Personal Injury Law Round-Up #56

It’s been a crazy week here in Austin so this week’s offer is a little slim. I don’t know how Eric Turkewitz has time to pull of the biggest April Fool’s Day joke in the history of the blogosphere, but I’m jealous.

I will add that the fierce T-Ball Diamondbacks have their first game tomorrow (with yours truly as coach). So given that, it’s important to note that April 2008 is Sports Eye Safety Month. Given that our team is all 4 and 5 year olds, I think we should be okay. The DC Metro Area Personal Injury Blog also says that April is Alcohol Awareness Month. (I dare say anyone trying to teach the game of baseball to a bunch of 4 and 5 year olds will be aware of alcohol.)

On to the tort “reform” news….

I hate to link to my own post, but one tort reform story of the week is How the Paulson Plan Will Affect Personal Injury Claims. Eric Turkewitz and Steve Lombardi also commented on the story.

Along the same lines, the Washington Times reported on preemption — The Silent Tort Reform.  I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: At a time when you have stories in the press literally every day about the CPSC or the FDA being overworked and not having the resources necessary to carry out their most basic responsibilities, why would you think it’s a good idea to have them preempt state tort laws? This is simply the most blatant form of pandering to big business and insurance companies possible.

Over at TortDeform, they report that the US Chamber of Commerce is attacking the arbitration fairness act. This is truly shocking news.

And all tort “reformers” favorite “journalist,” John Stossell is back. He’ll be on 20/20 tonight again espousing the dangers of lawsuits. How he can condemn lawsuits after filing his own personal injury suit stemming from one of his interviews is beyond me. Just another example of a tort reform hypocrite, I suppose.

Before I blow a gasket thinking about John Stossell, I’ll move on to the litigation news….

One of the big litigation stories has been Wal-Mart’s continued prosecution of its subrogation interest against Deborah Shank. Wal-Mart finally bowed to the publicity and has announced that it’s dropping its claim. Now, if the rest of us can get the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal to cover our subrogation nightmares, we’ll all be better off.

I’m not sure if this is personal injury or criminal law, but Ben Glass has the story of a nurse arrested after infecting patients. I have to think that having criminal charges brought against the defendant helps the liability claim.

Wrapping up the Erin Brockovich story, PG&E has agreed to pay $20 million to settle the final toxic tort claims filed against it.

In tractor-trailer news, almost a quarter of the trucks inspected in a Dallas, Tx surprise safety inspection failed the test. Having driven on I-35 here in Austin, I’d hazard a guess that most of those failed trucks had driven through town at some point or another.

And this is bound to end up on Overlawyered, but it appears that a Texas suit might be filed based on a teen being shot while playing the video game God of War. And the boy was in Marble Falls, less than 30 minutes from Austin.

Now on to the miscellaneous news….

Over at LexBlog, Kevin O’Keefe had an interesting post entitled Some Personal Injury Lawyers Continue Abuse of Legal Blogs. In the comments, Kevin promised to write a post about what content he thought a personal injury lawyer blog should have. I’m still waiting (Are you listening/reading Kevin?)

Back at work, John Day has What It takes to Be a Great Trial Lawyer, Part 9 and 10.

For those of us trying to fight inertia and move to a paperless office, the Illinois Trial Practice Weblog has the paperless office wiki.

That’s it for now. Thanks again for reading, and have a great weekend.

Brooks Schuelke

To contact Austin Personal Injury Lawyer, Austin Personal Attorney, Austin Accident Lawyer, Austin Injury Lawyer Perlmutter & Schuelke, PLLC or to learn more about Austin Personal Injury visit https://www.civtrial.com/.