ALFA International Publications

The term “going green” is everywhere these days. A large portion of going green will involve developing and maintaining a renewable energy model. Such models can significantly slow the growth of global warming. The World Health Organization (WHO) has theorized that failure to properly negate climate change and its effects would lead to as many as 250,000 deaths per year from malnutrition, malaria,…

For more than one hundred years, highway vehicles have been powered by internal combustion engines that burn gasoline or diesel fuel. In the last 20 years, however, vehicles powered by alternative fuels have proliferated, viewed as a means of reducing the world’s dependence on fossil fuels, lowering fuel costs, and lessening environmental pollution. The most widely used alternative vehicle fuel is…

In today’s legal environment, trials are no longer a certainty; however, it is clear, beyond peradventure that every case will be referred to mediation. Since Chief Justice Burger’s original admonition to the American Bar Association that the legal profession needed to do something about the plethora of cases being litigated and that the Court would do something about it if their lawyers did not, …

Are extreme jury awards – known as “nuclear verdicts” – the new normal? From 2015 to 2019, the average verdict in the National Law Journal’s Top 100 Verdicts more than tripled from $64 million to $214 million. (National Law Journal’s 2015 and 2019 editions of the Top 100 Verdicts studies). These socially inflated verdicts are creating challenges for the insurance industry, making it difficult to u…

Overview According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), excessive alcohol use was the cause of  more than 140,000 deaths each year between 2015-2019, or more than 380 deaths per day.[i]  This cost United States citizens more than $259 billion in 2010.[ii]  One of the CDC recommendations for addressing these issues is stringent enforcement of regulations govern…

Background Crimes against persons committed on the premises of retail and hospitality businesses are a major source of litigation in many jurisdictions around the country.  Hotels and stores, shopping malls, apartment complexes, restaurants, bars, movie theaters, nightclubs, parking facilities, dormitories and even churches are commonly named as defendants in lawsuits by Plaintiffs followi…

Watch Out for The Fall Guy:  Preparing Your A-Team  to litigate everything from slip-and-falls to Murder (she wrote)  -- What are Juries Focused on Post-Covid? The pandemic effectively ended most civil jury trials in early 2020.  Jury trials slowly began to resume under strict Covid screening and jury-protection measures. As jury trials resumed, there was speculation as to t…

What is “implicit” or “unconscious” bias? Implicit bias is a preference, whether positive or negative, for a group based upon a stereotype or attitude we hold that operates outside of human awareness. It can be understood as a lens through which someone view the world that automatically filters how a person takes in and responds to information.[i] In society, we all have attitudes toward people…

Introduction In the last decade, violence in the workplace has become tragically common.  When acts of violence occur within the workplace, it is common for employees to levy accusations against their employer for failing to prevent the incident.  Preventing violence in the workplace is one of the most important issues employers face, but addressing this issue is not simple.  Emp…

Running with the Bulls Running with the Bulls: How to Win Top-Dollar Settlements is the title of the 2018 book by nationally recognized plaintiff's attorney, Nicholas Rowley.  Attorney Rowley's websites, nicholasrowley.com and tl4j.com (Trial Lawyers for Justice), state that Attorney Rowley has achieved over $2 billion in verdicts and settlements for his clients, including: $131 millio…