Legal News

On Point Graphics

By Matthew Heller, Editor

Victoria's Secret appears to have developed a double-D sized products liability problem. With the addition of a case filed March 6 in Louisiana, at least 11 women have sued the company over the past 15 months over injuries that allegedly resulted from defectively manufactured undergarments (see link below).

Five of the cases are class-action variations on the theme that some "chemical, toxin, or allergen" in Victoria's Secret products is causing women to break out in a rash. A plaintiff in Cleveland, Ohio, federal court dismissed her case, but her attorney is representing another plaintiff in an identical Cleveland state court case.

A group of plaintiffs' lawyers has petitioned to consolidate four suits filed in federal court, saying they are prepared to file more than 600 other cases if the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation approves the consolidation.

The most bizarre case -- that of Macrida Patterson, who says a decorative metallic piece flew off her Sexy Little Thing thong and struck her in the eye while she was changing for work -- is set for trial June 5 in Los Angeles.

UNSAFE UNDIES?

Has the legal tide turned on same-sex marriage? After the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court upheld same-sex marriage in November 2003, gay rights activists suffered a losing streak in courts from Washington state to Maryland. But in 2008, California and Connecticut went the other way (see link below). And they have now been joined by Iowa, where the state Supreme Court found no "constitutionally adequate justification for excluding [same-sex couples] from the institution of civil marriage."

The issue is back on the docket in California, with a state Supreme Court ruling pending on whether Proposition 8 validly abolished the right to same-sex marriage established in In Re Marriage Cases.

SAME-SEX MILESTONES

Full post as published by On Point News on January 09, 2009 (boomark / email).