Scheduling orders are wonderful tools that are often overlooked by far too many plaintiff’s lawyers. One of the most important deadlines to put in a scheduling order is a deadline by which the defendant must allege the fault of a person not a party to the action. …
A settlement has been reached in Mohr v. Daimler Chrysler Corp., a products liability case which alleged defects in a 2000 Dodge Caravan. The Court of Appeals affirmed almost $5,000,000 in compensatory damage awards for the death of the driver and front-seat passenger in the case. The court also affirmed…
Penny White, Joe Riley and I are on the road again this Fall for the 2009 Justice Programs seminars. This two-day, 15-hour is designed for Tennessee lawyers who do civil litigation and who are looking for substantive continuing legal education that will help them better serve their clients. We will be…
If you don’t understand the title of this post, you will want to log into the seminar that goes by the same name that is sponsored by AAJ. This seminar, exclusively for plaintiff’s lawyers, will analyze the USSC decisions in these important cases and explain how they will impact…
Max Kennerly has done it again. Read this post on the Litigation and Trial bog which looks behind the allegation that the American people support medical malpractice reform. Before you do, read the following: DO YOU AGREE OR DISAGREE WITH THIS STATEMENT: As part of any health care reform plan, Congress needs…
One of the battles in the preparation of scheduling orders is the deadlines for disclosure of expert witnesses. The defense always wants the plaintiff to go first, and wants an additional 30 or 60 or even 90 days to disclose its experts. Sometimes, the defense wants to depose the plaintiff’s experts before…
Nashville trial lawyer John T. Conners, Jr. died yesterday in his home in West Meade. He would have turned 90 in March 2010. He was a name-partner at Boult Cummings Conners & Berry in Nashville and practiced law over 50 years.. To say that John Conners was an excellent lawyer is an…
A couple years ago I wrote this post about how to exercise preemptory challenges. Last week, I got a call from a lawyer on this issue once again, and thought I should re-run it. It is always a good idea to ask the trial judge at the pretrial conference or…
This is the last of 22 posts in our series of the new laws of interest to tort lawyers. If you missed any of these posts all of them are collected in the "Legislation 2009" category. The last post concerns the changes to the rules of civil procedure, evidence, and…
Post 21 of this series re-designates the current language of existing T.C.A. Section 70-7-104 (the Recreational Use Statute) as subsection (a) and then adds a subsection (b). Thus, as of July 1, the new statute reads as follows: (a) This part does not limit the liability that otherwise exists for:…