January 5 roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

FERPA meets HIPAA is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

April 11 roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Welcome WBAL listeners is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

More: Commenter Supremacy Claus says not to blame HIPAA, which has an exemption for police reports.

Friday morning sequel: This morning’s New York Post sticks with the original story and fleshes out the HIPAA role somewhat:

The hunt for the savage beast who butchered an Upper East Side therapist has hit a roadblock – because detectives can’t access her patients’ medical records under federal privacy laws, The Post has learned.

Police believe the meat-cleaver-wielding psycho who killed Kathryn Faughey on Tuesday night inside her office on East 79th Street could be the doctor’s patient – and need access to her records to identify him.

But police sources said because of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, signed by President Bill Clinton in 1996, investigators are having a hard time gaining access to those records.

“A case like this gets complicated because of medical privacy protections,” a source close to the investigation told The Post yesterday.

The federal law states that doctors, hospitals and health-insurance companies must protect the privacy of patients – even in a murder investigation – and that only through the use of subpoenas can authorities hope to obtain such information.

Police sources said investigators have applied for a subpoena, but have yet to receive it. Even if the subpoena is issued, patients can sue to keep their records private. …

[D]etectives have tried to get around the law by tracking down patients through sign-in sheets at the building’s front desk and through surveillance cameras in the lobby, sources said.

(Murray Weiss, Jamie Schram and Clemente Lisi, “Vexed by ‘Slay File’ Madness”, New York Post, Feb. 15). My Times (U.K.) article on the problems posed by health privacy laws is here.

High cost of health privacy laws, cont’d is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

• Dickie Scruggs will host Dec. 15 Hillary fundraiser headlined by Bill [Clarion-Ledger via WSJ law blog]
• Megabucks campaigns for state judicial office: Symptom? Illness? Both? [Justice O'Connor @ OpinionJournal.com, Adler @ Volokh; Pero]
• U.K. kids’ author says publisher’s safety worries vetoed depiction of fire-breathing dragon in book [Daily Mail]
• Roger Parloff describes the Judith Regan complaint as bizarre, and angry commenters are soon denouncing him as a Fox’s-paw [Fortune Legal Pad; Althouse; ritual disclaimer]
• Wonder why booking a dance venue can get pricey? Here’s one reason [WV Record]
• “Why should I take a dollar out of [my neighbor's] pocket?”: a Virginia Tech family wrestles with the temptation to sue [Mundy, WashPostMag]
• Essential silliness of the “media diversity” scare [Welch, LAT]
• Boston’s James Sokolove, known for his heavy rotation of personal-injury TV ads, is now chasing for … patent plaintiffs? [WSJ law blog; earlier]
• Great big gobs of mutilated monkey meat could bring five years in slammer for NYC immigrant [IHT]
• Recounting the tale of Miami’s one-time high-living “King of Torts” Louis Robles, who stole from around 4,500 clients [AJP "CEO Alert" series, PDF]

• Campaign regulation laws spell incumbent protection in New Zealand too [Bainbridge]
• Influence of newspaper lobby retards natural migration to the web of fine-print legal notices [Liptak, NYT]

November 20 roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Fairfax County school officials determined that Seung Hui Cho suffered from an anxiety disorder so severe that they put him in special education and devised a plan to help, according to sources familiar with his history, but Virginia Tech was never told of the problem.

The disorder made Cho unable to speak in social settings and was deemed an emotional disability, the sources said. When he stopped getting the help that Fairfax was providing, Cho became even more isolated and suffered severe ridicule during his four years at Virginia Tech, experts suggested. In his senior year, Cho killed 32 students and faculty members and himself in the deadliest shooting by an individual in U.S. history….

Professors and school administrators at Virginia Tech could not have known of Cho’s emotional disability — Fairfax officials were forbidden from telling them. Federal privacy and disability laws prohibit high schools from sharing with colleges private information such as a student’s special education coding or disability, according to high school and college guidance and admissions officials. Those laws also prohibit colleges from asking for such information.

The only way Virginia Tech officials would have known about Cho’s anxiety and selective mutism would have been if Cho or his parents told them about it and asked for accommodations to help him, as he had received in Fairfax….

Although the only way college officials could have known about Cho’s problem would have been from Cho, experts said that asking for help is an almost impossible task for someone with selective mutism.

(Brigid Schulte and Tim Craig, “Unknown to Va. Tech, Cho Had a Disorder”, Washington Post, Aug. 27). More: Hans Bader at CEI’s Open Market (Aug. 27).

Yet more on privacy/disability laws and Seung Hui Cho is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

• Not sure you’ve got probable cause for your motorist stop? Why not just fabricate it? [Grits for Breakfast]


• California Attorney General Jerry Brown cracks down on a prolific filer of Prop 65 (toxic warning) cases, New Canaan, Ct.-based Clifford Chanler [The Recorder]


• Man mounts San Francisco rooftop with apparent “self-destructive” intent, rescue effort by firefighters fails, now family’s suing the city [SF Chronicle]


• Why Mort Zuckerman says the law is the opposite of sex [Lattman, from offline New Yorker mag]


• Who’s stirring the pot on client litigation against big law firm Hogan & Hartson? [Lat] Update: it’s a former client [Turkewitz]


• Some top judges in Australia embarrassed after confessing activist leanings to an American academic who was writing it all down [The Australian]


• Cost of defending against a white-collar crime prosecution: seven figures if you’re lucky [Lattman via Lat]


• New at Point of Law: chiding Supreme Court Chicken Littles, more on Canadian sovereignty and the Conrad Black trial, reasonable degrees of expert witness certainty, making litigation instead of steel, Michael Krauss criticizes Virginia Tech compensation fund;


• If you can’t do something about the falling petals, maybe your flower shop shouldn’t be in the train station [U.K. Telegraph]


• Illinois tells lawyers to hire a doctor to certify merit of med-mal claim, but permits that doctor to remain anonymous [three years ago on Overlawyered]

July 23 roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Virginia Tech has provided some of Seung Hui Cho’s medical records to a panel investigating the April 16 massacre, after negotiating with family members to waive their privacy rights….

The records were released after weeks of frustration among the eight panel members over not being able to analyze Cho’s mental health in the years leading to the massacre, the worst mass shooting by an individual in U.S. history….

…panel officials said Thursday that they will continue to press for additional records, which also are protected under state and federal privacy laws.

(Tim Craig, “Panel Given Some Medical Files on Cho”, Washington Post, Jun. 15). And from a Thursday news report, also in the Post:

Authorities’ abilities to identify potentially dangerous mentally ill people are crippled across the nation by the same kinds of conflicts in privacy laws that prevented state officials from being able to intervene before Seung Hui Cho went on his rampage at Virginia Tech, according to a federal report commissioned after the Blacksburg shootings that was presented to President Bush yesterday.

Because school administrators, doctors and police officials rarely share information about students and others who have mental illnesses, troubled people don’t get the counseling they need, and authorities are often unable to prevent them from buying handguns, the report says.

(Chris L. Jenkins, “Confusion Over Laws Impedes Aid For Mentally Ill”, Washington Post, Jun. 14). My writings on the topic from April are here, here and here.

Vienna, Va. attorney Thomas J. Fadoul, Jr., who represents twenty victim families, has threatened to sue unless a family representative is appointed to the panel investigating the massacre so as to help “steer” its proceedings; Virginia governor Tim Kaine has replied that the panel was chosen so as not to include parties involved, and noted that the panel does not include any representative of Virginia Tech itself.

Privacy laws and Seung Hui Cho, cont’d is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

• Jack Thompson, call your office: FBI search turns up no evidence Virginia Tech killer owned or played videogames [Monsters and Critics]


• How many zeroes was that? Bank of America threatens ABN Amro with $220 billion suit if it reneges on deal to sell Chicago’s LaSalle Bank [Times (U.K.), Consumerist]


• Chuck Colson will be disappointed, but the rule of law wins: Supreme Court declines to intervene in Miller-Jenkins (Vermont-Virginia lesbian custody) dispute [AP; see Mar. 2 and many earlier posts]


• Oklahoma legislature passes, but governor vetoes, comprehensive liability-reform bill [Point of Law first, second, third posts]


• Good primer on California’s much-abused Prop 65 right-to-know toxics law [CalBizLit via Ted @ PoL]


• “Defensive psychiatry” and the pressure to hospitalize persons who talk of suicide [Intueri]


• Among the many other reasons not to admire RFK Jr., there’s his wind-farm hypocrisy [Mac Johnson, Energy Tribune]


• “Screed-O-Matic” simulates nastygrams dashed off by busy Hollywood lawyer Martin Singer [Portfolio]


• “Liability, health issues” cited as Carmel, Ind. officials plan to eject companion dogs from special-needs program, though no parents have complained [Indpls. Star; similar 1999 story from Ohio]


• First glimmerings of Sen. John Edwards’s national ambitions [five years ago on Overlawyered]

May 1 roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system