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WASHINGTON, DC – The Large Truck Crash Causation Study (LTCCS) is is the first-ever national study to attempt to determine the critical events and associated factors that contribute to serious large truck crashes. It has been conducted by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) which are agencies under the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT).

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SEATTLE, Nov. 2 – After a six-day trial, a federal jury dismissed Blue Niles $60.1 million claim against  Yehuda Diamond Company. The Jury ruled against Blue Nile, acknowledging Yehuda Diamond’s right to compare the prices of its clarity enhanced diamonds to the untreated diamonds sold by online retailer Blue Nile.

Blue Nile loses 60.1 Million Claim against Yehuda Diamond Company

Yehuda Diamond, based in New York, has earned widespread industry and consumer loyalty for its successful competition with Blue Nile and other online jewelers, favoring consumers not only with lower prices but also with unsurpassed expert face-to-face service and full Federal Trade Commission-compliant disclosure.

The suit [No. C-07-2017 TSZ], brought by Blue Nile and heard last month in U.S. District Court for the  Western District of Washington, involved Blue Nile’s efforts to prevent Yehuda Diamond from comparing the  price and appearance of its clarity enhanced diamonds to those natural untreated diamonds sold by Blue Nile.

Yehuda Diamond has consistently contended, even before Blue Nile filed the lawsuit against it in December 2007, that Yehuda Diamond’s price comparisons are in the best interest of consumers.  After 4-1/2 hours of deliberations, the jury agreed, dismissing both Blue Nile’s federal and state claims that Yehuda Diamond had engaged in false or misleading advertising.

Blue Nile, which has brought multiple lawsuits against smaller competitors over the past decade, had petitioned the jury to award it exemplary damages of $60,161,834.64, based on alleged actual damages of $20,053,944.88.

“This is a momentous victory for all consumers and for free-market competition,” says Dror Yehuda, president of Yehuda Diamonds.

“In essence, the jury told Blue Nile that it can’t use its massive size and legal muscle to prevent consumers from learning about lower-priced, quality alternatives to Blue Nile diamonds,” explains Mr. Yehuda.  “In recent years, Blue Nile has preferred to fight its competitors in the courtroom than in the marketplace.”

Mr. Yehuda said that given the jury’s rulings in support of Yehuda Diamond, he has asked his attorneys to petition the judge in the case, the Honorable Thomas S. Zilly, to require Blue Nile to pay Yehuda Diamond’s legal fees. Yehuda Diamond is represented by Pearl Cohen Zedek Latzer LLP, a Manhattan-based law firm.

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A default judgment award of 1.26 Billion was handed down on Sept. 30 by a Wisconsin state court in a case alleging that PepsiCo stole the idea to bottle and sell purified water from two Wisconsin men. PepsiCo filed motions to vacate the order and dismiss the claims on Oct. 13, saying it wasn’t even aware of the lawsuit until Oct. 6.

Administrator mistake costs PepsiCo $1.26 Billion in default judgment

Charles Joyce and James Voigt sued PepsiCo in April plus two of its distributors, alleging they had misappropriated trade secrets from confidential discussions the plaintiffs had with the distributors in 1981 about selling purified water. The information was illicitly passed to PepsiCo, which used it to develop and sell Aquafina bottled water, the plaintiffs allege in the case filed in the Circuit Court of Jefferson County before Judge Jacqueline Erwin.

In court documents, PepsiCo argues it was improperly served with the Wisconsin lawsuit in North Carolina, but also asks the court to excuse the corporate bureaucracy that buried a legal document for weeks. While plaintiffs say they served the lawsuit in June on PepsiCo’s registered agent in North Carolina, where the company is incorporated, PepsiCo says its law department at the company’s Purchase, N.Y.-based headquarters was not notified until September.

“The bottom line is there was a defect in the process for us, but also for” the plaintiffs, said PepsiCo spokesman Joe Jacuzzi, who called the case “highly dubious.”

In seeking to dismiss the case, PepsiCo argues that the statute of limitations should preclude the lawsuit, brought 15 years after the company started selling Aquafina and more than two decades after the alleged confidential talks. Moreover, “the $1.26 billion judgment that has been entered is unprecedented in size and justice requires that PepsiCo have a chance to defend itself,” the company said.

The lead plaintiffs lawyer, David Van Dyke of Chicago-based Cassiday Schade, said Wisconsin courts have been “pretty clear that they don’t like” vacating default judgments. “There is a possibly that a judge may say we’re going to litigate the damages aspect of it,” Van Dyke said. Read full story

According to a legal action filed yesterday in New York, Bernie Madoff’s  prison associates are quite cast of characters. Right now Madoff shares a jail cell with a 21-year-old drug dealer and hangs out with a former crime boss and an Israeli spy.

Complaint lodged against Bernie Madoff in New York Supreme Court by California Law Firm

Attorneys who interviewed Madoff in jail in July used information obtained from him to file a series of claims against major banks and accountancy firms, in an action that also throws light on Madoff’s life behind bars.

The 272-page complaint was lodged with the New York Supreme Court by the Californian law firm Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy.

According to the document submitted to the court: “Madoff now shares a cell with a 21-year-old inmate convicted of drug crimes. Madoff sleeps in the lower bunk and he eats pizza cooked by an inmate convicted of child molestation.”

The document describes how Madoff’s recreation time “consists of walking around the prison track at night”.

“He now spends time with former Colombo crime family boss Carmine Persico and Jonathan Pollard, who was convicted of spying for Israel,” the complaint said. “Most of his fellow inmates are in prison for drug crimes or sex crimes and Madoff will spend the rest of his life in prison with them.”

The legal action was brought by Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy on behalf of Jay Wexler, a New York resident who invested in Rye Select Broad Market Prime Fund, a fund managed by Tremont Group, the hedge fund business of Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance.

Pfizer found guity of criminal fraud

Pfizer pleaded guilty to a felony crime for “…for misbranding Bextra with the intent to defraud or mislead.”  Read more from the actual DOJ documents.

The feds relied heavily on evidence from a half-dozen whistleblowers  who give testimony that eventually proved  Pfizer fraudulently marketed Bextra.  This settlement is  the largest health fraud settlement in U.S. history.

What Pfizer did was ask the FDA for the approval of Bextra to be used for several diseases and conditions, but the FDA refused those approvals. Pfizer then went ahead anyway and off-label marketed the drugs for those diseases and conditions.

The key whistleblower was  West Point grad John Kopchinski, who was hired by Pfizer as a sales rep when he left the Army in 1992. Kopchinski, 45,  was fired by the company in 2003.

Kopchinsk was talking with lawyers by then about evidence he had accumulated on how Pfizer was marketing  Bextra, a painkiller withdrawn from the market in 2005 amid safety concerns.

When Kopchinski was asked about blowing the whistle he said,  “You have to live with yourself when you look at yourself in the mirror,” he told us in a telephone interview.

According to the DOJ following statement:

Pfizer has agreed to pay $1 billion to resolve allegations under the civil False Claims Act that the company illegally promoted four drugs — Bextra; Geodon, an anti-psychotic drug; Zyvox, an antibiotic; and Lyrica, an anti-epileptic drug — and caused false claims to be submitted to government health care programs for uses that were not medically accepted indications and therefore not covered by those programs. The civil settlement also resolves allegations that Pfizer paid kickbacks to health care providers to induce them to prescribe these, as well as other, drugs. The federal share of the civil settlement is $668,514,830 and the state Medicaid share of the civil settlement is $331,485,170. This is the largest civil fraud settlement in history against a pharmaceutical company.

“Six whistleblowers will receive payments totaling more than $102 million from the federal share of the civil recovery,” says the DOJ.

Along with this admission of guilt for committing a felony crime, Pfizer is paying well over $1 billion in criminal fines, plus another $1 billion or so to resolve civil allegations against its fraudulent marketing practices. In all, the multi-billion dollar health fraud settlement is the largest in the history of the DOJ.

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White House May Obtain Power Over Internet

Sen. Jay Rockefeller, a West Virginia Democrat, along with his aides, have spent months behind closed doors drafting a revised U.S. Senate bill that proposes giving the White House the power to disconnect private-sector computers from the Internet.

CNET News has obtained a copy of the 55-page draft of S.773 (excerpt), which still appears to permit the president to seize temporary control of private-sector networks during a so-called cybersecurity emergency.

The new version would allow the president to “declare a cybersecurity emergency” relating to “non-governmental” computer networks and do what’s necessary to respond to the threat. Other sections of the proposal include a federal certification program for “cybersecurity professionals,” and a requirement that certain computer systems and networks in the private sector be managed by people who have been awarded that license.

“I think the redraft, while improved, remains troubling due to its vagueness,” said Larry Clinton, president of the Internet Security Alliance, which counts representatives of Verizon, Verisign, Nortel, and Carnegie Mellon University on its board. “It is unclear what authority Sen. Rockefeller thinks is necessary over the private sector. Unless this is clarified, we cannot properly analyze, let alone support the bill.”  Read full story here

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TiVo Inc. has sued AT&T Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc. for patent infringement, regarding the ability to pause and rewind live TV.

TiVo Inc. (Nasdaq: TIVO) today filed complaints in the United States District Court, Eastern District of Texas against AT&T Inc. and Verizon Communications, Inc. for infringement of the following three TiVo patents U.S. Patent Nos. 6,233,389 B1 (”Multimedia Time Warping System”), 7,529,465 B2 (”System for Time Shifting Multimedia Content Streams”), and 7,493,015 B1 (”Automatic Playback Overshoot Correction System”). The complaints seek damages for past infringement and a permanent injunction, similar to that issued by the United States District Court, Eastern District of Texas against DISH/EchoStar.

TiVo CEO Tom Rogers said, “There are multichannel operators who compete with us through the unauthorized use of our intellectual property,” He added that while there were talks, “business agreements have not been reached.”

AT&T declined to comment. Verizon said it hasn’t seen the lawsuit yet and can’t comment.

TiVo received a setback Wednesday in a similar patent lawsuit against Dish Network Corp. and sister firm EchoStar Corp. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office ruled that the re-examination of TiVo’s patent that’s the subject of litigation may continue.

TiVo had asked the agency to vacate Dish’s request to look anew at the patents.

TiVo sued Dish in 2004, alleging that Dish infringed on its DVR technology. Dish lost. While the case was on appeal, Dish designed a modified software that it downloaded to customers’ DVRs. But TiVo said the workaround software still infringed on its patent and asked the district court for a permanent injunction. TiVo prevailed but Dish appealed the ruling.

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Rapper "C Murder" sentenced to life

The Huffington Post writes:

Rapper Corey “C-Murder” Miller has been sentenced to life in prison for his second-degree murder conviction.

District Judge Hans Liljeberg gave Miller the mandatory life sentence on Friday, days after the rapper was found guilty of the 2002 killing by a Louisiana jury.

The 38-year-old Miller was convicted of shooting 16-year-old fan Steve Thomas at a now-closed nightclub in Harvey.

It was the second time that a jury convicted Miller in the case, but a 2003 conviction was overturned.

Miller has been in jail after pleading no contest to two counts of attempted murder in a separate altercation at a nightclub in Baton Rouge in 2001.

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On Thursday, June 25^th, the United States Supreme Court decided a case styled Atlantic Sounding Co., Inc. et al. v Edgar L. Townsend 2009 WL 1789469 (U.S. June 25, 2009).  This case marked the Supreme Court’s decision to protect a seaman’s right to receive damages for an employers’ willful and wanton disregard of a maintenance and cure obligation.

Petitioners allegedly refused to pay maintenance and cure to respondent Townsend for injuries he suffered while working on its tugboat. Townsend filed suit under the Jones Act and general maritime law, alleging arbitrary and willful failure to provide maintenance and cure. He filed similar counterclaims in the declaratory judgment action, seeking punitive damages for the maintenance and cure claim.

The District Court denied petitioners’ motion to dismiss the punitive damages claim, but certified the question for interlocutory appeal. Following its precedent, the Eleventh Circuit held that punitive damages may be awarded for the willful withholding of maintenance and cure.

At issue in the Townsend case was whether an injured seaman may recover punitive damages for his employer’s willful failure to pay maintenance and cure.

Central to resolving this case were three settled legal principles. First, punitive damages have long been available at common law. Second, the common-law tradition of punitive damages extends to maritime claims. And third, there is no evidence that claims for maintenance and cure were excluded from this general admiralty rule.

The general rule that punitive damages are available at common law extends to claims arising under federal maritime law. The Supreme Court relied upon a previously decided case, i.e., Lake Shore & Michigan Southern R. Co. v Prentice, (147 U.S. 101) in making the above statement. The Prentice court held that courts of admiralty are to proceed upon the same principles as courts of common law, in allowing exemplary damages.

The only statute that could have served as a basis for overturning the common-law rule was the Jones Act. However, the plain language of the Jones Act does not provide a basis for overturning the common-law rule. The Townsend court’s previous decisions have repeatedly observed that the Jones Act preserves common-law causes of action such as maintenance and cure, and supports the view that punitive damages awards remain available in maintenance and cure actions after the Act’s passage.

Punitive damages have long been a remedy available at common law for wanton, willful, or outrageous conduct. The common-law punitive damages tradition extends to claims arising under federal maritime law.

The petitioner, Atlantic Sounding Co., cited Miles v Apex Marine Corp. (498 U.S. 19) in their argument. The Townsend court held that Miles did not limit recovery to the remedies available under the Jones Act. The Townsend court further held that Miles did not address either maintenance and cure actions in general or the availability of punitive damages for such actions. The case grappled with the question of whether general maritime law should provide a cause of action for wrongful death based on unseaworthiness. This case was not dealing with the availability of remedies for wrongful-death actions brought under general maritime law. Thus, the reasoning in Miles did not apply here.

The Townsend court held that the quest for uniformity in admiralty law does not require narrowing available damages to the lowest common denominator approved by Congress for distinct causes of action.

The Townsend dissent failed to acknowledge that the general common-law rule made punitive damages available in maritime actions. The dissent never explained why maintenance and cure actions should be excepted from this general rule. The fact that they want to limit recovery for maintenance and cure to whatever is permitted by the Jones Act would give greater pre-emptive effect to the Act than is required by its text, Miles, or any other court decisions.

The majority opinion in Townsend noted that punitive damages have long been an accepted remedy under general maritime law. Further, nothing in the Jones Act altered this understanding. Thus, damages for the willful and wanton disregard of the maintenance and cure obligation should remain available in this case as a matter of general maritime law. The Townsend court affirms the judgment of the 11^th Circuit Court of Appeals.

The Townsend opinion leaves the reader satisfied, knowing the Supreme Court continues to look out for seamen and their rights under general maritime law.

Gordon & Elias, L.L.P., represents clients in all aspects of personal injury and wrongful death. They are a boutique law firm with a nationwide practice focusing on Jones Act-Admiralty-Maritime Law , FELA and Trucking Accident Litigation . Gordon & Elias, L.L.P., was formed in 2000. Attorneys Steve Gordon and R. Todd Elias bring over 39 years of combined experience to the representation of their clients. The firm has the experience and resources to pursue recovery from large corporate defendants and/or their insurers.

sonia-sotomayor

I am concerned about Sonia Sotomayor being confirmed as the latest supreme court judge. I am not comfortable with her decision in New Haven Connencut that ruled against the firefighters being promoted on merit. That was a bad decision and is being appealed to the Supreme Court. I am also very uncomfortable with her remarks found on the Youtube video where she speaks of policy being made from the bench.

Her latest quote “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion [as a judge] than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.” doesn’t bother me as much. I don’t think she is a racist.

Leading conservative commentators and news outlets have jumped on the 2001 Sonia Sotomayor quote claiming that she has said that Latinas are better than white men. If you read the quote in context, it’s clear that Sotomayor was merely saying that it’s inevitable that a judge’s personal race-based and gender-based experiences will impact judging, particularly in race and sex discrimination cases. As a result, she said, while such formative experiences can be enriching and contribute to wise decisions, a judge should also be aware of them in order to avoid being wholly dominated by them. She vowed “complete vigilance in checking my assumptions, presumptions and perspectives.”

Rush Limbaugh, in an apparent reaction to the quote, said that Sotomayor is a “reverse racist” who “has put down white men in favor of Latina women.” Fox News’ Megyn Kelly said it shows Sotomayor thinks “that Latina judges are obviously better than white male judges.”

Michelle Malkin, meanwhile, said it shows that Sotomayor wants her personal experiences to “cloud her jurisprudence.”

“I can and do aspire to be greater than the sum total of my experiences, but I accept my limitations,” she said — the opposite of what critics claim she said. This quote is from a socialist. So if you beleive your future is determined by the friends you keep, then we should have something to worry about.

Obama has stated that he is looking to appoint a judge with empathy. When was that ever a requirement in determining consitiutional law. The constitution is what it it. It is not a living document that should be activated and changed from the bench.

I predict that Sonia Sotomayor will be confirmed. The democrats outweigh the Repubicans on this one.

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