Plaintiff’s lawyers need to be aware that legislation passed last year by the General Assembly requires the reporting of fees and expenses received as a result of medical negligence litigation in 2006. The reports are due at the offices of the Department of Commerce and Insurance on or before April 2, 2007.
The instructions for preparing the form it may be found here. The form itself is found here.
As one would expect, there are some problems with the reporting forms. I urge you not to simply object to filing the form (there are fines associated with not submitting the information on time) but instead fill out the form as completely and accurately as you can and accompanying it with an appropriate cover letter indicating the problems you identified. Such a letter will not only protect you from being accused of submitting inaccurate information (because of deficiencies in the form) but also will help the Department understand the shortcomings of the form so that it can be redesigned.
Most of our cases are referred to us by other lawyers. The instructions do not address how to handle this situation and avoid double reporting. I will find out what I can about this and let you know
I am going to republish this post every week so that people who have something better to do with their time than checking this blog every day will be alerted. I apologize in advance to my regular, devoted readers for the repeated postings but I want to make sure no one misses the deadline.