A very interesting development came to my attention today. You, I am sure, remember the welding fume litigation? That turned out to be not a happy investment for a lot of plaintiff attorneys.  In fact, only a couple of plaintiffs' verdicts were obtained, one of them, Elam, came out of Madison County in 2005 (about $1.5 million or so).

The next case tried  in Madison County was Steve Boren. That case resulted in a defense verdict. The trial judge, the Hon. Nick Byron, granted a new trial because defense counsel held up a picture of a billboard that said "WELDING ROD INJURIES? call 1-800-INJURED Milwaukee". It is hard to believe that a photograph of one billboard could have influenced the jury to dump plaintiff after a long and arduous trial,  but apparently Judge Byron thought so. And so did the Fifth District, which upheld the trial judge. And lo and behold,  yesterday the Supreme Court refused to entertain defendants' appeal.

So, the Boren case will be retried. It will be interesting to see how the case will shape up in front of a different judge (Judge Byron retired since then) and in this economic environment. As the physicians say :  "will follow with interest".