With the never-ending Johnny Depp versus Amber Heard trial ongoing in Virginia, libel is all the rage. It’s a hot tort, what with all the crazy talk and nasty, personal name-calling going on everywhere. If offended, keep in mind the standard of proof you may be required to meet. You don’t want a judge making […]
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 […]
Are we supposed to believe that the Justices who have signed on to the draft opinion shouting that Roe was “always” “egregiously wrong” – since it was decided in 1973 (almost fifty years ago) – were truth-telling during their confirmations when they praised Roe as “important” precedent that they’d never really thought about? If so, […]
More than four years ago, Tennessee nurse RaDonda Vaught typed two letters into a hospital’s computerized medication cabinet, selected the wrong drug from the search results, and gave a patient a fatal dose. The new Kaiser report on medication errors is here. In 2017, I posted a three-part series about my experience litigating a deadly […]
San Diego County is appealing an $85 million verdict obtained after it with-held discovery from the plaintiff and was sanctioned for it by the judge. Just before trial, lawyers for the family said that the county had acted improperly by not turning over key evidence, including a training video on how to apply restraints that […]
“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 […]
The news is that two Florida public hospitals want in – at the last minute – on the State’s opioid lawsuit. They’re afraid they may get cut off from money available arising out of the opioid prescriptions filled out by their employees. Judge Denies Sarasota Hospital and Lee Health Motion Intervene in Opioid Settlement I’ve […]
One day I will find the courage to rewrite it. I will speak as a witness. To how scary it is when air-raid sirens wail in the early morning on an ordinary Thursday. How I kept smiling while packing frantically, trying to signal to my son that I was not worried. The link is here: […]
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 […]
