Jury orders Charter to pay $7 billion in technician’s murder of Texas customer

People hate their cable companies. A focus group could have told the defense that before trial. My bet is the defense rode their assumption that the company couldn’t be held responsible for the employee’s criminal conduct all the way to real trouble. It’s a good bet that they misread the jurors all the way through […]

It’s Official: Pandemics Wreck Trial Dates

Civil dockets have been upended for years, as trial courts prioritize their criminal caseload. This leaves civil plaintiffs cases languishing, delaying resolution and upending settlement leverage. Insurance carriers are happy to hold on to the money owed to injured plaintiffs while they struggle to navigate the court system and the pandemic. Choose your lawyer wisely. […]

Grandma used to say, “Keep your nose to it …”

I’m reading Citizen Cash by Michael Stewart Foley. The book tells the story of Johnny Cash’s misunderstood politics of empathy. In today’s divisive politics, Republicans and Democrats both claim him as their own. Conservatives view him as a traditional patriot and Liberals view him as a champion of the downtrodden. But the author suggests the […]

Happy Bastille Day!

Shortly after the storming of the Bastille, late in the evening of 4 August, after a very stormy session of the Assemblée constituante, feudalism was abolished. On 26 August, the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (Déclaration des Droits de l’Homme et du Citoyen) was proclaimed. One of my favorite posts here is one of my […]

Signed, Sealed, Delivered (I’m Yours)

Earlier this week, I posted about a Florida case deciding that an expert witness used by a Plaintiff was not qualified under Florida’s pre-suit rules for medical malpractice cases. In that case, the Court ruled that the Plaintiff did not satisfy the pre-suit screening rules because their expert was insufficiently qualified. My earlier post about […]

Happy Day, Henry David Thoreau!

“It is never too late to give up our prejudices. No way of thinking or doing, however ancient, can be trusted without proof. What everybody echoes or in silence passes by as true today may turn out to be falsehood tomorrow, mere smoke of opinion, which some had trusted for a cloud that would sprinkle […]

The Lazarus Phenomenon

I look at the world through a gothic lens. I love the old and traditional mixed with the new and modern. “The Lazarus Phenomenon” describes the spontaneous return of electrical heart function and circulation after CPR (often abbreviated in a medical record as ROSC). It was first described in 1982 when I was in college. […]

One Doctor’s $355M #QualityFraud: Lap Band Surgeries

Prosecutors say Omidi incentivized employees to make sure patients received sleep studies and then falsified the results to show that patients had obstructive sleep apnea. Here is the story in the LA Times on what started with a billboard campaign across Los Angeles. Former doctor, company behind 1-800-GET-THIN found guilty of fraud