Day on Torts

By now everyone has heard of the troubles for Dr. Ray Harron, the radiologist who read as many as 150 x-rays a day at $125 each, the results of which efforts were used as support of the claim of 75,000 asbestos claimants. As this article from today’s NYT demonstrates, the defense lawyers are going after him. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see what is going to happen next.

Aren’t you glad you did not use this gentleman as an expert? Don’t you know that there are dozens and dozens of lawyers who are sitting in their offices right now wondering when the process server will show up with a subpeona and a deposition notice? Or worse?

I hope that Dr. Harron is clean. If he is not, I hope that the lawyers who employed him did not know he was not.

Ok, I have lived long enough to have some idea how the world works. I do not pretend to understand how the world works, mind you, I just have some idea how it works.

I knew that it was not by happenstance that drug reps tended to be attractive women (and men). But it never came to my mind that the drug companies would be actively recruiting cheerleaders to sell drugs. Read this story from the New York Times.

I love this quote: “T. Lynn Williamson, [a] cheering adviser at Kentucky, says he regularly gets calls from recruiters looking for talent, mainly from pharmaceutical companies. … ‘They don’t ask what the major is,’ Mr. Williamson said. Proven cheerleading skills suffice. ‘Exaggerated motions, exaggerated smiles, exaggerated enthusiasm – they learn those things, and they can get people to do what they want.'”

The federal judge heading up the Vioxx MDL will permit the plaintiffs to call expert witnesses to prove that short-term use of Vioxx can cause cardiac problems.

Read about the ruling and other Vioxx news here.