Personal Injury Law

Merry Christmas

Posted on December 24, 2009
  Thanks for David E. Mills, lawyer and cartoonist, whose work can be enjoyed at Courtoons.  David's work is available for purchase.

Use of Notes At Trial

Posted on December 22, 2009
 Winning Trial Advocacy Tips continues to be a great source of information for those of us who try cases.  This post, called "The Proper Use of Notes," does a fine job explaining how - and how not - to use notes at trial. An excerpt: When preparing the notes that you'll bring to court, instead of writing out a word-for-word script, write down only what you need...

Writing Appellate Briefs

Posted on December 22, 2009
Jay O'Keeffe has written a nice article about appellate brief writing on DeNovo:  A Virginia Appellate Law Blog.  The article is titled " 10 Ways to Ruin a Perfectly Good Brief."   Here is an excerpt: 1. Take shortcuts...

Physicians in the United States Less Likely to Use Health Information Technology

Posted on December 21, 2009
According to the 2009 Commonwealth Fund International Health Policy Survey, only 46 percent of U.S. doctors use electronic medical records, compared to 99 percent of doctors in the Netherlands and 97 percent of doctors in New Zealand and Norway. "We spend far more than any of the other countries in the survey, yet a majority of U...

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Memphis Lawyer Bites Nose of Hair Stylist in Restroom of Memphis Bar

Posted on December 20, 2009
Lawyer Mark Lambert , an attorney with the Cochran Firm in Memphis, has been sued by Greg Herbers, a Memphis hair stylist, over injuries Herbers says he received in an alteration with Lambert in the bathroom of a Memphis bar. According to the story in the Commercial Appeal, Herbers   entered the restroom around 9 p...

New Federal Rules of Civil Procedure

Posted on December 18, 2009
Here is the best summary I have seen that describes  the recent changes to the FRCP.  The new rules  went into effect on December 1, 2009.  The summary was written by the folks at Mayer Brown. Thanks to Dan Hull at What About Clients? for alerting me to it...

Should You Call A Witness a Liar?

Posted on December 17, 2009
 Winning Trial Advocacy Tips has a great post on the subject of whether you should ever call a witness a liar. An excerpt: Because we're lawyers, we don't have any problems believing that someone will take the stand and lie to us.  But jurors don't think like that...

Court Imposes Sanctions for Failure To Follow Rules Concerning Citation to the Record

Posted on December 16, 2009
Yesterday I discussed a portion of the opinion S.C. Johnson and Son, Inc. v. Morris,   Appeal No. 2008AP1647  (Wis. Ct. App. Div. II Dec. 2, 2009)  concerning the assertion of the Fifth Amendment in civil litigation.  I wanted to bring to your attention a footnote (Footnote 1) that addressed  the failure of counsel to follow court rules for  writing appellate briefs...

Court Blocks Effort to Withdraw Fifth Amendment Assertion at Civil Trial

Posted on December 15, 2009
Defendant asserted his Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination throughout the discovery phase of a civil trial.  During the fourth week of trial he attempted to waive the privilege and give substantive testimony. The Wisconsin Court of Appeals upheld the decision of the trial judge to prohibit the the witness from withdrawing his assertion of the privilege...

Settlement Mills

Posted on December 14, 2009
A law professor at Stanford, Lora Freeman Engstrom, has written an article published in Georgetown Journal of Legal Ethics  called "Run-of-the-Mill Justice."   Her  bio reveals that her research  interest is high-volume personal injury law practices that heavily advertise and mass-produce the resolution of claims and  is supported by a grant from the American Bar Association's Litigation Research Fund...

Fatal Car and Truck Crashes By Young Drivers

Posted on December 11, 2009
 NHTSA has released a report concerning fatal crashes by young drivers.  The report shows that „„Youths 15 to 20 years old represented 9 percent of the U.S. population in 2007 and 6 percent of the licensed drivers; however, 19 percent of the fatalities in the United States in 2007 were related to young-driver crashes...

Debt Collector Blamed in Wrongful Death Lawsuit

Posted on December 10, 2009
Dianne McLeod says a debt collector killed her husband Stanley.   According to CNN, Ms. McLeod alleges that " her mortgage company, Green Tree Servicing, for the wrongful death of her husband. McLeod said she thinks he would be alive if not for the stress caused by Green Tree's debt collectors...

Medical Malpractice Insurance Rates

Posted on December 10, 2009
 From the American Association for Justice:   State tort reforms have provided a boon to insurance companies, leading to record profits while physician and patient premiums continue to skyrocket. An analysis of data from the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) and company annual statements shows malpractice insurer profits are 24 percent higher in states with caps...

Alcohol Impaired Drivers Continue to Kill

Posted on December 09, 2009
According to NHTSA's National Center for Statistics and Analysis there were 1035 people killed on Tennessee roads in 2008.  Of those fatalities, 327 of them involved at least one driver who had a blood alcohol level of 0.8 or greater.  This is an alcohol-related death rate of ...

Wal-Mart Wins Suicide Case in Illinois

Posted on December 08, 2009
The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals has affirmed the dismissal of a case against Wal-Mart for selling bullets to a person without requiring her to present an identification card as required by Illinois law.  Candice Johnson later used the bullets to commit suicide...

Maine's Senator Snowe Introduces Legislation To Require Malpractice Victims Go to Expense and Time Delay of Medical Screening Panels Before A Jury Trial

Posted on December 08, 2009
Maine requires that a medical screening panel hear a medical malpractice case before it can be heard by a jury.   Tennessee had screening panels in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when they were abandoned because all agreed that they were ridiculous...

Senate Defeats Effort To Limit Access to the Courthouse by Medical Malpractice Victims

Posted on December 07, 2009
Senator Ensign (R-Nevada) introduced an amendment to limit contingent fees in medical malpractice cases.  The Senator attempted to attached the language to amendment SA 2786 to H.R. 3590, which is intended to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to modify the first-time homebuyers credit in the case of members of the Armed Forces and certain other Federal employees, and for other purposes...

When to Evaluate for a Hypercoagulable State

Posted on December 07, 2009
The Doctors Company is a medical malpractice insurer.  Its website contains articles of interest to all Tennessee medical malpractice lawyers and, in fact, medical malpractice lawyers in every state. For example, one interesting article is titled "When to Evaluate for a Hypercoagulable State...

Court Erred in Ordering Release of Medical Records

Posted on December 04, 2009
The Ohio Court of Appeals has ruled that a trial judge committed error by ordering production of a personal injury plaintiff's medical records without first doing an in camera review to determine if the records should have been turned over to the defendant...

Does Ms. Tiger Woods Have A Tort Claim Against the Other Woman?

Posted on December 02, 2009
More information continues to be leaked to the media about Tiger Woods' alleged mistresses, and  news reports indicate that at least one of them has confirmed a long-lasting affair. What does the law of torts say about this?  Alienation of affections, criminal conversation, and reckless  infliction of emotional distress immediately come to mind as potential claims that Ms...

A New Way of Looking at Duty and Causation

Posted on December 02, 2009
The Iowa Supreme Court has released an opinion in Thompson v. Kaczinski, 2009 WL 3786632 (Iowa 2009) and adopted the Restatement (Third) of Torts approach to both duty and causation. The case arose after  "a motorist lost control of his car on a rural gravel road and crashed upon encountering a trampoline that had been displaced by the wind from an adjoining yard to the surface of the road...

Free Software for Trial Lawyers

Posted on December 01, 2009
The good folks at the Winning Trial Advocacy Tips blog have assembled some more great information of  interest to trial lawyers.  This post is titled "Free Software for Trial Lawyers' and features a dozen free or almost free programs of interest to lawyers who try personal injury and wrongful death cases...

Defendant's Discovery Abuse Results in Default Judgment of $8,000,000, Plus Fees

Posted on November 30, 2009
What do you do when a party to a lawsuit intentionally refuses to follow the rules?  One judge in Washington State knew what to do: the judge struck the defendant's answer, entered judgment for $8,000,000, and awarded attorneys' fees.  Last week the Washington Supreme Court had upheld the award...

AAP Issues Expert Witness Policy

Posted on November 25, 2009
The American Academy of Pediatrics has issued a Policy Statement titled "Guidelines for Expert Testimony in Medical Malpractice Litigation.   After reviewing the role of the expert witness in medical malpractice litigation, the Guidelines begin the "recommendations" section of the paper with this statement: The AAP recognizes that physicians have the professional, ethical, and legal duty to testify as called on in a court of law in accordance with their expertise...

Sources for Closing Argument Stories

Posted on November 24, 2009
The Winning Trial Advocacy Tips blog has a great post titled "Sources for Closing Argument Stories."   The post identifies nine different sources for stories that can be used in closing arguments. Here is brief excerpt: 1. Aesop's Fables...

New Medical Malpractice Case Filing Statistics

Posted on November 22, 2009
Here is the most up-to-date data on medical malpractice case filings in Tennessee. Regular readers know that  effective October 1, 2008 the General Assembly imposed significant restrictions on patients who want to file a medical malpractice suits...

"Old Warriors"

Posted on November 20, 2009
 Gary Gwilliam from California has written a very interesting article called "Old Warriers" for Plaintiff Magazine.  Read the article here.

The Boss in Nashville

Posted on November 19, 2009
There are two reasons there is not a substantive post today.  First, I am speaking for three hours at our Justice Programs seminar today and am quite busy. Second, my wife Joy and I went to see Bruce Springsteen in concert last night in Nashville and I did not get to bed until 12:30 this morning...

HealthGrades Sixth Annual Patient Safety in American Hospitals Study

Posted on November 18, 2009
HeathGrades studies Medicare patient care in our nation's hospitals based on 15 indicators of patient safety.    Here are some highlights from the 2009 report representing data from 2005 -2007: ... There were 913,215 total patient safety events among 864,765 Medicare beneficiarieswhich represents 2...

Motorcoach Safety Action Plan

Posted on November 17, 2009
The United States Department of Transportation has adopted the Motorcoach Safety Action Plan following an analysis of safety data.  DOT has identified seven priority action items that will have the greatest impact on reducing motorcoach crashes, fatalities and injuries...

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