Articles Posted in Civil Litigation

Volkswagen has recently been hit by a wave of skepticism as news of the company’s emissions scandal shocked the United States. Volkswagen Group, also known as Volkswagen Aktiengasellschaft, is the second largest car manufacturer in the world. In addition to the well-known Volkswagen brand, the company also sells cars under its subsidiary brands such as Bentley, Bugatti, Lamborghini, Audi, and Porsche. As of May 2015, Volkswagen Group was valued at a substantial $126 billion, ranking 67^th on Forbes’ list of the World’s Most Valuable Brands.

What cars are affected by the emissions scandal?

In early 2014, two students and two professors at West Virginia University received a $50,000 grant to study the emissions tests on three diesel cars: the VW Passat, the VW Jetta, and the BMW X5. The studies revealed that the BMW X5 performed at or below federal emissions standards. However, the Volkswagen test subjects did not fare so well. The VW Passat exceeded U.S. emissions standards by a factor of 5 to 20, while the VW Jetta exceeded U.S. emissions standards by a factor of 15 to 35. In May of 2014, the West Virginia scientists reported their findings to the EPA.

Civil law can generally be divided into two categories: substantive and procedural. Many substantive laws are commonly experienced and understood by the general public. For instance, the tort of negligence is present in everyday occurrences such as car wrecks, and breaches of contract can occur in virtually any type of business dealing. Procedural laws, on the other hand, are often much more mysterious to a layman, simply because they regard the actual nuts and bolts of how a lawsuit is administered by a court.

An example of procedural law exists in the distinction between state courts and federal courts. Most lawsuits are handled in state court, because the only way a federal court can hear a suit is if (1) the parties to the lawsuit are from different states and the amount in controversy exceeds $75,000, or (2) the case primarily involves an issue of federal jurisdiction, rather than state jurisdiction. Though this may sound basic enough, there can be much dispute. If the case is held in federal court, there may also be a dispute as to which state’s laws the court should apply.  This issue most commonly arises when the accident or injury happens in one state, but the lawsuit is filed in a different state because of where the plaintiff and/or defendant reside.

A federal court case in the Northern District of Alabama currently being handled by the law firm of Hollis Wright provides a nice illustration of the juggling act between substantive and procedural laws. In this case, the plaintiff, a resident of Alabama, is suing the manufacturers of a surgical robot for injuries he sustained while undergoing surgery in Tennessee. The defendants did not dispute that the case should be held in federal court; rather, they maintained that the federal court should apply Tennessee’s statute of limitations, which is only one year, over Alabama’s, which is two years. If the federal court employed Tennessee’s statute of limitations, the plaintiff would have been time-barred from bringing his suit.

While Halloween is a night of fun, the special circumstances surrounding trick-or-treating and parties mean a variety of opportunities to commit actionable negligence. Here are a few thoughts on protecting yourself from liability on Halloween:

1. Don’t leave open candles anywhere outside. While your sidewalk may look great lined with real lanterns, this creates a foreseeable risk that someone could accidentally knock them over or that a child’s costume could catch fire.

2. Keep pets inside. Even if your dog is normally well-behaved, strangers, Halloween costumes, and props can cause your dog to get scared or territorial and lead to a dog bite incident. Especially if your dog has had a history of biting (even one time), a dog bite could expose you to liability.

One intensifying social controversy concerns the vaccination of children. A June 2014 article in the journal Pediatrics reports that 1 out of 10 parents in the United States are refusing to vaccinate their children. The momentum of the so-called “Anti-Vac” movement has been aided by the endorsement of celebrities such as Jenny McCarthy, who publicly claims that vaccination is the likely cause of her son’s autism.

In 2000, the Center for Disease Control announced that measles had been eradicated in the United States. In May of 2014, the CDC proclaimed that the number of measles cases in the country is the highest it has been since the disease was eliminated, opining that unvaccinated individuals travelling abroad have brought the disease back to the States. Pertussis, or “whooping cough,” has also made a comeback in the last decade.

With many states across the country requiring parents to provide documentation of their children’s immunizations prior to allowing those children to attend school, a constitutional controversy, which will likely be addressed by the United States Supreme Court at some point, is brewing.

Arbitration, what is it exactly? The process known as arbitration has become extremely common in our society. However, people oftentimes don’t understand what arbitration entails. Arbitration is considered to be a form of alternative dispute resolution to the traditional process involving a judge and/or a jury.

Arbitration is a process whereby an arbitrator, presumably independent and neutral, will hear a dispute between the parties. The dispute can involve most anything ranging from divorces, employment problems, personal injuries etc. The key component to the arbitration process though is that the arbitrator will issue an award or ruling. The ruling is final and binding on the parties with very few exceptions.

In order to be required to arbitrate a dispute, the parties have to mutually agree to do so in writing. Whether both parties really mutually and voluntarily agreed to arbitrate a future dispute or legal claim is a question frequently asked and litigated over? In many commercial transactions, it is common practice for a business owner, such as a car dealership or a nursing home, to require customers and/or patients to execute an agreement to arbitrate any dispute that might arise from the transaction or service. When being presented with several pages of small print and asked to sign, people typically don’t read the entire document and usually only realize after it is too late that they agreed to arbitrate a dispute or legal claim. Courts usually rule that if you signed your name after being presented with the agreement and had an opportunity to read the document before doing so, then you are bound by it. What does this mean exactly? It means that if a dispute or legal claim arises from the transaction or provided service, then you will not be able to have your day in court so to speak. You will be required to have your dispute or claim decided by an arbitrator.  Most attorneys believe that individuals required to litigate a claim or dispute against a company or business through the arbitration process typically don’t come out as well as if they had been able to present their claim to a judge or jury. If this is true, it is easy to understand why business owners would want to have an arbitration provision in an agreement.