Anthony Vargas's blog

No Butterfly Caused Katrina - Washington Times

Mississippi Resident Ned Comer is the lead plaintiff in a class action Climate Change lawsuit lawsuit winding its way through the Federal Courts. The plaintiffs are demanding major damage awards alleging that emissions from defendants' plants contributed to global warming which plaintiffs claim caused a strengthing of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 which led to the destruction of the plaintiffs' property. As previously discussed on this site, the district court rightly dismissed the case for lack of standing and because a political question - best left to the legislature - was at issue. However, a Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals three member panel reinstated the case.   Read More »

FacesofLawsuitAbuse.org  

“It’s very apparent to me that this whole case isn’t about justice. It was about trying to legally extort as much money as possible.” Vytas Juskys · LT Properties · Los Angeles, CA

 The United States Chamber of Commerce has rolled out a campaign to bring to light some of the stories of people affected by lawsuit abuse. FacesOfLawsuitAbuse.org is a project of the Chamber's Institute for Legal Reform (ILR) which represents the nation's business community. The mission of the ILR and facesoflawsuitabuse.org is to make America's legal system simpler, fairer, and faster for everyone. By telling the stories of the victims of lawsuit abuse the ILR hopes to raise public awareness of the burdens these suits place on the legal system. 

Here are just a couple of examples of the stories that can be found on facesoflawsuitabuse.org:  Read More »

Don't Trespass On Me - NuisanceLaw.com

We've seen attempts to expand tort law to avoid burdens of proof in the past, but these past attempts were tied only to public nuisance. Well, get ready for the next slight of hand in the plaintiff bar's bag of tricks  - intangible trespass!

Cathy Connors, partner at the Portland, Maine law firm Pierce Atwood LLP, comments on the movement to "modernize" the tort of trespass. Traditionally, as Connors points out, in order for a trespass to have occurred "something tangible must have come onto your property - smoke, noise, light and the ilk were left to nuisance law."  Read More »

 How the Plaintiffs Bar Bought the Senate – The Wall Street Journal

Onerous campaign finance laws have long served to hamper the business world’s influence on political elections while, at the same time, providing a huge advantage for trial attorneys.  In a recent Wall Street Journal Opinion piece James Copland explains that Corporations' interests have traditionally been dispersed among “a host of competing tax and regulatory concerns,” meaning that each individual company or industry has its own agenda when backing a political candidate.  The result is this: achieving substantial aggregate sums of financial backing for a single issue has been a near impossibility.  Read More »

Litigation Holds and E-Discovery Demands - Law technology News

Everyone deletes email from time to time. No harm, no foul, right? Not so if you're a party to litigation. Recent decisions may have lawyers scrambling to find e-discovery consultants to advise clients on the preservation of evidence. One such decision, Einstein v. 357 LLC, held that a party's deletion of email after litigation has commenced is tantamount to spoliation of evidence and necessarily entitles the opposing party to an adverse inference.  Read More »

 For Judges on Facebook, Friendship Has Limits - New York Times

As Facebook, the popular social networking site, becomes more ubiquitous, Florida Judges are being put on notice about the potential breach of an ethical boundary.

Earlier this month Florida's Judicial Ethics Advisory Committee has set limits on judicial  online behavior. According to the New York Times the committee stated in its opinion that when judges "friend" lawyers online it "creates the appearance of a conflict of interest, since it 'reasonably conveys to others the impression that these lawyer "friends" are in a special position to influence the judge.'"  Read More »

Eskimo Village Loses Global Warming Suit - FindLaw.com 

We have recently seen decisions from the Second Circuit and Fifth Circuit courts reversing district court dismissals of climate change suits.  Most observers believed that the once on the ropes Public Nuisance/Climate change actions were once again revived and that we would soon be seeing a tsunami of climate change cases filed in district courts.  Read More »

Can the law keep up with technology? - CNN.com

Social Networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter have become popular forums for users to air their grievances. However, users are beginning to realize that the same rules of libel that apply to old print media also apply to the new social platforms.

An Illinois Real Estate Firm filed a libel claim against one of its tenants after the tentant allegedly posted the following "tweet" on Twitter: "Who said sleeping in a moldy apartment was bad for you? Horizon Realty thinks it's okay."  Horizon Management LLC is seeking $50,000 in damages for the alleged tweet.  Read More »

Environmental Law Update - Bracewell & Guiliani, LLP

On October 16, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit revived a climate change lawsuit against corporate defendants in the energy and chemical sectors. The plaintiffs allege that greenhouse gases emitted by the defendants' operations were responsible for the property damage caused by Hurricane Katrina.

The Fifth Circuit disagreed with the district court's finding that global warming was a issue best addressed by the legislative and executive branches of government. In reaching its conclusion the Court apparently ignored the "political question doctrine," established by the Supreme Court in Baker v. Carr, 369 U.S. 186 (1962), which holds that courts should defer to the legislative and executive branches in certain circumstances. In the analysis of this doctrine the court ignored some of the 5 elements laid out by the Baker court and held that only one element in the disjunctive rule applied. 

All of this comes on heels of the Second Circuit's reversal of a lower court's dismissal of a public nuisance suit alleging that emissions from a coal fired electric plant were partly responsible for global warming in Connecticut v. American Electric Power Co. Inc.   Read More »

Fake Viagra and More in Bangkok - Global Post

The large availability of customers in the global market comes at a price - those certain local markets that are willing to ignore the law for personal gain.  The Global Post reports on such market where patents and copyrights are difficult, if not impossible to enforce: Bangkok, Thailand where you can find not only pirated DVDs, imitation Gucci bags, and the usual sort of knock-offs, but you can also find imitation prescription drugs!  Read More »