Intermittent outages have knocked Overlawyered offline for most of the past 24 hours, but it looks as if we’re back now. The problems began with spammer attacks on scripts from our old Movable Type days (moral: if you’re not using old scripts, remove them) and continued with out-of-memory problems.
Some elements of the site may still be missing or not up to date; I’ll be troubleshooting those as the day continues.
“In the wake of a disciplinary hearing against a top local prosecutor, the union that represents Santa Clara County prosecutors and public defenders is asking the California District Attorneys Association to sponsor a bill that would essentially curb the power of the state bar to punish all lawyers. …The proposal follows a recommendation by the state bar that Deputy District Attorney Ben Field be suspended from practicing law for three years — a punishment of unprecedented severity against a Santa Clara County prosecutor. Field is charged with committing misconduct in four criminal cases dating back to 1995, including misleading judges, defying court orders and concealing critical evidence from defense lawyers in pursuit of convictions.” The union objects (among other things) to letting disciplinary authorities look that far into the past for bad behavior. (Tracey Kaplan, “Prosecutors seek to curb powers of disciplinary board”, San Jose Mercury News, Nov. 7) (via Legal Ethics Forum).
A sign at Edinburgh Airport will help you out. (Massie, Nov. 17).
Updating our Apr. 29 item: “A law professor who sued two former students for defamation has dropped his suit after the school’s interim dean said there is no evidence he is a racist. Law professor Richard Peltz of the University of Arkansas at Little Rock told Inside Higher Ed that he sued to get his reputation back. ‘This suit was never about money,’ he said. ‘I feel that now with the university’s support, I am on the road to repairing my reputation.'” (Debra Cassens Weiss, ABA Journal, Nov. 17).
The Chicago lawprof discusses the pending Supreme Court case on implied pre-emption:
…it is folly to act as if the private lawsuits attacking FDA warnings just backstop a porous and lax FDA. Often those lawsuits add an unwanted deterrent against the sale of desperately needed drugs. That risk is multiplied by hyperventilated state tort law that, in many instances, is lopsidedly pro-plaintiff.
(“Wyeth v. Levine Could Endanger Your Health”, Forbes, Nov. 11). Much more on the debate at Point of Law here, here, here, etc.
From the farther shores of political lawsuit-filing, from a farther-shores kinda guy: “On November 13, Alan Keyes and his vice-presidential running mate in California, Reverend Wiley Drake, and other members of the American Independent Party, filed a new lawsuit over Barack Obama’s eligibility to be president. … All the other cases have been dismissed because the plaintiffs were said to lack standing. This is the first case with a presidential candidate-plaintiff.” (“Alan Keyes Files Lawsuit Over Obama Eligibility”, Richard Winger Ballot Access News, Nov. 16; Keyes v. Bowen, PDF; Scott Moss, Concurring Opinions, Nov. 17).
It’s enough to exasperate WhiteCoatRants (Oct. 20):
…Utter the terms “chest pain” and “trouble breathing” in the same sentence and with some doctors you’re getting a chest CT. It doesn’t matter that you have a cough, runny nose, that the chest pain is burning and only occurs when you cough, or that half the people in town have influenza because they didn’t get their flu shots. Even if bronchitis is the clinical diagnosis, there is still a 0.0001% chance that you could have a pulmonary embolism along with your bronchitis and we don’t want to miss it, because if we do, it may cause you to die and result in a lawsuit against the physician. Some doctors aren’t willing to take even the 1 in 1,000,000 chance that they’ll be sued. …
If a doctor doesn’t get every conceivable test on a patient and there is a bad outcome, then the doctor gets smacked with a lawsuit because the doctor didn’t do enough. Unless something changes, more and more patients coming to the emergency department will get megaworkups so nothing gets “missed.”
Then I read that some pompous plaintiff’s attorney said somewhere that “defensive medicine” was a myth. His theory was that if doctors do an extra test that catches a disease while it’s still treatable, then it is “good medicine,” not “defensive medicine.” Either he doesn’t get it because he is ignorant or he doesn’t get it because that attitude helps him afford his chalet in the Swiss Alps.
Medicine will never be perfect.
While on the subject, prominent health economist Uwe Reinhardt has cited our medical liability system as an important reason costs are significantly higher in the U.S. than elsewhere (PoL, Nov. 16). And KevinMD’s excellent section on defensive medicine has numerous posts in recent months we still haven’t gotten around to linking, including: guest take by “Dr. SSS” on the “two most expensive words in medicine” (“Sometimes it is difficult for me to understand if I am really treating myself or the patient.”); background on the $210 billion estimate that has been bandied about; E.R. visit + chest pains = obligatory catheterization?; quote from PandaBearMD (“Why risk our own money when we can use somebody else’s to protect us, even if it costs millions?”; a British visitor’s view of immobilization collars; don’t put the doc’s name on the chart!; and more reader reactions (“even if a patient has a good relationship with a physician and is willing to forgo various diagnostic tests, the family can decide to sue later if there is a bad outcome. … it is far easier to just order the test”)
“Dr. Steven Hayne, the man who performed most of Mississippi’s autopsies for 20 years, has filed a defamation lawsuit against The Innocence Project.” (Howard Ballou, WLBT, Oct. 30).
Hayne has been criticized because he said he conducted about 1,500 autopsies a year, much higher than the recommended standard [of fewer than 250 — ed.].
His testimony in two murder cases from Noxubee County turned out to be inaccurate and both men convicted in those cases were released from prison earlier this year.
One of the men had spent 15 years on Death Row for a crime he didn’t commit.
A third man has confessed to both slayings.
(“Investigation changes are needed”, Hattiesburg American, Oct. 22). As part of its campaign against Hayne, the Innocence Project sent more than 1,000 pages of material documenting its complaints to the Mississippi state medical licensure board and also denounced him to the national College of American Pathologists. (Jerry Mitchell, “Embattled doc suing Innocence Project”, Jackson Clarion-Ledger, Oct. 31). Radley Balko at Reason has been a longtime critic of Hayne (“Hit and Run”, Nov. 7), as has Lotus @ Folo. On Jun. 6, we reported on charges that Dr. Hayne’s forensic work has been of extensive assistance to plaintiff’s lawyers in Mississippi liability suits.