Washington Injury Law Blog

As Kirkland Personal Injury Attorney serving the entire Seattle and Puget Sound area I often see confidentiality clauses  being required by defendant corporations and their insurance companies before they will agree to a settlement. When this happens my client’s left with the hard choice of going to trial, where you never know what really will happen, or take the sure thing even if you cannot warn others about the danger or conduct of the defendant.

I see this most often in the employment law area of my law practice, which includes failure to pay wages, wrongful termination, discrimination and sexual harassment.  This is also very common in cases involving defect products, think Vioxx or any of the other drugs that have killed people for years but confidential settlements kept it all secret.

Washington state Sen. Adam Kline has proposed Senate Bill 5886, which would ban confidentiality requirements as a condition to settle a lawsuit. Sen. Kline wants to make sure the courts aren’t protecting dangerous products that could hurt other people. I think that’s a great idea. Most of my clients want to warn others so they won’t get hurt like they did, but defendants fight tooth and nail against it. Why? Because they would have more exposure to lawsuits and would actually have to spend the money to fix their dangerous product. Can you smell the greed?

More power to Sen. Kline, his bill has my vote!

Max Meyers, Esq.

Source:   Seattle Times, 2.24.09 – Courts Should Protect public from bad products