Posts tagged as:

Georgia

Medical roundup

by Walter Olson on May 15, 2013

  • Hit by stray bullet, wakes from anesthesia fighting, hospital told to pay $17 million [Georgia; Insurance Journal]
  • Study: physician’s previous paid claims history has no impact on odds of catastrophic med-mal payout [Bixenstine et al, JHQ via PoL] Overall, med-mal payouts have fallen steadily in past decade; $3.6 billion figure last year follows strongly regionalized pattern with top per capita figures all in Northeast [Diederich analysis of annual payouts via TortsProf] Florida law now requires that testifying medical witness be in same specialty as defendant [Business Week]
  • In lawsuits alleging “wrongful birth,” what’s the measure of damages? [Gerard Magliocca, Concurring Opinions]
  • ObamaCare exchanges in D.C., California and Connecticut declare smoking “pre-existing condition,” say insurers can’t base higher rates on it [Kevin Williamson, NR]
  • “The Crime of Whitening Teeth with Over-the-Counter Products” [Caleb Brown, Bluegrass Institute]
  • How not to die: Jonathan Rauch on end-of-life overtreatment [The Atlantic]
  • “I’m going to start a rumor that Sudafed is an abortifacient. Then the feds will finally have to allow reasonable access to it.” [me on Twitter]

{ 0 comments }

In the South, a wedding engagement gone sadly wrong leads to a compulsively readable opinion by Judge William Pryor for an Eleventh Circuit panel, complete with reference to the TV show The Dukes of Hazzard. [Myers v. Bowman, PDF; summary judgment affirmed against civil rights claim](bad link fixed now)

{ 6 comments }

Medical roundup

by Walter Olson on April 8, 2013

  • “It Didn’t Feel Like a ‘Win’” ["Birdstrike, M.D."/White Coat]
  • Federal ban on long shifts by hospital residents may have harmed safety, in part because it drove up number of patient handoffs [USA Today]
  • N.J. bill would narrow chance for suits against first aid, ambulance and rescue squads [NJLRA]
  • Bill in Georgia legislature aims to apply workers’-comp-like principles to med-mal [Florida Times-Union]
  • I mostly agree that med-mal reform is for states to decide, but Ramesh Ponnuru may underrate Washington’s legitimate role in prescribing legal consequences when it pays for care [Bloomberg/syndicated]
  • Shift burdens through price control: NJ assemblyman’s bill would prohibit insurers from considering docs’ claims experience except for cases that result in actual court findings [NJLRA]
  • Someone’s hand stuck in the sharps box again? Sixth time this month [Throckmorton]

{ 1 comment }

  • “Once your life is inside a federal investigation, there is no space outside of it.” [Quinn Norton, The Atlantic]
  • “Cops Detain 6-year-old for Walking Around Neighborhood (And It Gets Worse)” [Free-Range Kids] “Stop Criminalizing Parents who Let Their Kids Wait in the Car” [same]
  • Time to rethink the continued erosion of statutes of limitations [Joel Cohen, Law.com; our post the other day on Gabelli v. SEC]
  • “Are big-bank prosecutions following in the troubled footsteps of FCPA enforcement?” [Isaac Gorodetski, PoL]
  • The “‘professional’ press approach to the criminal justice system serves police and prosecutors very well. They favor reporters who hew to it.” [Ken at Popehat]
  • Scott Greenfield dissents from some common prescriptions on overcriminalization [Simple Justice]
  • Anti-catnip educational video might be a parody [YouTube via Radley Balko]
  • “Too Many Restrictions on Sex Offenders, or Too Few?” [NYT "Room for Debate"]
  • Kyle Graham on overcharging [Non Curat Lex] “The Policeman’s Legal Digest / A Walk Through the Penal Laws of New York (1934)” [Graham, ConcurOp]
  • “D.C. Council Proposes Pretty Decent Asset Forfeiture Reform” [John Ross, Reason] And the Institute for Justice reports on forfeiture controversies in Minnesota and Georgia.
  • Does prison privatization entrench a pro-incarceration lobby? [Sasha Volokh, more]

December 7 roundup

by Walter Olson on December 7, 2012

  • Georgia: “Twiggs County Landgrabber Loses, Must Pay $100K in Fees” [Lowering the Bar]
  • “Major California Rule Change For Depositions Takes Place In 2013″ [Cal Biz Lit] Discovery cost control explored at IAALS conference [Prawfs]
  • Gift idea! “Lego version of the Eighth Circle of Hell (where false counselors and perjurers suffered)” [John Steele, Legal Ethics Forum; Flavorwire]
  • “Don’t Worry About the Voting Rights Act: If the Supreme Court strikes down part of it, black and Hispanic voters will be just fine.” [Eric Posner and Nicholas Stephanopoulos, Slate, via @andrewmgrossman]
  • “Why did Congress hold hearings this week promoting crackpot [anti-vaccination] views? [Phil Plait, Slate]
  • “Debunking a Progressive Constitutional Myth; or, How Corporations Became People, Too” [John Fabian Witt, Balkinization]
  • “Federal ‘protection’ of American poker players turning into confiscation” [Point of Law]

Class action roundup

by Walter Olson on November 19, 2012

  • Ted Frank on Whirlpool front-loading washer class action [PoL] $1.5 million for attorneys, $41,510 for class? Judge balks at Amex gift card settlement [same] EasySaver coupon settlement “conservatively” values coupons at 85% of face value [same]
  • Cy pres: Roger Parloff on tech-defendant class-action cy pres [Fortune] Privacy groups nominated for cy pres windfall in Facebook settlement [Wired, PoL]
  • “Class-Action Lawyers Face Triple Threat At Supreme Court” [Daniel Fisher at Forbes; related, Michael Bobelian]
  • Georgia high court: company could be on hook for $456 million for sending junk faxes [UPI] Will unwanted text-message class actions be the sequel to junk-fax litigation? [Almeida, Sedgwick via WLF]
  • “Class action summer camp” series from Andrew Trask includes refreshers on key concepts such as typicality, adequacy, etc.
  • “Supreme Court Hears Arguments in Comcast” [Wajert, earlier]
  • City of Des Moines class action: we owe it to ourselves [Iowa Appeals] For another case where there was high overlap between plaintiff class members and those expected to pay damages, see Sept. 2, 1999 [Milwaukee tainted municipal water system]

October 2 roundup

by Walter Olson on October 2, 2012

  • CFPB hopes to fix regulation that has prevented stay-home moms from getting credit [Bloomberg Business Week, earlier]
  • Uncertified class action: “Federal judge orders cost-shifting for fishing expedition” [PoL] Ted Frank objects to $10 million fee in “cosmetic” Johnson & Johnson settlement [Daniel Fisher, PoL]
  • “Accused of Providing Blank Arrest Warrants to Police, Georgia Magistrate Resigns” [ABA Journal]
  • Lester Brickman, Peter Schuck in new podcast on Brickman’s book Lawyer Barons [Federalist Society]
  • “Wright and Ginsburg on Behavioral Law & Economics” [NW Law Review and SSRN via Adler]
  • “17th injury claim in 12 years got Chicago cop her disability deal” [Sun-Times]
  • “Injured while working for the Empire? Call Lando Calrissian.” Law firm ad parody [YouTube]

Property rights roundup

by Walter Olson on September 18, 2012

  • “Property Rights Panel at the Cato Institute’s Constitution Day” [Ilya Somin] Related: “Sackett v. EPA and the Due Process Deficit in Environmental Law” [Jonathan Adler]
  • Feds’ fishy forfeiture attack on Massachusetts scallopman [Ron Arnold, Examiner]
  • California politicos seek crackdown on lenders’ supposed “retaliation” against municipalities considering seizing mortgages by eminent domain: “You Can’t Use Voluntary Action to Try to Stop Government Coercion” [Coyote; earlier here, here, here] Will Congress step in to shut down the grab? [Kevin Funnell]
  • “The government of Honduras has signed a deal with private investors for the construction of three privately run cities with their own legal and tax systems.” [A Thousand Nations, Todd Zywicki, FedSoc Blog]
  • A Philadelphia business owner decides to clean up and improve an adjacent, neglected city-owned lot, and soon has sad cause for regret [Philly Law Blog]
  • Georgia claimant: “Hi, I own your land although I have no evidence of that” [Lowering the Bar, update]
  • “Blight” condemnation could stymie hopes for historic preservation in Denver [Castle Coalition]

{ 1 comment }

Torts roundup

by Walter Olson on July 6, 2012

  • House Judiciary passes measure (FACT Act) promoting transparency of asbestos trusts, could preserve assets for honest claimants by curbing n-tuple dippers [Harold Kim/US Chamber, Ted Frank] “$48 million jackpot justice asbestos award for 86-year-old” [Frank]
  • Canadian court: car crash caused chronic cough [Magraken]
  • Push in Connecticut legislature to ease expert testimony threshold, thus enabling more med-mal suits [Zachary Janowski, Raising Hale]
  • Georgia court: residents on notice of wild alligators, golf club not liable for elderly woman’s demise [Daily Report]
  • “NYT is inconceivably shocked that NYC defends itself in lawsuits instead of blindly writing multimillion $ checks.” [@tedfrank]
  • Arizona court declines Third Restatement’s invitation to gut duty prerequisite in tort law [David Oliver]
  • Vintage insurance fraud: “The Slip-and-fall Queen” [Brendan Koerner via @petewarden]
  • Relaxation of fault in auto cases: “Richard Nixon’s Torts Note” [Robinette, TortsProf] “Reforming the Reform: No-Fault Auto Insurance” [same]

Jonesboro, Ga.: the defense lawyer called it “a fun fact pattern” involving “quite a cast of characters,” while the plaintiff’s lawyer acknowledged taking the case to trial even while knowing “that there was a less than 10 percent chance of winning on liability. … I never turn down the chance to take a case to trial when there is a real injury involved, no matter how tough the liability picture.” Does that imply that he represents other clients whose injury isn’t as “real”? [Fulton County Daily Report]

{ 8 comments }

Covered it in a roundup a couple of weeks back, but as a reader favorite it may as well have its own post: “A jury has awarded a Georgia woman $3 million over her husband’s heart attack, finding that his doctor should have warned the Atlanta cop against strenuous activity like the three-way sex he was having at the time he died, WXIA-TV reports.” The deceased was not married to either of the other participants in the fatal motel-room encounter. [USA Today/Freep]

{ 8 comments }

May 22 roundup

by Walter Olson on May 22, 2012

  • Lacey Act madness: might Feds be empowered to disrupt summer concerts by seizing musicians’ Gibsons? [Bedard, DC Examiner; earlier; recent Heritage Foundation work; reworded to reflect comment from "Density Duck," below]
  • Contributors to new “Privatization Blog” include friend of this blog Coyote, e.g. here and here;
  • “Big Government Causes Hyper-Partisanship in the Judicial Appointment Process” [Ilya Shapiro] Fuels Culture War, too: “The faster the state expands, the more likely it is to violate your values” [Matt Welch]
  • Demagogy on expatriates: Schumer proposal for stiff tax on emigrants may have read better in original German [Ira Stoll, Roger Pilon/Cato, Paul Caron/TaxProf]
  • Georgia high court considers $459 million fax-spam verdict [AJC, AP, my take] “Hot fuel” class actions enrich the usual suspects [PoL]
  • New rebuttal to trial lawyer/HBO movie “Hot Coffee” [Victor Schwartz et al, auto-plays video] Ted Frank crossed swords with Litigation Lobby on the movie in January, particularly on the question of coffee temperature and the Liebeck case [PoL]
  • Overlawyered “will become the first [law] blog teenager this summer” [Bruce Carton, Legal Blog Watch] “I’ve been a fan of Walter Olson’s Overlawyered blog for years.” [Amy Alkon, Advice Goddess] Thanks!

{ 5 comments }

Radley Balko on the John McNeil case from Georgia. By reversing some of the assumed racial valences, will it give partisans on both sides reason to think harder about both the value of self-defense rights and the importance of a neutral rule of law? Well, one can hope.

He had previously faced charges of, yes, failure to appear [Lowering the Bar]

September 19 roundup

by Walter Olson on September 19, 2011

  • Educator: please don’t bring lawyers to parent-teacher meetings [Ron Clark, CNN] Steve Brill: what I found when I investigated NYC teacher “rubber rooms” [Reuters] “The Six Dumbest Things Schools Are Doing in the Name of Safety” [Cracked] School waterfall liability [Lincoln, Neb. Journal-Star]
  • As predicted: “Dodd-Frank Paperwork a Bonanza for Consultants and Lawyers” [NYT]
  • “Running out of common drugs” [Josh Bloom, NY Post] Pharmaceutical shortages: the role of Medicare price controls [Richard Epstein, Hoover; earlier here, here, etc.]
  • DoT insists on exposing private flight plans online. Yoo-hoo, privacy advocates? [Steve Chapman]
  • New class action law in Mexico includes loser-pays provision [WSJ]
  • Newt Gingrich candidacy revives memories of his 1995 call for death penalty (with “mass executions”) for drug smuggling [NYT archive via Josh Barro; see also @timothy_watson "Sounds kinda like Shariah Law to me.")
  • "Cy pres slush fund in Georgia under ethics investigation" [PoL]

{ 3 comments }

Prosecutors in a Georgia murder trial produced a birthday cake and proceeded to sing “Happy Birthday” to the deceased child victim for the benefit of the jury as well as a national Court TV audience. The defense lawyer failed to object, and the Georgia Supreme Court declined to order a new trial. [A Public Defender, Balko]

{ 5 comments }

Best law firm sign?

by Walter Olson on October 20, 2010

BestLawFirmSign
Atlas carrying the law firm’s weight on his shoulders: a mobile photo from Steve Dillard of Georgia.

{ 5 comments }

And that’s just so unfair, according to Lester Tate, president of the State Bar of Georgia. After all, it’s not as if lawyers have a lot of power or behave aggressively or hurtfully toward anyone else, right? “Particularly abhorrent are the attacks that come from candidates who are lawyers themselves.” Where’s their professional solidarity? [Atlanta Journal-Constitution]