Day on Torts

May you and your family enjoy a wonderful Christmas and have a safe and healthy 2006 – and beyond.

The President will sign a budget bill containing a provision for immunity for manufacturers of certain vaccines. I cannot track down the legislation itself but here is an ATLA summary of it: “The liability provisions allow the Secretary of HHS to declare that a drug, device, or vaccine is a…

Those of you who attend ATLA conventions probably know Howard Nations. Howard is a Vandy Law grad who practices in Houston. He is a frequent speaker at ATLA programs. This is a paper he wrote called ?Shakespeare’s Tribute to Trial Lawyers.” Read it and feel good about what you do.…

“If you have to go to the bathroom, you have to go, water on the floor or not.” That comes to us from Judge Susano, writing a concurring opinion in a new slip and fall case out of East Tennessee. The incarcerated plaintiff got up at 1:00 A.M. to use…

It is a good idea to write a reject letter to a potential client when you turn down a case. A good number of lawyers tell the receipent of the letter something about the statute of limitations on the particular claim in such a letter. This decision reminds us why…

The high court of Massachusetts upheld a lower court decision that found and enforced an oral fee-splitting arrangement between two lawyers. The lawyer who refused to share the fee claimed that the agreement was not only not it writing but was not agreed to by the client (which is also…

The federal Vioxx case that was mistried earlier this month has been set for a second trial on February 6, 2006. Read more here.

Locked Nest Mobster By Howard H. Vogel Guest Spoofer Nashville, Tennessee – December 18, 2005 Anonymous sources high up in the Bredesen administration announced today a break through in the Food for Tickets investigation that spans the administrations of four Tennessee governors. In a recent raid upon a locked janitors…

Here is a e-book written by Judge Mark Painter in Ohio. The book is called “Legal Writing 201” and it contains 30 rules that will help you write for, not like, a judge. (That is what the sub-title says, I promise.) Thanks for the lead from Appellate Law and Practice.

As I have mentioned in some past posts (the most recent one can be read here) the voters of Florida passed a constitutional amendment one year ago that severely limited the amount of attorneys’ fees in medical negligence actions. Lawyers who believed that a case was valid but who could…