August 22, 2007

As Paul Davies notes at the WSJ Law Blog, Mississippi law firm Davis & Feder recently sent a letter to 50 of its 125 silicosis clients saying it was withdrawing from their cases because "unfortunately" reexamination of their files by trained pulmonologists revealed that they didn't have the incurable lung disease after all. The review of the cases' medical files was occasioned by Judge Janis Jack's now-famous order cracking down on mass production of silicosis diagnoses by pliant medical experts. One commenter is skeptical that an objective review would really yield as many as 75 legitimate cases.