Personal Injury Law Round-Up #57

Sorry for the delay in posting. I was in Florida at a seminar most of last week, and after taking the family on a weekend detour to Disney World, we didn’t return until after midnight last night. So this week’s version won’t be a complete round-up, but a short highlight of what’s going on. I’d like to promise that I’ll do better next week, but looking at this week’s schedule, who knows what I’ll have next go round.

On tort “reform”…

One of the lead stories of the week was the Washington Post’s pseudo-editorial encouraging “comprehensive tort reform.” Of course, the editorial’s only real criticism of the civil justice system involves unscrupulous plaintiff’s attorneys (and they don’t even offer solutions to that problem). They wholly ignore unscrupulous defense lawyers or adjusters. All in all, it’s just another fluff, knee jerk reaction to the latest news story of the day without any real analysis of the situation.

Another lead tort reform story was the Wall Street Journal’s story on the use of arbitration by nursing homes. The WSJ law blog has a related post with its usual cast of interesting comments.

Staying with arbitration, on Tort Deform, Kia posts that San Francisco has filed suit against the National Arbitration Forum for its bias against consumers.

In Florida, Allstate says that it is releasing the so-called McKinsey documents. (Via TortBurger). This might actually be old news, but it’s just getting around to me.

Also on tort reform, the Southeast Texas Record talks about a snail mail letter debate on the pros/cons of tort reform between a Texas federal judge and an Austin lawyer that represents Texans for Lawsuit Reform. (Via Chris Robinette at TortsProf).

A few litigation highlights…

Virginia reached settlements with 21 families for the Virginia Tech shootings.

W.R. Grace has announced a settlement of all pending and future asbestos-related personal injury claims.

The deaths continue to mount in the Heparin mess.

And the best of the miscellaneous news…

And the always thoughtful Deliberations had a link to a new jury website, Jury Experiences, which (you might be able to tell from the name) invites jurors to write in about their experiences on juries. This is a site that is really worth taking a little time to read. For example, the first post for today is from a juror in a car wreck case who explains why the plaintiff’s lawyer should have asked what the jurors thought of chiropractors.

And John Day continues with What it Takes To Be A Great Trial Lawyer, part 11.

Thanks again for reading.

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/.