David Cline, the paramedic who was killed when the private ambulance he was driving slammed into the back of a TDOT roadside help truck on Interstate 65 on October 22, 2009, had a history of medical problems, including narcolepsy and epilepsy. Investigators are unsure why Cline left the highway but believe that the he…
The Tennessee Administrative Office of the Courts has released the 2008-09 Annual Report of the Tennessee Judiciary. The report includes information about court filings and dispositions for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2009. Here is some of the important data included in the Report: 1. There were only 10,659…
The South Carolina Supreme Court has ruled that the economic loss rule precludes a truck owner’s tort claims against the truck manufacturer. The case is Sapp & Smith v. Ford Motor Company, Opinion 26754 (S.C. December 21, 2009). Sapp filed suit against Ford alleging property damage to his vehicle (there…
Philip Brown, author of MS Litigation Review and Commentary, has an interesting post on the impact of social networking on the work of trial lawyers. An excerpt: I have talked with lawyers who are worried about a juror going home and researching parties on social network sites. What if a juror…
Today’s Tennessean has an article originally published in the Los Angeles Times that reveals a problem with nurses moving from state to state and leaving behind a bad disciplinary record. The article reports that "using public databases and state disciplinary reports, reporters found hundreds of cases in which registered nurses…
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. Here’s how you write a brief: brainstorm, research, brainstorm, outline, draft, revise,…
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…
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…
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…
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.