Day on Torts

I know you remember the Feres doctrine.  The Feres doctrine comes from the decision in Feres v. United States, 71 S.Ct. 153 (1950) and provides that soldiers cannot sue the government for injuries that they incur as part of their military service.  Not surprisingly, the doctrine has been asserted by  government contractors who do work for the military and who seek immunity for their actions.

In McMahon v. Presidential Airways, Inc., No. 06-15303  (llth Cir. Oct 5, 2007) the widows of three soldiers who died in airplane crash in Afghanistan sued the entities that owned an operated the plane.  Feres   was rasied as a defense, but it was not the sole defense.  Here is the table of contents for the 72-page opinion:

I. Derivative Feres immunity

Penny White, Joe Riley and I are on the road again with our 4th annual 15-hour seminar program. 

Here is our schedule for each seminar:

First Day

To what extent are we our brother’s keeper?   That is a constant question posed in cutting edge tort cases, and this case in Illinois is no exception.

Iseberg sued his two partners because they failed to warn him that a fourth partner, Slavin, had made threats against Iseberg’s life.  Iseberg was a man of his word:  he shot Iseberg and rendered him a paraplegic.

From the opinion of the Illinois Supreme Court:

Day on Torts:  A Handbook for Tennessee Tort Lawyers 2008 is at the printer.  The printing date is October 18 and the books should be delivered to Brentwood on October 23, 2007.

You may recall that the book will be updated during the year via a website called "dayontortsbook.com."  I have seen the mock-up of that site – the folks at Justia did a great job on it.  (Justia also developed our firm’s website – www.dayblair.com.  These folks are extremely competent and I really enjoy working with them.) It will be available for public viewing by the end of the month.

Part I of the book is called "Leading Tennessee Tort Cases by Subject."  It contains detailed summaries of 233 cases on 233 tort law subjects.  It also contains citations to well over 1000 additional cases.  Here is the table of contents to this section of the book.

Yesterday afternoon I attended the funeral of Judge Bill Cain of Columbia.

Judge Cain served on the Court of Appeals and had served as a trial judge.  He was a lawyer who loved the law and loved to discuss the subject.  He prided himself on his ability to dive into the books and find the answer to a problem, and was justified in his pride.  We debated many tort law subjects over the years and I found him to be a worthy adversary, someone who not only knew the law but understood why the law was the way it was.  

Judge Cain despised the phrase "reasonable degree of medical certainty" and did his best to relegate it to the ash-heap of history.  He thought the "locality" rule in medical malpractice cases was assine, but applied it because he was duty-bound to do so.  He applied to plaintiffs and defendants, and in fact reversed a jury verdict for the defendant in a Clarksville case because the defendant’s experts did not know the local standard of care.