Trey Mills is angry at Allstate. He explains why on his South Carolina Injury Law Journal blog.
Tips for Managing Witnesses
Winning Trial Advocacy Tips is one of the best blogs for trial lawyers in the entire blogosphere. Elliott Wilcox repeatedly delivers useful, timely information of interest to those of us who try cases. I encourage you to add it to your regular reading list.
Today, I share with you his post of tips to keep your witnesses happy and gain their cooperation. He is, as usual, dead-on. Ignore his advice at your peril.
An excerpt:
Patient Rights and Health Care Reform
Will the President sacrifice the rights of patients injured by medical malpractice to get Republicans to sign-off on a health care bill?
Steven Olsen explains why the President should not in this article titled "Why Shouldn’t Obama Throw Injured Patients Under the Bus to Get Heath Reform? Ask Steven Olsen."
Steven Olsen is a malpractice victim from California. Here is a letter written by the jury foreman after he learned that the jury’s damage award was cut because of California’s cap on damages.
New Decision on Diversity Jurisdiction
What is the principle place of business for a corporation for purposes of determining whether a federal court has diversity jurisdiction under 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1332(c)(1)? Well, what you thought you knew is no longer the law.
The United States Supreme Court ruled yesterday that the phrase
"principal place of business’ is best read asreferring to the place where a corporation’s officers direct, control, and coordinate the corporation’s activities. It is the place that Courts of Appeals have called the corporation’s “nerve center.” And in practice it should normally be the place where the corporation maintains its head-quarters—provided that the headquarters is the actual center of direction, control, and coordination, i.e., the “nerve center,” and not simply an office where the corpora-tion holds its board meetings (for example, attended by directors and officers who have traveled there for the occasion).
Secret Settlements Seminar
The American Association for Justice is hosting a teleseminar on March 16, 2010 on the ethics of secrets settlements. Get more information here.
Hospital Acquired Infections in the News
Two common conditions caused by hospital-acquired infections (HAIs) killed 48,000 people and ramped up health care costs by $8.1 billion in 2006 alone, according to a study released yesterday in the Archives of Internal Medicine.
Here is an excerpt from a summary of the study as reported at www.extendingthecure.com:
The researchers looked at infections that developed after hospitalization. They zeroed in on infections that are often preventable, like a serious bloodstream infection that occurs because of a lapse in sterile technique during surgery, and discovered that the cost of such infections can be quite high: For example, people who developed sepsis after surgery stayed in the hospital 11 days longer and the infections cost an extra $33,000 to treat per person.
Tennessee Personal Injury Client Advice
The Springfield Injury Law Blog has given us a great post titled "8 Ways to Help Your Personal Injury Lawyer Help Your Case." Obviously, the post informs personal injury clients how they can help their lawyer obtain a better result in their case.
It is so good I am going to reprint it here:
1. Give your lawyer the whole story
Federal Rules of Evidence PDF
The Federal Evidence Review has shared a PDF of the current federal rules of evidence. Only 40 pages in length (20 pages if you print on the front and the back of the page) this PDF is a handy addition to your trial notebook for cases in federal court.
Product Manufacturer Cannot Use Release Against Consumer
This is an interesting decision out of Colorado.
Executive Tans operated an upright tanning booth manufactured by Sun Ergoline. Before using the booth, Savannah Boles signed a release form provided by Executive Tans that said as follows: “I have read the instructions for proper use of the tanning facilities and do so at my own risk and hereby release the owners, operators, franchiser, or manufacturers, from any damage or harm that I might incur due to use of the facilities.” After entering the booth, several of Boles’s fingers came in contact with an exhaust fan located at the top of the booth, partially amputating them.
The Colorado Supreme Court refused to allow the manufacturer of the tanning both to assert the release as a bar to the claim. The court rejected the traditional test for determining the enforceability of exculpatory agreements (similar but not identical to the test we use in Tennessee) and court explained that
2009 Medical Malpractice Claims Reports Due March 1, 2010
The Tennessee Department of Commerce and Insurance has released the forms for reporting on medical malpractice claims for the 2009 calendar year.
The reports are due March 1, 2010.
Here are the instructions for filling out forms as a representative of the claimant. Here is the link to the reporting form.