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Mass tort litigation has become a multi-billion dollar industry for barristers over the past few decades, as it has covered everything from cigarettes and pharmaceuticals to talcum powder and military earplugs.
Trial lawyers, who have made billions in lawsuits against the tobacco and pharmaceutical industries, have set their sights on a new industry target: agriculture.
With thousands of lawsuits pending against Roundup®, some going to trial, the herbicide paraquat is their latest focus.
But they often hit the TV airwaves first before entering court. Trial attorneys and firms, known as “lead generators,” advertise millions of dollars in plaintiff-friendly “Judicial Hellholes®” to find potential plaintiffs.
We all declare that we or our loved ones may be entitled to financial compensation and that different products are responsible for medical conditions with different potential or completely unknown causes. I’ve seen ads asking for claims to make.
Roundup® has been the number one target of television advertising in these mass tort product liability lawsuits since 2015, with an estimated $131 million spent on more than 625,000 ads broadcast nationally and internationally. increase.
Plaintiffs’ Attorneys Now Launch Latest Advertising Campaign for Paraquat Claims, Having Earned Billions of Dollars on Handful of Roundup® Claims at Trial, Representing High Return on Advertising Investment doing.
Since the beginning of 2021, more television ads have been aired across the country seeking claims claiming injuries caused by paraquat than large-scale tort ads related to other products. We’ve spent over $24 million to run these ads over 150,000 times. Many advertisements focus on messages that products like Roundup® and paraquat cause serious illness, but there is no solid scientific evidence to support these claims.
Trial attorneys also rely on traditional and social media to bolster their cases, further fueling inaccurate and unsubstantiated claims. Nor do they tend to deviate from the typical playbook, as evidenced by his 2022-2023 Judicial Hellholes® report.
While advertising purchases and public relations campaigns sell misinformation and pollute public perceptions, Judicial Hellholes® judges are unable to limit falsehoods in court.
Personal injury attorneys sometimes partner with so-called experts to provide misleading scientific evidence to support their claims in and out of court.
Monsanto faces thousands of cases across the country claiming Roundup ® causes cancer. Expert witnesses testified that glyphosate, the active ingredient in the herbicide, triggered the disease. The barrister chose to file the case in Judicial Hellholds because judges are known to allow junk his science in court.
Barristers rely on individuals of dubious credibility and lax awareness of ethical standards. One reason is that the truth is not on their side.
Environmental safety agencies in the United States, Canada, Brazil, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and the European Union have investigated the health effects of glyphosate for decades. everyone agrees to
But one anomalous organization says otherwise. An advisory group of the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) has deemed glyphosate a “probable human carcinogen.” In 2017, a senior scientist on its IARC panel testified that significant evidence was withheld in favor of glyphosate, likely changing IARC’s conclusions. It was run by Christopher Portier, a scientist who received and worked under the direct supervision of a partner in the law firm suing Monsanto.
However, Monsanto recently won a jury trial in Missouri’s 21st Judicial District. The St. Louis case collapsed under cross-examination because the plaintiff’s expert witnesses were found to be unreliable.
Although the truth prevailed in this case, it would be unreasonable to expect a jury to arrive at a proper solution without a judge fulfilling his gatekeeping responsibilities and not bringing junk science to court.
The system is further abused by lawyers who take advantage of the procedural advantages of the judicial system itself, including a lesser-known process known as multidistrict litigation. The law firm is flooding her MDL process with tens of thousands of questionable claims, knowing it’s next to impossible for a judge (or defendant) to sort and check them all.
This has become a big problem. Currently, over 70% of his civil cases in federal court are placed on the MDL. As of October 2022, MDL has approximately 400,000 pending lawsuits, the majority of which are product liability lawsuits. That percentage has skyrocketed from less than 30% just a decade ago. As two law professors noted in a recent article, “His MDL’s gravitational pull over thousands of cases shatters all normal expectations of individual processes and federalism.”
Thousands of lawsuits have been filed and consolidated, often game over without the protections that MDL “destroys”. With so many cases impossible to bring to trial, the MDL defendant faces two unappealing options for him.
Tribunal’s playbook is chock-full of clever tricks to generate more business for themselves, but they can’t do it alone. We provide the necessary funds in advance to get started. Hedge funds, institutional investors, public and private companies are pouring billions of dollars into funding lawsuits.
The litigation investment industry is growing rapidly, with start-ups joining the fray and finding lucrative opportunities.
Massive advertising and public relations campaigns may paint a picture of a white knight helping those in need, but the reality is often quite different.
We all pay for the higher cost of goods and services. Studies show that litigation abuse across the United States has resulted in nearly $285 billion in tort costs, with every American paying about $1,303 in “tort taxes” each year. Excessive tort costs have affected her 4,244,960 jobs nationwide and an estimated $143.8 million in lost wages.
As Americans face record-high inflation, it’s more important than ever for courts across the country to rescale and ensure everyone is treated fairly in the civil justice system. increase. Our democracies and judicial systems are withstanding the tide of change.
Tiger Joyce is the American Tort Reform Association. (ATRA) President.
For more AG news and opinions, visit www.Agri-Pulse.com.
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