The second post in this series reports on a new law that confers immunity from civil action upon victims of crime for testimony given at offender’s parole hearing unless testimony is intentionally or maliciously false and defamatory. Here is the full text of the new statute: T.C.A. Section 40-38-303. (a)…
For the last five or six years my friend Bill Marler, food poisoning lawyer extraordinaire, and I have worked together on food poisoning cases. Bill knows this area like the back of his hand and is widely understood to be the lawyer with the greatest expertise in this field. One thing I really…
As you would expect, the Tennessee General Assembly is not particularly fond of drug dealers. But did you know that the General Assemby had passed what they call the "Drug Dealer Liability Act?" The Act, codified at TCA 29-38-101 et seq, permits the recovery of damages caused by drug dealers. …
That is what Tennessee’s own Jim Hall called for in today’s New York Times. An excerpt from Jim’s op-ed piece: Because American medicine accepts error as an inevitable consequence of treatment, our hospitals, insurers and government do little to respond to unnecessary deaths. If we are to address the problem…
This post is a first in a series of posts that will address new laws passed by the 106th General Assembly and signed into law by Governor Bredesen. The posts will run two or three days per week over the next several weeks. The first post is a change to…
Texting while driving is now illegal in Tennessee, and a study from the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute reaffirms why the law is necessary. For truck drivers, the risk of a crash or near-crash event increases by a 23.2 times as compared with non-distracted driving. Read the entire study here. UPDATE: …
Deaths on Tennessee roads continued to decrease in 2008. A total of 1035 people were killed on Tennessee roads in 2008, down from 1211 in 2007and 1339 in 2004. Nationally, 37,261 people died in motor vehicle crashes in 2008. Tennessee deaths were 16.55 per 100,000 of population, over 33% higher…
Not in the Seventh Circuit, it doesn’t. In Bakery Machinery & Fabrication, Inc. v. Traditional Baking, Inc., No 08-1967 (7th Cir. June 29, 2009) the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit refused to vacate a default judgment under Rule 60(b)(6). The Court ruled as follows: [W]e drew a clear…
The trial of virtually every personal injury or wrongful death case involves the use of one or more photographs. The recent decision in Zerega Ave. Realty Corp. v. Hornbeck Offshore Transp., LLC, __ F.3d __ (2d Cir. July 6, 2009) (No. 08-0639-CV) reminds us that the failure to lay a…
I have released three prior posts on the financial condition of State Volunteer Mutual Insurance Company – click here to read them: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3. The bottom line is that conservative financial management at SVMIC has permitted the company to accumulate a quarter of a billion dollars…