About a week ago I reported that a recently filed lawsuit against Panera Bread Co. alleges it should be liable for the death of a young woman who suffered cardiac arrest after drinking Panera's "charged lemonade" which allegedly contained more than 300 ml of caffeine at the time.
Now comes news that a second wrongful death lawsuit (on behalf of the beneficiaries of a 46-year old man) based on similar allegations has been filed in Delaware. The Hill has the story. NPR also has coverage.
Two years ago I reported that a California Appellate Court held that Amazon can be liable in products liability for products sold by other vendors through Amazon. See here. A few months later, the Texas Supreme Court reached the exact opposite result. See here.
I am writing about this today again because a a federal court in Louisiana recently declined to issue judgment in favor of Amazon on its argument that it is not liable for products sold by about two million “third party sellers,” such as the one that sold a defective battery charger that caused a deadly house fire resulting in this wrongful death lawsuit. You can read the decision here.
December 4, 2023
Back in 2012-2013 there was a lot of discussion on possible claims for damages caused by "high energy" (read: highly caffeinated) drinks. Go here and scroll down to refresh your memory.
The topic is now back in the news. A recently filed lawsuit against Panera Bread Co. alleges it should be liable for the death of a young woman who suffered cardiac arrest after drinking Panera's "charged lemonade" which allegedly contained more than 300 ml of caffeine at the time.
The Legal Eagle YouTube channel has a detailed explanation of the case.
UPDATE 12/10/23:
Additional coverage on the case at The Legal Examiner
A second wrongful death lawsuit has been filed in Delaware. See here.
In an important, and somewhat surprising, decision, a state judge has ruled that a teacher who was shot by a 6-year-old student in Virginia can proceed with a $40 million lawsuit against a school system over claims of negligence by school administrators.
The issue in the case was whether the claim should be considered to be a claim for a work related injury. If so, the claim could only be brought as a workers’ compensation claim which would have provided much lower compensation for the plaintiff.
Given the ruling, the plaintiff can proceed with the torts claim she filed in court, which asked for $40 million in damages.
The judge based its decision on the conclusion that the plaintiff's injuries “did not arise out of her employment” and therefore did not “fall within the exclusive provisions of workers’ compensation coverage.” The judge also concluded that “[t]he danger of being shot by a student is not one that is peculiar or unique to the job of a first-grade teacher.”
You can read more about the story Courthouse Network News, NPR and The Hill.
As the case moves forward now, I expect it will raise issues related to intervening causes, proximate cause, and governmental immunity. Stay tuned!
Three passengers who claimed to have suffered emotional distress as a result of a recent incident in an Alaska Airlines flight have filed a complaint against the airline, and have asked for the case to be recognized as a class action. The claim is based on the incident in which an Alaska Airlines flight that was nearly downed due to an alleged attempt by an off-duty pilot to shut down the engines last month have filed a class-action suit against the airline. The lawsuit alleges that the airline did not properly follow its policy by allowing the off duty pilot to fly in the cockpit’s jump seat, despite him admitting that he was not right of mind.
For the story on the original incident, go here. For more on the recently filed complaint, go here.
I do not understand why this claim would be considered to be a class action, but we'll have to wait and see what happens to that request.
October 21, 2023
If you have been following the news about the lawsuit filed by the surviving families of the Sandy Hook school shooting against millionaire conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, you know that a Connecticut jury ordered Jones to pay $965 million in damages to 15 relatives of the victims. Soon, Jones tried to weasel his way out of having to pay for the damages he caused by filing for bankruptcy.
But I just learned that another judge has ruled that Jones can’t use bankruptcy protections to avoid paying money to the families of the victims. The Hill has more on the story here.
Unfortunately, it may be a while before the families see any of the money, but I hope they do sooner rather than later.
UPDATE 10/27/23: Above the Law has an update and commentary here.
Day on Torts is reporting (here) on a recent case in Tennessee that reminds us of the importance of the difference between a wrongful death claim and a claim under a survival statute. And what is that difference? In a nutshell, the recovery in a wrongful death claim goes to the beneficiary as defined in the wrongful death statute, which is usually the decedent's surviving spouse; but the recovery in a claim under the survival statute goes to the decedent's estate. This means that in a case under the survival statute, it is possible the surviving spouse will get a much more reduced recovery - or none at all.
In this new case, called Sanders v. Higgins (available here), the plaintiff was the surviving spouse of someone who died in an accident. Plaintiff brought a claim against the decedent’s insurance company alleging misrepresentation and negligence. The parties reached a settlement on the negligence claims, and the trial court ordered disbursement of the settlement proceeds to plaintiff as surviving spouse but the decedent’s estate appealed arguing that the proceeds should have been distributed to the estate. On appeal, the court of appeals agreed with the estate and reversed.
I have to confess that I assumed that, as part of the analysis of cause in fact, all states required a plaintiff in a legal malpractice cased based on alleged negligence in handling the litigation of case to argue that they would have won "the case within the case" (or, in other words, that they would have won the underlying case had it not been for the negligent conduct of the defendant lawyer). But it turns out that until recently, Idaho apparently did not require this. Now they do.
Last week, the Legal Profession Blog reported that the Idaho Supreme Court decided a case in which it rejected a standard that the suing plaintiff only had to show "some chance of success" in the underlying medical malpractice case. In doing so, the Court adopted the much more popular test of requiring the plaintiff to show that they would have won the underlying case (had it not been for the negligent conduct of the defendant lawyer). This analysis is usually referred to as the "case within the case" analysis because it requires the plaintiff to show that they would have won the underlying (old) case in order to be able to win the new case they are litigating. (Note that the court apparently says that showing the case within the case is needed to meet the element of proximate cause, although it is more accurate to say it relates to cause in fact.)
Meeting the case within the case standard makes it more difficult for the plaintiff to support their claim but it is the logical analysis that is consistent with the notion of cause in fact. And, like I said, I always thought it was "universally" accepted, but now I see I was wrong about that.
So I wonder if there are any other states that still recognize a cause of action without requiring that the plaintiff meet the "case within the case" approach. Do you know of any?
The case is called Rich v. Hepworth Holzer and you can read the opinion here.
A few days ago, I posted a story questioning why Rudy Giuliani would concede the main elements of a cause of action for defamation he had been fighting (based on his comments about two election workers). Giuliani -- or perhaps, more accurately, the lawyer representing him -- apparently thought that it was a good tactic in order to avoid complying with a discovery request, but that made no sense. My original comment explaining why the tactic was likely to fail is here.
As I predicted, the tactic not only failed, it backfired spectacularly. See here. First it resulted in an order to explain his argument and eventually in a finding of liability by default.
Maybe Giuliani and his lawyer did not realize that what they did amounted to conceding the main elements of the cause of action and for that reason, and because of the fact that they did not comply with discovery, the court has found Giuliani liable by default.
Now that default judgment has been imposed, the case will move to trial on the question of the value of the injury, ie, on the damages issue alone. And if you have been paying attention to the story in the news and have watched some of the testimony by the plaintiffs, you know it is fair to say that the value will likely be high. Plus, Giuliani will have to pay attorneys' fees to the plaintiff's lawyers and more in sanctions.
Giuliani is in real trouble. He is reportedly in dire financial trouble and a huge verdict against him in this case will cause him a lot of distress. He has been trying to find funding for his legal bills, which include pending disbarment proceedings in New York and Washington DC, the indictment in Georgia, and at least one other defamation case. Reportedly, Trump is not contributing to his defense fund and Giuliani has put up his NY condo up for sale and is hosting events in attempts to raise funds. (Trump apparently agreed to appear in one of them, although I won't be surprised if he makes the appearance all about himself and ends up trying to get contributions for his legal defense fund rather than for Giuliani, but that's another story for another day.)
You can read the court's opinion here. You can find reports and commentary on the default judgment against Giuliani in the following:
Back in May I reported that the Illinois General Assembly was considering a bill that would allow plaintiffs to seek punitive damages in cases for Wrongful Death and in cases filed under the survival statute. In that post I explained why I thought the bill was a good idea (and why the old doctrine it sought to replace was wrong). See here.
Today, I am here to report that just a few days ago, on August 11, Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker signed the bill into law. The new law allows the recovery of punitive damages in wrongful death and survival actions.
However, as I argued in my previous post, the bill did not go gar enough because punitive damages still are not recoverable in actions against doctors, lawyers, and public entities.
