CSU Law Library Blog

ProQuest has a website titled Black Freedom Struggle in the United States. The site contains newspaper articles, pamphlets, diaries, correspondence, FBI records and more from six specific time periods in U.S. history:

• Resistance to Slavery and the Abolitionist Movement (1790-1860)
• The Civil War and the Reconstruction Era (1861-1877)
• Jim Crow Era from 1878 to the Great Depression (1878-1932)
• The New Deal and World War II (1933-1945)
• The Civil Rights and Black Power Movements (1946-1975)
• The Contemporary Era (1976-2000s)

One problem that law librarians and legal researchers find when researching current events is the lack of specific case information in news articles reporting on the cases.  Unfortunately, this has proven to be the case with recent news articles about lawsuits against Norfolk Southern for their hand in the East Palestine train disaster.  After reading through four news articles on this topic, I thought it of use to write a post that contains the basic information needed for legal researchers and the general public who may want to follow the course of these cases.

As of the writing of this post there have been six class action cases related to the train disaster filed in the Northern District of Ohio.  The search was done in Westlaw dockets limited to Ohio Federal District Courts in which Norfolk Southern was a party in a class action filed in 2023.

The list:

1. Canterbury et al. v. Norfolk Southern Corporation et al. 4:23-CV-00298
2. Eisley et al. v. Norfolk Southern Railway Company 4:23-CV-00250
3. Erdos et al. v. Norfolk Southern Corp. et al. 4:23-CV-00268
4. Feezle et al. v. Norfolk Southern Railway Co. et al. 4:23-CV-00242
5. Hall et al. v. Norfolk Southern Railway Co. et al. 4:23-CV-00257
6. Kinder et al. v. Norfolk Southern Corporation et al. 4:23-CV-00292

The private nonpartisan Joyce Foundation “invests in public policies and strategies to advance racial equity and economic mobility for the next generation in the Great Lakes region.”  One of the Foundation’s six Grants program areas is the Gun Violence Prevention & Justice Reform Program, which seeks to build safe and just communities, focusing on “reducing gun violence in the great Lakes region; reforming the justice system in the areas of policing, and alternatives to arrest and incarceration; and advancing violence intervention policy and practice as a gun violence prevention strategy, and an alternative to arrest and incarceration.”  The Foundation’s state and local work is concentrated in Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota, and Wisconsin, but it also funds national proposals likely to have an impact on the Great Lakes region.  The next grant proposal deadline is April 5, for consideration at the Board of Directors meeting in July 2023.  See the Foundation’s How to Apply page for more information on the application process.

In 2015, Ohio’s Task Force on Access to Justice, convened by Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor and comprising members of the courts, legal aid, the Ohio Legal Help Foundation, and the private bar, recommended specific actions to help close the civil justice gap. The sixth recommendation from the Supreme Court’s Access to Justice Task Force Report was to “develop and maintain a statewide website devoted to providing free and accurate legal information to Ohio residents,” which resulted in the development of Ohio Legal Help.

Ohio Legal Help is a nonprofit organization that was founded to help Ohioans access the civil justice system. It provides plain language legal help information, interactive self-help tools, and connections to local legal and community resources that can help people resolve their legal issues. The information on Ohio Legal Help is reviewed by expert private and legal aid lawyers. Users can get self-directed legal information including forms and even lawyer referrals.

Just in time for the end of PRIDE month is our recently updated Sexual Orientation & the Law Research Guide.  The guide covers books in our collection, journals, blogs, websites and databases.

Our newest database addition highlighted in the guide is HeinOnline’s LGBTQ+ Rights database. The database charts the gay rights movement in America and Includes government documents, case opinions, case briefs, books and pamphlets, as well as a curated scholarly article collection and interactive timeline.  Users can browse and search seven collections in the database: Marriage and Family; Employment Discrimination; AIDS and Health Care; Military service; Public Spaces and Society; Supreme Court Briefs; and Historical Attitudes and Analysis.