“The Supreme Court of Canada has taken away a $200,000 insurance award made to a Vancouver man who became paralyzed after a series of medical calamities arising from him having unprotected sex.” [The Globe and Mail]
Tagged as:
Canada,
communicable disease,
insurance
Physician-blogger Musings of a Dinosaur has some thoughts on the issue. More states are requiring lawyers to inform clients whether they carry liability insurance, according to the ABA Journal. Texas is one state where many lawyers are tenaciously trying to head off such a rule: “according to a February 2008 survey of attorneys conducted by the State Bar, 48 percent of the 6,160 attorneys who completed the survey do not have professional liability coverage.” [Texas Lawyer, White Coat]
Tagged as:
bar associations,
insurance,
lawyers,
Texas
“Calling someone a ‘douche’ may be bad manners but it does not give an insurance company grounds to disavow a policy protecting against defamation claims, a state judge has ruled.” The owner of a public relations firm was sued by a rival after he purchased a domain containing the rival’s name and posted as content on the resulting page a picture of the sanitary product “Summer’s Eve”. [Daniel Wise, NYLJ]
Tagged as:
insurance,
libel slander and defamation
- Alleged wife murderer “sues J.P. Morgan for cutting off his home equity line of credit.” Reason cited: “imprisonment”. [Joe Weisenthal, Business Insider via Fountain]
- Charles Krauthammer on the need to “reform our insane malpractice system. … I used to be a doctor, I know how much is wasted on defensive medicine.” [Der Spiegel interview]
- Popehat looks back on turning two, in customarily entertaining fashion [unsigned collective post]
- Sigh: “Chamber of Commerce Sues ‘Yes Men’ for Fake News Conference” [ABA Journal]
- Coverage mandates explain a lot about why health insurance is so much costlier in some states than others [Coyote] More: Tyler Cowen (autism treatment)
- Watch out for those default judgments: PepsiCo hit with $1.26 billion award in Wisconsin state court, says word of suit never got to responsible officials within the company [National Law Journal]
- Ohio appeals court: characterizing incident as “Baby Mama Drama” is not prosecutorial misconduct [The Briefcase]
- Ideological tests for educators? On efforts to screen out would-be teachers not seen as committed enough to “social justice” [K.C. Johnson, Minding the Campus]
Tagged as:
banks,
defensive medicine,
insurance,
mortgages,
Ohio,
on other blogs,
prosecution,
schools,
soft drinks,
Wisconsin
“Houston lawyer Warren Todd Hoeffner is accused of paying $3 million in cash, BMWs, trips, even spa treatments and ‘gentleman’s entertainment’” in a scheme to obtain $34 million in settlements in silicosis litigation. Things began to unravel when Hartford Insurance, which had cut settlements on behalf of a number of defendants, noticed the arrival of a check for $6,000 from Hoeffner to one of its former claims personnel. Hoeffner’s lawyers are arguing that the insurance company employees extorted money and goods from their client by threatening not to approve fair settlements otherwise. [Houston Chronicle, Southeast Texas Record]
Tagged as:
ethics,
insurance,
silicosis,
Texas
- Cops in London borough “remove valuables from unlocked cars to teach the owners about safety” [UPI, Sullum/Reason "Hit and Run", Coyote]
- “Trial starts for PI lawyer accused of paying bribes (to Texas insurance managers) for settlement” [ABA Journal]
- Tort reform in Oklahoma takes effect Nov. 1, so law firm advises getting those lawsuits filed quickly [The Oklahoman]
- Patent assembler Intellectual Ventures says it’s averse to suing. Its close partners, on the other hand… [Recorder, earlier]
- Bill to assert U.S. control of waters whether “navigable” or not is major federal power grab [Kay Hutchison and Nolan Ryan, Dallas News]
- California high court rules in Taster’s Choice photo-permission case [Lowering the Bar, WSJ Law Blog, earlier]
- Civil libertarians, secularists protest as Ireland criminalizes blasphemy [Volokh, Irish Times (Dawkins), MWW and more]
- He knows about big paychecks: “Obama’s ‘Pay Czar’ Made $5.76M Last Year as a Law Firm Partner” [ABA Journal]
Tagged as:
Barack Obama,
environment,
free speech,
insurance,
Ireland,
patent trolls,
police,
United Kingdom
- UK libel law still casting a chill on free speech around the world [Floyd Abrams, Index on Censorship via Ken at Popehat, Kirk Hartley]
- Much talked about Ramesh Ponnuru op-ed on Constitution and government consideration of race [NYT]
- “EFF Busts Bogus Internet Subdomain Patent” [Electronic Frontier Foundation]
- Why you can’t get low-cost health insurance, part LXVII: legal pressure on insurers to cover behavioral autism treatment [NLJ, Detroit Free Press]
- New Jersey disbars reparations lawyer Ed Fagan, New York having already done so [Black Star News, JTA, Newark Star-Ledger, NJLJ]
- Author Wendell Berry: force NAIS animal-tagging on every small farmer, and you’ll have to call the cops on me [Food Renegade; more on NAIS and small producers, Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund; earlier here, etc.]
- Indiana enacts what Gov. Mitch Daniels calls nation’s strongest law protecting teachers from lawsuits [WANE, WTHR]
- Town of Kenner, La. says it’s learned its lesson from being sued and will ticket drunken bicyclists even if they’re badly hurt in accidents [nine years ago on Overlawyered]
Tagged as:
agriculture and farming,
autism,
free speech,
Indiana,
insurance,
patent quality,
school discipline,
United Kingdom
Press coverage has been rather hostile toward AIG, which insures USAir, for its reluctance to cut large checks for therapy and the like to passengers aboard the miracle flight. (One major reason for it to balk may be the lack of any showing that the airline was negligent; also, passengers got $5,000 checks right after the rescue.)
Given the insurer’s status as public relations pariah, it’s interesting to note that at least one voice has been raised in its defense from a perhaps unexpected quarter: Ron Miller of Maryland Injury Lawyer. His “plea to every lawyer in the United States: please don’t file a lawsuit in these cases to get your name in the paper.” Earlier here and here.
Tagged as:
aviation,
insurance
Brian Shean, Sr., 37, of Derry Township, Pennsylvania, was killed by a falling tree in February, as he, his father Terry, and a third man attempted to keep it from toppling. Shean family lawyer Jason Hines “said Monday that the lawsuit was only a means to ensure the future of the Sheans’ son, Brian Jr.” [Pittsburgh Tribune-Review]
Tagged as:
insurance,
Pennsylvania
“An insurance company with a potential $25 million liability from a fatal 2007 Houston office fire announced [Jan. 21] that it will drop its legal argument” that it shouldn’t have to pay for smoke inhalation deaths because they supposedly resulted from “pollution”, a risk excluded under the policy, as opposed to the actual flames. [Houston Chronicle; earlier].
Tagged as:
fire,
Houston,
insurance
Did the fabulous pink diamond actually exist? That was one of the issues in the legal fight — which in places reads more like a spy thriller than like a conventional business dispute — between plaintiff John Stafford, a jeweler in Miami Township, Ohio, and defendant Julius Klein Diamonds of New York. A federal jury sided with Stafford, who said he had paid $8,000 in cash for the gem from a mysterious seller in Las Vegas; the eventual verdict came in at more than 400 times that sum. (OnPoint News; Dayton Business Journal; Diamonds.net)
Tagged as:
damages,
insurance,
Ohio
“An insurance company with a potential $25 million liability from a 2007 Houston office fire is claiming smoke that killed three people was ‘pollution’ and surviving families shouldn’t be compensated for their losses since the deaths were not caused directly by the actual flames. Great American Insurance Company is arguing in a Houston federal court that the section of the insurance policy that excludes payments for pollution — like discharges or seepage that require cleanup — would also exclude payouts for damages, including deaths, caused by smoke, or pollution, that results from a fire.” (Mary Flood, “Insurance loophole claimed in fire deaths”, Houston Chronicle, Dec. 17).
Tagged as:
fire,
Houston,
insurance
- Some backers of big national service plan say better roll it out now before the crisis atmosphere passes [Welch, Reason "Hit and Run"]
- Sorry ma’am, if hubby’s policy excludes coverage for injury to family members, you can’t blame him as “uninsured motorist” [The Briefcase, Ohio]
- Much-cited “$70/hr” figure for GM labor costs misleading: covers army of retirees, not just current workers [Salmon; but see McArdle]
- Thoughts on alleged inability of GM to get debtor-in-possession financing for a Chapter 11 bankruptcy [Oman, ConcurOp]
- Texas p.i. atty Mark Lanier famous for Xmas parties headlined by top stars, this year it’s Miley Cyrus a/k/a Hannah Montana [ABA Journal]
- “I Want Angry Jurors With Low Self-Esteem” [Bennett, Defending People]
- “We just really wanted to shatter the cupcake-pizza dichotomy. It’s just existed for too long.” [Seth Gitter via Tyler Cowen]
Tagged as:
General Motors,
insurance,
jury selection,
Mark Lanier,
national service
an Illinois appeals court decides in an insurance claim against Enterprise car rental [
