Military members and their families dedicate their lives in service to our country. As a thank you for that service, we promise to care for them and their loved ones.  

But, for members working and living on Camp Lejeune from 1953 to 1987, their dedication came with exposure to contaminated water linked to serious health risks. From 1953 to 1987, the United States government acknowledges that Marines and their family members who lived on Camp Lejeune and civilians who worked on base were exposed to hazardous chemicals in the water supply. It is estimated that this contaminated water impacted more than a million marines, their families, and civilians.  

Exposure to these dangerous chemicals is linked to serious health issues, including: 

• Kidney Cancer 
• Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma 
• Multiple Myeloma 
• Adult Leukemias 
• Liver Cancer 
• Parkinson’s Disease 
• Kidney Disease 
• Scleroderma/Systemic Sclerosis 
• Major Cardiac Birth Defects 
• Lung Cancer 
• Death 
• Miscarriages 
• Female infertility 
• Birth defects 

The Camp Lejeune Justice Act allows any exposed individual who lived or worked at the base for thirty days or more from Aug. 1, 1953, to Dec. 31, 1987, to file a claim against the U.S. government. However, the time for filing is limited. All claims that involve an injury or death that occurred before the passage of the Camp Lejeune Justice Act have until Aug. 10, 2024, to file their administrative claim. 

Beasley Allen has an entire team of lawyers and staff dedicated to investigating, filing, and establishing causation for claims by people or survivors of individuals exposed to the contaminated water at Camp Lejeune. 

You can contact our team should you need help with a claim or have questions. The lawyers include Leslie LaMacchia, Julia Merritt, Will Sutton, Ryan Kral, Trisha Green, Ken Wilson, Matt Pettit, Tucker Osborne, Gavin King, Elizabeth Weyerman, Maggie Arellano, and Marion Brummal.  

More and more administrative claims are proceeding to civil litigation for Camp Lejeune. The Navy has received over 70,000 administrative filings, yet a settlement offer has yet to be made at the administrative level. The cases are being filed in the Eastern District of North Carolina. 

With the growing surge in cases filed weekly, the Department of Justice has requested that civil cases be consolidated to help the Eastern District of North Carolina deal with the volume. 

If you’re an attorney with a Camp Lejeune case, let us put our resources to work for you. We can competently and conscientiously assist you in handling any group of cases, no matter how large.  

The post The Clock is Ticking for Camp Lejeune Contaminated Water Claims appeared first on Beasley Allen.

Our Hair Relaxer Litigation Team monitors Georgia cases as they survive motions to dismiss. The team also discusses the status of pending cases in the MDL and Illinois state courts. Our firm continues advancing chemical hair relaxer litigation in state and federal courts.

Legal action began following the October 17, 2022, publication of a study from the National Institutes of Health, which found that women who often use hair relaxer products are more than twice as likely to develop uterine cancer as those who don’t.

During the last few months, more cases have been filed in Illinois state courts, where several defendant corporations are. The influx of cases has led them to be combined for pre-trial and discovery matters. Initial discovery efforts are ongoing. Then, these cases will be reassigned to trial judges in their original venues. 

Plaintiffs in Georgia state courts successfully challenged the defendants’ initial motions to dismiss. A stay of discovery has been put in place while these rulings are under appeal. Hearing on motions to dismiss in other cases are scheduled over the next few weeks.

Beasley Allen has been heavily involved in federal court multidistrict litigation (MDL) as part of the plaintiffs’ expert committee and otherwise helping to advance the Plantiffs’ Steering Committee’s positions. Initial discovery requests were sent to the primary six defendants identified in the MDL during the last week of June.

Additional defendants have started to make appearances in the case, and more are expected as litigation progresses.

This case is being pursued by a team of Beasley Allen lawyers.

Our firm is actively investigating cases of women who developed uterine cancer, endometrial cancer, and ovarian cancer after using chemical hair relaxers. Contact Beasley Allen for a free case evaluation.

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In the world of cancer, things can get very complex. This is true for mesothelioma – cancer in the mesothelium, the thick layer of tissue, around particular organs.

There are four types of mesotheliomas based on tumor location:

• The lining of the lungs (pleural)
• Abdomen (peritoneal)
• Heart (pericardial)
• Testicles 

Along with the different locations of the body where mesotheliomas can occur, not all mesotheliomas are the same, in terms of cell type and location.

The three most common cell types for mesothelioma are epithelioid, sarcomatoid, and biphasic. Of those three, epithelioid is by far the most common, accounting for about 70% of mesothelioma diagnoses, while sarcomatoid accounts for only 10%. That leaves biphasic with just around 20%.

The shape of the cancers’ cells distinguishes these subtypes from one another. Epithelioid cells are boxy or oval shapes, sarcomatoid cells are oval or spindle-like, and biphasic have both epithelioid and sarcomatoid shapes.

The most significant impact the subtypes have on litigation is how the patient responds to potential treatment and how quickly the attorney on the file needs to make things happen.

Traditionally, epithelioid mesothelioma had the best prognosis of around 1.5 to 3 years to live, while a diagnosis with sarcomatoid was likely a death sentence within 10 months. 

Bisphasic is more like sacomatoid, with about 9-12 months to live. For the prosecuting attorney to understand this and be able to identify immediately the subtype is crucial. By not understanding the nuanced information related to subtypes and how to determine this information, plaintiffs can die much faster than expected.

Our firm was contacted in December 2021 by a potential client. After the lawyer spoke with the client and reviewed medical records, it became clear that this was not an epithelioid mesothelioma and time was truly of the essence. Within a month, the case was filed in the proper jurisdiction. A few months later, after diligent work to expedite the deposition by the attorneys working on the file, the client sat for a deposition.

Just weeks after that deposition, the client died. From first contact to death was around four months. Had he not sat for his deposition, his case would have been far, far weaker.

The attorneys at Beasley Allen recognized the urgency because of their experience and understanding of the issues, which allowed them to protect their client’s rights. This is the skilled and informed approach taken by all Beasley Allen asbestos attorneys.

The post Mesothelioma Cases Require Urgent Attention appeared first on Beasley Allen.

Whistleblowers are the key to exposing corporate wrongdoing and government fraud. A person with first-hand knowledge of fraud or other wrongdoing may have a whistleblower case. 

For example, California tech company NextGen Healthcare developed and sold Electronic Health Care software to healthcare providers throughout the United States. They received incentive payments for the software’s “meaningful use” under the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH). 

According to the complaint, the software NextGen sold was “woefully inadequate,” preventing providers from safely and reliably providing clinical care. Many flaws created an “acute risk” to patient health and safety. The complaint added that the flaws and others made the software non-compliant with the HITECH Act and ineligible for incentive payments. 

The court ordered NextGen to pay three times the damages the U.S. sustained because of its actions, plus civil penalties. They were also issued a cease and desist for the software’s use. 

The two nurse-turned-whistleblowers in the case received up to $5.58 million from the federal government for pursuing their claims for the past five years. 

Before you “blow the whistle” on suspected fraud or wrongdoing, it is crucial to ensure you have a valid claim and are prepared for what lies ahead: 

• Be hands-on– A whistleblower must have first-hand knowledge of the fraud or other wrongdoing to file a claim. It is essential to have physical evidence such as documents, emails, invoices, billing statements, or other materials that support your allegations. 
• Be specific– Identify the “who, what, when and where” of the fraud. Organize your information and, if possible, create a timeline for the fraudulent conduct. You will be required to explain why the conduct is fraudulent.  
• Verify criteria– The fraud must be against the US Government to file a federal False Claims Act case. You may file a state False Claims Act case, provided your state has one if state funds are affected by the fraud. (Visit our states FCA page for a list of states and their FCAs.) 
• Check yourself– If you are a government employee who witnesses fraud against the government, you may need first to try to report the fraud through channels within your agency before filing a whistleblower lawsuit. Talk to an attorney to determine if you should take this course. 
• Talk to a lawyer– A whistleblower lawyer can help you navigate a potential claim and guide you through what is often a lengthy process. Although your information will initially be kept confidential, you will eventually be identified as the whistleblower. Your lawyer can help you obtain whistleblower protections under the False Claims Act. 
• Determine motive- The fraud must have been committed willingly and deliberately. Mismanagement is not a cause for a whistleblower claim. 

If you feel you have a claim, our attorneys would like to talk to you. Beasley Allen has a talented team of attorneys dedicated to pursuing whistleblower cases. We want to meet with you confidentially to review your potential whistleblower claim. 

The post Stop and Think Before ‘Blowing the Whistle’ appeared first on Beasley Allen.

Fatigue for truck drivers is a very serious problem.

Our firm recently settled a case where a client was parked on the shoulder of Interstate 85 in Hall County, Georgia. A roadside assistant was parked behind the client’s vehicle and helping her refuel when a tractor-trailer struck the side of the attendant’s vehicle and the rear of the client’s vehicle.

The attendant was killed, and our client was ejected, suffering catastrophic injuries.

Following an investigation, we learned that the tractor-trailer driver was severely fatigued, so much so that he did not even apply his brakes before the collision.

Accidents like this and many others could be prevented if truck drivers followed the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration rules for hours of service. These regulations were implemented to keep the drivers of these massive and potentially dangerous vehicles safe and others sharing the road with them.

In the Driver Fatigue and Alertness Study, considered the largest and most comprehensive over-the-road study on this subject, it was found that fatigue leads to:

• Increased lapses of attention
• Slower information processing and decision making
• Longer reaction time to critical events
• More variable and less effective control responses
• Decreased motivation to sustain performance
• Increased subjective feelings of drowsiness.
• Decreased watchfulness
• Decreased alertness to danger

(Wylie, et al., 1997)

There is little dispute that these problems have the potential to become deadly behind the wheel of a tractor-trailer truck. So, it was no surprise that researchers found that driving while drowsy increased an individual’s crash risk by four to six times (Klauer, et al., 2006).

Beasley Allen is committed to fighting for justice on behalf of clients whose lives are forever altered by the negligence of truck drivers and the companies they work for if they do not follow or enforce the necessary rules to keep us all safe.

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Under the law, owners of establishments are responsible for ensuring that their property is reasonably safe and secure from anticipated dangers. This can be criminal acts like shootings, fights or other acts of physical violence to defects in architectural design.

However, an architect or contractor can be held accountable when the incident involves improper property design. For example, they can be held responsible when a pedestrian is struck by a vehicle on a property where the architects or engineers failed to create a safe walkway.

While it is accepted that an independent contractor is not liable for injuries suffered as a result of the work they did on the property, Georgia allows for negligence to be brought against the actual design by an architect if: 

• The work causes a nuisance or is inherently dangerous to third persons. 
• The work is so negligently defective that it is imminently dangerous to third persons. 

As with any negligence claims, we must prove five elements to prevail in court:

• Duty: This concerns the relationship between the plaintiff and the defendant. Our negligence lawyers must be able to prove that the defendant owed you a duty of care (responsibility) not to cause you or others harm. Whether or not a duty is owed in a negligent security case often hinges on the foreseeability of criminal activity.
• Breach of duty: Once duty has been established, we must prove that the defendant did not meet a level of standard care, which resulted in the injury to you or a family member.
• Cause in fact: We must show the causal connection between the defendant’s conduct or actions and the resulting harm to you or your family.
• Proximate cause: Our negligence lawyers must also show a direct correlation between an act of negligence and the injury that resulted from it and whether that harm was foreseeable. Foreseeability is a pivotal issue in any negligent security case.
• Harm/Damages: Finally, our negligence lawyers must be able to show that the defendant’s negligence resulted in actual damages for you or a family member.

Parker Miller and Houston Kessler, lawyers in our Atlanta office, oversee these cases and other premises liability and negligent security cases across the State of Georgia and other states.

The post Key Consideration Under Georgia Premises Liability Law appeared first on Beasley Allen.

Civil trials can now resume scheduling after Johnson & Johnson’s second bankruptcy protection attempt for its LTL Management subsidiary was formally dismissed, attorneys with the Beasley Allen Law Firm announced.

The firm currently represents thousands of women who developed ovarian cancer after regularly using J&J’s asbestos-tainted talcum powder products.

“The women and their families who have been devastated by ovarian cancer have waited for more than two years as J&J sought bankruptcy protections in an effort to delay or deny accountability in the tort system,” said Beasley Allen’s Leigh O’Dell, co-chair of the talc plaintiffs steering committee in the multidistrict litigation in New Jersey federal court.

In July, Judge Michael Kaplan ruled that J&J’s second bankruptcy attempt would be dismissed because the talc lawsuits didn’t cause immediate “financial distress” despite the company earning nearly $100 billion in revenue.

“Tragically, hundreds of women have died during this delay and will never see their day in court,” said Beasley Allen principal Ted Meadows. “Now, our firm can aggressively begin seeking a resumption of the trials that have been on hold for far too long. We’re certain that other firms will do the same.”

In the second dismissed bankruptcy filing, J&J argued bankruptcy would provide a “fair and efficient” way to handle settlements, proposing $8.9 billion to resolve all outstanding North American talc claims and any potential future claims.

Lawyers trying these cases for almost a decade say that the settlement amount is nowhere near enough to compensate the vast amount of present and future victims, reimbursements to health insurance and state governments.

“We are prepared and eager to return to jury trials to present the evidence of J&J’s reprehensible conduct in covering up the dangers of its products,” Andy Birchfield, head of the Mass Torts Section at Beasley Allen. “We stand ready to engage in rational and productive negotiations with J&J to resolve these claims,” adds Mr. Birchfield. “As with the civil court trials, those efforts were halted while J&J’s latest bankruptcy scheme was being pursued, and we hope today’s action leads to a renewal of those discussions.”

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Beasley Allen Law Firm eager to move forward for its clients.

Montgomery, Ala. (August 11, 2023) – Today’s formal dismissal of the second unsuccessful attempt by Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ) to seek bankruptcy protection for its LTL Management subsidiary should lead courts to resume scheduling civil trials across the nation, according to attorneys with the Beasley Allen Law Firm. 

The firm represents thousands of women who developed ovarian cancer after regular use of J&J’s asbestos-tainted talcum powder products.

“The women and their families who have been devastated by ovarian cancer have waited for more than two years as J&J sought bankruptcy protections in an effort to delay or deny accountability in the tort system,” says the firm’s Leigh O’Dell, co-chair of the talc plaintiffs steering committee in the multidistrict litigation in New Jersey federal court. 

“Tragically, hundreds of women have died during this delay and will never see their day in court. Now our firm can aggressively begin seeking a resumption of the trials that have been on hold for far too long. We’re certain that other firms will do the same.”

In late July, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Michael Kaplan ruled that J&J’s second bankruptcy, like its first, would be dismissed because the talc lawsuits did not put the company – which recorded almost $100 billion in revenue in its most recent fiscal year – in immediate “financial distress.”  

The company created LTL through a so-called “Texas Two-Step” divisive merger in 2021, transferring all its talc-related tort liabilities to the shell company. In the most recent bankruptcy attempt, J&J offered an $8.9 billion funding agreement through LTL to resolve all current and future claims.

“The bankruptcy court’s order dismissing J&J’s bad faith bankruptcy provides just the latest example of the judiciary questioning the use of the bankruptcy system to resolve tort claims and limit the liabilities of those involved,” says Andy Birchfield, head of the Mass Torts Section at the Beasley Allen firm. “We hope these recent developments signal that bankruptcy cannot serve as a shield for financially sound entities or as a tool to involuntarily deprive victims of their right to a trial by jury and just and fair compensation for their injuries. Any proposed compensation for victims must consider the real financial and emotional toll of this disease. 

“We are prepared and eager to return to jury trials to present the evidence of J&J’s reprehensible conduct in covering up the dangers of its products. We stand ready to engage in rational and productive negotiations with J&J to resolve these claims,” adds Mr. Birchfield. “As with the civil court trials, those efforts were halted while J&J’s latest bankruptcy scheme was being pursued, and we hope today’s action leads to a renewal of those discussions.”

The post Attorneys for Talc Victims Say Dismissal of Second Attempted Bankruptcy by J and J Should Prompt New Trials, Negotiations appeared first on Beasley Allen.

Beasley Allen continues representing school systems nationwide in lawsuits against social media giants like Meta (Facebook and Instagram), TikTok, Snapchat, and YouTube for their products’ damaging effects on youth.

Beasley Allen began filing social media lawsuits nationwide in 2022 on behalf of adolescents harmed by social media addiction. School districts in Baldwin, Montgomery, and Tuscaloosa counties were among the first filers of the lawsuit. Since then, Beasley Allen has continued representing numerous school districts across the country in states like Alabama, Florida, West Virginia and Kentucky.

Over the past decade, America’s youth has engaged with social media products at an exponential rate. According to the suit, this increase in usage is a direct and calculated effort by social media companies.

According to the filings, these social media companies do not charge users for their products but receive money from advertisers who pay a premium to target specific categories of users. In doing so, the companies generate revenue based on the total time users spend on the application, which directly correlates with the number of advertisements shown to each user.

Government agencies, including the Federal Trade Commission and the U.S. Surgeon General, have sounded the alarm linking the use of social media apps to a mental health crisis among youth. 

“The companies fail to protect young, vulnerable, at-risk users from social media addiction,” according to the U.S. Surgeon General, leading to anxiety, depression, body dysmorphia, self-harm, and suicide.   

The suits seek to hold these companies responsible and to help school districts access the resources they need to support affected youth.

Beasley Allen attorneys are leaders in complex litigation in courtrooms across the country. Our team can work with you to provide your client the best representation possible. If you are pursuing similar litigation, contact us today.

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