Yet a tally released today by SafetyForum.com, a firm that coordinates lawsuits against auto and tire makers, found that lawyers had already sued Firestone, and sometimes Ford as well, in cases involving 22 deaths and 69 serious injuries by the end of 1998.
If approved, which is likely, the F.T.C. investigation will require patent-assertion companies to answer questions about how they conduct their operations, including whether they coordinate their lawsuits with other patent holders and if they funnel proceeds from lawsuits and patent licenses back to the original patent owner.
Richard Scruggs, a lawyer who sued the tobacco industry for smoking-related diseases, is coordinating the lawsuits for the patients.
They are divorced, but their lawyers are coordinating the lawsuits.
The administration also argues that if the lawsuits, coordinated by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a privacy group known as EEF, are allowed to proceed, they could reveal national security secrets, and so the Justice Department has sought to block them by using the "state secrets privilege".
Lawyers in eight states are preparing to file coordinated class-action lawsuits on Wednesday maintaining that under federal law, any settlement to the states above the amount they paid through Medicaid for treatment of smoking-related diseases should go to Medicaid recipients who suffered from those illnesses.
News of a lawsuit coordinated by another former employee also spread along the e-mail list.
Before a lawsuit coordinated by FIRE forced changes, Texas Tech limited the free speech activities of its 28,000 to one 280-foot "free speech gazebo".
They are in the airy offices of Dejusticia, a research and advocacy organization that coordinated the group's lawsuit in its desire to do something practical to hold the government to its international commitments to reduce deforestation and greenhouse gas emissions.
The lawsuit is being coordinated by the National Redistricting Foundation, a nonprofit organization affiliated with the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, which Holder chairs, and the plaintiffs are represented by the law firm Covington & Burling, where he is a partner.
