When Bank of America acquired Countrywide, it did not become responsible for its past misdeeds and any litigation liability.
In the weeks after the terrorist attacks, Congress enacted legislation that created the Victim Compensation Fund and limited the airlines' litigation liability for all deaths, injuries and property damage to their existing insurance coverage -- roughly $1.5 billion for the plane that hit the Pentagon and about $3 billion for the two planes that hit the World Trade Center, he said.
In their disputes with the states, the banks are trying to protect themselves from such litigation liability.
Further adding to Kaiser's travails are a $540 million asbestos litigation liability, a lawsuit from the National Labor Relations Board and the United Steelworkers of America over a labor lockout, and fallout from a 1999 explosion at one of its smelters.
Armstrong World Industries, a subsidiary of Armstrong Holdings, was one of the first of two dozen companies that decided that bankruptcy court was the place to resolve its unquantifiable and unending asbestos litigation liability.
As Home Depot's Bernard Marcus and others have pointed out, for all of David Souter's predictable role on the court's liberal side in most high-profile cases, he in fact steered to middle-of-the-road, hard-to-characterize views on many issues of litigation, liability and procedure, either as a swing vote or as the author of opinions.
In a Wall Street Journal opinion piece in 2007, Frank said that the Department of Treasury and SEC should urge the Supreme Court to reject expanded securities litigation liability in Stoneridge v. Scientific-Atlanta.
Ms. Barham also works in the areas of personal injury litigation, general liability defense, and products liability.
Now it seems the high court is more easily persuaded to expand liability, as it has done with decisions affecting asbestos litigation, medical liability, workers' compensation and 'bad faith' claims against insurers.
As a member of the firm's global commercial disputes group, Young focuses his practice on litigating and providing counsel for complex business disputes, including complex commercial litigation, products liability (especially aviation litigation), financial services litigation, energy and natural resources, advertising/trademark litigation, and international arbitration.
