The Litigation Counsellor®

By Joseph Twarog, Esq.

On January 7, 2013, Philadelphia Judge Nitza I. Quinones affirmed a $10 million jury verdict in favor of Plaintiff Brianna Maya for injuries she sustained after taking over-the-counter Children’s Motrin.

As the first DePuy ASR hip trial began in a California State Court in Los Angeles, Defendant, Johnson & Johnson (“J&J”) was reeling from the Food & Drug Administration’s proposal that manufacturers of metal-on-metal hip implants submit affirmative scientific evidence that the devices are safe and effective. Previously, manufacturers like J&J were allowed to market the implants under much less stringent guidelines that did not require submission of such safety and effectiveness data.

Chances are that if you are a woman and have visited Paris in your lifetime, you—and millions of other women like you—most certainly broke the law without even realizing it.

School administrators at the The Calhoun School on Manhattan’s Upper West Side fired Daniele Benatouil, a 12-year veteran French teacher, for allowing six 18-year-old seniors to drink a glass of wine during their school-sponsored trip to France.

The night of December 16, 2010 took a tragic turn for 13-year-old Rohayent Gomez Eriza when Police Officer Victor Abarca and his partner came across Eriza and his friends playing a game of cops and robbers with toy guns.

In light of the recent National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) decision in In re Hispanics United of Buffalo, Inc., No. 03-CA-027872, companies, both with and without unions, may want to take some time to reexamine their social media policies. Although the National Labor Relations Act of 1935 (NLRA) was enacted to prevent workers from being retaliated against for forming unions, the recent decision expands that protection to just about any worker who engages in “concerted activity” within the meaning of the act.

In 2012, U.S. law firms experienced the greatest year-end revenue growth results since 2008, according to a preliminary survey released by Wells Fargo Private Bank Legal Specialty Group on January 28, 2013. The survey indicated that in 2012, law firms across the U.S. had surprising gross and net revenue growth of five and six percent, respectively, as well as an increase in profits per partner of five percent.

On December 6, 2012, a jury awarded $109 million in damages, the largest award in Allegheny County history, in a case involving a woman who died three days after being electrocuted by a fallen power line.

On July 15, 2006, 12-year-old little league pitcher Steven Domalewski was struck in the chest by a line drive from a Louisville Slugger TPX Platinum aluminum bat. Domalewski then went into cardiac arrest and was deprived of oxygen for 15 minutes. Although was resuscitated, Domalewski suffered permanent cognitive impairment and became confined to a wheelchair. Now, at age 19, he has impaired speech and is almost completely blind.

On November 16, 2008, Plaintiff James Von Normann, a 25-year-old salesman, was found laying in the parking lot of the Newport Channel Inn in Newport Beach, California. Paramedics found Plaintiff unresponsive with a score of nine on the Glasgow Coma Scale, which rates patients on a scale from 1-15 based on scores in three categories: eye opening response, verbal response and motor response. Patients with scores between two and eight are usually considered to be in a coma.¹ Plaintiff was transported to Western Medical Center in Santa Ana with a skull fracture and severe traumatic brain injuries. There, hospital physicians ordered a blood draw which revealed Plaintiff’s blood alcohol content to be .267 - more than three times the legal limit for driving while intoxicated.

In 2011, the U.S. Supreme Court in Wal-Mart v. Dukes, 131 S.Ct. 2541 (2011), ruled in a 5-4 decision that the certification of the nationwide class of female Wal-Mart employees was not consistent with Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23(a), which requires the party seeking class certification to prove that the class has common questions of law or fact. In Dukes, Plaintiffs alleged Wal-Mart management discriminated against women over pay and promotions in violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The Supreme Court, however, de-certified the class because it determined that the female Wal-Mart employees, members of the largest class in U.S. history, did not share enough in common as plaintiffs to be granted class certification.

Can an employer lawfully terminate an employee simply for being irresistible? According to a December 21, 2012 decision from the Iowa Supreme Court, the answer appears to be “yes.”

On November 9, 2012, the First Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the District Court of Massachusetts' determination that Starbucks' shift supervisors had improperly shared in tips left at the counter for baristas at their numerous coffee shop locations.