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Shedding light on manufacturer wrongdoing.

Article Excerpt
Anyone who has ever handled a products liability lawsuit is familiar with the onerous protective orders that manufacturers insist on and that state and federal courts routinely grant. Nearly every state affords manufacturers the right to keep trade secrets from being disclosed in litigation.

It is appropriate that bona fide trade secrets not be disclosed to competitors. But manufacturers too often abuse the privilege of protective orders, insisting on draconian provisions, the purpose of which is not to protect trade secrets from competitors but to ensure that courts and lawyers handling other similar cases do not learn of a product's defects.

In some cases I have handled, manufacturers have resorted to extreme measures to intimidate me or to retaliate against me for sharing unprotected documents and fighting protective orders. At a manufacturer's request, a judge placed me under gag order, prohibiting me from discussing the manufacturer's products, including products other than the one involved in that particular case. I'm sure other products liability attorneys have faced similar tactics.

In one case, I was about to begin closing argument when the defendant manufacturer had me served with an order to appear in court in a state on the other side of the country. The order required me to...

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