Pre-judgment interest is not the Wicked Witch of the East – it will not die. (Do you remember the unseen WWE? Dorothy parked a house on top of her and ended up with her ruby red slippers – much to the chagrin of WWE’s sister, the Wicked Witch of the…
I wrote recently about the decision in Arkansas Dept. of Health and Human Services v. Alhborn, 126 S.Ct. 1752 (2006), the USSC decision which ruled that state Medicaid agencies’ claims for reimbursement out of tort settlements are limited to that portion of any settlement attributable to past medical expenses. The…
This is a brief in response to a defendant’s motion in limine to exclude the expert witness testimony of an economist. The economist was disclosed in a wrongful death case arising out of the drowning of a three-year-old boy. The economist is expected to testify about the present value of…
Professor Anthony Sebok from the Brooklyn Law School has written an interesting paper on punitive damages. Here is his abstract of the article: In this article I argue that the current problem with punitive damages in the United States is not, as is popularly believed, that they are out of…
A great new study that could provide for support for determining the value of the life of a homemaker. A news article says this about the study: “A full-time stay-at-home mother would earn $134,121 a year if paid for all her work, an amount similar to a top U.S. ad…
A lawyer was hurt in a wreck and received injuries that limited his work hours. He was a partner is a law firm and continued to receive his regular compensation despite his failure to work and bill the required number of hours. The judge did not permit the defendant to…
The Arizona Court of Appeals has decided that a plaintiff can recover the full value of her medical bills in a tort case and that the amount of the bills should not be reduced by contractual discounts. The case is Lopez v. Safeway Stores, Inc. (2 CA-CV 2005-0057, 2/28/06). The…
Chiropractors get a bad rap and almost certainly an unfair rap. But this type of news stories do not do the profession any good. Time travel?
Punitive damages in Tennessee are rarer than hen’s teeth. But that doesn’t mean that they shouldn’t be sought in appropriate cases – of course they should. However, it is not enough to simply say: “what the defendant did was bad, real bad” and hope that you can carry the day.…
The Supreme Court denied cert in a cigarette case yesterday, letting a $50,000,000 punitive damages award stand against Phillip Morris. The compensatory damages in the case were $5,500,000. This will be an encouragement to the plaintiff in the Oregon tobacco case; recall that the Oregon Supreme Court affirmed a $79.5…