Day on Torts

March 24, 2006

John Ritter’s Family Settles Med Mal Lawsuit

John Ritter died of an aortic aneurysm in 2003. His family filed a medical malpractice lawsuit against various health care providers. It now appears that the case has been settled.

I met John Ritter in New York 5 or 6 years ago. I went to a play and at the end the cast came back onto the stage and auctioned off a prop to raise money for an AIDS group. I “won” the auction and got to go backstage, meet the cast (including Henry Winkler), get photos, etc. It was a good deal of fun.

The reason for that little story is this: John Ritter could not have been more gracious. He spent part of his life in Nashville (his dad was country music legend Tex Ritter), and actually lived in a beautiful house about 4 miles away from my house. We talked about Nashville and he told me what wonderful memories he had of my adoptive home. I could tell that he was a kind, compassionate man.

March 24, 2006

Death of Milda Heath, my Grandmother

by The Law Offices of John Day, P.C.

Wednesday morning at 10:30 a.m. my grandmother died at home at the age of 97. My wife Joy and I leave for Wisconsin this morning; the funeral is Saturday in Platteville, a college town of 10,000 people. Platteville is in the Southwest corner of the state and about nine miles from Rewey, the 200+ person village where my grandma lived most of her life.

Grandma graduated from college at the age of 16 (a teaching certificate took one year in 1924) and began teaching one-room school in a schoolhouse on County Trunk A in Iowa County, Wisconsin about 3 miles outside of Rewey. She taught school for thirty years, interrupting her service to raise two daughters. The last years of her career she taught a combined first and second grade class in the brick school across the street from her little yellow home on Main Street. My grandfather built that home from wood he recovered from an old house he tore down.

Every summer she had each of her grandchildren spent one week with her. This was a big deal for my family – Grandma lived 180 miles of two-lane roads away. How she managed to deal with a room full of little kids throughout the school year and then accept the responsibility of having a kid in her home virtually every week of the summer amazes me to this day.

March 23, 2006

Research on Defense of Punitive Damages Cases

by The Law Offices of John Day, P.C.

Punitive damages in Tennessee are rarer than hen’s teeth. But that doesn’t mean that they shouldn’t be sought in appropriate cases – of course they should.

However, it is not enough to simply say: “what the defendant did was bad, real bad” and hope that you can carry the day. Punitive damage cases are aggressively defended and you need to have a good idea of the way defense counsel is going to approach the case.

Here is an article written by Dale E. Hausman of Washington, D.C. His firm represents insurers in insurance coverage matters. The article is titled “An Insurer’s Defense Against Punitive Damages Claims,” and although it is a little dated on the law it gives you an idea of what you will be facing at trial – and thereafter.

March 23, 2006

Lanier v. Merck, Round 2, Post 12

by The Law Offices of John Day, P.C.

The defense starts it case in the New Jersey Vioxx trial. The trial is expected to be over next week.

March 23, 2006

This op-ed piece from today’s

by The Law Offices of John Day, P.C.

This op-ed piece from today’s New York Times is so good it needs to be repeated in full in this blog.

The Doctor Will See You for Exactly Seven Minutes
By PETER SALGO

WHEN politicians speak of America’s health care needs, they often miss an important point: the doctor-patient relationship has become frayed. Patients aren’t unhappy just because health care costs too much (though they would certainly like it to be more affordable). Rather, people sense a malaise within the system that has eroded the respect they feel patients deserve.

March 23, 2006

Editorial Re: Tort Reform

by The Law Offices of John Day, P.C.

Here is an editorial from Wausau Daily Hearld Wisconsin, the county seat in my home county in the Northwoods.

A sample:

“Now legislators have pulled another number from thin air and set it as the cap after hearing tales of horror and woe from the state’s physicians. You likely heard or saw some of their ads. They said that without a cap, doctors would flee the state for fear of being sued, or that health care costs would skyrocket to compensate doctors for increasing insurance premiums.

March 22, 2006

Lanier v. Merck, Round 2, Post 11

by The Law Offices of John Day, P.C.

Motion for directed verdict denied. Merck has now begun to offer its defense to the two Vioxx cases consolidated for trial in New Jersey. Read more here.

Meanwhile, the California Vioxx cases are heating up. Learn more here.

March 22, 2006

Natalee Holloway

by The Law Offices of John Day, P.C.

The death of Natalee Holloway is a tragedy in every sense of the word. It is a tragedy compounded by screaming skulls (as opposed to talking heads) like Nancy Grace, a pseudo-journalist who has successfully managed to purge any gray matter she might have of anything she was supposed to learn in law school about the Bill of Rights. Nancy Grace is a poster child for what is wrong with cable “news” shows.

Back to Natalee. Her parents have filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Joran Van Der Sloot and Paulus Van Der Sloot. Under the law in every state, they certainly have a right to do so, i.e. they have a right to prove in the civil justice system what the criminal justice system has not been able to prove.

The Van Der Sloots have been sued in New York. Natalee’s parents are asking Alabama law to apply to that case.

March 21, 2006

Lanier v. Merck, Round 2, Post 10

by The Law Offices of John Day, P.C.

The news from the New Jersey Vioxx trials.

March 21, 2006

SCOTUS Denies Cert in Punitive Damages Case

by The Law Offices of John Day, P.C.

The Supreme Court denied cert in a cigarette case yesterday, letting a $50,000,000 punitive damages award stand against Phillip Morris. The compensatory damages in the case were $5,500,000.

This will be an encouragement to the plaintiff in the Oregon tobacco case; recall that the Oregon Supreme Court affirmed a $79.5 million punitive damage verdict for that plaintiff recently.