Posts Tagged ‘insurance fraud’

Torts roundup

  • 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]

April 25 roundup

March 15 roundup

  • Part III of Radley Balko series on painkiller access [HuffPo]
  • “Note: Add ‘Judge’s Nameplate’ to List of Things Not to Steal” [Lowering the Bar]
  • California’s business-hostile climate: if the ADA mills don’t get you, other suits might [CACALA]
  • Bottom story of the month: ABA president backs higher legal services budget [ABA Journal]
  • After string of courtroom defeats, Teva pays to settle Nevada propofol cases [Oliver, earlier]
  • Voting Rights Act has outstayed its constitutional welcome [Ilya Shapiro/Cato] More: Stuart Taylor, Jr./The Atlantic.
  • Huge bust of what NY authorities say was $279 million crash-fraud ring NY Post, NYLJ, Business Insider, Turkewitz (go after dishonest docs on both sides)]

Update: Hoeffner reaches plea deal with feds

“Houston plaintiffs’ attorney Warren Todd Hoeffner, whose criminal case ended in a mistrial in October 2009, has struck a deal with federal prosecutors. Prosecutors agreed to defer a new trial for one year on the criminal charges against Hoeffner. Among other conditions, the agreement calls for Hoeffner to pay the government $2,485,000 and agree to a voluntary suspension of his Texas law license for two years.” Prosecutors said Hoeffner paid millions to insurance company claims department employees in the course of obtaining $34 million in silicosis payouts; his lawyers argued at trial that the employees extorted consideration as a condition of approving otherwise fair settlements. [Brenda Jeffreys, Texas Lawyer; earlier here and here]

July 24 roundup

  • San Francisco considers, then tables, ban on pet sales at stores [Amy Alkon]
  • Florida: we’ll pull you into our courts as an online-defamation defendant even if you’ve never set foot here [CBS4.com]
  • Bratz case: “Alex Kozinski gives Barbie a spanking” [AtL]
  • GEICO launches counterattack against crash fraud in New York [PoL]
  • When a lawyer sues the wrong doctor: hey, isn’t everyone entitled to mistakes now and then? [American Medical News, sanctions affirmed in Virginia case]
  • “[Congressman Alan] Grayson’s shakedown lawsuit threatens D.C. business” [LaFetra, PLF/Examiner]
  • Asbestos: Do component makers have a duty to warn about other manufacturers’ hazardous products? [Cal Biz Lit and two followups on California decisions, NAM and Levy Phillips & Konigsberg on a since-settled New York case against Foster Wheeler]
  • Subsidies for durum wheat flowed in happy circle for everyone but taxpayer and consumer [Mark Perry]

28 felony counts in California crash-faking indictment

“For several years, [defendant Susana] Chung ‘acted as the conduit’ of fraudulent insurance claims filed in connection with staged crashes in Northern California, said Larry Blazer, an Alameda County assistant district attorney.” Nearly 100 persons, mostly “victims” of bogus accidents but also including three chiropractors, have been found guilty in the scheme. [San Francisco Chronicle, Oakland Tribune via ABA Journal]

November 4 roundup