Articles Posted in Web Resources for Litigators

At 819 pages, the Manual for Complex Litigation, Fourth is not for vacation reading at the beach.  It is for lawyers who have complex litigation.  It is a gold mine of information to streamline the litigation of cases with multiple parties, complex issues, and the like.

The MCL is a great book and it is now available for free. The new edition “updates the treatment of electronic discovery and other aspects of pretrial management and describes major changes affecting case management in the substantive and procedural law in mass torts, class actions, intellectual property, employment discrimination, and other types of litigation.” It has dozens of forms, a good number of which can be used in “normal” cases.

Find the book here.

Morgan Adams recently pointed out that this site has the codes for reading crash reports from most states. Great tip, Morgan.

The U.S. Department of Transportation maintains a website with journal articles, research papers, and other published research on transportation. There are articles covering a massive number of topics. It’s a good starting point if you’re looking for information about a roadway problem, the adequacy of signs and pavement markings, or temporary work zone issue.

Ok, you may think this is boring but …

Trying to get your hands on local ordinances in other cities and counties is a challenge. Here is a site that offers the codes in some Tennessee cities for free. The cities included are Brentwood, Clarksville, Gallatin, Germantown, Kingsport, Knoxville, and Memphis. Also included are the ordinances for Shelby County.

The site is offered by the publisher of the codes in those locales. The publisher has codes for over 1400 cites and towns. Visit the publisher’s home page here.

The Tennessee Department of Transportation has a terrific web tool that lets you view the amount of traffic on state roads. You can click on any county in the state, then zoom around the map to find the highway you are looking for. This is a great tool for checking the traffic volume on a road based on Average Daily Traffic (“ADT”). This information is invaluable in dangerous roadway cases.

How many times have you gotten ready to file suit against an out-of-state corporation and searched the Internet for its registered agent? Wouldn’t it be nice to have a single website with links to corporate filing information from all 50 states? Voila. The site correctly points out that the extent of information available in each state varies widely. Georgia even gives you a free search by officer’s name to find every company that person serves as officer on. At a minimum, you can start your search for registered agents and official corporate names.

Filing negligence and other personal injury and wrongful death lawsuits is not only about proving fault, causation and damages but also about being able to collect a judgment. You have done your client no good whatsoever if you obtain a judgment that you cannot collect. One potential source of satisfying a judgment is real prperty.

In Davidson County, Tennessee you can get learn alot about what property your opponent owns from Tax Assessor’s website. You can see a map of the property and the surrounding property by visiting this site.

Finally, you can get some information on properties across the state from this site (although it is not as user friendly).

49 C.F.R. 387 requires commercial motor carriers to maintain minimum insurance policy limits on their commercial vehicles. The minimum amount varies depending on the vehicle’s use. In any event, the commercial motor carrier is required to report their insurance policy limits to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration. The FMCSA, in turn, publishes the information for free on a public website.