Carter Wood

Things were looking up for Dole legally even before a federal judge rejected a Nicaraguan court’s award against the company as coming from a fundamentally unfair legal system. (See earlier post.) The latest edition of California Lawyer magazine covers the corrupt class-action case against Dole based on invented claims of ...

Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi spoke at the Heritage Foundation today on the state’s successes with tort reform, an event hosted by former Attorney General Ed Meese. During the Q&A period, Meese asked the governor about the effects of the 2004 tort reforms on the state’s trial bar. In response, ...

The First Presidential Debate and Legal Reform The first presidential debate takes place Friday in Oxford, Mississippi. Oxford…Oxford…Oxford…Now whom is it we associate, lately, with Oxford, Mississippi? Right. It’s the home of Richard “Dickie” Scruggs, the giant among trial lawyers. Or at least it was until July. “Court Orders Dickie ...

Not much to say about Alaska’s governor, Sarah Palin, on legal reform issues (certainly a lot less than Sen. Joe Biden). The Pacific Research Institute’s 2008 State Liability Index ranks Alaska as having the No. 2 legal climate in outputs (costs) and No. 16 in inputs (laws). Both Sen. McCain ...

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Institute for Legal Reform on Wednesday is releasing its 2008 Lawsuit Climate report, an annual exercise in which the ILR surveys in-house counsels on their perceptions of how reasonable and balanced each state’s tort liability system is. (The 2007 survey is available here.) It’s one ...

The Pacific Research Institute has just released its latest study on the civil litigation climates in each of the states, “U.S. Tort Liability Index: 2008 Report.” Indexwise, good news for North Dakota, bad news for Florida. The study takes a twofold approach toward assessing a state’s tort climate — its ...