Articles Posted in Miscellaneous

I posted an entry recently concerning access to municipal codes in Tennessee. I mentioned that I did not know how to find the code for Nashville on the Web.

Tony Duncan knew – here is the site.

Thanks Tony

Once again, I took some time off, this time with my children. We made our annual pilgrimage to Wisconsin. We drove back yesterday – 875 miles in 14 hours.

There have been a bunch of exciting developments in the law of torts in the past 10 days. Brandon Bass covered the blog for me while I was out of town and alerted you to many of them; I will comment on some of his posts over the next few days and add a few other things I came upon during my trip.

It feels good to be back in the saddle.

For Independence Day, why not read about another affront to the civil justice system, this one via a bill sponsored by Texas Republican Lamar Smith? There is a good article on the dangers of the bill over at law.com. It is amazing that the bill not only attacks a nonexistant problem, but does so with all the precision of a drunken sumo wrestler in high heels. It’s like trying to kill a housefly with a shotgun.

From over at the Med Mal Blog: The Eastern Section Court of Appeals held today that Givens prevents a trial court from issuing an order that allows ex parte communications with a plaintiff’s treating physicians. The Court of Appeals rejected the argument by the defendant doctors and Tennessee Medical Association that a patient waives confidentiality by filing suit. Although there is a good chance this case is going up to the Tennessee Supreme Court, this resolves the issue for now in favor of patients.

This issue has been popping up in numerous cases across the state, so the Court of Appeals decision is an important one. Many defendants request “authorizations for medical records and information” with written discovery. Think hard before you allow your client to sign on to any medical release that might be read to allow the defendant to skirt Givens.

Branham & Day is happy to announce that our firm is now running another legal blog, medmalblog.com. Several of the attorneys at our office, as well as our nurse-paralegal, are posting entries on the new site. Rebecca Blair, a shareholder at Branham & Day, is leading it. The blog is focused on the plaintiff / patient’s side, and we are planning to provide legal forms, resources, case law summaries, and notes on the tort reform movement. Check it out (in your mythical free time).

Sometimes you need data that you can only find from the federal government. Here is a link to a site that has more statistics than you can shake a stick at. Hundreds of federal agencies have statistics on this site on even more subjects.

Here is another site than can give you public information from state governments.

Our friends in the insurance defense bar have compiled a list of helpful links to websites to do sleuthing on the Internet.

If they are going to do it, don’t you think you might want to consider doing it yourself?

I must say that this isn’t the best such list I have seen, but there are some interesting links concerning the admissibility of digital photography.

Aren’t you sick and tired of these jerks who attack your clients and your profession? I have been jerked around at Little League games, my kids’ basketball games, cocktail parties, church – it never stops.

Here is some ammo you can use to fight back – unless you think that the better course of action is to simply walk away.

You tort and negligence law junkies may have been wondering where I have been the past few days.

Well, I went to Knoxville on Tuesday for a committee meeting to work on the Tennessee Pattern Jury Instructions. Wednesday, Thursday and Friday I was at the Tennessee Trial Lawyers Association Annual Convention, and last night I went to the Annual Dinner of the American College of Trial Lawyers at Cherokee Country Club.
I came back to work today in an effort to catch up on what appears to be a big pile of work.

I had trouble getting access to the Internet to blog. The computer access in my room went down. There were some “public” computers available. Unfortunately, access to them was hogged by people who saw nothing wrong with using them for hours on end to look for clothes, plan their next vacation, etc. I have learned a lesson.