Legal

The Legal section covers court rulings, statutory changes, liability trends, and key developments in Alabama and federal law that shape personal-injury claims. We explain how case law and regulation affect claims strategy, statutes of limitations, damages, and the rights of injured people pursuing justice.

Michigan Prison Faces Sex Assault Law Suits

The Michigan prison system may find that protecting female inmates from sexual assaults by guards is not just the morally right thing to do, but that it makes business sense, as well. In the first…

By Pete Mackey

/ 7 Jan 2009

Feds Give State Veterans' Home Failing Grades

The William F. Green State Veterans Home in Bay Minette, Alabama was severely critcized in a report by Federal inspectors released last month. The inspection, conducted in February of 2008, found…

By Pete Mackey

/ 6 Jan 2009

Fire Alarms

Deaths from fires and burns are the fifth most common cause of unintentional injury and deaths in the United States (CDC 2005) and the third leading cause of fatal home injury (Runyan 2004). In…

By Pete Burns

/ 6 Jan 2009

The Ledbetter Decision may not be Long for this World

The Democrats controlling Congress are looking to overturn the Supreme Court’s recent decision which limited worker’s discrimination claims by providing a restrictive statute of limitations. The…

By Pete Mackey

/ 6 Jan 2009

Life Insurance Companies Need Your Help

Consumer groups are opposing the insurance industry’s effort to lower reserve requirements. The Consumer Federation of America and the Center for Economic Justice are up in arms – they believe that…

By Pete Mackey

/ 5 Jan 2009

The People's Law School Returns

A 10 week course to better explain to lay people how the legal system works – the People’s Law School – returns January 26 in Huntsville, Alabama. Huntsville’s Mayor, Tommy Battle, explains how the…

By Pete Mackey

/ 5 Jan 2009

Bicycle safety tips….

With Christmas bringing new bicycles to both kids and parents, the importance of bicycle safety should be stressed to all new cyclists. Unfortunately, this past weekend a South Alabama resident was…

By Troy Schwant

/ 4 Jan 2009

TVA – Business Before Regulations

Two weeks after the area around the Kingston, Tn. steam plant was inundated with fly ash sludge after a holding pond ruptured, news has surfaced a TVA Inspector General had issued a report in…

By Pete Mackey

/ 4 Jan 2009

Damage from the Madoff Scandal Grows

By now, if you do not know who Bernie Madoff is, chances are you have been hibernating in a cave for the winter. This self professed financial scammer has been front page news world wide for his…

By Pete Mackey

/ 2 Jan 2009

Have a Happy but Safe New Years…..

I would like to wish everyone a Happy, but Safe New Years. I know that saying is cliche, and everyone hears these same words every year around this time, but even if you are being safe, you still…

By Troy Schwant

/ 1 Jan 2009

Homeowners Sue TVA for Environmental Spill

Residents of a subdivision in Tennessee located near the Kingston, Tn. Power Plant filed a lawsuit against the Tennessee Valley Authority seeking $165,000,000 in damages caused by the rupture of a…

By Pete Mackey

/ 1 Jan 2009

It is Time to Look for Dangerous Toys

Remember Dan Akroyd as Irving Mainway hawking safe toys such as Bag O’ Glass, Doggy Dentist and Mr. Skin-Grafter on Saturday Night Live? The joke was, nobody would sell toys that were as dangerous…

By Pete Mackey

/ 31 Dec 2008