- Activist high court, no-fault PPI auto insurance, assignment-of-benefits (AOB) claims helped Florida win top Judicial Hellhole ranking from American Tort Reform Foundation [Amy O’Connor, Insurance Journal]
- Maybe getting people interested in the age-old ethical dangers of champerty and maintenance would be easier if litigation finance were framed as a Chamber of Commerce vs. Peter Thiel match-up [Jacob Gershman, WSJ] “Prosecutors Investigate Firms That Offer Plaintiffs Early Cash” [Matthew Goldstein and Jessica Silver-Greenberg, New York Times]
- Seventh Circuit: parents, not Starbucks, bore duty of protecting 3-year-old from harm resulting from playing on crowd-control stanchions [Roh v. Starbucks]
- British Columbia is only Canadian province without limits on soft-tissue injury claims after car crashes, and now fiscal implosion at province-owned auto insurer ICBC may force leftist NDP government to reconsider that [Mike Smyth/The Province, Jason Proctor and Karin Larsen, CBC]
- “NYS Exposed: The one law adding $10,000 to the cost of a new home” [WHEC, New York Post editorial on scaffold law and other elements of state liability scene, earlier]
- “Former South Carolina Lawmaker Sentenced for Improperly Using Office to Help Trial Lawyers” [U.S. Chamber Institute for Legal Reform; Glenn Smith, Post and Courier; John Monk, The State]
Posts Tagged ‘low-speed auto collisions’
Whiplash and incentives, abroad
“In my first 20 years as a consultant I wrote many reports which were economical with the truth – the truth being that there was very little wrong with the vast majority of compensation claimants that I saw. I was moving with the herd.” While lawyers, insurers, and others are all complicit, writes Dr. Charlie Marks, the onus is on the medical profession to speak up against medico-legal misdiagnosis [Irish Times via Patrick Collinson, The Guardian (“Whiplash: the myth that funds a £20bn gravy train”)]
YouTube goblin-toppler said to have been “debilitated” by ’09 crash
A YouTube clip went viral last week of three men in Utah’s Goblin Valley State Park toppling over an ancient “goblin” sandstone rock formation that they considered it a safety hazard, then laughing and high-fiving afterward. It might seem surprising that the one who gave the shove, Glenn Taylor, was up for such vigorous activities, since he suffered what were described as “debilitating” back injuries (according to his legal claims) in a road accident four years ago. According to the father of the defendant in that still-unresolved case, neither Taylor nor others involved visited the hospital after that rear-ending. “Taylor’s attorney Mark Stubbs says just because his client is beginning to recover from his injured back doesn’t mean he hasn’t suffered from pain in the past, and he says Taylor’s medical bills in the wake of the accident could continue for years.” [CNN, NYDN, KUTV (auto-plays video)] More: NY Post. More: Lenore Skenazy (but it’s to make kids safer!).
February 24 roundup
- Melissa Kite, columnist with Britain’s Spectator, writes about her low-speed car crash and its aftermath [first, second, third, fourth]
- NYT’s Nocera lauds Keystone pipeline, gets called “global warming denier” [NYTimes] More about foundations’ campaign to throttle Alberta tar sands [Coyote] Regulations mandating insurance “disclosures” provide another way for climate change activists to stir the pot [Insurance and Technology]
- “Cop spends weeks to trick an 18-year-old into possession and sale of a gram of pot” [Frauenfelder, BB]
- Federal Circuit model order, pilot program could show way to rein in patent e-discovery [Inside Counsel, Corporate Counsel] December Congressional hearing on discovery costs [Lawyers for Civil Justice]
- Trial lawyer group working with Senate campaigns in North Dakota, Nevada, Wisconsin, Hawaii [Rob Port via LNL] President of Houston Trial Lawyers Association makes U.S. Senate bid [Chron]
- Panel selection: “Jury strikes matter” [Ron Miller, Maryland Injury]
- Law-world summaries/Seventeen syllables long/@legal_haiku (& for a similar treatment of high court cases, check out @SupremeHaiku)
JAMA: back surgeries overprescribed
Commenter “Anonymous Attorney” writes:
Part of the litigation explosion includes every other person with a back injury claim being sent for invasive “fusion” or other drastic spinal surgery. Of course, defendants, often through insurance, foot the bill for these very expensive procedures. In my time I saw dozens of cases involving, say, a 5-mph fender bender that resulted in these surgeries. It was almost as if plaintiff attorneys and doctors worked together to push them through because they would multiply damages 5-fold for the lawyer, and of course the doctor gets paid handsomely, too. The cost of some surgeries can approach $100,000. A few doctors were known for never seeing a patient who didn’t “need” these surgeries. Courts and juries, of course, take anything a doctor says on its face, and so they’d go along.
A study in JAMA now confirms these are grossly overprescribed and often a really bad idea, medically. Note that this particular study excluded patients admitted as a result of vehicle crashes or with vertebral fractures or dislocations, which nonetheless leaves many other injuries that can fit the pattern: slip-falls, workers comp back strains and so on. I think it’s safe to say that if the JAMA authors ever do a study looking at car crash plaintiffs, they’ll make similar findings.
By the way, the New York Times actually beat JAMA to the punch on some of this, like the doctors owning financial stakes in the surgical equipment companies.
Schrenker’s fender-bender splendor
After your low-speed accident outside New York City’s Port Authority, you suspect there’s something a tad suspicious about the resulting $15 million neck-and-back-injury claim against you by the occupant of the limo you hit, a man named Marcus Schrenker. And then one day he turns up on all the front pages…