Read this opinion starting at Page 17 to get a court’s insight on how not to present an appeal.
An example: “Further, most of plaintiffs’ claims are patently disingenuous. Arguments regarding use of the Streamlined Rules, failure to find the arbitration was binding, the selection of the arbitrator and his subsequent disclosures or lack thereof, and the order compelling arbitration distort the law, the facts, and logic.”
Ouch.
Plaintiff’s lawyers don’t really do legal research, do they?
Only the plaintiff’s lawyers who want to win.
If you don’t know the law it is difficult to make intelligent case selection decisions. There is nothing wrong with pushing the envelope, but you need to know you are pushing the envelope when you accept the case so that you can make an informed decision that you are taking a case that has appropriate facts that increase the likelihood that you will push the envelope and live to tell about it.
Well, its 9:30 a.m. and I still haven’t posted on the blog today. Sorry. I gave a speech in Memphis last night to a group of nurse practitioners (more in a later post) and drove back to Music City (180 miles) early this morning.
My post this morning is a Guest Post that I wrote for Evan Schaeffer’s Legal Underground blog. Evan is a plaintiff’s lawyer from Madison County, IL and has a great blog that I would encourage you to put on your RSS feed. He was kind enough to let me put a post on his site. He titled it “A Plaintiff’s Lawyer Explains the Economics of Turning Down Cases.”
Some of you have heard me speak on this topic; it is part of the seminar our firm offers every year to young lawyers who practice civil litigation. This year the seminar will be held on December 14 and 15 in Nashville. A mailer on the seminar will be coming out any day and you will be able to register via the Web. More on that later.
An appellate lawyer in a big firm got his hand slapped by a 9th Circuit judge for his firm’s choice of words in a brief.
Some examples:
“The district court’s refusal to apply Daubert was erroneous and stands as yet another example of the court’s twisting the substantive law in furtherance of the procedural class action device.”
Lawyers have a lot to worry about. It’s an occupational hazard. Want one more stressor on your plate? If you’re filing electronically, and the court’s website runs so slowly that you start before the filing deadline but finish an hour after the deadline, your filing may not count. Read about it over at our Tennessee Business Litigation blog.
Eighty percent of our fees are earned from contingent fees representing plaintiffs in personal injury and wrongful death cases arising from medical negligence, careless truck or automobile drivers, etc. The rest of our fees come from hourly work arising from commercial litigation or, occasionally, plaintiffs in personal injury cases who prefer to pay by the hour.
I say that to say this: client selection is a key to profitability and sanity in a trial practice. In a personal injury case, poor client selection can result in the loss of an otherwise good case. In a commercial case, a bad client can cause untold grief.
Here is a link to a post by Matthew Holmann under the title “Fire These Clients Now,” who in turn links to post from a software shop.
Day on Torts