Articles Posted in Miscellaneous

SVMIC’s position on how the new statute making it more difficult to sue physicians will impact what doctors pay for medical malpractice insurance:

"Regarding the effect of this reform on your professional liability insurance, it will be difficult to quantify what, if any, rate changes are a direct result of the reform. A multitude of factors affect the filing of suits and awards in medical malpractice cases, therefore it may be a period of time before any effect will be realized. We congratulate the TMA on their accomplishment after many years of hard work for reform."

Is anyone surprised by this?

Ok – I know I have not been posting lately.  I spent 8 days in Canada fishing and returned on Saturday night.

I am now back to work and will be back on a normal blogging pattern this week.

Thanks for coming back to the site.

Did you know that Tennessee has a specific statute addressing sex abuse claims against therapists?

The "Therapist Sexual Misconduct Victims Compensation Act" is set forth in T.C.A. Sec. 29-26-201 et seq. A "therapist" is defined as "any person who performs therapy regardless of whether the person is licensed by the state." "Therapy" is also a defined term, and includes marital counseling, substance abuse treatment, family counseling, and other treatment.   The statute of limitations is the most generous of any personal injury claim in Tennessee.

AAJ has released a report titled "The Ten Worst Insurance Companies in America."  Read it here.

The list: 

1.  Allstate

This post has nothing to do with torts.

How is it possible that the White House, which has direct access to and hopefully control  over the State Department, the Defense Department, the CIA, the NSA, and  host of other agencies, possibly rely on a Web site called Encyclopedia of World Biography to prepare a biography on a world leader?   Want to know more?  Read this article in the Washington Post.  http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/08/AR2008070802652.html

BTW, read this for George W. Bush’s bio on the same site.  A teaser: 

I spent the last week at Rosemary Beach, Florida with my family.  I took a week off from blogging and virtually everything else and did nothing.

Let the blogging begin!  Here is a Tort Law Tibit from June of 2005:

The Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices is available, free of charge, online at the Federal Highway Administration website. The site not only has the latest 2003 edition, but goes back as far as the 1993 revisions. You should be able to find the right edition to address any pending or potential claim for a roadway that is dangerously unmarked. Compliance with the MUTCD is necessary, but not always sufficient. The MUTCD and the law still require reasonableness by a contractor or highway planner.

Harris Interactive conducted a online poll about  jury service in December 2007.  The findings include the following:

* "Two-thirds (65%) of Americans have been called to serve jury duty, two-thirds of that (68%) actually attended, leaving one-third (32%) who did not.

* Of those who have attended jury duty, just over half (55%) have actually served on a jury.

As a 51 year old man happily married to a beautiful, intelligent 37 year old woman, I confess I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about thongs.  I also confess that it never crossed my mind that a person wearing a thong could ever suffer a personal injury from the thong.    Oh sure, I knew that a thong could cause financial loss, usually in the form of alimony paid by the married man dating a woman who wore one.  And I could certainly image some degree of discomfort when wearing a thong in a foreseeable manner- clearly an assumed risk.  But actionable personal injury?  Nope, never crossed my mind.

Well, it has happened.  Or at least Macrida Patterson, a 52 year old woman from California, says it happened.  Her lawyer told The Smoking Gun that "a "design problem" caused [a] decorative piece [on the thong] to come loose and strike Patterson in the eye, causing damage to her cornea."    The offending piece of merchandise was  reportedly  a "’low-rise v-string’ from the Victoria’s Secret ‘Sexy Little Thing’ line."  Read the article and complaint here.

TSG also tells us that   "v-strings" are an undergarment that serves as  the Victoria’s Secret variant on the "g-string," " which has long been favored in the battle against visible panty lines" (also known as "vpls").  (Aren’t you men glad TSG saved us hours of time paging through the latest VS catalog trying to figure this out?  For those of you who don’t trust TSG, go here and conduct your own research.)

The Tennessee Supreme Court has issued an opinion interpreting Rule 35 of the Tennessee Rules of Civil Procedure.

Rule 35 is the rule the permits a party to have a physician of the party’s choice examine the adverse party.  Unfortunately, it is often referred to as an independent medical examination, and indeed the opinion mistakenly refers to it as such.  Rule 35 exams usually have the same degree of objectivity as a mother opining on  the character and physical appearance of her only son. 

But on to substance.  Very few civil procedure cases find their way to the Tennessee Supreme Court (exception:  Rule 56) and when one does get there we need to read it.  This is true even in this case where the plaintiff was pursuing a worker’s compensation claim and the issue is primarily covered by the Worker’s Compensation Act.