Latest in Legal Reform

TODAY’S NEWS: The National Law Journal reports on a study predicting that businesses will have to spend even more money on legal costs in the coming months, but businesses worry that their budgets do not allow for such increases. 

TODAY’S NEWS: In addition to contingency fees – a litigation funding mechanism many claim facilitates frivolous lawsuits – an investment firm is developing a new way to make money by fronting the cost of a lawsuit. Read more in Fortune. 

ILR IN THE NEWS: Lawyers for Civil Justice write on ILR’s opposition to anti-protective order legislation, designed to severely restrict existing judicial discretion to protect confidential proprietary and personal information in civil litigation by requiring judges to make premature decisions about the masses of information produced in modern litigation.  Read the full article in Metropolitan Corporate Counsel.

TODAY’S NEWS: An ABC news affiliate interviewed class action plaintiffs who argue that class action lawsuits are not an efficient way to compensate consumers. Contingency fee attorneys take up to a third of any settlement or award, and, according to the interviewees, consumers in the class get far less money than they deserve.

ILR IN THE NEWS: The Washington Examiner is the latest to write on ILR’s new Faces of Lawsuit Abuse movie trailers, stories about the impact of abusive suits on individuals and small businesses to play before featured films in select cities.

U.S. Chamber Urges Attorney General Holder to Investigate and Prosecute Widespread Fraud in Asbestos Litigation

On Wednesday, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce released a letter sent to Attorney General Eric Holder highlighting widespread evidence of asbestos litigation fraud and the necessity of immediate and serious intervention.

In the letter, Chamber President and CEO Thomas J. Donohue said, “wrongdoers continue to escape prosecution and are not being held accountable for conduct that has inflicted unwarranted economic damage to companies and their employees, undermined the integrity of our civil justice system and deprived the truly sick of compensation for their injuries. It is unfathomable to the business community that federal prosecutors could ignore this conduct, especially when it is revealed repeatedly and openly around the country.”

Read the press release

Read the letter (pdf)

Americans Trust Doctors and Scientists over Juries and Lawyers to Set Safety Standards for Medical Devices, Poll Shows

When it comes to setting standards for the safety of medical devices, the American public trusts academic researchers, and Food and Drug Administration scientists and physicians much more than they do lay juries or trial lawyers, according to a poll conducted by the independent research firm Harris Interactive and released March 30th by ILR.

The results of the poll will be featured in an advertisement unveiled this week. Also released March 30th was a letter to all members of Congress from a broad coalition of groups opposing the Medical Device Safety Act. The letter states that the proposal would “stifle innovation of new medical devices thus limiting the availability of lifesaving technologies,” and, contrary to its title, would “provide no real safety benefits to American consumers.”

The full poll question, the advertisement, the coalition letter and the corresponding press release can be found here.

Achieving the Right Balance: The Role of Corporate Criminal Law in Ensuring Corporate Compliance

April 21, 2009
Washington, DC

Georgetown University Law Center and the American Criminal Law Review are hosting a Corporate Criminal Law Conference: Achieving the Right Balance: The Role of Corporate Criminal Law in Ensuring Corporate Compliance. The conference will focus on the current state of corporate criminal law. Participants will also analyze corporate compliance programs and how a "good" corporate compliance program should be considered by prosecutors.

Luncheon Keynote Speaker: Larry D. Thompson, Senior Vice President, Secretary and General Counsel, PepsiCo, Inc.

Confirmed speakers include:

• Kathy Ruemmler, Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General, U.S. Department of Justice
• Robert B. Fiske Jr., Partner, Davis, Polk & Wardell
• Professor Sara Sun Beale, Charles L.B. Lowndes Professor, Duke University School of Law

In cooperation with the American Criminal Law Review and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.

Tuesday, April 21
Georgetown University Law Center
Registration: 8:30 a.m.
Program: 9:00 a.m. – 3:00 p.m.

Sponsored by the U.S. Chamber Institute for Legal Reform

Learn more

Register

It's 4th and Goal for Florida's Landmark Contingency Fee Reform Legislation

By Lisa Rickard

There is no doubt that Florida legislators have seen the recent series of editorials (one, two, three) in the Wall Street Journal outlining the latest national disgrace for the plaintiffs’ bar – pay-to-play scandals involving state officials across the country.

The stories are classic old-style politics: a special interest (private plaintiffs’ lawyers) make campaign contributions to state officials (in this case, attorneys general and one governor), and in return are hired with lucrative contingency fee contracts (typically resulting in multi-million dollar paydays) in deals done behind closed doors and often without competitive bids.

While the Wall Street Journal’s series highlighted the problem states, it extolled Florida’s push to reform these contingency fee agreements thanks to Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum, who doesn’t believe in doing the public’s business the shady, behind-closed-doors, pay-to-play way. General McCollum has championed legislation that would require him and future Florida AGs to do the public’s business, believe it or not, in public.

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Congress Should Consider Evidence over Hype in Arbitration Debate

By Lisa Rickard

Anti-arbitration advocates want more disputes taken to court, so they have been peddling studies and anecdotes to make the case against arbitration, including the ironically named Arbitration Fairness Act. Yet, they continue to ignore a growing body of evidence that verifies the benefits of the 84-year old arbitration system.

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