Articles Posted in Miscellaneous

Aggie Spirit took exception to my suggestion that Herman Cain encourage the NRA to waive the confidentiality provisions of the settlement agreements with the women who lodged sexual harassment charges against him.

This was AggieSpirit’s comment::

I am sure your position as a trial lawyer (and likely member of ATLA) and your donation history (which shows that you donate to Democrats like Bruce Braley) have no influence on your hypocritical position on whether or not Cain should release his accusers from confidentiality agreements. Where were all the Democratic calls for openness for Ginnifer Flowers, nor where was the main stream media in revealing that Flowers was paid a 6 figure settlement by the Clintons? 
You democrats have a double standard at every aspect here — in your mind, Cain has been accused of wrongdoing, therefore, he must be guilty. But the benefit of the doubt is given to every accused Democrat, and the media turns the other way and essentially ignores wrongdoing by Democrats. You would think the media would have reported extensively about the close ties between Obama and American unrepentant terrorist Bill Ayers, but not one network outside of Fox reported on the relationship. 
This whole situation with Cain wreaks of one thing, and one thing alone — the political establishment and their media Obama worshiping allies will do anything to railroad the possibility that a black man become the GOP nominee — because Democrats, just like their slave master ancestor Southern Democrats of the 1800s, believe that they OWN black people, and deserve their vote. How dare Cain, or any other minority, leave the plantation of handouts, welfare, and failed affirmative action policy which have destroyed black America and created a generation of government dependency. But hey – you lawyers benefit directly from regulation, which is why you are overwhelmingly liberal. The more regulation and law, the richer you get. You sir, are disgusting.

There are two things wrong with this post.  First, it is not directly about tort law – it is about contract law.  And this is supposed to be a blog about tort law.  So perhaps this post shouldn’t be here.

Second, this post is about a victory our firm had in the Tennessee Court of Appeals on October 19, 2011.  Regular readers know that I typically don’t write about our firm’s cases on this blog.

That aside, I know that many of my fellow tort lawyers handle commercial litigation cases from time to time.  I have done so for most of my career and enjoy the work.  Thus, I thought that many readers could benefit from knowing about this new appellate court decision, particularly the readers from Tennessee.  

A man with a student pilot’s license crashed into a home, killing himself and his minor daughter.  The deceased child’s mother brought suit against the local aviation board and others for permitting him to take off in the plane despite the absence of a pilot’s license, seeking damages for the death of her daughter.

The defendants moved for summary judgment, saying that the father had intentionally crashed the plane into his mother-in-law’s house with the intent to kill his daughter and himself.  The father and his wife were in the process of a divorce, and the father was upset that his wife was dating another man.  Among other damning facts, the evidence showed that

Eric [the father] attempted to  contact Beth [the mother] on her cell phone, and he made angry and threatening statements when he reached Beth on the third attempt.  At some point during the conversation, Eric told Beth that she would never see Emily again. Just before the plane  crashed into Pace’s house, two bystanders witnessed the airplane abruptly angle downward and throttle its engines toward the ground, without taking the normal steps to prepare for landing, such as deploying flaps, reducing speed, and shallowing descent.    Eric  crashed the airplane into the house shortly thereafter.   As noted above, [his mother-in-law’s] residence  was one of 18,500 houses in  Lawrence County.  [Citations omitted.]

You have to give the Republican Party credit – they are working hard to create jobs for those who are out of work.

In Tennessee, for example, the right to trial by jury was limited for every Tennessean so that somebody somewhere could get a job.

The right that citizens had to sue those who design and build dangerous roads and bridges was severely limited with the promise of more jobs.

Yesterday I posted my 2000th entry on this blog.  2000 posts in 78 months – this blog started in the Spring of 2005.

I celebrated by writing five posts for the coming week.

Thanks for reading. 

 I received this announcement from LexisNexis on Friday the 28th of October:: 

Each year, LexisNexis honors a select group of blogs that set the online standard for a given industry.  I’m pleased to notify you that your blog is one of the nominated candidates for the LexisNexis Top 25 Tort Blogs of 2011, featured on the Litigation Resource Community. 

We are inviting tort law practitioners to comment on our list of nominees. If you’d like to request that readers support your nomination, please ask them to comment on the announcement post on our Litigation Resource Community.

Amy Alkon, the Advice Goddess, had a bad run-in with a TSA agent. Of course, we have no legal right to hold the TSA or its agents accountable for acting like complete and total jerks, so she wrote about her experience.  As only a writer could write.

And, God love her, she named the agent.

The agent threatened a lawsuit against her and demanded $500,000.  (Read the letter sent by the agent’s lawyer here.)

"Trial Lawyers Care" was created to help 9/11 victims advocate for benefits from the Victim Compensation Fund.  It brought out the best of AAJ and its members.

This article does a nice job explaining the work that was done and the thoughts of some of the participants. 

The Tennessee Supreme Court has circulated for public comment changes to the rules of evidence and procedure. 

If adopted by the Court and approved by resolution in the 2012 General Assembly, the proposed rule changes will go into effect July 1, 2012.

A couple changes are of particular interest to tort lawyers.  First, there is a proposal to amend TRCP 12.06 to extend the time to file motions to strike.  Second, changes have been suggested to Rule 45 to put receipents of subpoenas on notice of the 14-day deadline for lodging objections.    Third, several changes  to the rules of appellate procedure have been suggested.