Archive for November 2007
Personal Injury Law Round-Up Number 38
Personal Injury Law Roundup Number 38 Thanks for coming back to this week’s personal injury round-up after the short Thanksgiving week. Since it was a busy week, we’ll hop right into it. Keeping with Eric’s form, we’ll start off with tort reform. We’ll start with a trio of Texas stories. First, the Dallas Morning News…
Read MoreThe Baylor Judicial Tort Reform Survey in the News
As you may recall, Baylor Law School professors conducted a survey of the state’s district judges to get their thoughts on frivolous lawsuits, excessive verdicts, and the such. Two Texas plaintiffs’ lawyers have recently written a commentary based on the article for the San Antonio Express News. TLR attorney Lee Parsley had his response, and…
Read MoreThe Dangers of Binding Mandatory Arbitration
The brilliant Stephanie Mencimer has a new article entitled Suckers Wanted: How Car Dealers and Other Businesses Are Taking Away Your Right to Sue. In it, she starts by outlining the problems she had in trying to buy a car without an arbitration agreement. When she and her husband asked the dealership to remove the…
Read MoreShould Physicians Disclose Gifts From Drug Manufacturers?
The Nov. 1, 2007 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine has an article encouraging federal legislation to require pharmaceutical and medical device companies with more than $100 million in revenue to disclose the amount of money and gifts they give to physicians. The bill, entitled the “Physician Payment Sunshine Act,” is “about letting…
Read MoreIn Support of Pakistani Lawyers
Jay Harvey, an Austin personal injury lawyer and current president of the Texas Trial Lawyer’s Association, has a letter to the editor in today’s paper supporting the Pakistani lawyers who are standing up for the rule of law. There have been demonstrations all over the country in support of the lawyers, including demonstrations in New…
Read MoreTort Reform in The ER
Several states, including Texas, have special laws protecting emergency room physicians from medical malpractice litigation. These protections may include higher burden of proof on the plaintiff or a different standard of care (for example, providing only liability when there is gross negligence). Last week, the Torts Prof Blog outlined an interesting medical malpractice reform proposal being…
Read MorePersonal Injury Subrogation In The News
We’ve previously written about the problems of personal injury subrogation and ERISA subrogation. Now, a Minneapolis television station has run a story outlining the problems that a husband has encountered surrounding subrogation in the medical malpractice context. There are two things that are interesting about the story. First, it’s a good background on subgrogation. The…
Read MoreBe Careful What You Ask For
There is a long line of politicians who vote for various tort reform measures only to need to turn to the tort system themselves. The latest is Florida Republican Stephen Wise, a strong supporter of reform of medical malpractice and nursing home litigation. According to the Florida Times Union: As a state representative and senator representing…
Read MoreProgressive Gainsharing
We recently received a link to the Progressive Gainsharing program. Under the program, Progressive Insurance employees receive bonuses based on how well the company does. That’s not a problem for many industries, but it is a problem in insurance if adjusters receive monetary incentives to deny claims. Perhaps we should give Progressive some credit for…
Read MoreMedical Malpractice and "Defensive" Medicine
An anonymous Texas ER doc has a blog post discussing the medical malpractice story of Christopher Jones. Mr. Jones, 33, arrived at a Los Angeles area emergency room complaining of chest pains, where he was told to sit down and wait his turn. After more than three hours, he got up, walked outside, collapsed and…
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