Articles

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court is scheduled to hear oral argument in Howard v. AW Chesterton, an asbestos case, on March 6. But instead of contemplating whether a mesothelioma plaintiff (John Ravert) must prove that he was exposed to the defendant companies’ asbestos products with sufficient frequency, proximity, and regularity to justify imp ...

Plaintiffs suffering from asbestos-related diseases typically sue dozens of defendants: the manufacturers and distributors of every asbestos-containing product to which they were ever exposed, their employers, and more.  As a matter of course, the vast majority of these defendants either settle the plaintiffs’ claims, or, if they can prove t ...

Today, we received notice that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court issued a favorable per curiam opinion in Howard v. A.W. Chesterton Co. on September 26.  The issue was whether a mesothelioma patient must prove that he was exposed to the defendant companies’ asbestos products with sufficient frequency, proximity, and regularity to justify imposi ...

Property Rights – California Coastal Commission We reported last week that the California Court of Appeal issued an adverse decision in SDS Family Trust v. CCC, based on its misunderstanding of the facts related to when the family challenged the mile-long easement imposed on its property.  This week, PLF filed a petition for rehearing that ...

Tort law allows injured people to sue the person or company that caused the injury.  The question of who “caused” the injury, however, has filled volumes of legal reports.  In the context of asbestos litigation, where the companies that manufactured asbestos-containing products long ago went bankrupt, plaintiffs suffering from asbesto ...

Today, the New Mexico Supreme Court decided in Rodriguez v. Del Sol Shopping Center that when a court decides whether a property owner has a duty to protect people from harm on the premises, the court must never consider whether the harm was foreseeable. PLF has long argued in premises liability cases that foreseeability cannot … ...

Timothy Bostic died from mesothelioma, which he alleged was caused by his exposure to asbestos from a variety of sources, including his use of asbestos-containing joint compound manufactured by Georgia-Pacific Corporation when he was a child and teenager helping his father on weekend drywall projects.  He originally sued dozens of defendants and, ...

Johnny Kesner was diagnosed with mesothelioma in 2011.  Because this is an asbestos-related illness, he cast a wide net and sued 19 companies, most of whom were Kesner’s former employers where Kesner was exposed to asbestos on the premises, but also including Pneumo Abex Co., which employed his uncle.  Kesner claims that his uncle left  ...

Environment & Endangered Species Act — 60-day notice filed for the Kangaroo Rat As required by the Endangered Species Act, we filed a sixty-day notice on intent to sue with the United States Fish & Wildlife Service over the Service’s failure to act on our petition to delist the Stephens Kangaroo Rat. Ad described here, our pet ...