Under a federal rule issued by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) that was passed on Nov. 21, 2013, new tour buses and buses that provide services between cities must be equipped with seatbelts. This new federal rule goes into effect beginning in November 2016. This safety measure was…
Federal District Court Judge Hon. David R. Herndon of the Southern District of Illinois has ordered that Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (BIPI) pay $1 million in sanctions for discovery abuses in the multidistrict litigation (MDL) involving the oral anticoagulant Predaxa. This same U.S. Federal District Court, also in the Southern District…
It is sometimes overlooked in trial practice or not given enough emphasis that the conduct of a defendant must be proved to have proximately caused the injuries or damages claimed in the pleadings. Also, expert testimony must meet the rules of scientific reliability. For example, Gary McCann, an engineer for…
Scott Weigle and John Moore, two mechanics, were working on a trailer from a semi-truck. Weigle and Moore had considerable experience as mechanics working at a trucking repair company. On July 31, 2009, Weigle and Moore were about to do a job to rebuild the braking system on a semi-truck trailer. …
According to a recent Chicago U.S. District Court decision, a Maine aircraft repair company cannot be brought into a court in Illinois. The decision was based on an argument that because the company’s website can be accessed in Illinois, jurisdiction would lie in U.S. District Court. In the written opinion issued…
Those who would prefer that court records remain secret have a higher burden in trying to keep filed pleadings, court orders, minute entries, hearing transcripts, trial exhibits and discovery documents filed with the court as attachments to motions. For those who wish to have court records secret, the proponent must demonstrate…
Many truck accidents are caused by truck driver fatigue. There are new federal restrictions on the number of hours a driver can be in service under the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA), which created the hours-of-service rules. Under these new rules, a driver is limited with respect to how long he…
A district court judge in Chicago granted the motion of defendant Ryobi Technologies Inc. to exclude an expert witness as unreliable and irrelevant. Purportedly, it would have cost Ryobi $50 to $150 to install an automatic braking system on the table saw that sliced off Brandon Stollings’s index finger and portions of…
The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that more than 3.9 million sports-related and recreation-related concussions occur in the United States each year. Most of the reported sports-related concussions occur in high school football. Continuing to play a sport with a concussion or symptoms of a head injury makes the…
Hubert Walker represented a class of truck owner-operators who sued Trailer Transit Inc., a broker of trucking services, for breach of contract. The lawsuit was filed in an Indiana state court. The underlying lawsuit concerned a lease agreement between Walker, who owned and operated a long-haul truck and trailer transit. Under the…