Blog

Finding out your neighborhood or your home has been polluted from nearby industry can be a terrifying experience.  Our homes are where we feel most safe, are where we raise our families, and are usually the biggest financial investment we will ever make.  Such an invasion can result in tremendous emotional and physical harm.

We have fought for the victims of environmental contamination for many years. We are pleased that in the past two years, courts in both New York and New Jersey have upheld our argument that the class action is the best way to protect the residents' rights and ensure justice.

Office Building Janitor Secretly Videotaped Women Over 11-Month Period

An invasion of privacy case involving a group of 29 women surreptitiously videotaped using a restroom by a janitor working in a Somerset, NJ, office building was settled yesterday in Bergen County Superior Court for $940,000.

The women were represented by Neel Bhuta, an attorney for Locks Law Firm, and Franklin Solomon, of Solomon Law Firm, LLC, along with co-counsel Hill Wallack LLP.

The defendants in the trial included the building security company, Planned Security Services; and the collective building management (the janitorial company, CRS Janitorial Services; the building owner, I&G Garden State; and the property manager, Jones Lang LaSalle). The janitor who did the taping, Teodoro Martinez, was criminally charged and released on bail, but subsequently fled the country and is thought to be hiding in Mexico.

An astonishing article appeared in the March 2, 2016 edition of The New York Times.  In what they called a “startling accusation,” lawyers in litigation against drug manufacturers Johnson & Johnson and Bayer concerning the prescription anti-clotting drug Xarelto, claim that important data was omitted by researchers from Duke University in a letter to the editor published in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine.

Xarelto, which had sales of close to two billion dollars in the United States alone last year, is a blockbuster drug in the area of blood thinners.  It is marketed in the United States by Johnson & Johnson and overseas by Bayer. The two pharmaceutical manufacturers hired the Duke Clinical Research Institute to conduct a three-year clinical trial involving 14,000 patients in order to get Xarelto approved for sale by the regulatory agencies.

There is no question that business and commerce can and do wreak havoc with our environment and our planet.  Worse yet is that the rampant corporate polluters responsible remain mostly unpunished, and because of a web of lax laws and powerful lobbying efforts, coupled with targeted political contributions, these companies continue to recklessly foul our water, our air and the ground that our homes are built upon and that our children play upon.  Municipalities are often powerless to bring polluters to justice, usually due to the lack of financial resources with which to fight the bottomless coffers of major corporations.  Taxpayer dollars are limited, and only so much of a limited budget can be set aside for litigation. This is especially true in the face of state imposed tax caps, the costs of providing municipal services, of repairing and caring for ageing infrastructure coupled with shrinking state support to local and smaller municipalities.

Locks Law Attorneys Andrew DuPont and Jenna Kristal Egner Prove that U.S. Steel’s Benzene Caused Client’s Leukemia

On February 24, 2016 a Philadelphia jury found U.S. Steel liable for strict liability, recklessness and fraudulent concealment of the health hazards of benzene that caused a worker’s Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML) in a case (DeSorbo vs. U.S. Steel)  tried by Andrew DuPont and Jenna Kristal Egner.

According to DuPont, the case was made particularly challenging by Connecticut law which applies a 10-year statute of repose for products liability and requires proof of actual knowledge and intentional misrepresentation or fraudulent concealment to avoid application of the limitations period.

After law school, I clerked for a Judge in the Appellate Division in New Jersey, which was an amazing experience that allowed me to work on civil, criminal and administrative agency appeals. I then worked for a defense firm for about two years, but always questioned the work I was doing because I never felt like I was helping other people, something I have always wanted to do.

Now, for the past eight years, I have had the great privilege and honor of representing individual plaintiffs in personal injury and other lawsuits. Many of the cases I work on involve someone who ultimately dies, be it from mesothelioma due to exposure to asbestos in the workplace, neglect and abuse in a nursing home entrusted with one’s care, or chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), the signature latent disease of football. After someone’s death, my clients are typically the surviving spouse and children of the person who died, and my role as their attorney involves listening and amateur grief counseling as much as it involves zealously advocating on their behalf and helping them navigate their way through the often complicated legal system.

As the Oscar’s approach, Senior Partner Marc Weingarten discusses America’s long fascination with courtroom drama, trials and lawyers as viewed through the Hollywood lens.  Whether it’s Miracle on 34^th Street, My Cousin Vinny or A Time to Kill, they have all shown facets of the legal profession that are both entertaining and instructional.  Read the full article here.

Last week I had the honor of testifying before the Judicial Conference Advisory Committee on Evidence Rules – a committee created by the US Supreme Court’s Judicial Conference.  I was one of 10 lawyers allowed to present oral testimony to the committee regarding a proposed amendment or abrogation of FRE 803(16), the ancient documents rule.  This rule, a longstanding exception to the hearsay rule, is based on necessity and reliability.  It allows the use of written documents as evidence which would otherwise be hearsay.  The present rule requires that the documents be over 20 years old, and therefore they precede litigation and are deemed to be reliable.  These “ancient documents” can substitute for the testimony of witnesses whose memories may fade, health may change and or even possibly pass away.  For this and other reasons, I strongly urged the Committee to leave the rule in its present format.

On February 11, 2016, the Honorable Judge Andrew J. Guilford of the Federal District Court for the Central District of California signed an order appointing Locks Law Firm to the Plaintiffs’ Steering Committee in the Experian Data Breach Litigation.   The Plaintiffs’ Steering Committee will be in charge of prosecuting the more than 30 class actions filed against Experian because of its conduct with regard to the exposure and subsequent theft of the personal information of approximately 15 million T-Mobile customers.

On February 8, 2016, the Honorable Judge Jeffrey S. White of the Federal District Court for the Northern District of California signed an order appointing Locks Law Firm to the Plaintiffs’ Executive Committee in the YapStone Data Breach Litigation. YapStone is a web and mobile platform-based payment processor which processes payments for companies such as Vacation Rental By Owner (www.vrbo.com) and Home Away (www.homeaway.com).

The Plaintiffs’ Executive Committee will be in charge of prosecuting claims on behalf of all individuals and entities whose personal identifying information and bank account information were accessible through an unsecured URL owned by YapStone.