Recently in Injury & Tort Law Category

Thomson Reuters is a massive, massive company. Among its many, many products are FindLaw.com (that's us!) and West Publishing, whose blue screens of research filled your sleep-deprived nights in law school.

One of West's available products is a driver's license information database. West obtains the information in bulk, from DMVs and third parties, and sells it to end-users for "proper purposes".

Marcy A. Johnson isn't too happy about that practice. She alleged, on behalf of herself and all similarly-situated people in the class, that the act of bulk aggregation of DMV data and the sale of such data violated the Driver's Privacy Protection Act (DPPA).

Some rapscallions were vandalizing and stealing property from Gear Automotive in Kansas City. The police, after investigating, expressed their hunch that the culprits would return, and suggested that someone guard the lot. As many of my fellow-Missourians would do, Robert Gear decided to round up a posse - himself, his brother Darrel, and some armed guy named Joe.

When unidentified individuals did show, the predictable happened, and Joe accidentally shot Robert.

Pizza delivery is a fun gig, especially for those of us who love to drive while bumping hot jams. ("I [Drove] Myself Crazy" - don't judge). Unfortunately for drivers, many pizza places now tack on a "delivery charge" of a buck or two, which some customers mistake for an automatically-included gratuity. For those restaurants that do not split that fee with the drivers, that means the drivers get shafted.

Matt Luiken was one of those drivers. He worked for Domino's, which -- at the time -- charged a $1 per delivery fee. He sued on behalf of all similarly-situated pizza boys, claiming that the big D withheld these fees from the drivers illegally, as per Minnesota law, they are tips.

We get a fair number of junk faxes at our office. Our fax machine is next to the paper recycling bin, so it’s easy to toss them and forget about them. Because that’s what most people do.

Most people are tossing out a veritable gold mine; under the Junk Fax Act, they could be suing and collecting damages for those unwanted faxes.

Before you shudder at the thousands of dollars you’re losing by simply ignoring your in-house money press fax machine, just think about the money you’re saving insurance companies. Yes, insurers have to indemnify those overly-aggressive-faxers under advertising injury provisions.

In Jonathan Larson's Tony-winning musical Rent, we learned that a year is 525,600 minutes. That number was repeated throughout the song "Seasons of Love," which lasts for approximately 3 minutes, (or 0.00000571 years). And if you illegally download "Seasons of Love," those 3 minutes could cost you $9,250, (or $51.38 per second).

The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled today that Jammie Thomas-Rasset is on the line for $220,000 for peer-to-peer file sharing. Thomas-Rasset shared 24 songs on Kazaa, including Def Leppard's "Pour Some Sugar on Me," Journey's "Don't Stop Believin' and Green Day's "Basket Case" The Wall Street Journal reports. Now she'll pay a six-figure sum for songs she could have heard second-rate cover bands play for free at almost any bar or frat party

So why did this case need to be resolved in an appellate court?

The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals reduced a judgment against Tony Alamo this week, finding that the judgment exceeded the single-digit ratio between punitive and compensatory damages that the Supreme Court encourages, reports the Arkansas News Bureau.

Last year, a jury found Alamo liable for battery, outrage and conspiracy and awarded two men $33 million each for the abuse they suffered as children while members of the Tony Alamo Christian Ministries. The Eighth Circuit reduced the awards to $12 million each.

The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on Monday that a trio of Missouri social workers are entitled to qualified immunity after recommending a guardianship arrangement for a child that allegedly led to the child's death.

Lynn and Jason Hutson filed a civil rights lawsuit against Jude Walker, Julie Baumgardner, and Sallie West -- the social workers -- after the employees recommended that custody of their son, A.H., be granted to his grandparents, Carolyn and Patrick Cattin. According to the Hutsons, this recommendation resulted in the A.H.'s untimely death.

The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals reinstated a failure to warn lawsuit against Eli Lilly over Cymbalta on Friday.

The appellate court found that there was a genuine issue of material fact regarding whether Lilly’s failure to warn about increased suicide risks among teens would have affected the plaintiff’s doctor’s decision to prescribe Cymbalta.

The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last week that an Arkansas federal magistrate judge abused his discretion when he blocked expert testimony from a doctor on behalf of two Prempro users who developed breast cancer, reports CBS.

A study linked Prempro -- a combination hormone therapy drug marketed to treat symptoms of menopause -- to increased rates of breast cancer, heart attack and stroke in 2002.

It's not every day that a garden variety car accident case makes its way up to the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals. So what does it take for a federal appeals court to overturn a negligence determination?

On Tuesday, a three-judge panel of the Eighth Circuit ruled on such a case, finding that a Michigan man, Justin Pohl, could keep his $407,000 jury award for the injuries he suffered in a car crash.