Damage paid for personal injury claims are not taxable, right? Wrong. Damages paid for personal injury claims "“on account of personal physical injuries or physical sickness” are not taxable. 26 U.S.C. § 104(a)(2). Damages paid for purely emotional injuries are taxable, at least in the opinion of the IRS. Now,…
Another day, another article about problems in the human tissue industry. This time it is Donor Referral Services of Raleigh, N.C., a company run by a man named Philip Guyett. This North Carolina firm in the business of body part brokering allegedly used an unsterile embalming room to get usable tissue. The…
The statute of limitations is tolled when the plaintiff is of unsound mind. Tenn. Code Ann. § 28-1-106. Does the fact that a Durable Power of Attorney (executed before the incompetency) is in existence trump the tolling statute and require the attorney-in-fact to take action within the original statute? The Tennessee…
From a recent press release issued by the Tennessee Dept. of Commerce and Insurance: "Public Chapter 744, effective May 23, 2006, contains several important changes to the Medical Malpractice Reporting Law of Tennessee, (Public Chapter 902, adopted in 2004, and codified at Tenn. Code Ann. § 56-54-101). For the first time, it…
Here is an interesting site that provides a good number of links of use to tort lawyers (and others). The site is published by the Philadelphia Association of Paralegals and has more than 100 links. For instance, Omni Medical Search is a site that I was unfamiliar with that is referenced by…
Merck got hammered twice yesterday, first in New Orleans and then in New Jersey. In New Orleans, a federal court jury ordered Merck to pay $51 M to a retired FBI agent who suffered a heart attack after taking Vioxx for three years. The case was a "must win" for…
The ABAs House of Delegates voted 207-137 to recommend adding to Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Rule 26(a)(2) a privilege for draft reports and communications between attorneys and their experts. A Law.com article on the votes reports that "[t]he proposed change was prompted by varying judicial interpretations of 1993 amendments…
Law.com has posted an interesting article about destructive testing in products liability actions. The article was written by Michael Hoenig and was originally published in the New York Law Journal. The article discussed the recent case of Mirchandani v. Home Depot, U.S.A., Inc., 235 FRD 611 (D. Md. 2006), in…
A recent study reports about the risk of lack of sleep on commercial drivers. In an article entitled "Impaired Performance in Commercial Drivers: Role of Sleep Apnea and Short Sleep Duration" researchers from the University of Pennsylvania "examined 406 truck drivers and found that those who routinely slept less than…
Under Tennessee law fault cannot be assigned to a plaintiff’s employer but the defendant is permitted to prove and argue that the employer was the cause in fact of the injury. But what if the defendant wants to ask the jury to apportion fault to an entity that is deemed…