Clarence Whitaker alleged that his wife’s 2007 Hyundai Santa Fe was defective because a critical wiring harness had become disconnected. Mrs. Whitaker was found dead between her car and the side of her house. Police found that the vehicle was ...

Tagged with: Defense Verdict Judge Michael F. Urbanski Products Liability U.S. District Court - Western District

Where drug manufacturers provided adequate warnings to a patient’s treating physician but the treating physician did not make the patient aware of the risks of taking the drug, and the patient experienced a known side effect and died, the manufacturers ...

Tagged with: 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Per Curiam Opinion Products Liability

Plaintiff’s claims for design defect and failure to warn were viable where the barrel of his firearm exploded after it had been loaded with a non-recommended bullet because there were questions of fact regarding the actual cause of the barrel ...

Tagged with: Judge Michael F. Urbanski Products Liability U.S. District Court - Western District

Where the deceased fell off a ladder when a piece of a crate he was attempting to pull up suddenly broke off, the administrator of the deceased’s estate could sue the company that designed and manufactured the crate for wrongful ...

Tagged with: Judge John A. Gibney Jr. Products Liability U.S. District Court - Eastern District

In a ruling that denied both sides’ motions for summary judgment involving a man’s 25-foot fall while installing a tree step, the court rejected both sides’ efforts to exclude the other’s experts in their entirety but limited the testimony of ...

Tagged with: Judge Elizabeth K. Dillon Products Liability U.S. District Court - Western District

In a case where motions to exclude both sides’ expert witnesses were denied, a jury should decide whether Hyundai is liable for the death of a woman crushed by its Santa Fe vehicle. Background Shannon Whitaker was crushed to death ...

Tagged with: Judge Michael F. Urbanski Products Liability U.S. District Court - Western District

A 36-year-old Richmond lawyer – working out of a county-seat office in the Piedmont hills – is doing network interviews and accepting congratulations from big-time tort lawyers for a stunning $289 million product liability verdict this month in a California ...

Tagged with: Products Liability

Robert Benedict, the plaintiff, had been employed as a commercial truck driver for a company named Essex Concrete. On Nov. 14, 2014, plaintiff departed on his route for the day, which involved driving a fully loaded cement mixer to a ...

Tagged with: Judge Robert E. Payne Million-Dollar Verdicts Products Liability U.S. District Court - Eastern District

The defendants were not entitled to reconsideration of the court’s decision to grant summary judgment to the plaintiff on the issue of his contributory negligence, as their proposed grounds amounted to mere disagreement with the court’s earlier conclusions. Background In ...

Tagged with: Civil Procedure Judge Robert E. Payne Negligence Personal Injury Products Liability U.S. District Court - Eastern District

Although the estate of a plant worker crushed by a lift truck offered a truck redesign that could have prevented that particular worker’s death, there was no evidence that the redesign would lead to fewer total deaths. Thus, the jury’s ...

Tagged with: Justice Stephen R. McCullough Negligence Personal Injury Products Liability Supreme Court of Virginia Tort