The United States Supreme Court denied cert in Flax v. DaimlerChrysler Corporation, the products liability, punitive damages, and negligent infliction of the emotional distress case decided by the Tennessee Supreme Court last year. Here is my post from last July on the decision by the Tennessee court.
Last year I wrote about the Tennessee Department of Commerce and Insurance’s 2008 Medical Malpractice Claims Report. The report revealed data from medical malpractice cases settled and tried in Tennessee in calendar year 2007.
The numbers:
Total judgments for plaintiffs
"I’ve got a $1,000,000 lawsuit."
No – you have a lawsuit with a $1,000,000 ad damnum. There is a huge difference between the two.
Tennessee law requires an ad damnum in all cases except medical malpractice cases. An ad damnum must be stated in the initial complaint only in products liability cases; different judges impose different deadlines on when a specific ad damnum must be stated in other types of cases.
On Tuesday I posted David B. Troxel, MD’s article in The Doctor’s Advocate about VTE. Today, I include another article by the same doctor – this one about diagnosis and treatment of PE.
Here it is.
To be precise, I am not talking about iPhones. I am talking about the apps for iPhones. There are hundreds and hundreds of iPhone apps for health care providers that permit one to help formulate a differential diagnosis, check for drug-drug interactions, or identify medications.
So, does the standard of care require a doctor to buy and use these apps relevant to his or her field?
Not today. But as time goes on look for the standard of care to include either the knowledge of relevant data that can be gathered from such sources or ready means to access it via iPhone, Blackberry, etc. Medical students are already being trained for the use of these devices, and it is only natural that the standard of care will ultimately incorporate the use of these tools.
David B. Troxel, MD of the Doctors Company has written a great article about VTE inThe Doctor’s Advocate.. The article reviews the risk factors for VTE, the prevention of VTE, and the diagnosis of DVT and includes a reference to the American College of Chest Physicians’ guidelines.
Read here – and learn.
Last night at about 10:45 EDT I had to occasion to start counting blessings. My advancing age means I do this more and more, and it also causes me to realize that I should have counted those blessings more frequently in years past . I will tell you what gave rise to the time for reflection in a moment, but permit to re-count a few of the blessings of yesterday:
Yes, the music of the Boss causes one to count blessings, and May 18, 2009 goes down as a very blessed day, indeed.
On September 28, 2008 FRE 502 become applicable in federal court. The rule provides that under certain circumstances the disclosure of attorney-client material and work product material does not constitute a waiver. Read the full rule here.
Federal Evidence Review is a great resource for infromation about this rule. Click here for all you need to know abou this rule.
Last Monday I referred to the Palsgraf opinion and took the opportunity to re-read it. I suggest you do the same. The dispute between Justice Cardozo and Justice Andrews lives on. Read this and tell me who could have written the exact same words almost 100 years later:
The proposition is this. Every one owes to the world at large the duty of refraining from those acts that may unreasonably threaten the safety of others. Such an act occurs. Not only is he wronged to whom harm might reasonably be expected to result, but he also who is in fact injured, even if he be outside what would generally be thought the danger zone. There needs be duty due the one complaining but this is not a duty to a particular individual because as to him harm might be expected.
The first couple sentences sound exactly like Chief Justice Holder’s position on the law of premises liability in Tennessee. To be sure, she would likely draw the causation circle a little tighter than Justice Anderson, but she views the concept of duty much differently than Justices Clark, Wade and Koch (who are relying on precedent). We don’t know where Justice Lee is on the issue yet.
The United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit recently ruled that federal law applies to determination what sanctions should be available for relief of spoiled evidence in federal question cases. The en banc decision reversed precedent and brought the circuit in line with other appellate courts.
An excerpt: "Because failures to produce relevant evidence fall ‘along a continuum of fault – ranging from innocence through the degrees of negligence to intentionality,’ the severity of a sanction may, depending on the circumstances of the case, correspond to the party’s fault. Thus, a district court could impose many different kinds of sanctions for spoliated evidence, including dismissing a case, granting summary judgment, or instructing a jury that it may infer a fact based on lost or destroyed evidence." [Citations omitted.]
Read Adkins v. Wolever, No. 07-1421 (6th Cir. Feb. 4, 2009) here.
