The Tennessee Court of Appeals recently issued an opinion of interest to every Tennessee personal injury lawyer. The Court of Appeals held in a car accident case that a plaintiff who serves a summons by certified mail must file the return receipt “promptly.” The court did not say what “promptly”…
T.C.A. Section 20-1-119 is one of the most important statutes for those of us who practice personal injury law in Tennessee, and the recent Mills v. Fulmarque opinion issued by the Tennessee Supreme Court has changed the way many people thought about this statute. Subject to several important limitations, the…
Tennessee summary judgment law changed on July 1, 2011 to allow the use of "put up or shut up" motions. (The law only applies to cases filed on or after July 1.) This change will increase the use of summary judgment motions in Tennessee and will probably result in…
The Tennessee Supreme Court has ruled that Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544 (2007), and Ashcroft v.Iqbal, ___ U.S. ___, 129 S. Ct. 1937 (2009) do not apply to cases filed in Tennessee state courts. The extremely well-written opinion marshals the arguments against the application of the federal standard…
The authors of this article have called for substantial changes in the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. Included in their proposals is this call for shifting the cost of discovery: In General. A party submitting a request for discovery is required to pay the reasonable costs incurred by the…
The Nevada Supreme Court has affirmed a trial judge order that struck a defendant’s ability to argue liability, limiting it to contesting compensatory damages. In Bahena v. Goodyear, the trial judge struck the defendant’s answer as to liability after it failed to follow prior court orders concerning several discovery…
The Kentucky Supreme Court has ruled that a plaintiff who asserted a claim of mental injury waived her right to assert that the psychotherapist-patient privilege protected her prior mental health records. In Dudley v. Jefferson Circuit Court, 2010-SC-000458-M (Ken. S.C. 6/10/2011) plaintiff brought a medical malpractice claim alleging, inter alia,…
What happens when a personal injury plaintiff files a bankruptcy petition? What happens if that plaintiff fails to disclose in the bankruptcy petition that he has a personal injury claim that has not yet been filed? How does a bankruptcy court discharge affect the plaintiff’s rights to later file…
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit has ruled that the 30-day period for removing a case to federal court does not begin to run until "the plaintiff serves the defendant with a paper that explicitly identified the amount of damages sought." Moltner sued Starbucks in state court…
FDCC Quarterly, a publication of the Federation of Defense and Corporate Counsel, has published an article on the impact of the relatively recent decisions of United States Supreme Court in Iqual and Twombly. This is how the authors summarize the holdings of the two decisions: Together, Iqbal and…