Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
Thursday, August 7th, 2008
…let me apologize for this.
As if we needed more bad publicity, now a flight attendant has sued Joel Osteen’s wife over an alleged assault which occurred when Mrs. Osteen got upset when something wasn’t quite right in First Class.
According to court documents, the plaintiff is suing Osteen for causing “anxiety and hemorrhoids” because of the assault, as well as a loss of faith. I can’t wait to see how the plaintiff attempts to prove causation. I read somewhere that the plaintiff is seeking punitive damages of 10% of Osteen’s net worth, which is somewhere in the neighborhood of a gazillion dollars. Good luck with that.
Prediction: Osteen’s lawyer Rusty Hardin will beat this plaintiff like a rented mule. IF it gets to the jury, they will deliberate for a few minutes just to be polite and then return a defense verdict. Meanwhile, the rest of us need to start thinking about how we handle this case in our next voir dires.
Tags: jury trials, Osteen
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Thursday, July 24th, 2008
There’s been a fatal crane collapse in Oklahoma City today. Apparently a crane toppled over and crushed a car, killing one of the occupants and injuring the other. The victims are believed to be husband and wife. No word yet on the cause of the accident.
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Tuesday, July 22nd, 2008
Developing story from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram: a worker at a Chesapeake gas well near Cresson fell some 40 feet down a well shaft, where he was stuck for several hours before being rescued by emergency crews from several local fire departments. Early reports are that the man was eventually pulled out and transported to JPS hospital in good condition.
I had no idea those shafts were large enough for a man to fit inside. Amazing. And 40 feet is a long way down. That must have been horrifying.
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Tuesday, July 15th, 2008
The American Association for Justice released a report last week listing the nation’s worst insurance companies for consumers. Allstate topped the list of insurers who refuse to pay just claims, employ hardball tactics against policyholders, reward executives with extravagant salaries, and raise premiums while hoarding excessive profits, followed by Unum and AIG. The report was compiled using information from court documents, SEC and FBI records, state insurance department investigations and complaints, nationwide news accounts, and testimony of former insurance agents and adjusters.
Tags: bad faith, bad insurance companies
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Friday, July 11th, 2008
Another report of Heparin overdosing of premature babies, this time involving up to 14 babies at Christus Spohn hospital in Corpus Christi. Two of the overdosed babies, twin siblings, have died.
“Christus Spohn (Health System) confirms that an error occurred during the mixing process in our hospital pharmacy,” Chief Medical Officer Dr. Richard Davis said in a prepared statement. “The error was unrelated to product labeling or packaging.”
The Texas Legislature in 2003 - pumped full of special-interest money and controlled by the insurance and business lobbies - passed laws limiting the damages that victims of medical malpractice can recover from negligent health care providers. Unfortunately, they took no steps to try to ensure less negligence or better healthcare.
Tags: malpractice, Medical negligence
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Tuesday, July 1st, 2008
Great op-ed in today’s Clarion-Ledger in Jackson, Mississippi by insurance-defense lawyer Alex Alston (certainly no bomb-throwing liberal trial lawyer) about how that state’s high court has shifted to protecting businesses and insurers over injured consumers. Switch the states and names and he could as well be describing the Texas Supreme Court.
Notable among Alston’s comments are these:
“Our entire judicial system is built on a “rule of law.” In other words, it makes no difference whether you are a prince or a pauper, the law must be precisely the same for all. A court that substitutes its opinion for that of a jury, or simply decides a case for the benefit of a favored party, tears the basic fabric of our judicial system to shreds. If the rule of law is not followed, the entire foundation of our judicial system is undermined. The public has a right to expect the Supreme Court to follow the rule of law and decide the cases before it fairly and impartially without favor to any party regardless of status, race, creed or color…Should we not demand that [they] follow the rule of law? Certainly it is a fair question to ask why 88 percent of the time, the court reverses a jury verdict for a plaintiff and substitutes its own opinion, and why, in 100 percent of the cases involving an injured victim’s appeals from a jury verdict in favor of a defendant, the court finds for the wealthy or powerful defendant. Our court must be more than a rubber stamp for the rich and powerful. Shouldn’t we expect that and more?”
Well said.
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Wednesday, June 25th, 2008
The U.S. Supreme Court released its opinion on whether Exxon should pay $2.5 billion in punitive damages arising out of the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster. In a decision that comes as no surprise to anyone…except maybe those who expected that the court would throw out punitive damages in their entirety…the court reduced the punitive damages from $2.5 billion to roughly $504 million, which is about $46 dollars for every gallon of oil they spilled in Prince William Sound.
Several observations:
1. Champagne corks are flying at the Exxon boardroom in Dallas. You can hear the popping sounds all the way over here in Fort Worth.
2. Exxon is the most profitable corporation in the history of ever. It set an annual profit record by earning $40.61 billion last year - or nearly $1,300 per second in 2007. That eclipsed its previous record of $39.5 billion in 2006.
3. Justice Samuel Alito did not participate in the decision because he owns Exxon stock. As if…
Tags: Dallas
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Friday, May 30th, 2008
Horrible crane collapse in New York City again, resulting in the death of at least one construction worker and injury to a pedestrian. Eyewitness reports describe a catastrophic scene, like a drawn-out car wreck with screeching metal and even fire. A crane collapsing from a high-rise must be a terribly frightening sight.
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Thursday, May 29th, 2008
Good recent New York Times op/ed discussing preemption, the trumping of state law by federal law and a favorite tool of the current administration to further close the courthouse door on consumers. Among other observations (such as how the Bush Administration issued rules preempting state banking laws - over the objection of all 50 states’ banking superintendents - and thus helped pave the way for the subprime mortgage crisis):
[T]he federal rule should be a floor, not a ceiling. It should set a minimum level of rights, not stop states from doing more to protect their citizens.
For years, the federal government used pre-emption [to set a minimum level of rights]. Civil rights acts swept away discrimination at the state level, and workplace safety laws upgraded conditions in factories and mines. Conservatives opposed many of these federal laws on the principle that they were trampling on “states’ rights.”
Since the conservative ascendancy in Washington, many of these same people have stopped praising states’ rights and have begun burying them — not to protect citizens’ rights, but to take them away. The Bush administration and its Congressional allies have helped their friends in industry by enacting weak environmental, health and consumer regulations — and arguing that they wipe out more robust state protections.
Most Americans may not know about the supremacy clause, but they do seem to understand that they are increasingly vulnerable. Weeks before the 2006 elections shifted control of Congress from the Republicans to the Democrats, 79 percent of respondents in an Opinion Research poll said big business had too much influence over the Bush administration. As Democrats and Republicans contemplate what kind of “change” voters are looking for now, they can start with the idea that both the federal and state government need to do a better job of protecting their citizens.
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Thursday, May 29th, 2008
Well, no surprise here, but appellate courts today in Texas and New Jersey overturned two jury verdicts against drug giant Merck in cases over its drug Vioxx.
Regarding the Texas court, Plaintiff’s lawyer Mark Lanier said, “It’s a sad day that they can write a 10-page opinion and wipe out a widow’s verdict with a new judicial activism that reinterprets the evidence to support corporate executives.” He also pointed out that all three judges on the appellate panel who tossed out his verdict took campaign contributions from law firms defending Merck.
Say what you will about the civil justice system, but it’s scary how far the appeals courts will go these days to overturn jury verdicts. Conservatives always rally against “judicial activism,” yet the GOP-controlled appeals courts in Texas have become the worst practitioners of this.
Mark Lanier is an incredible trial lawyer. Something tells me he’s not through with Merck just yet.
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