The Tennessee Supreme Court released its decision in Hannan v. Alltel Publishing Company and has affirmed Judge Susano’s reversal of summary judgment in favor of the defendant. The court, by a 4-1 margin, re-affirmed its decisions in Byrd, McCarley and Blair and held a moving party who seeks to shift…
I have been doing some reading about Adobe Acrobat recently and came across this post about organizing documents using PDF Portfolios. I have not tried this method of document organization and, I confess, will probably ask one of our paralegals to look into it for our firm rather than attempting to…
The U.S. Department of Heath and Human Services has a website that delivers information on how well hospitals care for patients with certain medical conditions or surgical procedures, and the results of a survey of patients about the quality of care the patients received during a recent hospital stay. The…
The Federation of State Medical Boards has a website that allows you to order professional information on physicians and physician assistants. The reports include infomoration about disciplinary sanctions, education, medical specialty, licensure history and locations. The cost of each report is $9.95. Go the this site to place an order.…
Why should you care about the decision of the United States Supreme Court in Bell Atlantic Court v. Twombly , 127 S. Ct. 1955 (2007)? Because it changed the rules of pleading in federal court and, because Tennessee looks to interpretations of the federal rules to interpret its own similar rules, it…
The Congress has approved changes to the Federal Rules of Evidence, including the addition of Rule 502 dealing with the waiver of attorney-client privilege and work product protection as a result of inadvertent or intentional disclosure to another party. Click here for the text of the rule as it appears…
The Administrative Office of the Courts has released the form that must be filed by plaintiffs in medical negligence cases (and by defendants who allege fault of another health care provider). Both forms are available here. In general, a plaintiff must file the certificate within 90 days after filing suit.…
Yesterday, AAJ released a new report on complete immunity preemption titled, Get Out of Jail Free: A Historical Perspective of How the Bush Administration Helps Corporations Escape Accountability. This report reveals how in a stealth effort coordinated at the highest levels of the Bush administration, federal agencies were repeatedly ordered…
Associated Press has reported that Nebraska State Senator Ernie Chambers’ lawsuit against God has been dismissed for lack of service of process. The suit sought a permanent injunction to prevent God from committing acts of violence such as tornadoes and earthquakes. Just think, if God was a Tennessee doctor the…
Here is a fascinating article from the New York Law Journal about an opinion by Judge Jack B. Weinstein objecting to a defendant’s use of race-based statistics on life expectancy to reduce a damage award in a quadriplegia case.