There have been two bills introduced by Senator Spector that, if passed and signed into law, would be good for those of us who do contingent fee work and for the clients who hire us.
S. 813 provides as follows:
(a) In General- Section 162 of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 (relating to trade or business expenses) is amended by redesignating subsection (q) as subsection (r) and by inserting after subsection (p) the following new subsection:
The Truck Safety Coalition has released data showing the number of fatal truck crashes by state. Tennessee had 156 fatal crashes in 2005 and 717 in the five-year period from 2001-2005. By comparison, Alabama had 122 fatal crashes in 2005 (706 in five-years), Kentucky had 124 (596), Arkansas had 116 (531), Mississippi had 91 (445) and Georgia had 229 (1162).
Tennessee had 2.62 fatal crashes per 100,000 people, the 15th highest rate in the country. Wyoming was the worst at 6.09. Rhode Island had the best rate at .09. Eight states in the Southeast were amoung the twenty states with the highest death rates.
Another 114,000 persons were injured in truck crashes in 2005.
Here is an interesting article about the admissibility of the testimony of a forensic economist. The article is written to give guidance to defense counsel about how to exclude such testimony.
The Tennessee Supreme Court has issued an opinion in Bennett v. Trevacca Nazarene University.
The summary:
"We accepted this appeal of a premises liability case to determine whether the “independent contractor rule” adopted in Blair v. Campbell, 924 S.W.2d 75 (Tenn. 1996), relieves a premises owner from liability when a premises owner provides an independent contractor inaccurate information germane to the contractor’s work. We hold that a property owner has a duty of reasonable care to provide accurate information to an independent contractor if the owner provides specific information germane to the repair after engaging the contractor. Because material facts remain in dispute between the parties in this case about what information the premises owner provided, the trial court erred when it granted summary judgment to the defendant. We affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeals and remand this case to the trial court for further proceedings consistent with this opinion."
Larry’s recent column on the med mal issue.
Update: link repaired.
The President’s daughter Jenna has written a book that she "very, very modestly" hopes will have the influence of Anne Frank’s The Diary of Anne Frank.
Like Jenna, I too find myself tightly bound by humility. Her willingness to reveal her hopes despite her extreme modesty compel me to reveal one of my own hopes: that this blog will have the influence of the Declaration of Independence.
There. I said it. I feel better already. Many of you plaintiff’s lawyers simply cannot comprehend the burden of being "very, very modest." Indeed, I felt extreme anxiety for weeks calling this blog "Dayontorts" and took this step only after discovering, much to my dismay, the "Humbleontorts" was not available.
Here is an article that talks about the negotiations concerning the med mal legislation currently pending in the General Assembly.
This excerpt tells it all: ""Basically [the potential compromise] was done between the legislators themselves representing probably both sides of the interests," Miller [VP of the TMA] said. "One of the things that didn’t come through was that doctors _ who are probably the main focus of this legislation _ were not party to these negotiations."
He is right. The main push for and therefore focus of the legislation is doctors. Not patients. Not the common good. Not justice.
State Volunteer Mutual Insurance Company , the doctor-owned medical malpractice insurance carrier, continues to enjoy profitability, according to my review of its 2006 Annual Report that was recently filed with the Tennessee Department of Commerce and Insurance.
A few highlights:
* Surplus, the insurance industry equivalent of net worth, increased $33,000,000 to a total of $217,000,000. This represents an increase of almost 18% in one year. This follows a $16.4 million dollar increase in 2005.
Vioxx is back in the news. Merck won one and lost one in New Jersey and is on trial in Illinois.
In New Jersey, the jury condemned the pre- April 2002 label but approved the label issued that month. The verdict was under New Jersey’s consumer law fraud, which has a fee-shifting provision. The jury will now consider the issue of causation on the pre-April 2002 label – the plaintiff is Frederick Humeston. Read more here.
The Illinois case has just started and is expected to take four to six weeks.
The Tennessean published an op-ed piece I wrote today. Read it here.
