Plaintiffs

A federal judge sitting in New York has found there is no evidence lawyers at the Center City firm of Kohn, Swift & Graf P.C. were aware of potentially fraudulent actions in a huge pollution lawsuit it financed that alleges that Chevron Corp. had despoiled vast stretches of the Amazon rain forest. However, the ruling by U.S. Magistrate Judge James C. Francis requires the Kohn firm and other parties to turn over internal documents that Chevron contends may bolster its claim that opposing lawyers in Ecuador corruptly influenced the judiciary there.

Waste Management Inc. has moved to dismiss a $600 million federal lawsuit brought by four environmental groups alleging improper cleanup and monitoring of groundwater contamination at the GROWS landfill. "We considered the plaintiffs' suit technically and legally flawed," Waste Management's attorney, Andrew Levine, said Wednesday. Levine said the suit, filed June 17, would delay and complicate plans to implement state- and federally approved protection measures at the landfill.

A judge has denied a motion to add parties to a civil-rights lawsuit filed by Erial residents against the Winslow Township Police Department and First Union Bank. The residents, who filed the suit in May in federal court, say they were the victims of racial profiling and are seeking $1 million in damages. The motion was denied in late August pending further evidence, said the attorney for the four plaintiffs, Michael Saltzman, who wanted to add other bank employees as defendants.

O.J. Simpson's lawyer accused police of lying and tampering with evidence yesterday after a gut-wrenching finale from attorneys for the victims' relatives that brought many in the courtroom to tears. "I didn't hear one word about police malfeasance in this case," said attorney Robert Baker, who had not been permitted to raise theories of a police conspiracy during his defense of Simpson. "But witness after witness came here. They contradict each other, and they lie. They lie from the witness stand.

Negligent, but not outrageous. Those words cost GlaxoSmithKline P.L.C. a $2.5 million judgment - but ruled out additional, punitive damages, in a Philadelphia courtroom last week. The case was the first of about 600 lawsuits to go to trial on claims that the company's Paxil antidepressant caused birth defects in children whose mothers took the drug during pregnancy. Legal experts saw the 10-2 jury decision as a big win for plaintiffs in the remaining cases, even though the jurors awarded only compensatory damages to Michelle David of Bensalem.

Using an 1871 law passed in response to Ku Klux Klan attacks, the American Civil Liberties Union argued in federal court here yesterday that officials of a York County town did not do enough to prevent a racial dispute from causing havoc in the streets there three years ago. Officials of the borough of Hanover allegedly knew of rumors about an attack being planned on an interracial group of youths, yet did not take sufficient action to stop the...

Because of a missed deadline, the Supreme Court refused yesterday to permit a lawsuit by 42 people who claimed to have suffered adverse health effects from the Three Mile Island nuclear accident 18 years ago. Without comment, the court let stand a ruling that the lawsuits were filed too late to meet Pennsylvania's two-year statute of limitations. Laura Karinch, a spokeswoman for GPU Nuclear Inc., the plant owner, said yesterday that the company applauded the court decision.

Attorneys leading the legal battle over exposure to toxic emissions from the Lipari Landfill overcame a major hurdle last week when a judge granted their motion to certify two groups of plaintiffs in the case, allowing it to proceed as a class-action suit. Judge John S. Holston Jr. of Gloucester County Superior Court ruled Thursday that the two groups, totaling more than 1,600 people, could be at risk of developing health problems associated with chemical exposure from the Mantua Township landfill, which once topped the federal Superfund list.

When a federal judge Friday threw out nearly 2,000 lawsuits claiming health problems caused by the 1979 Three Mile Island accident, the plaintiffs' attorneys weren't surprised. In fact, said attorney Arnold Levin, "We were waiting for this. " And he said that as far as he and the rest of the legal team were concerned, it's not over. U.S. District Chief Judge Sylvia H. Rambo decided there was insufficient evidence to link the plaintiffs' various cases of cancer and birth defects to the leak of radiation that occurred at the nuclear-power plant in Middletown.

Six current and former Pitman residents have filed a class-action suit over pollutants at the Lipari Landfill, seeking damages for what they say are injuries, medical costs and lowered property values. The suit identifies three classes of plaintiffs - residential-property damage, medical monitoring and personal-injury liability - and says that each was affected by toxic chemicals dumped from 1957 to 1971, when Nick Lipari owned and operated the landfill. The suit seeks unspecified compensatory damages for health problems it says were inflicted by toxic chemicals from the landfill.