The Tennessee General Assembly passed several bills that became law effective July 1, 2010. One of those is Public Chapter 752. The legislation revises a deadline for a special definition of governmental entities in governmental tort liability cases against governmental entities in Shelby County. The legislation was designed to protect The Med…
Judge Susano and his colleagues on the Eastern Section of the Tennessee Court of Appeals issued an opinion yesterday in Usher v. Charles Blalock & Sons, Inc. The opinion addresses some important issues of Tennessee law, but is mentioned here because it utlizies photographs scanned into the body of the…
PC Magazine Oprah Winfrey has been urging her viewers to promise not to text or make telephone calls while driving. Last Friday she dedicated her show to the subject. Some 23 states, including Tennessee, have laws banning texting while driving. Eight other states have partial bans on texting while driving. …
Today’s Wall Street Journal has a fascinating article about a California program that helps determine if physicians who have been disciplined can start practicing again. The goal of PACE (Physician Assessment and Clinical Education Program) is " to evaluate the competence of troubled doctors whose infractions range from serious medical…
Paul Luvera does a nice job in this post hitting the high points of David Ball’s book Ball on Damages. An excerpt: [W]e must shed our law school training about advocacy and learn to present cases consistent with the way that people really make decisions. You were probably taught…
I have had several lawyers ask me to post our most recent work in the area of filing motions to strike insufficient affirmative defenses in comparative fault cases. I have been filing these motions since 1992. A defendant has an obligation to follow Rule 8.03 of the Tennessee Rules of…
Tim Edwards of Memphis has kindly shared a protective order in a products liability case.
Tennessee’s nursing homes rank the 5th worst in the United States, according to an analysis done by the Tennessean. The February 3, 2010 article points out that [a]bout 15,000 nursing homes nationwide got ratings of one to five stars, with five being the best, from the U.S. Centers for…
My daughter was hurt in a soccer game because the ref refused to reign in a reckless player on the opposing team. Can I sue? My son is devastated because he was improperly called out on strikes by a blind umpire. Can I sue? Setting aside the merits of these…
The Tennessee Medical Malpractice Claims Report for 2009 (which reports data for 2008) contains lots of information of interest to lawyers who represent Tennesseans in medical malpractice claims. Last week I wrote about the number of claims closed in 2008 and the amount paid on these claims. Today I will…