The Rhode Island Supreme Court has ruled that a plaintiff who is injured in a slip and fall accident at a restaurant is entitled to a spoliation instruction if the restaurant, contrary to policy, did not prepare an accident report. The Court re-affirmed existing law in the state which provided…
Here is a link to an article I wrote for the Tennessee Bar Journal about a recent opinion discussing T.C.A. Sec. 20-1-119. Go to the link and locate the article and you will find a link to the article in the “Table of Contents” on the left side of the…
Do you want to see how the tort deform movement has made an impact on the laws of the fifty states (and D.C.)? See this article. The abstract: “This manuscript contains the most detailed, complete and comprehensive legal dataset of tort reforms in the U.S. The dataset records state laws…
The doctors have been claiming that there are shortages in the numbers of physicians and that the shortage is due to laws which hold doctors accountable for negligence that causes harm to patients. (You know, just as if they were truck drivers or other real people.) Well, yesterday’s Los Angeles…
“Are we negotiating or are we telling the truth?” That’s a quote from a defense lawyer friend of mine made while we were trying to resolve a medical malpractice case. I have used it many times over the years. The American Bar Association has issued a Formal Ethics Opinion recognizing…
It is going to be a busy week at Branham & Day. John Branham and Brandon Bass are trying a two-day personal injury case starting Monday morning in Gallatin. I start (what hopefully will be only) a three-day arbitration in a commercial case Tuesday – we have eleven notebooks of…
The Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit has ruled that a products liability claim against a catheter manufacturer are preempted. More specifically, the Court held that “tort claims that allege liability as to a PMA-approved medical device, notwithstanding that device’s adherence to the standards upon which it obtained premarket…
The number of products liability lawsuits filed in federal courts is declining. According to an article posted at www.insurancejournal.com, the number of federal products liability lawsuits declined by 14% last year and are on pace to decline 16% this year. Read the article here. The study itself may be found…
The Texas Supreme Court has ruled that executors of an estate can sue the decedent’s attorney for malpractice for negligently providing estate planning advice. In Belt v. Openheimer, Blend, Harrison & Tate, Inc., No. 04-0681 (May 5, 2005), the executors claimed that poor estate planning cost the estate $1.5M that…
Senators Clinton and Obama have written an article about the need for patient safety for the New England Journal of Medicine. The opening paragraph: “We have visited doctors and hospitals throughout the country and heard firsthand from those who face ever-escalating insurance costs. Indeed, in some specialties, high premiums are…