Today (August 4) I will be speaking on behalf of the Nashville Bar Association about various tort and civil procedure topics that cause lawyers to lose sleep. The title of the speech is " KEY PRACTICE STRATEGIES FOR TORT LAWYERS: SOLVING ISSUES THAT KEEP YOU UP AT NIGHT." The program qualifies for 1.5 hours of CLE credit.
Read more here.
The government of Thailand wants to have a scheme to compensate victims of medical malpractice. Many Thai doctors are opposed to the law. Here is an argument made by the physicians, as reported in Taiwan News:
It means our staff would have to be extra careful during work, which would decrease efficiency," said Somkid Auapisithwong of Thai Federation of Doctors, Main Hospitals and General Hospitals, which looks after the interests of medical practitioners in state hospitals. "We’re already very stretched. Some of our nurses have to work almost 365 days. This would add more stress to our staff. They would have to be extra careful with all sorts of risks and this will hinder their work.
Thanks to Torts Prof for informing me about this article.
This post is part of our continuing effort to advise Tennessee lawyers about substantive law changes resulting from the actions of the General Assembly.
Public Chapter 865 sets forth maximum charges to lawyers (and presumably others) for obtaining medical records. Here are the maximum charges:
The party requesting the patient’s records is responsible to the provider for the reasonable costs of copying and mailing such patient’s records. For other than records involving workers’ compensation cases, such reasonable costs shall not exceed twenty dollars ($20.00) for medical records five (5) pages or less in length and fifty cents (50¢) per page for each page copied after the first five (5) pages and the actual cost of mailing. Any third-party provider of record copying and related services shall be subject to the reasonable cost limits contained in this section and shall not impose any charge or fee for such services in excess of such cost limits. The costs charged for reproducing records of patients involved in a workers’ compensation claim shall be as defined in § 50-6-204.
This post is part of our continuing effort to advise Tennessee lawyers about substantive law changes resulting from the actions of the General Assembly.
Public Chapter 858 sets forth a procedure for helping injured workers obtain medical benefits they are entitled to receive after a judgment or settlement of a worker’s compensation action. It allows a Department of Labor employee to order an employer to pay for treatment and award attorney’s fees and costs incurred by the employee to obtain the benefits.
It became effective on April 30, 2010.
This post is a part of our effort to advise our fellow lawyers of statutes that were enacted during the 2010 legislative session.
Public Chapter 850 is known at "Katie Beth’s Law." It requires the use of pool alarms in all swimming pools ( a defined term) installed after July 1, 2011. The poorly-drafted act excludes public pools and pools in multi-family housing operations. The failure to install a pool alarm is a Class C misdemeanor.
"Katie Beth’s Law" is named a child who drowned in a residential swimming pool in Cookeville in 2009. Katie Beth was the great granddaughter of Sen. Charlotte Burks.
There are lots and lots of reasons to be a good dad, not the least of which is to avoid having your son or daughter actively oppose your effort to be a judge by taking out an ad in the local newspaper.
A recent study gives yet another reason of why it is difficult for a plaintiff to win a medical malpractice case in Nashville.
MTSU’s Business and Economic Research Center has released a study that states that puts health care industry’s annual economic impact in Nashville at $30 billion. That represents an increase of 60 percent since 2004. The number of jobs in teh Nashville MSA directly tied to the health care industry has grown from 94,000 to more than 110,000.
The study reports that "[m]ore than 56 major health care companies (public and private) have chosen Nashville as their home, and seven of the nation’s 12 leading for-profit acute care hospital companies are located in Nashville, controlling more than one-third of the investor-owned hospitals in the United States."
I have said for years that it is essential that lawyers trying tort cases must visit the scene of the events to adequately prepare for trial. Now, Winning Trial Advocacy Tips has written a post called "Trial Lawyers at the Scene of the Crime" that does an excellent job of explaining why it is so important to do so.
This is one of a series of posts that will excerpt sections from the third edition of my book, Day on Torts: Leading Tennessee Tort Cases. To order the book go here.
§ 14.1 Generally
The Case: Anderson v. Armstrong, 171 S.W.2d 401 (Tenn. 1943).
I readily and proudly admit to being a plaintiff’s lawyer. And, I confess, from time to time I have taken what some would argue as "aggressive" positions on the responsibility of certain defendants to warn others of the risk of harm.
However, the most aggressive plaintiff’s lawyer on the planet would not think the warning given in the restrooms in the convention center in Vancouver was necessary. This is the language of a sign posted above each urinal.
The Vancouver Convention Centre is committed to sustainability and uses recycled non-potable water from its Waste Treatment Facility to flush toilets and urinals. This water is not intended for consumption.
