I’m going a little out of format today, but I’d like to start by congratulating my firm. Today, our local volunteer legal services organization is awarding us the Judge Joe Hart Award. According to them the award is "presented annually to a law firm that has demonstrated the integrity and dedication to legal services to the poor exemplified by Mr. Hart throughout his legal and judicial career." I hope that we continued to be blessed with the time and resources to continue our VLS work.

Sorry to get off track. Now, over to tort reform issues.......

One of the bigger stories of the week was Obama’s position on tort reform. In a Fox interview, Obama cited his vote on CAFA as an example of him being willing to cross party lines. You can check out posts from Bill Childs, Point of Law, and f/k/a. Obama’s attacked from the left for supporting CAFA and attacked by POL for not supporting enough tort reform. But isn’t that what we should be asking our legislators to do? As they say, a good mediation result is when both sides leave unhappy. Shouldn’t that be the same for legislation? (Disclosure: I was an Obama delegate to our local county convention in what might be the most convoluted voting process in the country.)

Chris Robinette is apparently publishing a book that will be available next month on balanced tort reform. He’s starting a preview on the tortsprof blog.

Overlawyered and Maryland Lawyer Blog both have good posts on the story of a pitcher filing suit after his coach let him throw 140 pitches in a game. Ron Miller has some nice analysis on tort reform issues, but you might be surprised by his take.

In the "lawyers behaving badly" category, a Florida case on behalf of 441 medical providers against Progressive ends up with a massive fee dispute and an ethics report to the Florida bar.

In the same vein, three Kentucky Fen Phen lawyers are being prosecuted for bilking 440 clients out of settlement funds, and, in a bizarre twist, the criminal defense lawyer for one of the lawyers recently admitted to the Ky federal court handling the case that he himself had been suspended from practicing in a Tennessee federal court after being found in contempt of court. I don’t think we could make this kind of stuff up.

In the "wives of Texas Supreme Court justices behaving badly" category, the wife of Texas Supreme Court justice David Medina was indicted a second time for charges connected to their house fire. You may recall that there was outrage earlier this year from the sitting grand jury when the Harris County, Texas DA dismissed a previous indictment against the judge and his wife. I have several posts about it on this blog, but I’m too lazy to cross-post to those. If you’re interested, use the search function.

In New York, an appellate court upheld the jury finding against the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey stemming from the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. There are comments all around the blogosphere, including Turkewitz , MassTorts, Overlawyered, and How Appealing.Ted Frank was busy on this — also posting at Point of Law and writing an op-ed piece in the NY Sun.

In pharma litigation, Rep John Dingell figured out that "citizens can no longer trust" the FDA. No kidding? Who would have thunk it? When the FDA chief counsel is interfering in the heparin probe, I think we’d agree there’s a problem. Of course, personal injury lawyers have always known that the FDA and preemption was a joke.

Speaking of heparin, it appears the heparin contamination was intentional.

Another big story in this week was the concern over Lasik surgery. Last Friday, the FDA urged additional warnings for Lasik patients. This has been addressed by Milwaukee personal injury lawyer Paul Jacquart and NPR, among others.

In California, a hospital settled a medication error suit for $5.1 million.

In a little divergence, NPR has a series of stories about improper care in Army hospitals. Yesterday, they started with a story on a rash of accidental overdoses at Army hospitals. And today, they report that even after the uproar last year, the Army hospitals have a long way to go to provide quality care.

And hot off the presses, the state of Minnesota has agreed to settle cases from the horrible bridge collapse.

Turkewitz laments once again that personal injury blogs aren’t getting any respect.

John Day continues his series with What it Takes to Be A Great Trial Lawyer - Part 14.

And this is way off topic, but in Dallas County, Texas an 18th innocent man was cleared by DNA testing. An amazing number for one county.

Thanks again for reading. Have a great weekend.

Brooks Schuelke

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