My op-ed from last Monday’s Wall Street Journal on some of the more dubious men behind John Edwards’ campaign has now been posted on the WSJ’s OpinionJournal site, which makes it available to everyone and not just Journal subscribers. (Walter Olson, “Edwards & Co.”, OpinionJournal, Jul. 19)(WSJ version).
Author Archive
Baltimore Sun on obstetrics
Who’s going to be left delivering babies? Maybe foreign medical graduates, who still perceive themselves as having fewer options than the U.S.-born medical students who are increasingly steering clear of obstetrics as a specialty. Of course there’s also the option of departing a state like Maryland, where the prevailing insurance premium for an ob/gyn is slated to rise this year to $160,130, and starting up practice instead in a state like Wisconsin, where tough tort reforms keep the corresponding figure to an average of $45,000 to $50,000, according to Dr. Douglas Laube, head of an American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists panel on obstetrics residency. (Jonathan Bor, “Obstetrics is failing to draw new doctors”, Baltimore Sun, Jul. 11).
“Compensation culture” — in Iraq
“Whatever you think about democracy and human rights, the Coalition successfully imported one thing from the West into post-Saddam Iraq — the compensation culture. Iraq has become a hotbed of legal claims and counterclaims, of individual complaints and class action lawsuits, for everything from physical and mental injury to destruction of property. Iraqis demand compensation for damage caused to their gardens by American tanks, or for the scrapes and dents to their cars caused by run-ins with speeding Humvees. American soldiers have threatened to sue the US military for exposing them to death and injury by terrorist attack, while British soldiers want compensation for injuries sustained in friendly fire incidents. Ambulance-chasing (or perhaps Humvee-chasing) human rights lawyers are everywhere in Iraq, encouraging Iraqis to sue, sue, sue.” (Brendan O?Neill, “Invasion of the lawyers”, The Spectator (U.K.), Jul. 10 issue, posted Jul. 17)(reg).
Update: DoJ off overtime hook
Updating our report of Aug. 30, 1999: “A federal appeals court [last month] threw out a class action seeking overtime pay for more than 9,000 government attorneys because the lawyers didn’t get the proper written approval before putting in extra hours. … The largely anonymous class sought $500 million in overtime pay for work performed between 1992 and 1999, when Congress passed a law barring overtime pay.” We have observed before that the antediluvian overtime-pay mandates of federal labor law are easy to break inadvertently, and this would seem to be an illustration: neither the government agency charged with making everyone else obey the laws, nor its highly skilled lawyer-employees, seemed to have their eyes on the ball with regard to overtime obligations until the possibility of a retroactive claim came up. (Jeff Chorney, “Federal Circuit Says No Back Pay for DOJ Lawyers”, The Recorder, Jun. 24).
Update: U. of Utah settles won’t-swear actress’s suit
“The University of Utah agreed yesterday to let students opt out of activities that conflict with their religious beliefs, settling a lawsuit brought by a Mormon drama student who refused to recite lines that contained the F-word and took the Lord?s name in vain. Christina Axson-Flynn, 24, had sued the university in federal court, accusing it of violating her to right to freedom of speech and religion.” (“College, Mormon student settle theatrical-swearing case”, AP/First Amendment Center, Jul. 15; Elizabeth Neff and Shinika A. Sykes, “U. settles case over student’s rights on stage”, Salt Lake Tribune, Jul. 15). The “university will reimburse Axson-Flynn for tuition and fees paid during the 1998-99 academic year and, through the state’s risk management office, pay her attorneys’ fees of approximately $250,000.” (Angie Welling, “U., Axson-Flynn settle civil rights suit”, Deseret News, Jul. 15). See our coverage of Jan. 24, 2000 and Feb. 16, 2004.
An Edwards non-admirer
“I have cerebral palsy, and it’s not my doctor’s fault.” — David Robinson, “Lawyer Logic: A Villain For Every Victim”, Wall Street Journal/OpinionJournal.com, Jul. 16).
Oft-sued Pennsylvania doctors
The litigation lobby has worked hard to advance the theme (accepted at face value in places like the New Republic) that a few bad apples in the medical profession account for most malpractice claims. On the other hand, some medical observers (see Apr. 10-13, 2003) have pointed out that if it’s true that five percent of doctors account for a majority of malpractice payouts, the most accurate description of that five percent would be not “incompetent M.D.s who should not be in practice” but rather “members of high-risk specialties in litigious localities”.
Reinforcing this latter view, a Pew Foundation project has surveyed 1,333 Pennsylvania specialists and drew responses from 824 physicians in high-risk fields including emergency medicine, general surgery, neurosurgery, orthopedic surgery, obstetrics/gynecology and radiology. “Eighty-six percent of specialists had been named in a malpractice suit at least once during their careers, and 47 percent had been sued in the three years prior to the survey.” Details today at Point Of Law, which also has new posts on Eliot Spitzer and on John Kerry’s Pennsylvania fund-raising.
EDDix guide to law weblogs
An outfit called EDDix, which markets services relating to the electronic data discovery (EDD) aspects of litigation, recently published an annotated list of its 50 favorite legal-related weblogs, which includes kind words about this site (we’re among 16 deemed “must reading”). Perhaps the list was meant to boost EDDix’s profile — it’s certainly done that — but it’s worth a look in its own right. I don’t remember seeing elsewhere such a useful pocket guide to the so-called blawgosphere, including information on the people who put out the sites, and it alerted me to the existence of a number of promising sites new to me.
U.K.: ban proposed on disrespecting religions
In Great Britain, where there is no First Amendment to protect free expression, Home Secretary David Blunkett has proposed a law banning so-called hate speech directed against religion, apparently in a gesture toward Muslim clerics offended by vigorous criticisms of their preachings. David G. Green, Director of Civitas: the Institute for the Study of Civil Society, warns that such a step would endanger Britain’s history of intellectual liberty — Hume, for one, might have been open to prosecution given the rude things he said about priests — and would act as a protective charter for religious extremism by giving its adherents a way to persecute scoffers by dragging them through the courts. (“Background Briefing”, Civitas, undated). Iain Murray comments as does Mark Steyn (“Blunkett’s ban will fan the flames”, Daily Telegraph, Jul. 13)(via AtlanticBlog). More: Mick Hume, “Don’t you just hate the Illiberati?”, The Times/Spiked-Online, Jul. 12. For earlier proposals along the same lines, see Oct. 19-21, 2001.
Sue the fire-shelter makers
Central Washington state: “Nearly three years after four local firefighters died in a wildfire, some family members are suing the manufacturer of the fire shelters they were using. … They claim the instruction manual for the shelters encouraged the firefighters to set them up on rocky terrain. But hot gas from the fire was able to seep in and kill them. The lawsuit names the manufacturer and the National Association of State Foresters, which helped write the manual.” (Craig Galbraith, “Thirtymile Fire Lawsuit”, KIMA-TV (Yakima, Wash.), Jul. 9). According to a Sept. 2001 press release from the office of Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), the Forest Service report on the incident found that the deaths were not caused by faulty equipment. “According to this investigation, these deaths occurred due to poor judgment at several critical junctures and a failure to follow established procedures”. (USFS fire investigation reports).