The United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit recently revived a lawsuit brought on by CSX Transportation against the Pittsburgh law firm of Robert Peirce Associates, accusing the firm of filing meritless asbestos lawsuits against the railroad in violation of RICO. The district judge had dismissed the claims in March 2008 on statute of limitations grounds, though CSX asserted it could not have earlier discovered that workers had actually been recruited to fake diagnoses of their exposure to asbestos.
I hope the allegations aren’t true. But if they are, Robert Pierce Associates should suffer the same consequences as any other defendant. A lawyer is supposed to have a reasonable basis for filing a lawsuit. No excuse exists for filing baseless litigation, and any lawyer who does so gives every lawyer a bad name.
We’ll just have to see how this plays out.
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