About Beth Taylor
Beth Taylor was a senior editor for Super Lawyers for more than 20 years, and has won dozens of awards for headline-writing and editing throughout her career. Previously, she was an editor and covered courts for The Orlando Sentinel. She also worked for go2net and KIRO-TV in Seattle, where she wrote for and edited their websites. In addition, Beth edited The Kitsap Business Journal and Media Inc. Beth has written travel books, including Around Seattle With Kids for Fodor’s and Seattle Day By Day for Frommer’s, and online travel guides for Google. Her travel writing has appeared in publications including the Chicago Tribune and the San Francisco Chronicle. Beth has a B.A. in communications/journalism and a master’s degree in political science.
Articles written by Beth Taylor
Custody Clarification
Cleveland family law attorney Andrew Zashin gets a 6th Circuit ruling that brings consistency to cases involving vulnerable childrenAlthough the 6th Circuit Court denied family law attorney Andrew Zashin’s appeal in a Hague Convention custody case, the court’s October ruling clarified case law for future Hague matters, and Taglieri v. Monasky may be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. Just getting an en banc hearing by a full circuit court was an accomplishment. “This is only the second en banc Hague Case ever heard before a circuit court of appeals,” says Zashin, co-managing partner at Zashin & Rich. “So …
John Kenney on Writing Songs
The Oklahoma City litigator has a way with wordsJohn Kenney knows how to speak to juries—and country music fans, too. The intellectual property attorney, who practices law at McAfee & Taft, talks about how he got started writing songs, and discusses the similarities between working a story into a song and telling the storyline of a case in a compelling way. https://youtu.be/vRTwBk_bwac Kenney's story is featured in the 2018 edition of Oklahoma Super Lawyers magazine. "I take the idea—it may be funny, it may be serious, it …
Mark Lanier’s Fascination With Trains
The Houston attorney has a narrow-gauge railroad surrounding his propertyLitigator Mark Lanier has many talents, including a strong work ethic, natural connection with juries, tech savvy, deep faith and a photographic memory. Lanier, who practices plaintiff’s law—class action/mass torts and personal injury—also happens to be a big-time train buff. He talks about the half-scale, narrow-gauge train that runs around his 40-acre property, in homage to his dad, who worked for the Texas & Pacific Railroad. https://youtu.be/KBFt8YibrcI Lanier's story was …
VW Settlement Money Earmarked to Battle Climate Change
The $1.4 billion comes from a $14.7 billion payout negotiated in 2016 by San Francisco’s Elizabeth CabraserA coalition of 17 states recently pledged to spend $1.4 billion toward fighting climate change. The money comes from a $14.7 billion settlement with Volkswagen, negotiated in 2016 by San Francisco plaintiff’s class action attorney Elizabeth Cabraser. The car manufacturer was accused by the Environmental Protection Agency of programming about 480,000 diesel-powered cars so that they seemed to perform better on emissions tests than they actually did. Cabraser handled the delicate negotiations …
Houston’s Mark Lanier Wins $4.7 Billion Verdict in Talcum Case
The largest jury award in the U.S. this year went against Johnson & JohnsonIn the largest jury award in the U.S. this year, a St. Louis jury on July 12 awarded $4.14 billion in punitive damages, plus $550 million in compensatory damages, to nearly two dozen women and their families who claimed that Johnson & Johnson’s talcum powder caused ovarian cancer. Houston personal injury attorney Mark Lanier, with The Lanier Law Firm, was the lead attorney for the plaintiffs. He argued during the six-week trial that Johnson & Johnson talcum powder contains asbestos, …
Dale Minami’s Most Significant Case
He defended a Japanese-American who refused to report for internmentDale Minami with Fred Korematsu Plaintiff’s personal injury attorney Dale Minami, with Minami Tamaki in San Francisco, talks about his landmark case that overturned a conviction for Japanese-American citizen Fred Korematsu, who defied Executive Order 9066 by refusing to report for internment; his conviction was upheld in 1944 by the U.S. Supreme Court. In 1983, Minami got that conviction vacated by U.S. District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel. An excerpt from Pate’s opinion: “As a legal …
Custody Battle
Family law attorney Andrew Zashin asks the 6th Circuit to bring consistency to cases involving vulnerable childrenOn June 13, Cleveland family law attorney Andrew Zashin drove to Cincinnati for a rare event: an en banc hearing by the 6th Circuit Court in a Hague Convention case. It was the second-ever Hague Convention-related hearing by a full circuit court in the U.S., and the first-ever en banc circuit court hearing on the issue of habitual residence—or what country a child at the center of a custody battle belongs in. “This is an international treaty that has not been well vetted by our courts. The …
Ohio Fertility Clinic Hit With Lawsuits Over Destroyed Embryos
Storage tank alarm did not warn of rising temperatureOn March 3-4, a rise in temperature in a fertility clinic storage tank run by Cleveland’s University Hospitals destroyed more than 4,000 frozen eggs and embryos. Nearly 1,000 people were affected, and many of them are filing individual and class actions against the hospital. “The victims of this tragedy are devastated,” says Tom Merriman, a personal injury attorney with Landskroner Grieco Merriman in Cleveland. “The [in vitro fertilization] process is extremely difficult for women and …
Nevertheless, She Persisted
Fern Steiner brings her labor law tenacity to two local boardsAfter digesting the works of legal masterminds F. Lee Bailey and Louis Nizer, Fern Steiner decided to follow in their footsteps. She was 8. That resolve wavered only once in her life—when she went to work as a hospital lab technician after college. But the job wound up not only reaffirming her original ambition but also pointing her toward a specific practice area. “It was where I had my first labor dispute,” she explains. “They were assigning the evening and night shifts as a …
Class Action Hastens MLB’s Extension of Safety Netting
Texas attorney Bob Hilliard calls suit ‘the crack in the dam’When the last Major League Baseball teams recently announced that they, too, would extend the safety netting behind the dugouts at their ballparks, no one was happier than Robert Hilliard. The Corpus Christi attorney, who practices class action and consumer law at Hilliard Martinez Gonzales, was representing season-ticket holders in a lawsuit accusing MLB of failing to protect fans. The plaintiffs had seats along the first and third base lines, past the netting. In 2015, MLB recommended that …
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