Recently in Injury & Tort Law Category

The Flint water crisis is likely to be remembered as one of the worst public disasters caused by a local government in the state of Michigan's history.

And while several lawsuits have been filed, one recently made it back from the Sixth Circuit with bad news for several of the government officials named as defendants. The appellate court affirmed the lower court's ruling that certain officials and the state were not immune, but it also reversed the holding in favor of some other officials.

It's hard to know what's real and what's not on reality television -- even for lawyers.

But two Nashville attorneys say their clients really got beat up on "Street Outlaws: Memphis." The show, which airs on the Discovery Channel, pits street racers against each other.

In one episode last February, however, the street race turned into a street fight.

With legal troubles hanging overhead, President Trump got some good news in one case.

The U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed a lawsuit that alleged he incited a riot when he had protesters forcibly removed from a campaign rally. In Nwanguma v. Trump, the appeals court said Trump's call to "get 'em out of here" was protected by the First Amendment.

Trump must be happy about the respite from litigation. The last thing he needed was another adverse judgment.

During a conference with over a 100 lawyers in his courtroom, District Court Judge Dan Polster, who has been assigned to handle the consolidated multi-district litigation in the Opioid crisis cases, demanded that the parties in the extraordinarily complex litigation try to figure out a way to settle the whole matter.

In his remarks, Judge Polster explained his belief that everyone in litigation is somewhat responsible for the current opioid epidemic. From the doctors to drug makers, distributors, hospitals, and even governments and individuals, Judge Polster believes there's plenty of blame to share, but that pointing fingers just isn't worthwhile. He explained that on that day, based on the numbers, 150 individuals would die due to opioids.

FACTS: A law professor grabs a colleague by the shoulder to talk to him about a dispute with the law librarian.

LAW: A battery occurs when a person acts to cause a harmful or offensive contact, which would offend the ordinary person.

ISSUE: Is this a law exam question or a real case?

U.S. District Judge Jack Zouhary probably wishes it were a fictitious case. In Gerber v. Veltri, the Ohio judge said the case was "seemingly ripped from the pages of a first-year torts exam, with the added twist that the parties are, in real life, law school professors."

Spying on your spouse used to involve reading their mail, looking for lipstick on their collar, looking at call logs, etc. Some of these spy techniques, though widely used in unhappy marriages, can be actionable offenses.

But how culpable are makers of technology that facilitate spying? That is the question at the center of the recent Sixth Circuit case, Luis v. Awareness.

The Sixth Circuit just affirmed a second dismissal on forum non conveniens grounds in just as many weeks.

In this case with international implications, the Sixth Circuit found that American citizen Brandon Hefferan should have brought suit in Germany instead of the United States, following his nightmarish experience with a surgical stapler that malfunctioned.

A salvage scrapper will have to pay the full amount of some $10 million in cleaning costs to the EPA according to a recent ruling by the Sixth Circuit which affirmed the decision of a federal district court.

That lower federal appeals courts was not persuaded by defendant Mark Sawyer's theories, saying that in this case of first impression, the EPA must be compensated for its clean-up expenditures after Sawyer's company completely contaminated a 300-acre plot of land in violation of federal environmental law.

Ricky Edwards worked for CSX Transportation for 31 years before his career was ended by a freak accident -- caused in part by a "nasty" toilet. When Edwards showed up to work with an upset stomach one day, his nausea was only exacerbated by the foul conditions in his train's bathroom: urine, feces, and "blue chemical" splattered all over the toilet.

When his nausea escalated, Edwards chose to ralph over the rails, rather than in the foul toilet. In the process, he fell from the train, breaking his back and ending his career with CSX. And that wasn't the end of the gut-retching news for Edwards, whose suit against CSX was tossed by the Sixth Circuit last Friday.

An interesting case was affirmed for the defendant ski-resort at the Sixth Circuit recently, offering refresher insights into the proper means and technique of statutory interpretation.

The case involved a lady in a wheelchair on a ski-lift tramway. Despite the prosaic facts, the plaintiff offered some curious legal theories in her injury claim.