5. A Great Trial Lawyer Maintains A Reasonable Caseload In Part 4 we discussed the fact that great trial lawyers take time to think about their cases. And we mentioned that many lawyer argue that they don’t have time to think. I suggest that there are only four possible reasons…
The United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit released a decision several months ago that presents a real danger for plaintiff’s lawyers and their clients who seek to rely on T.C.A. Section 20-1-119 to avoid a statute of limitations defense. The Tennessee Bar Journal published my article on…
The Tennessean has been kind enough to print an op-ed piece I wrote and to editorialize against the health care industry’s attempt to avoid full responsibility for the harm it causes to its patients. Read the editorial here. Read my op-ed piece here. Read the opposing op-ed piece by Rep.…
The Tennessee Board of Professional Responsibility has a website that includes a section that allows you to search ethics opinions by key word. Of course, it also has a complete set of the displinary rules.
The November 2007 Annals of Surgery has an interesting article on surgical errors. The abstract of the article says that the authors "analyzed 444 randomly sampled surgical malpractice claims from four liability insurers. Among 258 claims in which injuries due to error were detected, 52% (n = 133) involved technical…
We are hearing it again this year: doctors are leaving the state because we don’t have caps on damages in medical malpractice cases. When pressed for evidence on this point, a doctor will refer to "some guy in Memphis" or "some woman in Knoxville" who quit practicing medicine because of…
The Eastern Section of our Court of Appeals has ruled that Rule 5A(4)(c) of the Tennessee Rules of Civil Procedure means what it says and that a party cannot fax file an affidavit opposing a motion for summary judgment . Rule 5A (4)(c) says that “The following documents shall not…
Day on Torts: A Handbook for Tennessee Tort Lawyers 2008 has been updated to include all cases through Sunday, January 13, 2008. The updates work like this. After you have found the leading case summarized in one of 233 sections of the book, go to the "Free Updates" page of…
Yesterday I wrote about tort statistics revealed by the 2006-07 "Annual Report of the Tennessee Judiciary." Among the statistics I cited was that there were 584 medical malpractices cases filed in the state of Tennessee and a total of 15 medical malpractice trials. To put that in perspective, remember that according…
The Tennessee Supreme Court has just released the 2006-07 “Annual Report of the Tennessee Judiciary.” It has some amazing, indeed alarming, information. There were 584 medical malpractice cases filed in Tennessee last year. To put that in perspective, there were 10,165 general “Damages/Torts” cases filed. Indeed, there were less medical…