Articles Posted in Miscellaneous

There are a good number of you folks – almost 50 of you every workday – who check this blog before 8:00 a.m. I typically get up between 4:00 and 4:30 and do my daily post first thing in morning, so some of you have come to expect that I will have posted by the time you have had your first cup of coffee. Indeed, my friend Keith Williams called me one time when I did not post before 8:00 because he thought I must be ill.

Tomorrow will be a little different. I have to go to Baltimore this morning and Washington, D.C. this afternoon. I have decided not to haul a computer will me so, unless the hotel has a business center with access to a computer, I will not be posting tomorrow until close to Noon.

Thanks for reading. If you have any suggestions for what I can do to improve this blog please let me know.

Well, the 2006 TTLA Convention is over. As I mentioned earlier this week, Gary Gober did a great job organizing the speakers for the event.

Many of you came up to me at the various meetings and parties and expressed your appreciation for my work on this blog. I truly appreciate your kind words. A blog does take more effort than you might imagine, although I must say I do not really find it to be “work” in any shape, form or fashion. I learn with every post and, to the extent that I can help my fellow lawyers do a better job representing their clients by sharing what I learn on this blog, so much the better. A rising tide truly lifts all boats.

Some of you asked what you could do for me for providing this service to the Bar. I have one request: support the Tennessee Trial Lawyers Association and its political action committee, Lawyers Involved For Tennessee. Both organizations perform valuable service for the people of Tennessee. TTLA helps advance the cause of personal injury and wrongful death victims on Capitol Hill and educate its members on how to advance the cause of those citizens in our courtrooms. LIFT contributes money to candidates who have made or are willing to make the sacrific of public service in our Legislature. Both organizations deserve our continued support.

As I mentioned in a post last weekend, our firm had three cases going to trial this week. John Branham and Brandon Bass settled their personal injury case Tuesday morning right around the time for closing argument. They obtained a great result in a case in which no money was offered before trial.

John Branham and Rebecca Blair’s trial settled Wednesday, the day before trial.

My case – an arbitration of a commerical case – was set to go three days. I was defending this case; it alleged breach of contract and a TCPA violation. It settled near the end of my cross-examination of our adversary’s CEO for one-half of our prior offer and less than 4% of the claimed damages. It was a fun experience, especially since the arbitrator did not permit depositions.

As you undoubted know if you are a regular reader of this blog, we represent plaintiffs in medical malpractice cases. We average almost three calls per business day from prospective medical malpractice plaintiffs; our screening process weeds out 98% of those calls and therefore we file less than 20 of those cases per year.

We are seeing a significant increase in the number of hospital-acquired infection calls we are getting. Of course, we have always gotten a good number of calls where people complain about getting a staph infection. But we have seen a virtual explosion in the number of calls.

That is why this article caught my eye. Apparently a hospital in Pennsylvania decided to attack the problem and believes that it saved 47 lives by doing so. One doctor said that their three year program demonstrates that “as much as 90 percent of common hospital-acquired infections could be prevented in a year’s time if hospitals paid better attention to hygiene and standardized how intensive care unit patients receive care.”

“Are we negotiating or are we telling the truth?”

That’s a quote from a defense lawyer friend of mine made while we were trying to resolve a medical malpractice case. I have used it many times over the years.

The American Bar Association has issued a Formal Ethics Opinion recognizing that there must be a little room for positioning while negotiating. The opinion gives specific examples of when you can puff and when you cannot.

The doctors have been claiming that there are shortages in the numbers of physicians and that the shortage is due to laws which hold doctors accountable for negligence that causes harm to patients. (You know, just as if they were truck drivers or other real people.)

Well, yesterday’s Los Angeles Times wrote about the shortage of physicians. Take a look at this:

“The number of medical school graduates has remained virtually flat for a quarter century, because the schools limited enrollment out of concern that the nation was producing too many doctors. But demand has exploded, driven by population gains, a healthy economy and a technology-driven boom in physicians’ repertoires, which now include such procedures as joint replacement and liposuction.”

It is going to be a busy week at Branham & Day. John Branham and Brandon Bass are trying a two-day personal injury case starting Monday morning in Gallatin. I start (what hopefully will be only) a three-day arbitration in a commercial case Tuesday – we have eleven notebooks of exhibits and my opponents claim that they will call over a dozen witnesses. No depositions have been permitted (except for a couple witnesses who could not be physically present for the hearing); the lack of depositions makes trials so much more exciting (and, quite frankly, increases the anxiety level).

Then John Branham and Rebecca Blair start a trial in a commerical case on Thursday; it should be finished in a day-and-a-half.

So, as you trial lawyers might imagine, there has been a flurry of activity at our offices in the last week. Exhibit lists and witnesses lists being prepared. Direct and cross-examnations have been honed. The copy machine has been working like an expresso machine at the Starbucks in Rockefeller Center at 8:30 a.m. My opponent and I are trying to hammer out stipulations, something that therotically should be done earlier but always seems to be done on the eve of trial.

Lay and Skilling have been found guilty of multiple crimes that contributed to the fall of Enron and the loss of hundreds of millions of dollars of shareholder value.

How much time should these men spend in prison?

I know little about the federal sentencing guidelines. But I think back to Anna Ayala, who got nine years for saying that she found a finger in the chili she purchased at Wendy’s when in fact she planted the finger. (Prior posts.) If that sentence was fair – and I don’t think that it was – then each of these men deserve to spend the rest of their lives in prison.

OK, so it is a compromise and settlement of a divorce case. The fact remains that the law of compromise and settlement in Tennessee has been in disarray and the Tennessee Supreme Court has taken a step in the right direction to get it fixed.

In Barnes v. Barnes, No. W2004-01426-SC-R11-CV, ( Filed May 17, 2006) the TSC reversed an appellate court opinion which held that an MDA signed by the parties was not an enforceable agreement. The husband admitted executing the agreement but tried to back out of it two weeks after he signed it.

Read the opinion here.

Here is part one of the speech everyone has been talking about. Here is part two.