While thousands of employees have complained that employers retaliated in some form after they had filed discrimination complaints, these kinds of lawsuits raise the stakes much higher.
Mr. Bush had said the Senate bill and the original Norwood bill would have permitted explosive growth in lawsuits, raising the cost of insurance and, thus, the number of Americans without coverage.
These lawsuits raise controversial questions: In the eyes of the law, should the elderly be treated like adolescents, who are not entirely responsible for their poor decisions, but are also barred from making certain choices on their own?
Most Senate Republicans dislike the House bill, which is opposed by the insurance industry, saying it would lead to runaway lawsuits, raise premiums and put employers out of business.
In May, Thiel revealed that he was secretly funding Bollea's case and said that he has financed other lawsuits, raising fears about the influence of wealthy third-party interests in cases regarding the press.
And in both cases, the company followed its practice of settling personal-injury and wrongful-death lawsuits raising safety concerns by requiring that the cases be sealed and that the plaintiffs return all incriminating company documents to Ford.
The long debate over the National Football League's handling of concussions is reaching the courts in a flurry of lawsuits, raising the possibility that dozens of former players will go before juries to outline the league's medical practices and describe long-term cognitive problems they say were caused by the sport.
The lawsuits raise fundamental questions about whether the market for new issues was manipulated at the expense of the little investor, who was shut out of the offerings and had no way of knowing whether some of the subsequent "buy" orders might have been prearranged at escalating prices, creating artificial demand for stocks that would later erode.
Private lawsuits raise lots of tax issues for plaintiffs, defendants and their lawyers.
Some of the lawsuits raise questions over such paperwork problems.
