Turns out, politics isn’t the only place where misinformation is used to ply the soil that grows bad ideas. In the 1980’s, health care providers and insurance carriers deliberately and falsely yelled that the sky was falling due to negligence claims and payouts. Their solution? Caps on damages in the most righteous and significant cases. […]
Sentencing Mitchell, Recorder of Leeds, Judge Guy Kearl QC, said: “I don’t doubt you didn’t intend to undermine the course of justice but that is the effect of what you were doing.” As a solicitor, he added, Mitchell knew “the importance of court orders and the consequences of breaching them”. “I have formed the view […]
“Your Honor, I distinctly heard someone at Mr. Thompson’s table say the word “cheeses”.” I thought I’d mumbled it under my breath. Apparently not. It was a bench trial and there was no jury so things had gotten a little loose after a day or two of everyone getting comfortable with one another. Maybe too […]
A North Carolina appellate court recently ruled that civil litigants need counsel physically present when they are deposed. This wholesale ban on personal attendance of Defendant’s counsel at depositions of its own employees and witnesses presented the constitutional issue Defendant asserts in this appeal and was not supported by existing law, emergency orders, or evidence. […]
And sometimes the critical need to focus on persuasion can understandably affect a trial lawyer’s focus on sometimes mundane legal issues. Behind every good trial strategy lies a series of arguments, objections and rulings that could – theoretically – set a case up for appeal regardless of the verdict. I know this better than most, […]
I watched the American Bar Association’s recommendation of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s nomination to the Supreme Court. It all made sense. She’s highly qualified. We can all celebrate that she served as a public defender, tried civil rights cases, and served as a trial judge before being elevated. These are qualities that are historically underrepresented […]
The Jury consequently invests the people … with the direction of society. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America Yesterday, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) used a lot of his time during the Ketanji Brown Jackson nomination hearing to champion the Constitutionally protected 7th Amendment right to a jury trial. He argued that SCOTUS, the Chamber of […]
During a hospital stay, there are many ways for things to go sideways. For a timely and successful discharge, every health care provider and every department has to be working as one – each fulfilling their part toward the end goal of stabilizing the patient and putting them on the road to recovery. The nursing […]
For decades, families of medical malpractice victims in Florida have suffered without a remedy under an unfair law that treats them differently from other grieving families. Florida’s wrongful death act exempts negligent health care providers from righteous claims that would exist if anyone else caused their parent’s death. The pain they experience is no different […]
Judge Katanji Brown Jackson, prematurely referred to as KBJ here, is being feted at Congress this month after her SCOTUS nomination. Much is made of her being the first black woman nominated. But she would also be the first public defender appointed in a generation or two. At her press announcement, she name-checked my favorite […]
