For many decades, Delaware has enjoyed a favored position as the first choice for incorporation. Many U.S. companies incorporate in Delaware to benefit from its favorable tax and legal corporate environment. And other states look to specialized Delaware courts for guidance, particularly the Delaware Court of Chancery, with its expertise and deep precedent in corporate and shareholder dispute resolution. Delaware’s developed jurisprudence, with a perceived orientation to corporate interests, is unmatched in any other state and offers more guidance and certainty.
Now, the ...
In 2020, the Missouri General Assembly continued its efforts toward tort reform related to asbestos trust claim transparency related to civil litigation. As explained below, S.B. 575 sought to make clear from the beginning of a lawsuit the scope and extent of asbestos trust fund (“Trust”) claims available to a plaintiff and to allow evidence related to such claims to be admissible at trial.
S.B. 575, sponsored by Senator Bill Eigel (St. Charles County), would have imposed substantive and procedural requirements for lawsuits filed for damages related to asbestos exposure. The ...
Summary of County of Maui, Hawaii v. Hawaii Wildlife Fund, et al.
No. 18-260, Argued 1/6/2019, Decided 4/23/2020)
Petitioner, County of Maui (“Maui”), operates a wastewater reclamation facility that partially treats water from the surrounding area, then releases roughly 4 million gallons of treated water into the ground through four wells. The effluent travels through ground water for one-half mile to the Pacific Ocean.
In 2012, environmental groups sued under the citizen suit provisions of the Clean Water Act (“Act”), alleging that Maui was “discharge[ing]” a ...
Not long after governors and mayors issued orders shutting down non-essential businesses as a safeguard against the spread of COVID-19, we read countless emails and blog posts about how those entities’ business interruption coverages might apply to businesses shut down by the pandemic. Most writers conclude the ISO forms almost certainly will not indemnify the insured for those costs, and while there undoubtedly will be exceptions, I won’t muck about trying to add to that consensus here.
Instead, I’m curious about what happens next, when the owner of a restaurant or plastics ...
April 1 closes out one of the longest months Americans have felt in a while, and with it comes another big financial difficulty facing the country: Rent. Landlords and lenders alike will find themselves in the unsettling reality that many of their renters and borrowers cannot stay current during this pandemic. Only a few months ago, studies found that the average American did not have the savings to endure a $1,000 emergency[1] —this during a period when the financial market indices were running on historic highs.
Now that the global economy is coming to a standstill and ...
Health experts have explained the need to “flatten the curve” through mandatory and voluntary social isolation. These painful yet necessary efforts to fight the COVID-19 pandemic have sparked a crisis in employment which is on course to surpass even the worst days of the 2008-09 financial crisis. Nationwide, millions have been laid off within a very short period. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 3.3 million Americans filed for unemployment the week of March 16, a tremendous jump from the previous week’s 282,000 unemployment claims, and an overall record in U.S ...
On August 28, 2017, several new, employer-friendly provisions of the Missouri Human Rights Act (MHRA) took effect. Since then, the Missouri Supreme Court has issued a string of employment law opinions favorable to employers. Most recently, the Supreme Court struck a victory for employers defending retaliation claims asserted under the MHRA based upon requests for accommodation of disability. In the case Li Lin v. Ellis, SC 97641, 2020 WL 203145 (January 14, 2020)*, the Court held as an issue of first impression that an employee’s mere request for accommodation of a disability was ...
HeplerBroom’s Indiana office recently secured the dismissal of a long-standing lawsuit against its client, a product defendant in an asbestos case, on the basis that the Court lacked personal jurisdiction over the client. Notably, HeplerBroom was able to overcome the plaintiff’s various tactics for attempting to prove jurisdiction over the client, including an attempt to establish jurisdiction by piercing the corporate veil. This result was significant as it likely will bar any future attempts to name the client as a defendant in future asbestos litigation in Indiana ...
Under Illinois law, a healthcare provider facing allegations of malpractice knows that the standard by which his or her actions will be judged is what a reasonably careful healthcare provider would do under the same or similar circumstances based upon testimony provided by expert witnesses from the same area of practice. However, physicians and healthcare providers practicing in prisons, jails, and detention facilities will find that their decisions will be adjudicated under disparate standards that depend on a lay jury’s understanding of “objective ...
While overall trends show that more and more litigants are appearing in court without an attorney, in the medical malpractice context, defending a case against a pro se plaintiff is not as common. This is particularly true in courts where the amount in controversy must be in the tens of thousands before a court can even hear the case (e.g., in the Circuit Court of Cook County, Illinois, where the Law Division only hears civil suits for recovery of monetary damages in excess of $30,000). Nonetheless, we have all had one. You probably still have one now – and every pro se case brings its own ...
