Welcome to your Friday morning round-up of stories in today’s edition of The Legal Intelligencer. All of the links below will take you directly to today’s stories, or you can head straight over to The Legal’s homepage. (Some stories may require registration or a paid subscription.)
Today’s top story is drugmaker Pfizer seeking to consolidate almost 50 cases that have been removed to the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania into one multidistrict litigation. As reporter Amaris Elliott-Engel writes, Pfizer counsel filed a motion with the U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation to consolidate 59 cases filed in Pennsylvania, New York, Illinois, Mississippi, Missouri and Ohio for pretrial proceedings. The plaintiffs allege that the drug Zoloft caused birth defects in children when taken during pregnancy, according to court papers.
On the bottom of Page 1 today, reporter Zack Needles writes that a Philadelphia Common Pleas Court judge has granted summary judgment to a Philadelphia lawyer who claimed a fellow plaintiffs attorney owed him more than $550,000 in referral fees for a personal injury case that settled for $4.5 million.
Today’s Page 3 story, written by Amaris Elliott-Engel, involves Judge David C. Shuter ruling that landlords must secure licenses from a city agency before they can collect back rent. Shuter wrote in a Dec. 14 Philadelphia Common Pleas Court opinion in Goldstein v. Weiner that no landlord may collect rent unless a valid license has been issues by the Department of Licenses and Inspections.
As always, our People in the News section is on Page 2, and the top stories from our sister publications across the country make up the Page 4 National News section.
In today’s Workers’ Comp Update, contributor Christian Petrucci writes that the offset of Social Security benefits has been ruled constitutional by the Commonwealth Court in last month’s case of White v. Workers’ Compensation Appeals Board (City of Pittsburgh).
In an Asset Management column on Page 7, contributor Mark L. Silow writes about the effects of the new Philadelphia Business Privilege Tax legislation, which directs the Philadelphia Department of Revenue to implement a single sales factor method for the apportionment of net income, among other things.
If you have questions or comments about any of today's stories, or our coverage as a whole, we invite you to e-mail any of the reporters directly. We hope you'll enjoy today's Legal.
The plaintiffs allege that the drug Zoloft caused birth defects in children when taken during pregnancy, according to court papers.
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Posted by: david098 | Saturday, October 13, 2012 at 09:22 PM