True peace is not merely the absence of tension – It is also the presence of justice.

The post Happy Martin Luther King, Jr. Day appeared first on The Thompson Law Firm.

“He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression.”

Thomas Paine was an England-born political philosopher and writer who supported revolutionary causes in America and Europe. Published in 1776 to international acclaim, “Common Sense” was the first pamphlet to advocate American independence.

The post Happy Day, Thomas Paine! appeared first on The Thompson Law Firm.

Back in the Spring, I wrote in separate posts about a long hoped-for consumer win in Florida to change unfair wrongful death laws:

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. And as it turns out down the road, the “crisis” was just a public relations ploy to immunize themselves from the costs of medical error. And the con continues.

….

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 from the pain suffered by families victimized by a car accident or equipment malfunction. But in Florida’s never-ending quest for “tort reform” and special protections – even immunity – for powerful special interests, their pain is treated as non-existent.

That may be about to change.

Politicians paid by the insurance lobby killed that victims’ rights bill in committee even though versions passed both the House and Senate.

Legislative History and Death of Florida HB 6011

This happens in other states.

The New York Trial Lawyers Association, various law firms and their allies in the Legislature have also been ratcheting up the pressure on Hochul to approve the Grieving Families Act. “This year we passed the Grieving Families Act because we all know that the value of a person’s life is more than their paycheck,” state Sen. Sean M. Ryan, D-Buffalo.

Here is the New York story

New York Wrongful Death Changes Setup Lobbying Battle

In a political environment flush with insurance industry cash where the rules are written by insurance lobbyists, victims of wrongful death have little chance on their own. Justice demands that you choose your lawyer carefully. Or, as the lyrics from the Led Zeppelin song go,

Oh dance in the dark of night
Sing to the mornin’ light.
The magic runes are writ in gold
To bring the balance back
Bring it back

The post The Battle of Evermore: How the Insurance Lobby Rules Florida appeared first on The Thompson Law Firm.

I don’t know if it is rule number one, but it is certainly top 5: Don’t piss off the Judge.

The link to the Bloomberg story is here

Judge to Trump Lawyer in Ex-Aide Deposition: ‘Stop Wasting Time’

The post Pro-Tip: Try To Avoid Having To Call The Judge Minutes Into A Deposition appeared first on The Thompson Law Firm.

Your own path you make with every step you take. That’s why it’s your path.

Joseph Campbell

Here’s a link to a story

Trump And His Team ‘Likely Concealed’ Classified Documents, DOJ Filing Alleges

The post The Midnight DOJ Filing on the Mar A Lago Search appeared first on The Thompson Law Firm.

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 first after launching the website and blog (September of 2016), tracing the origins of our jury trial rights that we celebrate on this day. Link is here:

What Is A Jury Trial (No. 1)?

The post Happy Bastille Day! appeared first on The Thompson Law Firm.

On the heels of the Palin (win for the Defendant NYT) and Depp (win for the Plaintiff) defamation cases, comes a case that could bankrupt Fox News Corp. if it goes to trial. That kind of accountability – the kind that could alter the global media landscape – will be interesting to watch.

Here is a link to the story:

Dominion Suit Against Fox Proceeds Toward A Trial Date

And here are links to my posts on defamation claims and how they worked out in the Palin and Depp trials.

The post Dominion and Smartmatic Suit Against Fox Proceeds appeared first on The Thompson Law Firm.

If so, we should quit this stupid game. This all started back in the ’80s when Judge Bork lost his confirmation battle for telling the truth about his antipathy toward Roe. At some point, like-minded judges decided that it was okay to conceal their thoughts on the subject rather than tell the truth. Our Representatives encouraged the untruths by idly sitting by twiddling their thumbs instead of doing their job of providing the Executive with good advice and consent. Now, we are stuck with a tarnished Supreme Court.

The post Stare Decisis and The Problem Of Encouraging Lying appeared first on The Thompson Law Firm.

“While our intent was not to fuel the epidemic, we failed to recognize the broader context of what was going on in society around us,” said Bob Sternfels, who assumed his role as global managing partner leading the 38,000-employee firm in July 2021. “That’s why we have new protocols and policies in place to prevent this happening again.”

The link to the story is here:

McKinsey Chief Says Firm Failed to Identify Opioid Epidemic

The post The Companies Making Billions Off The Opioid Epidemic Want You To Know They Are (Really) Sorrry (Really) appeared first on The Thompson Law Firm.

All government programs get an acronym and the acronym for this burden-shifting agency is NICA (The Florida Birth-Related Neurological Injury Compensation Association). As anyone would have anticipated, it turned into a racket for politicians with little notion of the issues (despite the enormous implications to these vulnerable kids and families).

If you log onto the NICA site here,  you’ll be told that “NICA ensures birth-injured children and adults receive the care they need while reducing the financial burden on medical providers and families.” This kind of gaslighting is too prevalent in politics today. The sole purpose of NICA is and has always been to shift the enormous cost of medical errors occurring at birth. The legislature did not want these kids to have the same right to a jury trial (protected by the state and federal constitutions) that other injured Floridians enjoy.

The cost of brain injury caused by medical error amounts to tens of millions of dollars per child. If all you care about is unloading that cost from the healthcare and insurance companies that would be responsible for those damages, you wouldn’t really care that the cost got shifted off on the public trough. That was the result of NICA: Families of brain-damaged children have limited legal remedies (without top-notch legal help and brave judges). Here is the link,

A Program Promised to Pay for Brain-Damaged Infants’ Care. Then It Sent Families to Medicaid Instead.

Perhaps embarrassed by the cruelty of this scheme, the Legislature slowly began making exceptions for some families that managed to fight their way through the bureaucracy. That has happened more than once lately, reflecting the hint of movement toward acknowledging the catastrophic error of locking these kids out of court in the first place. Links to those small moves of remorse are found

here

and

here

These token payments – fought for valiantly by families and their lawyers – don’t begin to cover the costs necessary to take care of all the children with catastrophic neurological injuries caused by medical error.

With other Florida trial lawyers, I am working to get these children and their families around this inequitable regulatory scheme.

The post On Top Of Locking Many Brain Damaged Children Out Of Court, Florida Begins Gaslighting Them appeared first on The Thompson Law Firm.