Articles Posted in Miscellaneous

Charlie Weis, head football coach at Notre Dame, sued two doctors in connection with injuries he received following gastric bypass surgery.  The trial in underway in Boston.

He alleges that he suffered internal bleeding after the procedure and that his doctors failed to promptly correct it.  The doctors say that internal bleeding is a known, disclosed risk of the procedure and that they did not move more aggressively to correct the condition because of the risk of pulmonary embolus.

Read more here.  Weis testified yesterday.

Business Tennessee magazine has released its list of the 150 best lawyers in Tennessee.  Here is the list by area of practice.

These lists come out from time to time and I am always surprised to see that some lawyers I think are just fantastic are not included.  I don’t know exactly how the process works but I am honored to be included on the list again this year.

I was in Knoxville yesterday and had the opportunity to talk with my friend Howard Vogel and his son Alex.  We were talking blogs (the three of us make a fun group, don’t we?) and Howard or Alex asked what blogs I regularly read.

I thought I would share the list. 

What About Clients?

I really enjoy reading Blog 702.  The writing is great, the posts informative.  I wish they had a permalink function in their blogging program, but this post is too good not to re-print here in toto.

2/7/07 UPDATE:  I got a comment from the folks at Blog 702 and they informed me that they do have a permalink function.  My bad.  Here it is the link.

"A post by Ted Frank at Point of Law directs us to another post, by Jim Beck and Mark Herrmann at Drug and Device Law, which adverts, in turn, to an article in the December 2006 issue of Neurology entitled "The impact of litigation on neurologic research." The article is authored by two faculty at the Washington University School of Medicine (Drs. Brad A. Racette and Joel S. Perlmutter) and two attorneys (Ann Bradley, internal university counsel, and Carrie A. Wrisberg, a partner in the St. Louis law firm Moser & Marsalek).

I never met Molly Ivins, but wish I had.  She was a gifted writer with a wonderful sense of humor.

Her death is a real loss for all of us who love to read about politics.

The Supreme Court of Arizona has ruled that  persons who are prescribed drugs owe a duty of care, making them potentially liable for negligence, when they improperly give their drugs to others.

The defendant shared his prescribed drug (oxycodone) with others at a party.  One of the women he shared the drugs with gave them to the plaintiff’s decedent, who died that night from the combined toxicity of alcohol and oxcyodone.  The plaintiff (decedent’s mother) sued, and defendant denied that he owed a duty to the decedent.

The Court held that because Arizona had  statutes prohibiting the sharing of prescription drugs a duty existed.  The Court said that "[b]ecause [the decedent] is within the class of persons to be protected by the statute and the harm that occurred here is the risk that the statute sought to protect against, these statutes create a tort duty."

Well, as you probably have heard, a woman who participated in a "Hold your wee for a Wii" contest died of water intoxication.   According to the Sacramento Bee, "the contestants were given two minutes to drink an 8 ounce bottles of water every ten minutes. The winner was the last one to use the restroom."

An attorney has announced that suit will be filed against the station.

The allegations – and apparently undisputed facts – are that the disc jockeys laughed about the risk to participants and knew the risk of the stunt could be fatal.  Indeed, according to the Bee article, "a nurse called into the program to warn that drinking too much water was dangerous."

Most of us know judges who from time to time have disagreements with their colleagues and know other judges who simply don’t like a judge they have to work with every day.  There is nothing unusual about this – judges are people and it is unrealistic for anyone to expect that the day a person puts on a robe he or she is able to silently accept the human failings of others (or not have failings of their own).

But in Tennessee those disagreements rarely find their way to the public eye.  Indeed, I have no memory of ever reading a Tennessee court opinion in which one judge criticized the intellect or integrity of another judge.  We simply don’t do that "down here."

Things are a little different in Michigan – an "up there" state.  Those of you who love the law (or lack a real life) already know that the Supreme Court in Michigan is polarized.  But I admit that I had no idea that it had gotten downright ugly, as reflected in this memo dissenting from the election of the chief justice.

Can you imagine sitting in your battery-powered wheelchair and having it catch on fire?

That’s what the plaintiff alleged happened to her late father in this California case.  It settled on the courthouse steps; the settlement is, of course, confidential.

The article reports that "in 2006, said court records, the company released a new product manual warning of the potential for hydrogen fire during recharging of the wheelchair’s battery."

Here is an interesting article from the New York Times that discusses a recent study of whether private practice lawyers or public defenders get better outcomes for citizens accused of crimes.