The U.S. Chamber Institute for Legal Reform’s latest ranking of states’ lawsuit climate has Louisiana once again near the bottom, ranking 49th for the third straight year — one slot behind Mississippi. West Virginia ranks last while Delaware, Nebraska and Wyoming occupy the top three spots.
The national survey polled business attorneys and executives at companies with annual revenues of at least $100 million on a number of criteria including the number of personal injury suits filed, the standards for certifying class-action lawsuits, the fairness of juries and competence of judges. The U.S. Chamber-sponsored survey should be taken with a grain of salt: the pro-business organization has long been an advocate of so-called tort reform, an issue a national trial lawyers organization says is blown far out of proportion.
In “Debunking the Myths,” the American Association for Justice, known until recently as the Association of Trial Lawyers of America, goes point-by-point after what it claims are exaggerations and mischaracterizations about lawsuit abuse propagated by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other pro-business, pro-tort-reform groups.
Among the AAJ’s targets are claims that lawsuits are skyrocketing, insurance rates and health care costs are rising as a result and that lawsuits hurt small business and drive big companies out of business.
David Calhoun and Elizabeth “EB” Brooks are the first two employees of Lafayette Central Park Inc., the nonprofit charged with turning Lafayette Consolidated Government’s 100-acre Johnston Street Horse Farm property into a passive public park. Calhoun was named executive director, and Brooks is director of planning and design.
At Thursday's State of the Economy luncheon, LEDA President and CEO Gregg Gothreaux said PXP has already quietly hired 180 people for its Broussard expansion.
There will soon be a whole lot of shakin’ going on at Benny’s Sportshack Supplement Depot, a new concept by Opelousas native Benny Nele. Located at 2002 Johnston St., the supplement shop, smoothie bar and café, featuring hot off the press paninis and wraps, plans to open in late May.
This year’s Cool Town issue is all about people who are not native to South Louisiana but made a conscious decision to be here, to be among us, to participate in our culture and contribute to it.
A shelved ordinance transferring $200,000 from a northside drainage project to a south Lafayette development may not break any laws, but it stinks to high heaven.
An effort to restore a shuttered dancehall and document other vacant or razed honky-tonks could serve as a model for saving an endangered species of entertainment.
Lafayette’s gene pool has been host to a long line of eccentric characters who have blurred the lines between crazy, genius, disturbed and curiously entertaining.
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