Seattle Post-Intelligencer, "Trial lawyers suffer a lack of respect -- until they're needed"

Bush campaign spinners have been bashing trial lawyers as a bunch of "ambulance chasers" since John Kerry picked former trial lawyer John Edwards as his vice-presidential nominee. And that doesn't surprise attorneys like Seattle's Jan Eric Peterson. But it sure steams one of his young clients who wonders, without trial lawyers, how many other kids like himself would have dive-boarded into too-shallow pools and come up paralyzed for life? Or how many babies would have died from overly aggressive auto air bags? Or awakened as amputees from defective lap seat belts?

Shawn Meneely, who turns 29 this week, didn't think much about trial lawyers one way or the other at age 16. Then the Kennewick High School basketball standout sprang from a diving board into a pool that the National Pool and Spa Institute's regulations insisted was perfectly deep enough for a summertime plunge. From the moment his head hit bottom, Meneely never moved his hands or legs again.

Now a Seattle-based UBS PaineWebber financial planner, Meneely graduated from college and launched his career from a wheelchair because of gritty determination and the $11 million jury verdict it took attorneys eight years to achieve. A quadriplegic, Meneely helps others in similar straits find a measure of financial security. By tirelessly digging through mountains of documents, attorney Peterson, his partner Fred Zeder and a team of trial assistants uncovered the fact that, for decades, the pool industry had failed to disclose potentially lethal specifications. "They knew their standards were dangerous and still wouldn't correct them," Meneely told me last week. "Without my lawyers, they (pool makers) would just have kept on going (allowing the installation of diving boards in pools of dangerously shallow depths). "Without my attorneys' work, who would have known?"

Omaha World-Herald, "Workers' lawsuits say health is damaged by flavoring for popcorn"

          At least 66 workers at the Gilster-Mary Lee Corp. and ConAgra plants in Missouri, Ohio, Illinois and Iowa have sued the companies that make artificial butter flavoring, claiming it damaged their lungs.
            Of the six cases that have gone to trial so far, one worker has received a $ 20 million verdict and four others have received undisclosed, out-of-court settlements, said Ken McClain, the lawyer handling the suits. One suit is ongoing.
          International Flavors and Fragrances, the company that lost the one verdict, denies that its product is unsafe and said it would appeal.