product liability defense

=NAS 22003. Nathan Schactman is a lawyer who has <a href="http://schachtmanlaw.com/publications-presentations/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">published much </a>on evidence. Product liability lawsuits can range from bogus to strongly merited and either may have good or bad lawyers. He may or may not be a “product defense lawyer” (akin to Louis Anthony Cox) defending companies against legitimate complaints. David Michaels in <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Triumph-Doubt-Money-Science-Deception/dp/0190922664" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Triumph of Doubt</a> (2020) (<a href="https://twitter.com/JohnMashey/status/1219139520399994881" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">review</a>) devotes a whole chapter, p.117-140 to “Deadly Dust (silica).” Hence, it is somewhat worrying to see this in Schactman's blog:<blockquote style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; margin: 1.5em 30px;">“Contesting An Erroneous Diagnosis of Silicosis,” for Harris Martin Seminars, in New Orleans, Louisiana (March 26, 2004) “Should an ILO 1/0 Be Compensated in Silica Litigation,” for Harris Martin Seminars, in New York, New York (January 29, 2003)
“State-of-the-Art Defense in Silica Litigation,” Chair and presenter at Mealey’s Silica Litigation Conference, in Atlanta, Georgia (October 13 and 14, 2003)
“Silicosis Litigation,” to Merrill-Lynch Institutional Investors, in Philadelphia, PA (October 7, 2003)
“Stop Silicosis Litigation – Now,” at Industrial Minerals Association – North America’s Semiannual Meeting, in Washington, D.C. (September 25, 2003)”</blockquote>Also concerning are articles like <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2668902/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">The Trials and Tribulations of Two Historians: Adjudicating Responsibility for Pollution and Personal Harm</a> (2009), by Columbia's <a href="https://www.mailman.columbia.edu/people/our-faculty/dr289" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">David Rosner</a> and CUNY's <a href="https://www.jjay.cuny.edu/faculty/gerald-markowitz" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Gerald Markowitz</a>, who wrote Deadly Dust (1991):<blockquote style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; margin: 1.5em 30px;">“For most of the 1990s the attempts to undermine our work were done in depositions, generally private meetings where we could defend our reputations by presenting the documents we had uncovered. While the depositions were trying, in fact we had the materials available and often provided thousands of pages to defence attorneys. But that began to change shortly after the turn of the new century. The first shot across the bow occurred at a meeting of lawyers sponsored by LexisNexis in Washington at which Nathan Schachtman, an attorney with McCarter & English in Philadelphia, gave a lengthy address attacking us and our book. In Mealey's Litigation Report: Silica, published in 2003, he castigated us for writing a “jeremiad” that “resonates to the passions and prejudices of the last century”. He took us to task for our “prejudice” that “silicosis results from the valuation of profits over people and for not pointing out that in Communist countries silicosis rates were much higher. “They fairly consistently excuse or justify the actions of labor … They excoriate the motives and actions of industry …”. Later on the same page, Schachtman argued that our “thesis ignores the practical … problem of motivating or mandating workers to take appropriate measures to protect themselves”.<a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2668902/#fn17" rid="fn17" target="_blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">17</a> Schachtman saw no problem with accusing us of sloppy scholarship, arguing that we are little more than propagandists, all in the first page of his piece. … (much more).” [emphasis added]</blockquote>This seems akin to Wood's style of attack....