Articles Posted in Miscellaneous

Today I am off to Chattanooga for two days of a seminar sponsored by Justice Programs. The 15-credit hour seminar (which includes 3 E & P hours) is designed for lawyers who practice civil litigation. The seminar will also be held in Knoxville on November 17 and 18 and in Memphis on December 1 and 2. Read more here.

Those of you who dive may enjoy a seminar in Cozumel on November 26-29. I will be speaking for 6 hours on torts, comparative fault, and depositions. This program is sponsered by the Tennessee Bench Bar Conference. Contact me for more information.

Finally, our law firm will be holding two seminars in December. On December 14 and 15 we offer a program for young lawyers called “Fundamentals of Civil Litigation.” It is always a well-attended program and has gotten great reviews over the years. On December 19 we will hold our second annual “Beyond the Fundamentals of Civil Litigation” program. Both seminars are held in the Nashville area (Franklin, right of I-65). Read about them at this page on our website.

Tort cases are a rare commodity in the SCOTUS (Thank God) but one was argued earlier this week. A woman tripped on packages and other matters left on her porch (rather than in her mailbox) by the Post Office and and brought suit under the FTCA.

The issue is “whether a claim for personal injury caused by the negligence of a United States Postal Service employee while
delivering mail is barred by 28 U.S.C. ㋔ 2680(b), the exception
to the government’s waiver of sovereign immunity in the
Federal Tort Claims Act for claims “arising out of the loss,
miscarriage, or negligent transmission of letters or postal matter.”

The case is Dolan v. United States Postal Service, 04-848. Read more here. You can get copies of the briefs here.

Here is a great decision out of the state of Illinois, home of the World Champion White Sox. (I never thought I would type that phrase.)

The Fourth Division of the Illinois Court of Appeals said that “plaintiffs presented evidence that one result of the budget cuts mandated by defendant [corporate parent] was a decrease in the number of trained maintenance mechanics at the refinery, undermining the overall level of safety at the refinery. In fact, the fire was apparently caused by workers who were conducting maintenance on machinery that they were not trained or qualified to work on.” The opinion goes on to say that “Plaintiffs here alleged that defendant [parent] was a proximate cause of the decedent’s deaths via its own direct conduct, i.e., by mandating that [its subsidiary] Clark Refinery operate the refinery at “survival mode” and by reducing the capital expenditures to the “minimum sustainable level,” defendant created conditions within the refinery which posed an unreasonable risk of harm to refinery employees like the decedents. In other words, by mandating how Clark Refining was to operate the Blue Island refinery (at a 25% cost reduction), plaintiffs allege that defendant “interposed a guiding hand” in Clark Refining’s management of the refinery, leaving Clark Refining “no choice but to obey.”

After analyzing corporate law and various decisions concerning the relationship between parent and subsidiary corporations and the liability of parent corporations, the Court noted that “it has long been acknowledged that parents may be ‘directly’ liable for their subsidiaries’ actions when the ‘alleged wrong can seemingly be traced to the parent through the conduit of its own personnel and management,’ and the parent has interfered with the subsidiary’s operations in a way that surpasses the control exercised by a parent as an incident of ownership.”

Insurance Journal reports this: “There is no credible evidence to link the tort system either to the economic ills its critics claim or to the benefits they argue would be produced by altering it, according to a new study by the Economic Policy Institute.”

The article goes on to say that “the EPI report, The Frivolous Case for Tort Law Change, examines reports prepared by Tillinghast-Towers Perrin, a consulting firm whose clients include many of the world’s largest insurance companies. TTP’s reports are cited by President George Bush and his Council of Economic Advisors in arguing for tort reforms. The insurance consultants have spun a few high-profile but unrepresentative incidents into a horror story that is almost entirely unsupported by the facts,” said Chimerine. “It is cobbled together out of gross exaggerations, shreds of fact plucked out of context, and ‘secret’ data that cannot be examined by anyone but them. The result is a mishmash that bears little resemblance to actual research.”

Read the entire article here.

The Government Printing Office has a host of information for you. Government Printing Office which provides electronic access to Federal Government documents. The site gives you access to official, published versions of legislative, executive and judicial documents, including the Code of Federal Regulations, Federal Register, and Presidential Materials.

For example, do you need an analysis of cases interpreting the U. S. Constitution? There is a publication on point. There is even a Cybercemetary, where old government websites are maintained.

Happy surfing.

Do you what $146,604 represents?

It is the amount of money both Exxon and Shell made every minute of every hour of every day last quarter.

Or $2443 every second.

Hopefully you will get to read this article in Texas Monthly before this link is gone. It describes what happened to the people of Texas because of tort reform.

Here is a description of what happened to one family who was looking for a plaintiff’s lawyer to handle a medical malpractice case:

“They saw the first [lawyer] last December. He explained the realities: The facts of the case looked promising, but because their mother was retired, they would have a hard time getting any lawyer to take the case. It was, essentially, the same story Kelly Reddell had told Alvin Berry: Anyone who didn’t work-the elderly, homemakers, or children-was looking at a cap on noneconomic damages of $250,000. Trying such cases was simply not cost-effective for the lawyer or the client. (“It’s an assault on those who are the most vulnerable,” one plaintiff’s attorney told me. “It’s almost legal malpractice to take those cases.”)

Some of you are familiar with the Rosoce Pound Institute, an organization founded in 1956 which works to “help judges, academics and others understand a balanced view of the U.S. civil justice system.”

Last week, the Institute held a conference at Vanderbilt University School of Law on the issue of medical negligence. Friday afternoon I had the opportunity to participate in a panel discussion about patient safety. Joining me on the panel were Sandy Bledsoe, a nurse by training and now the #2 person in Vanderbilt’s Risk Management Department, Dr. Paul Keckley, the head of Vanderbilt’s Center for Evidence-Based Medicine, and Dr. Gerald Hickson, Director of the Center for Patient and Professional Advocacy.

I was happy to learn about the substantial effort Vanderbilt is making in attempting to reduce patient injuries and claims. The CPPA identifies physcians who are the subject of patient complaints and works with them to approve their skills in communicating with patients. Dr. Hickson has taken this program around the country; I believe he said that his team has been to 18 other institutions with this concept. Dr. Hickson has worked in conjunction with the Risk Managment Department at Vanderbilt.

Gray’s Anatomy of the Human Body is the leading textbook on anatomy and now it is available on-line. Click here to review the index of what drawings and information is available.

Thanks to Bob Kraft for bringing this site to my attention.

Georgia passed a tort “deform” statute last year. One part of the legislation required a plaintiff to pay a defendant’s attorneys’ fees if the plaintiff did not obtain a judgment of at 25% higher than a defendant’s last offer of judgment.

A trial judge has struck down that provision, saying that “[b]y authorizing attorney’s fees to be awarded against plaintiffs who assert their right to prosecute their claims in court, secure a judgment in their favor, but fail to win as much damages as they hoped, the statute violates [Georgia’s Constitutional] guarantees that “[n]o person shall be deprived of the right to prosecute … [their] cause in any of the courts of this state.”

Here is an articledicussing the ruling.