Practitioners usually face cases where they reasonably expect the health of a party to remain the same throughout the pendency of a lawsuit. An important, and sometimes overlooked, aspect of a litigation strategy is the long-term health of a party, or a key witness, which is a significant factor when considering both discovery and trial strategies.
The first strategic aspect to consider is the type of claim filed and how it may change moving forward, as it may affect the applicable statute of limitations or the damages available. A cause of action that begins as a claim for medical ...
The Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA) establishes safeguards and procedures relating to the retention, collection, disclosure, and destruction of biometric data. Passed in October 2008, BIPA is intended to protect a person’s unique biological traits – the data encompassed in a person’s fingerprint, voice print, retinal scan, or facial geometry. This information is the most sensitive data belonging to an individual. Unlike a PIN code or a social security number, once biometric data is compromised, “the individual has no recourse, is at [a] heightened risk for ...
In recent years, Missouri courts, and St. Louis City courts in particular, have been getting attention for their large toxic tort verdicts. The legislature is responding. While Missouri’s official nickname is the “Show Me State,” some legislators have been referring to it as the “Sue Me State” to promote new tort reform measures. One such reform measure is Missouri’s Asbestos Bankruptcy Transparency Act, introduced in the 2018 session as House Bill 1645. Similar bills were introduced in 2017 and 2016 but did not become law.
Missouri is not the first state to seek ...
The Missouri Court of Appeals for the Eastern District recently handed down the case of Spencer v. American Airlines, Inc., et al., ED105809, limiting the duty owed by an airline to its passengers while in flight. The Honorable Robert M. Clayton authored the opinion affirming summary judgment to American Airlines, with the Honorable Gary M. Gaertner and the Honorable Angela T. Quigless concurring.
According to the opinion, Plaintiff, Karen Spencer, and her husband, Larry Spencer, intended to fly American Airlines from Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport to Lambert-St ...
Are you at home in the jurisdiction where you are being sued? Did the cause of action arise from your contacts in that jurisdiction? If you are a corporate defendant in a lawsuit and neither applies to your company, you should probably at least raise an objection to Personal Jurisdiction in your initial response to preserve it, if for no other reason. Once you have done that, there is a decent chance the other side will serve you with discovery relating to Personal Jurisdiction. That discovery may be directly related to whether you are “at home” in the forum state, it may contain requests ...
Pop Quiz
Question 1 - Who is the manufacturer of your router? (If you don't know, don't feel bad. You're not alone.)
Question 2 - What is your router’s “name”? (This one may be easier. Maybe it is “No Wi-Fi No Cry.”)
Question 3 - What is the admin login username to your router? (Is your answer, “See answer to Question 2?”)
Okay, okay. If you're like a lot of my recent test subjects (mostly against their will), you may not know the answers to those questions. That's okay. I'm sure you're still a good person. But, I thought I would take a minute to try to demystify how to ensure ...
When was the last time you had to create a new password and faced criteria such as, “Your password must be eight characters or longer and must contain characters from three of these four categories: a) uppercase (A-Z); b) lowercase (a-z); c) numeric (0-9); and d) nonalphabetic (e.g., !, $, #, %)? After you have digested the rule and created your brilliant password, how many times do you still get an error that your password does not meet the criteria and you have to start all over? It conjures up scenes from Office Space.
I think that we have all come to understand how passwords play a role in ...
In 2008, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (“USEPA”) adopted the Lead-Based Paint Renovation, Repair and Painting (“RRP”) Rule under its TSCA authority. See 40 CFR §745.80 et seq. Congress’ purpose for implementing this rule was to protect occupants in homes and buildings built before 1978 from lead-based paint hazards during renovation. The RRP Rule requires anyone receiving compensation to perform work that disturbs paint in houses, apartments and child-occupied facilities built before 1978 to prevent or minimize exposure to lead hazards. The RRP Rule ...
On March 25, 2016, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) published a final rule that increased the protections in place for employees exposed to silica in the workplace and imposed new obligations on employers. The final rule created two separate standards addressing occupational exposure to silica – one for general industry and maritime and another for the construction industry. Most of the provisions of the standard for general industry and maritime became enforceable on June 23, 2018.
The new standard establishes a permissible exposure limit ...
Every day, at sites across the United States, federal agents search container ships, trucks, cars, and aircraft entering the country. Now, increasingly, federal agents are also searching the electronic devices of the individuals entering the country – from citizens to permanent residents to tourists. See United States v. Cotterman, 709 F.3d 952, 956 (9th Cir. 2013) (en banc) (“Every day more than a million people cross American borders [and] . . . they carry with them laptop computers, iPhones, iPads, iPods, Kindles, Nooks, Surfaces, tablets, Blackberries, cell ...
