- Marie Gryphon rounds up what’s known about the Republican candidates and their views on litigation reform [Point of Law]
- Obama’s signature achievement as an Illinois legislator was a law requiring that police videotape interrogations and confessions, the better to protect both suspects from beatings and cops from false charges of abuse; some “death penalty abolitionists … worried that Obama’s bill, by preventing the execution of innocents, would deprive them of their best argument” (!). [Peters/WaPo]
- Giuliani-bashers had a fine old time hammering the former mayor on supposed scandal over girlfriend’s driver. So was there anything there? [NYTimes, Newsday “Spin Cycle”, Frum; standard disclaimer]
- Edwards has resolved to run as a plaintiff’s lawyer in full jury-stirring mode; we know a fair bit about his trial-winning style, less about how he settles cases [Beldar]
- Quite a few adherents of the scary Christian Reconstructionist movement seem to like Gov. Huckabee a lot, one hopes he doesn’t like them back [Lindsey, Cato-at-Liberty; Box Turtle Bulletin]
Archive for 2008
AEI Vioxx Settlement panel on CSPAN
Scheduled for broadcast today at the strange hour of 11:07 AM to 1:11 PM Eastern. A webcast is also available. See also our January 5 post.
A podcast and webcast are also available on the AEI website.
“The wonderful blog, Overlawyered”
Thank you, Patent Troll Tracker (Jan. 4).
“Inmate Sues Jail, Blames It For His Escapes”
Colorado: “An inmate who twice escaped from the Pueblo County jail filed a federal lawsuit Thursday, alleging that guards abused him and didn’t do enough to stop him from breaking out.” Scott Anthony Gomez, Jr.’s lawsuit “claims authorities ‘did next to nothing to ensure that the jail was secure and that the Plaintiff could not escape.'” (TheDenverChannel.com, Jan. 4).
Overlawyered featured
On the WSJ Law Blog—and the plaintiffs attorneys commenting have such nice things to say!
When is it nobody’s fault?
I’d like to thank Walter Olson for inviting me to contribute to one of my favorite blogs, Overlawyered. As an attorney and psychologist, I’ve worked in a number of different hospitals across the country. Health care institutions are unique places to work for in many respects because the decisions made there can directly lead to serious or even fatal outcomes. Of course this is obvious, as should be the fact that despite the best intentions of everyone involved in a patient’s care, bad outcomes occur.
Alison Cowan has this article in last Friday’s New York Times highlighting a recent case involving the suicide of Ruth Farrell. By all accounts Farrell had been quite depressed for a very long time. As is the case with some people who struggle with chronic depression, Ms. Ferrell was admitted to the hospital for care and observation related to her depression and suicidal ideation. Sadly, Ms. Farell hanged herself with her own pants between the standard 15 minute “checks” performed by staff on psychiatric wards. In turn, her estate sued her doctors and the hospital claiming improper care.
Tiger victims in ambulance: “Don’t tell them what we did”
The Dhaliwal brothers prefer to have attorney Mark Geragos do the talking, greatly frustrating investigators trying to reconstruct what happened in the zoo mauling. (Jaxon Van Derbeken, “In ambulance, survivors of S.F. tiger attack made pact of silence”, San Francisco Chronicle, Jan. 5; “San Francisco Authorities Seek to Inspect Tiger Attack Victims’ Cell Phones”, AP/FoxNews.com, Jan. 5; Patricia Yollin, Tanya Schevitz, Kevin Fagan, “S.F. Zoo visitor saw 2 victims of tiger attack teasing lions”, San Francisco Chronicle, Jan. 3; Jacob Sullum, “The Buck Keeps Moving”, syndicated/Reason, Jan. 2). Earlier: Jan. 3.
Mississippi wrong-doc-sued case
Robert Loblaw’s Decision of the Day blog, on appellate decisions, has this update (and somewhat longer write-up) on a case briefly noted by guestblogger Jason Barney in this space in October:
Ratliff v. Stewart, 06-61018 (5th Cir., Dec. 6, 2007)
The facts in this Fifth Circuit decision reflect rather poorly on the practice of law in the Southern District of Mississippi. The underlying case arises from injuries that plaintiff Sarah Ratliff allegedly suffered from the drug Stadol. Although Ratliff eventually settled her claims, her litigation took some strange turns, resulting in this appeal.
To start, Ratliff’s attorney named the wrong doctor as a defendant. The attorney knew that Ratliff had been prescribed Stadol by a Dr. Stewart with an office in McComb, Mississippi. Without investigating further, the lawyer found a defendant who fit the bill: Dr. Lawrence Stewart. But Lawrence Stewart had never prescribed Stadol to Sarah Ratliff. Although he did have a patient named Sarah Ratliff, she insisted that she had not filed a lawsuit against him.
As it turns out, the plaintiff had been treated by Lawrence Stewart’s father, Edsel Ford Stewart, who by this point had passed away. But Lawrence’s protests fell on deaf ears, as did his motion to dismiss, complete with an affidavit stating that he had never treated the plaintiff. After filing their opposition to this motion, the plaintiff’s attorneys finally bothered to check with their client and, lo and behold, she told them that they had sued the wrong guy. Just for fun, the attorneys waited another month before confessing error and letting Lawrence off the hook.
Did they learn from their mistake? Not really, as they then filed a suit against the estate of “the elder Lawrence Stewart.”
Could it get any worse? Maybe a little. Five months after being dismissed from the case and nine days after the rest of Ratliff’s case was reassigned to a different judge, Lawrence Stewart’s attorney sent a letter to follow up on an earlier request for attorney fees. But he sent it to the old judge. And, in an even bigger blunder, the old judge decided to award attorney fees for a case that was no longer on his docket.
The mess eventually got cleaned up: the old judge vacated his order and the new judge adopted it. Ratliff appealed, but the Fifth Circuit rejects his arguments and largely affirms the fee award.
U.K.: Farm stiles and gates yield to wheelchair access
In the English countryside stiles and so-called kissing gates “have been a familiar feature of the landscape for centuries, but local authorities now believe that installing them along footpaths and rights of way is a breach of the Disability Discrimination Act 1995.” (“Farms kiss goodbye to stiles and gates to allow wheelchair access”, Times Online, Nov. 30). According to Wikipedia, some kissing gates are designed on a large enough scale that wheelchairs can pass through.
Did Mark Lanier comment about Vioxx on a medical blog?
Libertarian medical school blogger “Frommedskool” has been critical of the Vioxx litigation (regularly citing to our coverage at Point of Law). An April 2006 post about the Cona/McDarby case, however, appears to have generated a December 2007 comment from someone calling himself Mark Lanier, the plaintiffs’ attorney in the case:
Third, there was a huge amount of info Merck had that it never gave the FDA, there were smoking gun memos and emails, and there was huge harassment of the medical community done by Merck. For example, Merck did a full meta-analysis of placebo trial that showed a statistically significant increase in heart attacks, but Merck excised that from the report given the FDA. Even Merck’s head admtted they should have given the analysis to the FDA.
(Point of Law discussed the so-called withholding of the meta-analysis back in 2006. It wasn’t all that.) Fascinatingly, this comment immediately provokes comments from another lurker (just two hours later?!) claiming to be a plaintiff, reasonably asking why, if the evidence was so good, Lanier was agreeing to settle 47,000 plaintiffs’ cases for under $5 billion, essentially a nuisance settlement given that victorious plaintiffs were being awarded in the millions and tens of millions.