Here is a fascinating article about a handwriting expert from Houston that assists lawyers in jury selection. The expert is Alice Weiser, author of Judge the Jury: Experience the Power of Reading People. An excerpt: "Weiser said that people who make little circle dots above the letter "i" are individual and unique,…
Health care providers and their insurance companies have managed to persuade all too many Americans that holding providers responsible for malpractice is a bad thing. They also claim that the number medical malpractice claims and payments are increasing. I simply cannot respond to the first contention. The idea of holding…
Facebook – a leading source for informal discovery in personal injury and wrongful death litigation. Now, the ABA Journal reports that a $10+million verdict is threatened because of a Facebook issue. The defendant in the case has alleged that plaintiff’s counsel instructed a plaintiff to delete information from a Facebook…
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…
Are you more likely to get hurt in the hospital in July? This article from the New York Times says "yes," if you are in a teaching hospital. The Times article references to a paper published earlier this month in Annals of Internal Medicine,. The paper examines previous studies of the…
Some of you have seen Hot Coffee, the documentary that reveals how corporate interests manipulated the media about the McDonald’s coffee case and the other extra-ordinary steps corporate America is taking to take control of the civil justice system. If you have not seen the movie, I encourage you to…
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…
On Saturday, July 9, 2011 I was very fortunate to be asked to speak at the Pound Civil Justice Institute ‘s 2011 Forum for State Appellate Court Judges in New York City. This year’s program concerned the huge reduction in civil jury trials in our state and federal court and the…
The South Carolina Supreme Court has ruled that there is not cause of action for the negligent spoliation of evidence in that state. In Cole Vision Corp. v. Hobbs, No. 26988 (S.C. 6/20/11) the defendant counterclaimed and sued plaintiff for negligent spoliation of evidence. Defendant maintained that plaintiff lost a…
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…