June 18 roundup

  • Are plaintiffs’ attorneys judge-shopping by filing and dismissing and refiling identical class-action complaints in the highly-publicized restaurant menu case against Applebee’s? [Cal Biz Lit]
  • You won’t be surprised that most of the nine worst business stories picked by BMI involve spoon-feeding by plaintiffs’ attorneys to a credulous press. [Business & Media Institute]
  • “There’s no justification whatsoever for the agency to take any kind of action,” said Julie Vallese, a spokeswoman for the Consumer Product Safety Commission. “The claims being made about the dangers of shower curtains are phantasmagorical. It’s ridiculous.” Yeah, but the lawsuits are bound to happen anyway. [NY Daily News]
  • Jack Thompson stays in the news when U.S. Marshals pay him a visit after a letter to a judge. [GamePolitics (h/t J.L.)]
  • “A City lawyer who is demanding £19 million in compensation for work-place bullying faked a nervous breakdown to secure a larger payout, an employment tribunal was told.” [London Times via ATL]
  • Did defensive medicine almost kill a patient when doctor worries more about potential lawsuit than whether nurse could save patient’s life? Heck if I know, but the underlying medicine is debated in the comments. [EM Physician blog]
  • Hair-stylist fined £4,000 for “hurt feelings” after refusing to hire a Muslim stylist who wouldn’t show her hair at work. [Daily Mail (h/t Slim); earlier on Overlawyered]
  • Disturbing turn in the Adam Reposa disciplinary hearing over his obscene gesture in court: state bar introduces satirical magazine as evidence because they “thought it was indicative of Reposa’s lack of respect for the law and the court system.” [Texas Lawyer/law.com] Mind you, this is the same Texas legal discipline system that refused to take action against Fred Baron and gave a slap on the wrist to the lawyers who tried to fake evidence in a product liability suit against Chrysler. As long as your priorities are straight.

3 Comments

  • The link in the Applebee’s item is to the wrong article.

    Fixed, thanks — TF

  • Did defensive medicine almost kill a patient when doctor worries more about potential lawsuit than whether nurse could save patient’s life? Heck if I know, but the underlying medicine is debated in the comments.

    Ted, stay away form second guessing ER Doctor’s decison to not allow a CRNA to take a stab at intuibating this patient. She probably would have had the same problems ER Doc and the anesthesiologist had resulting in a failed intubation.

    Closing airways whether due to known or unknow etiologies is common in the Emergency Room. ER Doc himelf did EVERYTHING correctly under bad circumstances, but it was negligent for those circumstances (no equipment or the proper docs on call and immediately available)to be present in the first place.

    As it turned out, this was negligence in the air and of course is not actionable. But, this incident was a “reportable event” under The Joint Commission on the Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO)and state health department regulations and the hospital’s peer review processes, the purpose of which is to eliminate the chain of events that casue problems leadign to medical errors. I’ll bet you 10 to 1 however, that this incident was swept under the rug, and no one performed the required “root casue analysis.” It is therefore destined to repeat itself. The hospital needs to investigate why it took “forever” to get the anesthesiologist, who was supposedly on-call to examine the patient, or why an otolaryngologist was not available, and to eliminate the bottlenecks.

  • […] on bogus shower curtain scare story (earlier). [NYT; related AEI […]