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More Seniors Means More Falls, More Deaths

November 26th, 2014

Americans are living longer due to advances in medicine, but the physical safety of the elderly population is becoming even more precarious. According to a New York Times article published in late October, “The number of people over 65 who died after a fall reached nearly …

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Understanding the Dangers of Trucks in the Wake of the Berks County Tragedy

November 20th, 2014

Over the past few years, this blog has discussed the dangers of trucking from various angles, covering the government’s efforts to keep drivers off their cell phones and reporting about the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s findings that tractor-trailers killed nearly 3,800 people in 2011. …

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Campaign Finance Undermines Americans’ Faith in Judicial Branch

November 19th, 2014

Tort reform is hardly a headline-grabbing subject, and it’s not all that often that a high-profile news outlet runs a thorough and insightful piece on the subject. The magazine Mother Joneshas done so, however, in an article targeting interest groups’ financing of judicial elections called …

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Takata Air Bag Recall: Worse Than We Thought

November 12th, 2014

Back in July of this year, we published an article about a recall that happened at the same time as the 20 million-vehicle GM recall, which despite being nearly as dangerous was not as well-chronicled. While GM was trying to deal with cars that powered …

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How Class Action Lawsuits Help All Americans

November 5th, 2014

In the past, this blog has covered the issue of forced arbitration (through contracts of adhesion), a practice that enables corporations and other businesses to avoid lawsuits from consumers in favor of mediation with a company-appointed arbitrator. The consumer has no idea that he/she is …

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Are Punitive Damages in Texas Punitive Enough?

October 29th, 2014

In mid-September of this year, a jury in Texas awarded Martha Salazar $73 million dollars–including $50 million in punitive damages–after she brought a lawsuit against Boston Scientific, the company responsible for manufacturing the Obtryx transvaginal mesh sling. Salazar, who received the pelvic implant to clear …

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Missouri Cap on Punitive Damages Overturned

October 22nd, 2014

Punitive damages–monetary amounts designed to be a deterrent for reckless behavior against defendants–are important to the civil justice system in this country. However, they are also often attacked by critics in the so-called “tort reform” movement for being disproportionately large and arbitrarily assigned. The headlines …

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Texas Hospital Misses Ebola Diagnosis

October 15th, 2014

By now it is common knowledge that there is an outbreak of the infectious disease Ebola in West Africa. Having killed thousands there, the disease has also spread to the United States, where one patient just died (at the time of this writing). Thomas Duncan, …

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Drive-By Doctoring: The Hidden Costs of Healthcare

October 8th, 2014

Since the summer of 2013, journalist Elisabeth Rosenthal has been publishing articles in theNew York Times in an ongoing series called “Paying Till It Hurts,” which investigates the incredibly high price of healthcare in the United States. Her most recent entry, which ran on the …

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