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    Industrial (Litigation)

 

  • Experience with commercial litigation related to industrial accident issues such as accounting liability, alternate dispute resolution, antitrust (such as tortious interference with business relations or contract, trade libel, trade secrets, trademark infringement, tying, unfair competition), arbitration, assignments, breach of fiduciary duty (such as a partner using insider information for personal gain to the detriment of his company or a board of directors knowingly taking governance actions detrimental to the company for personal gain), class actions pursuant to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Rule 23 and 28 U.S.C.A. §1332(d) (where numerous plaintiffs, as represented symbolically by one or two named plaintiffs, are involved in bringing the same action and the amount in controversy exceeds $5,000,000), compensation (such as minimum wages and overtime pay under applicable state laws and the Fair Labor Standards Act – FLSA, construction defects (including defects in access, design, drawings, drainage, engineering, materials, methods, supervision, workmanship), contracts (including agency, brokerage, procurement, purchase and sale, sourcing), directors’ and officers’ liability (D&O), drug injuries, employment (such as executive employment agreements and compensation), environmental contamination (such as fuel spills such as gas or groundwater contamination caused by nearby industrial operations, or oil, or industrial waste, resulting in a condition called brownfields, or lack of vegetation that causes more intense flooding and runoff or radon, asbestos, mold, or other indoor contaminants that prohibit a building’s interior from being used), franchises, fraud (such as advertising, business-to-business, consumer, deceptive trade, investment, marketing, real estate), indemnification, insurance, joint ventures (such as corporate governance, operating agreements), labor (such as collective bargaining, right-to-work, union-organizing), leases (commercial, gas, ground, office, oil), mass tort (when a single incident or product injures many people who may be located in many jurisdictions), mediation, medical injuries, mergers and acquisitions, misrepresentation, multidistrict litigation (MDL) (for complex, large-scale cases involving similar issues but initiated in many different jurisdictions, such as premises liability or railroad accidents), oil and gas (exploration and production issues, mineral rights, riparian rights, title issues, unitizing or pooling of interests in oil and gas reservoirs), royalties, partnership issues (breach of fiduciary duty, business disparagement, conspiracy, dissolution, embezzlement, intellectual property, trade secrets), securities (mortgage-backed securities, stocks), wrongful death (when an entity’s or person’s negligence or intentional acts cause the death of another, such as an employer’s failure to maintain a safe working environment).

 

  • Experience with insurance claims, such as first-party insurance claims (for individual insurance directly from an insurer, such as business interruption or commercial property insurance, that may involve bad faith allegations, such as attempting to settle for an unrealistically-low amount, blaming the loss on events other than the actual cause, denying the claim altogether, failing to perform an adequate investigation, intentional misinterpretation of the contract language against the claimant, prolonging the claims process unnecessarily, threatening to drop the claimant’s coverage if they continue the claim, unnecessarily delaying payment of claims, wrongfully claiming your loss is not covered), general claims (between an individual or multiple claimants against one or more insurers, such as for denial or undervaluing a claim), health insurance claims (between an individual and a health insurer), natural disaster claims (generally involving catastrophic property loss by an individual or business due to extreme climate or weather conditions, such as earthquakes, floods, hail, hurricanes, lightning, tornadoes, wildfires, winds) and Workers’ compensation claims (for workplace injuries sustained on the job, such as a concussion or contusion, or the loss of a limb due to operating machinery, or due to mere presence on the job over an extended period of time, such as mesothelioma form unknown exposure to asbestos); familiarity with long-term injuries and next-generation injuries (such as birth defects), caused by daily exposure to hazardous fumes emanating from a nearby plant (such as a concrete plant, chemical plant) or refinery, or contamination of the groundwater, or through various activities (such as asbestos remediation or welding).

 

  • Litigation support for many types of personal injury litigations (generally in the context of industrial accidents).

 

  • Arc flash accidents (caused when an electrical current leaves its designated path and travels to another conductor or ground, generally caused by corrosion, faulty installation, human error).

 

  • Aviation accidents (generally in the context of commercial airlines, helicopters or private planes bringing equipment, supplies or workers from or to an offshore rig, refinery, warehouse, work site or the like).

 

  • Construction accidents (such as being caught in between a moving object such as a piece of steel being hoisted by a crane and some immovable object such as a column, or being struck by some sideways-propelled object or vertically-falling object, falling, electrocution, pedestrian accidents, scaffolding issues – for all types of scaffolding, including bamboo, birdcage, cantilever, single-pole and suspended, such as collapse, improper erection or dismantlement, inadequate footings, lack of guying wires, mid-rails, safety nets or other safety precautions such as guardrails and interior stairway structures with handrails – slipping, tripping) caused by inadequate safety provisions (such as using a secured harness and safety nets when working on high steel), negligent supervision or worker error or negligence (such as smoking while in a work zone).

 

  • Defective products accidents (product liability, such as caused by hand tools used for hammering, welding and other activities, or by industrial equipment including rotators, conveyors, feeder belts, or transportation equipment such as forklifts, cranes, hoists, and derricks, or by catastrophic industrial equipment malfunctions, as on oil rigs), including design defects, failure to provide adequate warnings, manufacturing defects and marketing defects; familiarity with regulations issues by the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

 

  • Drilling and environmental accidents resulting from various methods of drilling procedures, such as eco-pad drilling (in which four wells can be drilled from a single pad, which allows for two separate formations on two separate spacing units to be developed at the same time), horizontal drilling (allowing a well to be drilled from the surface to a subsurface location just above a target gas or oil reserve before deviating to intersect the reservoir at its entry point at a nearly horizontal incline), hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”, which forces fluids under high pressure into underground wells to create cracks at the weak points of deep underground rock formations, and has allegedly caused contamination and poisoning of underground land and water for many miles around some of the drilling sites).

 

  • Harbor accidents (such as failures by cranes or hoists, falling, loading, lifting, shipyard repair accidents, slipping, tripping, unloading), familiarity with Federal statutes, covering longshoremen, offshore workers and shipyard workers, the Defense Base Act (DBA), Longshore and Harbor Workers’ Compensation Act (LHWCA), Non-Appropriated Fund Instrumentalities Act (NAFIA), Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act (OCSLA), and for onshore workers, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA).

 

  • Heavy machinery accidents (such as may be caused by: cranes or derricks that are defective or poorly maintained; electrical machinery that is improperly insulated, has loose or exposed wires, or insufficient grounding; equipment with an unguarded cutter, blade, pulley belt, or emery wheel; Equipment with powered doors that lack warning alarms; machinery with rotating or moving parts such as a flywheel, including food slicers, meat grinders, wood chippers).

 

  • Marine accidents (such as capsizing, cargo slippage, explosions, falling, fires, lifting, sinking, slipping, towing failure, vessel collisions), familiarity Federal statutes – which may be applied in cases heard in both state and federal courts under the savings to suitors clause (28 U.S.C. § 1333) – covering marine workers, such as the Death on the High Seas Act (DOHSA), the Limitation of Liability Act (LLA), the Merchant Marine Act (Jones Act), which also covers claims of general unseaworthiness.

 

  • Mine accidents (generally caused by coal dust explosions, coal stockpile collapse, defective tools and equipment, lack of safety equipment, long-term exposure to coal dust, longwall shield collapse, methane explosions, mine shaft collapse, mine stope collapse, negligence when using explosives, roof collapse, runaway mine cars, seismic activity, sudden flooding, vibrations from mining operations).

 

  • Motor vehicle (cars or trucks) accidents (generally in the context either of workers driving from or to a work site or of equipment or supplies being delivered from or to refineries, warehouses, work sites or the like, which can be caused by driver or employer negligence, improperly-secured or unsecured cargo, jackknifing, underride accidents – unique to 18-wheeler crashes, in which a following car is unable to avoid rear-ending the 18-wheeler, and then becomes pinned under the trailer – vehicle issues, weather); familiarity with guidelines issued by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA).

 

  • Offshore accidents (such as commercial diving accidents, crane failures, decompression sickness, falling, jack-up barge capsizing or sinking, slipping).

 

  • Oil rig (both offshore and onshore) accidents and explosions – generally caused by surface, subsea or underground blowouts (caused by drilling, production, well completion, well testing, workover activities or defective blowout preventers), equipment failure (corroded parts, damaged cables, overheating or sparks), fires (generally caused by someone’s negligence, faulty equipment or lack of maintenance), pipeline ruptures; familiarity with safety regulations issued by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (BOEM) for offshore workers and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), for onshore workers.

 

  • Plant and refinery accidents and explosions – generally caused by human error including aging infrastructure, careless use of toxic chemicals, corrosion, failure to complete a process safety information (PSI) about potential hazards, electrocution (either from aging cables and infrastructure or inadequate design), inadequate hazard review or process hazards analysis, inadequate indications of process condition, inappropriate or poorly-designed equipment (such as alkylation units, boilers, coking units, desalter units, heaters, pumps, storage tanks, treatment tanks), ignored warning signs, lack of maintenance, oil spills, negligent supervision, pipeline ruptures, poor training of workers; familiarity with safety regulations issued by OSHA and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and with Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSB) investigations.

 

  • Premises liability accidents (in which property owners have a duty to keep their property safe, and free of obvious hazards for people who enter their property at the expressed or implied invitation of the owner, whether for the benefit of the owner or for the visitor, whether for business purposes or personal purposes, and that visitor is injured by a hazardous condition, such as dogs, inadequate lighting, inadequate security).

 

  • Railroad accidents (generally caused by conductor or engineer negligence, collision, derailment – caused by defective rails or ties, excessive speed, poorly-designed sharp curves – failure to apply the brakes, faulty signaling or train equipment, poor training), including railway crossing accidents (at both passive crossings – no barriers or warning lights – and protected crossings – with barriers and or warning lights; familiarity with guidelines issued by the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) – administering the Accidents Reports Act (ARA), the Locomotive Inspection Act (LIA), Railroad Safety Appliance Act (RSAA), the Signal Inspection Act (SIA) – and with the Federal Employers Liability Act (FELA), the Hazardous Materials Transportation Act (HMTA) and the Federal Railroad Safety Act (FRSA), covering railroad employees injured on the job (including injuries from spills of hazardous substances resulting from derailment or collision with another train or some obstructions on the tracks, such as a truck stuck at a crossing).

 

  • Trenching accidents (generally caused by entering into an unprotected trench without proper means of descent, improper or complete lack of sloping of both walls of the trench, lack of surface barriers along the sides of a trench, proper trench design using a professional civil engineer, providing trench exits at a maximum of 25’ apart).

 

  • Turnaround period accidents (the process of taking the entire plant or refinery offline for some time period while a revamp or renewal is performed, generally called a turnaround, but sometimes called an outage or shutdown, and may refer to various diverse activities, such as debottlenecking, inspection and testing, or revamps,generally resulting in an increase of accidents because of the tight timeframe and increased number of workers performing various activities with welding equipment, heavy-lifting equipment and the like in close proximity to other groups of workers performing various unrelated activities).

 

  • Warehouse accidents (such as crushing, falling, fires, forklift accidents, slipping).

 

    Last updated 200827_1644

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