Articles Posted in Miscellaneous

This was another interesting day at the ATLA Convention.

This morning I went to a breakfast featuring Senator Gordon Smith (R-OR).  He gave a good talk, not particularly dynamic but very informative and given with obvious conviction.  Senator Smith’s remarks included telling us about the relatively recent suicide of his son, a young man who suffered from manic depression.  He gave each of us a copy of his book about his son; I have already started to read it and find it well-written, informative, and profoundly sad.  I had not met Senator Smith before the speech but found him to be an intelligent, pleasant man who appears to have an understanding of who he is and what he stands for.

I heard James Carville speak at lunch.  Carville is an dynamic speaker who can really pump a crowd already leaning toward his views.  He is very bright and truly believes what he says but tends to use outrageous examples and words to drive his point home.   I have had the pleasure of seeing Carville speak three or four times and meeting him twice.  He is much more reserved in person and it is easy to understand why candidates seek his advice.

I am in Seattle at the ATLA Convention.  I arrived here last Thursday.  I spent Friday and Saturday doing board work for the National Board of Trial Advocacy and Sunday morning meeting with a group of lawyers on a case that we are working on together.  I finally got the opportunity to get in a little CLE yesterday afternoon and will be enjoying more of that today.

The weather is beautiful here – mid-70s during the day and sunny.

Those of you that are ATLA lawyers know that there will be a vote here Wednesday on whether to change ATLA’s name.  I do not have a sense on whether the name change will pass but ATLA leadership seems confident that it will.

Here is a list of those starting with the letter "A":

AAMA American Architectural Manufacturers Association

AAMA American Apparel Manufacturers Association

LexBlog provides us various types of service  for our four blogs.  Yesterday they upgraded our software and therefore we couldn’t blog until the end of the day.   And by the end of the day (I left the office at 6:00, came back at 7:45 and left at 9:15) I was ready for bed.

However, today is a new day and we are ready to rock ‘n roll.

I am off to Seattle to the ATLA Convention.  I attended by first ATLA Convention in Seattle over 20 years ago.  It is a very nice city and I am really looking forward to the trip.

I am happy to report that this blog has reached the 750-post milestone. The blog began in February, 2005 and has grown to appoximately 500 unique vistors per business day (only a couple hundred on weekends).

The experience has been a very positive one. It takes me back to the time I started the Tennessee Tort Law Letter over a decade ago. At the time I thought I had a good grasp on tort law, but after I started reading every tort decision released in Tennessee I began to realize what I didn’t know. Now I make more of an effort to keep up with tort law developments nationally so that I can share what I learn on this blog – and once again find out how much there is to know.

The goal of this blog has always been to help lawyers keep up-to-date with developments in tort law in Tennessee and across the nation. In the coming months I am going to make an effort to add to the Blue Chippers List – people seem to like this feature. If there is other information you would like me to seek out and share please let me know.

I am at my cabin right now struggling with problems with the “internets.”

The Tennessean has reported that a E. coli 0157:H7 outbreak has sent four toddlers to Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Six other children also became infected with the potentially deadly organism.

The children became infected at Paulette’s Group Day Care Home. The paper reports that the day care center has been cleared of wrongdoing.

We just settled a case where we represented a teenager who became infected with E. coli 0157:H7 in a treatment center in East Tennessee. She became horribly ill, was hospitalized for weeks and received permanent kidney damage. We worked on the case with Bill Marler’s firm out of Washington State; he has a great blog on E. coli 0157:H7 and his firm has more knowledge about this subject than any law firm in the country, if not the world.

Some of you know that we represented two boys who were sexually abused by a (former) Roman Catholic priest who served in the Diocese of Nashville. I came to learn most than I wanted to know (and more that the confidentiality order will allow me to share) about the Church’s response to misconduct of priests.

Here is a clip from CNN that describes a tell-all documentary from a priest in California.

An excerpt from the article:

Moe Levine wrote and let me know that a link to the article that formed the based of my post about admissibility of electronic records was broken. He is right – and now I cannot find the article. I will keep looking.

Sorry about that.

However, if you go to the cases cited in the post you will find the substance of the article.

I hesitate to use this title – my “comments” log is already filled with posts from people who try to sell sex over the Internet.

But “Sex Torts” is the name of a law review article by Deana Pollard and, at a minimum, that title got each one of you to read this far, didn’t it?

Here is an abstract of the article: