read publications through its media outfit, the Legal Newsline, founded in 2006.

Further, 39 states elect their high court judges, and from 2001 to 2003, for example, the candidate backed by the Chamber won 21 of 24 judicial elections. In 2004, the Chamber-backed candidate won 12 of 13 state Supreme Court races.

The Chamber gives financial support to the campaigns of state judges it views as aligned with its interests and attacks judges that it views as opposed to its priorities. Business groups spent about $26.2 million in races between 2000 and 2009, and the Chamber was a major player. In 2000, for example, the Mississippi chief justice, whom the Chamber supported but who was concerned about out-of-state influence on the state elections, asked the Chamber to stop running ads for her — but the Chamber ignored her request.

Chamber-identified ads disappeared in the 2002 Mississippi election season, but similar ads were run by the Law Enforcement Alliance of America (LEAA). The LEAA’s donors are secret, but Mississippi Supreme Court Justice Oliver Diaz suspected the Chamber was still at work, saying, “The ads that the U.S. Chamber ran against me in 2000 were extremely similar [to the ones] that the LEAA ran against me in 2008.” The Chamber had run highly negative ads, including accusing Justice Diaz of “voting for drug dealers and baby killers.”

“Judges who are running for reelection do keep in mind what the next 30-second ad is going to look like,” Justice Diaz said. A 2013 report by the Center for American Progress found that as campaign cash in judicial elections has increased, courts have begun to rule more often in favor of prosecutors and against criminal defendants.

Fewer numbers are available now than when the wave of spending began around 2000. The Chamber’s state high court spending is becoming increasingly difficult to trace, as observers, including former state supreme court justices, believe it has turned increasingly to spending money through opaque third-party organizations like the LEAA. Additionally, as the Center for Public Integrity notes, “Tracking all outside spending is nearly impossible thanks to lax state disclosure rules, as well as a loophole in the federal tax code that allows politically active nonprofits to run attack ads without disclosing who funds them.”

In a 2002 speech to the Illinois Chamber of Commerce, U.S. Chamber President Tom Donohue gave some insight into the rise of the Chamber's involvement in judicial elections. Taking aim at trial lawyers who successfully litigated class action lawsuits for people harmed by asbestos and tobacco companies, he said, “Our approach is simple — implement a multi-front strategy of challenging these unscrupulous trial lawyers every time they poke their head out of the ground.… On the political front, we’re going to get involved in key state Supreme Court and attorney general races as part of our effort to elect pro-legal reform judicial candidates.... We’re clearly engaged in hand-to-hand combat, and we’ve got to step it up if we’re going to survive.”

How Karl Rove Ran Mark Kennedy Off the Supreme Court

Kennedy, the son-in-law of George Wallace himself, was the first state Supreme Court Justice targeted by Karl Rove, who came to work for a University of Alabama Law School professor named Harold See at the behest of the Business Council of Alabama. It was and is still run by Bill Canary who had worked as a political operative for George H.W. Bush. We haven’t seen much of Canary since he was named prominently in all the stories about the political prosecution of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman.

Kennedy actually beat Rove and his candidate in that first race, barely, but he was so shaken by the dirty campaign tactics that he decided not to seek another term and face Rove again in 1998. He retired, but finally agreed in 2010 to get back into politics as head of the Alabama Democratic Party.

I caught up with him at an AFL-CIO convention in Prattville last fall and got him to tell me the story of what Karl Rove did to him. You can see the interview in the above.

Before being elected to the state Supreme Court, Kennedy served as a juvenile judge and family-court judge, where he saw the negative plight of abused children who ended up in the justice system. In light of his experiences, he helped start the Children’s Trust Fund of Alabama and later the Corporate Foundation for Children and served as president of the National Committee to Prevent Child Abuse and Neglect.Kennedy’s campaign commercials showed his volunteer work, and included pictures of him holding hands with children he had helped.

Rove took those innocent pictures and, in the early days of the Internet, got Republican operatives at the University of Alabama Law School and the secretive, conservative Federalist Society to e-mail around an attack ad claiming Kennedy was a gay pedophile. It was not unlike the “whispering campaign” he used in Texas to get Bush elected over Ann Richards, who he accused of being a lesbian in similar fashion.

“Karl Rove is a expert at turning what you believe to be your strongest suit into being your worst nightmare, kind of like the Swiftboat ads,” Kennedy said. “He accused me of being a pedophile.”

Rove also exaggerated the issue of large jury awards and turned “tort reform” into a campaign issue, accusing judges like Kennedy of being “too liberal” and guilty of “jackpot justice.” With those misleading tactics, he managed to take over the Texas and Alabama appellate court systems by getting pro-big business Republicans elected. Over time the Alabama Supreme Court and the Court of Civil Appeals became a “no win zone” for any average Alabamian seeking justice for a grievance against any corporate entity that wronged them. Big insurance companies loved this, so they chipped in millions to Rove’s campaignsafter that and still support him to this day in a big way.

While it is clear that even if there was an imbalance in the court system in favor of juries granting too much to defendants in trials in those days, the pendulum has swung way too far back in the other direction, and nobody in the mainstream media is telling that story.

So in the process of investigating this, to show how imbalanced the courts have become, we caught up with a Montgomery woman named Jo Ann Shiver. She is also interviewed in the.

How the Supreme Court Came Up With ‘Sovereign Immunity’ for Hospitals

Shiver’s mother was killed by a deadly staph infection she caught in a Baptist hospital that was ignored and even covered up by the hospital staff.

Her sister filed a lawsuit against the Montgomery hospital and actually managed to win a jury verdict in the lower court. But the case was thrown out by the state Supreme Court, by the judges Rove and his brand of dirty politics were instrumental in electing to the bench.

Ms. Shiver said she has no doubt politics played a role in the case. “Follow the money,” she said.

You could research the court dockets in this state and find hundreds of cases like this where justice was clearly not done. But this one is so strange it deserves special attention.

In this case, not only did the justices throw out the jury verdict and the award for damages. They actually set a precedent that unless reversed soon will result in thousands of unnecessary deaths by unaccountable doctors and hospitals. Here again, theUniversity of Alabama plays a critical role in this part of the saga.

The Montgomery hospital had entered into a management agreement with the university on paper to handle some of the accounting due to some financial problems they were having, and as a result, the Supreme Court ruled that the hospital was a legal entity of the state and could not be sued under an old English Common Law tenant known as “Sovereign Immunity.” You could not sue the King in a Monarchy, and under certain circumstances, you can’t sue the state even today.

But somehow I doubt that even those who wrote the language for the English law would have envisioned a day when sovereign immunity would cover a private, for profit hospital owned by a church.

The court vacated a $3.2 million jury verdict in favor of the family of Lauree Durden Ellison. She died Nov. 8, 2005, after a stay at Baptist Medical Center East in Montgomery. She developed a staph infection from the hospital, but the church-state hospital administrators refused further treatment and denied liability or responsibility.

“They said she slipped through the cracks,” Ms. Shiver said, nearly tearing up.

I have searched high and low for an independent legal expert who could address this situation with insight. But so far, apparently the precedent is so strange that no one knows anything about it. It truly is one of those times when you have to throw up your hands and say, “only in Alabama.”

“Nobody knows the consequences of that opinion. It goes where no one has gone before,” Mark White, a former president of the Alabama Bar Association, told a Tuscaloosa newspaper reporter last year in one of the few news stories on the case to get reported in Alabama. No national news organization has touched the story.

Then-Chief Justice Sue Bell Cobb, the one Democrat on the court at the time who dissented in the case, said although Baptist Health retains an interest in its assets that are managed by the UAB health care authority, the court’s decision means the hospital is no longer “legally responsible for the harm that may be caused by its negligence.”

“Shouldn’t a hospital be responsible if they cut the wrong leg off?” Ms. Shiver asks. “It gives them license to be negligent.”

William Powell, an attorney for a friend-of-the-court group, said sovereign immunity is a powerful legal-protection device.

“You can only sue the king if the king lets you,” he said.

The Alabama Association for Justice and theAlabama AFL-CIO have asked the court to grant a rehearing in the case, but so far, the high court has been non-responsive.

Morris Lilienthal, a trial lawyer in North Alabama who has reviewed the Ellison case, said the decision overreaches in a major way.

“It’s going to have dramatic effects on the law in Alabama,” he said.

The effect, in essence, is that all the health systems in Alabama, which already have “unbelievable, overreaching” protections under the Alabama Medical Liability Act, “may just be totally immune” from negligence or wrongful death claims from now on, Lilienthal said. “The doctors and staff there now have compete immunity from any accident.”

The Law as a Check on Greed

The law is supposed to be a leveler for and a check on “corporations out just for greed and money” and has made the world a safer place, he said. Even doctors should admit if they operate on the wrong limb of someone or leave medical instruments in a person and cause harm, for example, they should be held to a certain standard and be held accountable.

The Ellison case sets up a scenario where they are no longer held to a standard and are immune from any accountability. “It’s certainly not fair,” he said.

Tom Edwards, who ran for a state Supreme Court slot in 2010 as a Democrat and lost, said the Ellison case is a “clear example of how our Supreme Court will go out of its way to protect big business.”

When asked if he thought Rove’s takeover of the courts ended up creating a big corporation protection bureau and destroyed constitutional jury rights, making it impossible for average folks to get justice in the court system, he said: “That’s exactly what happened.”

“They do it very systematically,” he said. “The decision uses strained logic to set a legal precedent that grants state sovereign immunity to a private, profit-making operation competing in the private sector. It was a way for them to go out of their way to protect the medical industry.”

Another one of Rove’s tactics is to get his clients to rail against “activist liberal judges” who “legislate from the bench” to protect minorities and such.

But no one ever seems seems to talk about “activist conservative judges” who legislate from the bench to protect big corporations.

The Ellison case, Edwards said, is an example of “an activist court of an extreme nature. They write new laws from the bench every Friday, and they protect big corporations over the citizens of Alabama.”

Of course many doctors, hospitals, their PACs and their insurance carriers give millions of dollars in campaign contributions every year, mostly to Republicans.

Now ask yourself if your vote matters. If a hospital killed your mother, would you not want to sue somebody? Apparently you can’t do that anymore in Alabama.

For average working folks to vote Republican is “absolutely against their economic interest,” according to union officials such as Al Henley of the Alabama AFL-CIO and Auburn History Professor Wayne Flynt.

In addition, Lienthall added, most states have a tort claims act on the books where state entities can be held liable. But not in Alabama, he said, which is still operating under an outdated constitution written in 1901, updated in election years by constitutional amendments placed on the ballot at election time — and by judges. Those judges are elected as partisans who must raise millions in campaign contributions to get elected to jobs that qualify them for state retirement benefits — subsidized by the taxpayers, citizens who no longer possess full citizenship since they have no right to sue for damages or render judgements against corporations from the jury box.

Legal experts agree that where legislatures and courts intercede on these rights they violate the Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Yet again, Karl Rove and his clients are getting away with trampling on the constitution — seemingly without challenge. Only on the Web Press.

Why is it that the people who are getting screwed the worst keep voting for them?

“You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time,” Lincoln said.

Unless you can convince them all to get their news from talk radio and Fox.

Karl Rove at a book signing in Birmingham withWilliam “Bill” Pryor who President George W. Bush appointed to the U.S. Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta as a political payoff for beginning the prosecution of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman. Rove denied even knowing Pryor in a hearing before the House Judiciary Committee, even though he ran his campaign for Attorney General of Alabama in 1998. When Pryor greeted Rove at this event at Brookwood Mall, he said, “Hey bud,” and they hugged.

Ms. Shiver has written a letter to the University of Alabama Board of Trustees asking about a conflict of interest and an ethics problem with the hospital arrangement, but she has never received a response. You can read her letter below.

2012 Glynn Wilson

http://blog.locustfork.net/2012/10/how-karl-rove-took-over-the-alabama-supreme-court-and-created-a-no-win-zone-for-citizens/

info source:

Exxon Fighting to Keep Public From Seeing 900,000 Pages of Documents in Oil Spill Lawsuit

Oil giant ExxonMobil is seeking "unprecedented secrecy" by labeling nearly 900,000 pages of documents as confidential in a class action lawsuit over an oil pipeline rupture in Arkansas, an attorney said in a new court filing.

Breast implant controversy

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, class-action lawsuits^[2] claimed that Dow Corning's silicone breast implants caused systemic health problems. The claims first centered around breast cancer, and then migrated to a range of autoimmune diseases, including lupus, rheumatoid arthritis and various neurological problems. This led to numerous lawsuits beginning in 1984 and culminating in a 1998 multibillion dollar class action settlement. As a result, Dow Corning was in bankruptcyprotection for nine years, ending in June 2004.

A number of large, independent reviews of the scientific literature, including the U.S. Institute of Medicine, have subsequently found that silicone breast implants do not appear to cause breast cancers or any identifiable systemic disease.^[3][4][5]

most feared 2014

Bernstein Litowitz Berger & Grossmann LLP
Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC – “In February the firm inked a $275 million settlement with the Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC over its RMBS deals, one of the top-five class action accords for soured MBS transactions.”
Gibbs & Bruns LLP – “In January, a New York state judge finalized an $8.5 billion cash settlement the firm struck with Bank of America to end claims tied to 530 troubled residential mortgage-backed securities trusts packaged and sold by BofA subsidiary Countrywide Financial Corp.”
Grant & Eisenhofer PA – “In September 2013, the firm, serving as co-counsel to a Michigan pension fund in a derivative suit, reached an agreement with Oracle Corp.’s billionaire founder and chief executive Larry Ellison, who agreed to fork over roughly $440 million he and his associates made from a transaction in which Oracle bought another company Ellison owned.”
Labaton Sucharow LLP
The Lanier Law Firm PLLC
Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein LLP
Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd LLP – “The firm won the largest judgment following a securities class action trial, when in October 2013 an Illinois federal judge imposed a nearly $2.5 billion order against Household International Inc. and three former executives.”
Robins Kaplan Miller & Ciresi LLP
Susman Godfrey LLP

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