The second post in this series reports on a new law that confers immunity from civil action upon victims of crime for testimony given at offender’s parole hearing unless testimony is intentionally or maliciously false and defamatory.
Here is the full text of the new statute:
T.C.A. Section 40-38-303.
For the last five or six years my friend Bill Marler, food poisoning lawyer extraordinaire, and I have worked together on food poisoning cases. Bill knows this area like the back of his hand and is widely understood to be the lawyer with the greatest expertise in this field.
One thing I really respect about Bill is that he still practices law at what I call the "retail" level. I contrast that with what I call lawyers who function as "wholesalers;" that is, lawyers who race to file personal injury cases as class actions (medical monitoring is different) and treat cases as "inventory." Bill actually cares about the people he represents, and despite the fact that he files cases across America (unfortunately there is a real food safety problem in America) and spends a lot of time in Washington DC speaking out for food safety he still is hands-on with clients and gives them the attention that they deserve.
Earlier today our firms filed a case on behalf of two people in Memphis who contracted salmonella poisoning after eating food served by A & R Barbecue in Memphis. Both plaintiffs, a father and his son, suffered acute kidney failure as a result of their Salmonella infections, and needed extensive medical treatment, including dialysis. Apparently twenty people were poisoned at this event. Read more about the litigation here.
As you would expect, the Tennessee General Assembly is not particularly fond of drug dealers. But did you know that the General Assemby had passed what they call the "Drug Dealer Liability Act?"
The Act, codified at TCA 29-38-101 et seq, permits the recovery of damages caused by drug dealers. We just used this Act to add an additional cause of action against a man who we alleged engaged in inappropriate conduct with two pre-teen females and from time to time used a drug to help accomplish his actions. The use of the Act was important because (a) it gave us a claim for attorney’s fees and (b) it provides for prejudgment attachment of assets of the defendant.
The Act contains several sections, but this is the section that creates the cause of action, identifies who can file suit, and states what damages can be recovered.
That is what Tennessee’s own Jim Hall called for in today’s New York Times. An excerpt from Jim’s op-ed piece:
Because American medicine accepts error as an inevitable consequence of treatment, our hospitals, insurers and government do little to respond to unnecessary deaths. If we are to address the problem in a serious manner, we must first change this culture.
Jim is the former chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board. Read the entire op-ed piece here.
This post is a first in a series of posts that will address new laws passed by the 106th General Assembly and signed into law by Governor Bredesen. The posts will run two or three days per week over the next several weeks.
The first post is a change to the Tennessee Peer Review Law of 1967. The bill will be of interest to any one who does medical malpractice or any other area of health care law.
Here is a summary of the legislation:
Texting while driving is now illegal in Tennessee, and a study from the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute reaffirms why the law is necessary.
For truck drivers, the risk of a crash or near-crash event increases by a 23.2 times as compared with non-distracted driving.
Read the entire study here.
Deaths on Tennessee roads continued to decrease in 2008. A total of 1035 people were killed on Tennessee roads in 2008, down from 1211 in 2007and 1339 in 2004. Nationally, 37,261 people died in motor vehicle crashes in 2008.
Tennessee deaths were 16.55 per 100,000 of population, over 33% higher than the national average of 12.25 deaths per 100,000 citizens.
Of the 1035 Tennessee deaths, 605 involved single vehicle crashes. A total of 95 of the deaths involved at least one large truck.
Not in the Seventh Circuit, it doesn’t. In Bakery Machinery & Fabrication, Inc. v. Traditional Baking, Inc., No 08-1967 (7th Cir. June 29, 2009) the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit refused to vacate a default judgment under Rule 60(b)(6).
The Court ruled as follows:
[W]e drew a clear line in United States v. 7108 West Grand Avenue, 15 F.3d 632, 634 (7th Cir. 1994) when we said that “[t]he clients are principals, the attorney is an agent, and under the law of agency the principal is bound by his chosen agent’s deeds.” The rule is that all of the attorney’s misconduct (except in the cases where the act is outside the scope of employment or in cases of excusable neglect) becomes the problem of the client. See id. A lawyer who inexcusably neglects his client’s obligations does not present exceptional circumstances. See Williams, 890 F.2d at 996. Hinterlong’s actions, even with BMF’s purported diligence, do not fall within the exceptions to the rule and do not rise to the level of ‘exceptional’ to warrant such ‘extraordinary’ relief.
The trial of virtually every personal injury or wrongful death case involves the use of one or more photographs.
The recent decision in Zerega Ave. Realty Corp. v. Hornbeck Offshore Transp., LLC, __ F.3d __ (2d Cir. July 6, 2009) (No. 08-0639-CV) reminds us that the failure to lay a proper foundation will result in exclusion of photographs at trial. The opinion reminds us that the "standard for admissibility of photographs requires the witness to recognize and identify the object depicted and testify that the photograph is a fair representation of what it purports to portray." The witness attempting to authenticate the photographs identified the object but was not asked whether the photograph was a fair and accurate representation of the object. The exclusion of the photograph was affirmed on appeal.
Recall that "[t]he witness qualifying a photograph … does not need to be the photographer or see the picture taken. It is only necessary that he recognize and identify the object depicted and testify that the photograph fairly and correctly represents it.” Kleveland v. United States, 345 F.2d 134, 137 (2d Cir. 1965)
I have released three prior posts on the financial condition of State Volunteer Mutual Insurance Company – click here to read them: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.
The bottom line is that conservative financial management at SVMIC has permitted the company to accumulate a quarter of a billion dollars in net worth, even as the number of policyholders has declined 4% of the last year.
So how is that impacting rates?
