California News

When Harry "Mitch" Mitchell bought Mitchell's Pit Stop gas station in Orange in 1999, he purchased gasoline pumps for $6,500 each to comply with federal environmental regulations. Mitchell said he had never received any customer complaints about the pumps. If someone needs help, Mitchell or his employees run out to pump gas at no extra price. So he was surprised when a process server showed up at his home on an August Saturday night and served him with a lawsuit alleging his business violated state and federal laws that protect the rights of the disabled.

Gov. Jerry Brown has begun aggressively challenging federal court oversight of California’s prison system by highlighting what he says is a costly conflict of interest: The private law firms representing inmates and the judges’ own hand-picked authorities benefit financially by keeping the cases alive.

2013 could have been the year that our nation turned over a new leaf and stopped the mindless class action lawsuits that have plagued businesses in the United States for years. Unfortunately, it is already too late.

The maker of Zoloft is being sued in an unusual case alleging the popular antidepressant has no more benefit than a dummy pill and that patients who took it should be reimbursed for their costs.

A California jury heard opening statements Friday in a lawsuit that accuses Johnson & Johnson of knowingly marketing a faulty hip implant that lawyers say left thousands of people with crippling problems or in need of replacement surgeries.

A state law tort claim of failure to warn about risky medical devices is not pre-empted by the federal medical device law — so long as the state law duty of care runs "parallel" to a duty established by the federal law.