Last week Tennessee’s health care industry tried to hijack the Governor’s Cover Tennessee bill in an effort to obtain caps on their liability. The effort failed, thanks to the efforts of the entire Democratic Caucus in the Senate, Chairpman Person (R-Memphis), Senator Williams, and others. The industry worked to amend…
The property and causalty insurance cycle, understood by everyone except some (but not all) Republican lawmakers, continues to turn. Insurance company profits are swelling and insurance price increases have come to a virtual halt. Last year premiums rose an average of one-half of one percent and net income increased 12%,…
OK, so it is a compromise and settlement of a divorce case. The fact remains that the law of compromise and settlement in Tennessee has been in disarray and the Tennessee Supreme Court has taken a step in the right direction to get it fixed. In Barnes v. Barnes, No.…
The SCOTUS has decided the Sereboff v. Mid Atlantic Medical Services, Inc. case – the long awaited case that was to tell us about an ERISA plan’s right to seek reimbursement of medical payments from a tort recovery. The Court held that the payments were recoverable. The case was decided…
Professor Anthony Sebok from the Brooklyn Law School has written an interesting paper on punitive damages. Here is his abstract of the article: In this article I argue that the current problem with punitive damages in the United States is not, as is popularly believed, that they are out of…
Here is a great opinion out of California that does a nice job of handling the “causation” issue in a case against a security guard company that is alleged to have failed to provide proper protection to a c-store employee. The case is Mukthar v. Latin American Security Company, B183968…
Yesterday I posted changes to the Federal Rules of Evidence. Below, in the language of US Courts, are the changes to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. Absent action by Congress, the changes are effective December 1, 2006. Civil Rule 9 (Pleading Special Matters) (conforming amendment pertaining to Supplemental Rule…
The United States Supreme Court has approved changes to several rules of the Federal Rules of Evidence. The changes become effective December 1, 2006 unless Congress votes to overturn them. Here is the language of the rule changes from the US Courts website: Evidence Rule 404 (Character Evidence Not Admissible…
The Nebraska Supreme Court has ruled that plaintiffs could not argue that a surgeon should have disclosed his displinary history unless there was proof that the standard of care required disclosure. The Court held that plaintiffs “never established that the standard of care required such disclosures. Rather, they ask us…
The USSC has ruled that a state may not enforce its Medicaid lien out of money paid to the plaintiff for losses other than medical expenses. The case is Arkansas Department of Health and Human Services v. Ahlborn, No. 04-1506 (decided May 1, 2006). Arkansas had a statute that permitted…