- Pearson Pants update: dry cleaners offered to drop their fee demand if Pearson would end case, but he declined [Marc Fisher, other Washington Post coverage, Beldar]
- Check your oil, ma’am? On second thought, if it’s going to get us sued, never mind [Reiland/Pittsburgh Tribune-Review]
- “Surprising and uncommon” resolution of med-mal case: Nebraska Methodist Health System admits error, cooperates with family on video memorializing victim and educating other hospitals about aortic dissection [Omaha World-Herald, Chamber reprint]
- Heated email exchange between perennial Overlawyered favorite Jack Thompson and Take Two game company exec [Ambrogi]
- Putting her image on a Hallmark card? Now that’s degrading and exploitative enough to make Paris Hilton want to sue [K.C. Star]
- Uncle sues nephew over season tickets to Chicago Bears at 40-yard line [Crain's Chicago Business]
- Hurt her teeth on McDonald’s cherry pie, hurt her teeth on cheeseburger soon after — and what’s this about forged dental-work receipts? [Seattle Times]
- Wisconsin snuff users may soon be rolling in coupons following settlement of antitrust class action, lawyers to pocket $17 million [AP/Green Bay Press-Gazette]
- New at Point of Law: fiasco of UC Irvine’s withdrawn offer to Chemerinsky; judge says $500/hr is enough for lawyers in Northwest bankruptcy; law firm advertises for heart attack victims to sue over lack of defibrillators in public places; Astroturf detected in Washington-state insurance-suit referendum fight; NY Times takes skeptical look at Mount Sinai’s Selikoff Center; Jerry Brown sure fooled us, says San Diego paper; Ted expands his empire; and much more;
- A topic on which we’ve had a lot to say over the years — to what extent does the Americans with Disabilities Act apply to websites? — may be heating up again [Corporate Counsel]
- Thanks for the incoming links from, among others, Instapundit (on Ted’s reclining-car-seat post, which has drawn a bodacious number of comments), Patterico (on Jarek Molski), Bainbridge (on animal welfare laws), and Adam Smith Institute (on lawyers suing each other: “Such a pity that only one side can lose”.)
Tagged as:
antitrust,
bankruptcy,
coupon settlements,
hospitals,
Jack Thompson,
Jarek Molski,
Jerry Brown,
Nebraska,
Roy Pearson,
Seattle,
web accessibility,
Wisconsin
Some quick links:
- Michael Krauss reviews a Mississippi Court of Appeals decision on a bogus fender-bender claim. [Point of Law; Gilbert v. Ireland]
- Yet another example of overbroad laws on sex offenders (see also Jul. 3, 2005). [Above the Law]
- “As far as the law is concerned, those individuals whose pacemakers fail are the lucky ones.” [TortsProf Blog]
- Emerson Electric sues NBC in St. Louis over a scene in an hourly drama where a cheerleader mangles her hand in a branded garbage disposal. [Hollywood Reporter, Esq.; Lattman; Defamer and Defamer update; St. Louis Post Dispatch]
- A case that’s really not about the money: Man stiffs restaurant over $46 check, defends himself against misdemeanor charge with $500/lawyer. [St. Petersburg Times; Obscure Store]
- Bill Childs catches yet another Justinian Lane misrepresentation. See also Sep. 26 and Sep. 17 (cf. related posts on Lane’s co-blogger Oct. 3 and Sep. 25), and we might just have to retire the category, since we can only hope to scratch the surface. Point of Law has the Gary Schwartz law review article discussed by Childs. [TortsProf Blog and ] Lane’s post also deliberately confuses non-economic damages caps with total damages caps: nothing stops someone with more than $250,000 in economic damages from recovering more than $250,000, even in a world with non-economic damages caps.
- Update: Bill Childs in the comments-section to Lane:
“Of course, all of this gets pretty far afield from what I originally wrote and that you’ve conceded, which is that you (unintentionally but sloppily) misrepresented the facts of the Pinto memo, failed to research its background beyond what was apparently represented to you, and still haven’t (last time I checked, at 9:10 p.m.) updated your site to reflect your error. Nor have you approved the trackback I sent to the site. You’ve posted comments to that very entry and another entry has gone up on the site, but readers still see the plainly inaccurate statement that the memo excerpt you show was Ford evaluating tort liability for rearendings, when in fact it was Ford evaluating a regulatory proposal for rollovers using numbers from NHTSA.
Tagged as:
Ford Pinto,
Ireland,
Justinian Lane,
Mississippi,
not about the money
…so a Florida jury ordered it to pay $619,650 to the family of a Fort Lauderdale customer who had a heart attack. A spokesman for L.A. Fitness says it wasn’t common, let alone legally mandatory, for health clubs to stock defibrillators in 2003, when the incident occurred. (Jon Burstein, “Gym told to pay $619,650 in man’s death because it didn’t have a defibrillator”, South Florida Sun-Sentinel, Mar. 30)(hat tip: Florida Masochist).
Tagged as:
sports
Attorneys recommended against installing defibrillators in casinos for fear that the plaintiffs’ bar would use the safety measure as evidence that casinos had a duty to provide medical attention to patrons and create additional liability on the occasions the defibrillators fail, but executives overruled the lawyers. As a result,
Medical research shows that casino visitors whose hearts suddenly stop survive at higher rates even than people who happen to go into cardiac arrest while visiting a hospital. “The safest place in America to suffer sudden cardiac arrest is a casino,” says Bryan Bledsoe, a George Washington University emergency-medicine doctor and co-author of textbooks for paramedics.
Dozens of lives have been saved, and Nevada and several other states have since passed tort reform providing immunity to businesses that use defibrillators. Never fear, there’s always someone happy to ascribe a sinister motive to corporate behavior: “‘Casinos are just saving gamblers so that these people can return to casinos and lose more money,’ says David Robertson, a board member of the National Coalition Against Legalized Gambling.” (Kevin Helliker, “Beating the Odds”, Wall Street Journal, Jan. 28).
Tagged as:
hospitals
Point of Law