by brettb on February 3, 2010
According to media reports, a Pennsylvania Superior Court has ruled in favor of an injured working in finding that a federal workplace safety statue did not preempt the states product liability law.
The case involved a warning device on an industrial vehicle. A worker was injured allegedly due to a defective forklift. The Court’s en banc decision reversed a trial court’s ruling on summary judgment in favor of a defendant. The decision allows the injured worker to go forward with his product liability suit against the company that manufactured the forklift.
Let’s hope San Francisco Superior Courts share the same view regarding federal preemption.
by brettb on January 26, 2010
I’m an injury attorney in San Francisco, which means my job is to represent injury victims in personal injury, wrongful death, and workplace injury matters. And in order to do my job, I spend a lot of time researching legal issues and topics. Until recently, the guys at Lexis and Westlaw dominated the legal research market. Others have tried to make inroads but their efforts were mostly to no avail and the two superstars or giants of the legal research industry remained unchallenged. So, their platforms went relatively unchanged and their products though consistent were relatively uninteresting for years.
That was then. This is now. And now, there are new products, new technologies, and an ever changing industry that demands quicker, more accurate, and cheaper information – even where legal research is concerned. All of this, no doubt, is thanks to Google – the noun, the verb, and the way of retrieving information that we all have come to expect. You open a product or software, you get a little white box, you type in exactly what you want, and the software brings it to you or brings you a lot of things that will lead you to exactly what you want – all on the first page right.
Well, that is precisely what Lexis and Westlaw have announced they are attempting to do in recent revamps to their search technology. According to the ABA Journal, West’s new platform (known as WestlawNext) will debut February 1 and it is very similar to what I just described. And not to be left out, Lexis is also going the way of “the Google” with their own Google-ized revamp coming out later in the year. There is even a new competitor in town attempting to take advantage of the new platform expectations by consumers – Bloomberg Law. The financial information powerhouse Bloomberg will introduce its own legal research product later in the year as well. And all of these developments are good news for consumers of legal research, like San Francisco injury attorneys like myself, other attorneys and legal professionals of all sorts, and last but not least consumers also known as our clients. 
Because let’s face it, both Lexis and Westlaw offer products that are overly expensive and not anywhere near as accurate or as efficient as they should be for the price. They have gotten away with this because for years no one had a choice – there was simply no other way to obtain legal research but through their portals. Now, the first stop of nearly every attorney I know when we don’t have an answer to a question is Google (with Microsoft’s Bing gaining). The next stop is Google Scholar. And at that point, unless you are a law student or a judge’s clerk, you are usually done. There are, however, products or services that Lexis and Westlaw offer that cannot be found anywhere else. But just was with the search technology that too is changing rapidly. The 
more courts that go online and the more rulings, decisions, legal forms, and information that becomes available to anyone and everyone the less of a hold Westlaw and Lexis will have.
That is, unless they adapt and change – can’t wait to see those new products guys.
