Following a battle of the medical experts, a jury tells the UCF Athletics Association to pay $10 million in the death of a student player who “collapsed and died following offseason conditioning drills at the UCF football complex.” [Chicago Tribune]
Posts Tagged ‘expert witnesses’
June 30 roundup
- First Amendment wins as SCOTUS strikes down violent-videogame ban [Ilya Shapiro, Hans Bader] Justice Scalia cites “Snow White” and “Hansel and Gretel” [Ann Althouse]
- More Wal-Mart v. Dukes analysis [Schwartz, Althouse, Trask, Fisher, Beck, Sergio Campos/Prawfs] And aftermath for the litigants and others: ABA Journal (Pelosi wants legislative fix), CLP (plaintiffs), Reuters (law firm that’s won hundreds of millions in class actions complains it’s sunk $7 million into the case), Ted Frank (responding to that), Bay Citizen (“Foundations Could Pull Plug on Wal-Mart Suit”).
- “Would the REINS Act Rein In Federal Regulation?” [Jonathan Adler, Regulation magazine (PDF)]
- “Hypotheses Are Verified By Testing, Not By Submitting Them To Lay Juries For A Vote” [David Oliver; Drug and Device Law on denture cream product liability suit]
- Clash between federalism and some med mal reform proposals could have implications for ObamaCare battle [John Baker, Daily Caller; earlier]
- Dan Snyder Gets a Taste of D.C.’s New Anti-SLAPP Law [Citizen Media Law, earlier]
- Court skeptical of testimony of lap dance expert [Legal Blog Watch]
May 2 roundup
- In suit over weird, elaborate online hoax, court allows fraudulent-misrepresentation claim despite lack of motive of tangible gain [Chi Trib]
- Service animal rodeo: “A trained rat probably would have had a good case in California” [AP/Statesman-Journal] Broward County, Fla. backs lonely widow’s right to keep “prescription Chihuahua” against rules of condo board [AOL, Sun-Sentinel] Oklahoma: “Depressed Woman Fights to Keep Therapy Kangaroo” [Newser] Earlier on recent change in federal rules;
- Should lawmakers screen bills for constitutionality? Ms. Lithwick has trouble sticking to a position [AEternitatis]
- Human-relations complaint leads to arrest of U.K. man for singing “Kung Fu Fighting” [MSNBC]
- Barney Frank: Yes, let’s talk about med-mal reform [The Hill] Ringing the bell: Roundups of more big med-mal verdicts [White Coat, more]
- “Expert Witnesses Stripped Of Immunity From Negligence Suits In The UK” [Erik Magraken]
- “Sustainability”: an empty idea? Or perhaps actively wrongheaded? [David Friedman via David Henderson]
Turnabout in demon-nurse case
St. Luke’s Hospital in Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley is suing a lawyer and law firm “for proceeding with cases that the attorneys [allegedly] knew were ‘baseless and lacking in evidence,'” and is also suing an expert for allegedly filing a “boilerplate” certificate of merit. The cases in question are among many filed claiming that patients were killed by notorious “Angel of Death” nurse Charles Cullen; hospitals say that while some of the suits were filed on behalf of actual Cullen victims, others piled on seeking compensation for bad outcomes that had nothing to do with the murderer. Damages for wrongful litigation are notoriously hard to win in American courts. [White Coat]
Radley Balko on forensics reform
Fix the incentives that underlie the system’s pervasive failures, argues the journalist who’s exposed crime-lab scandals and expert unreliability in a series of widely discussed articles. [Reason]
Shaken-baby syndrome: the doubts
In dozens of prosecutions each year, parents or caregivers are charged after infants who died under their care have been found to display supposedly infallible indicators of abuse — in particular, subdural and retinal hemorrhage with brain swelling. Many convicted defendants stoutly maintain their innocence all along; others are sent to prison on the basis of equivocal “confessions”. Even when (as is common) there is no pattern of previous child abuse, it often happens that authorities remove other children from an alleged abuser’s home as legal action proceeds. Has the hope of using cutting-edge forensics to identify abusers wound up leading the authorities and courts to inflict new injustices? [Emily Bazelon, New York Times Magazine] More: Balko.
February 7 roundup
- Paper by Lester Brickman previews his much-anticipated new book Lawyer Barons [Mass Tort Lit, SSRN] More: Sheila Scheuerman, TortsProf.
- “A Players’ Class Action Against the NFL for Concussions?” [Russell Jackson]
- C’mon, DoJ, stop spreading domestic violence myths [Christina Hoff Sommers, USA Today]
- “Historians as Experts: A Plea for Help” [Bill Childs, TortsProf; related, Nathan Schachtman]
- Might not really work, though: “A call for aviation liability reform in South Dakota” [PoL]
- “Chevron Turns Tables on Ecuador Plaintiffs; Sues Them” [WSJ Law Blog, ShopFloor, more, yet more, NYLJ]
- Hedge funder plays race card against NYC’s famed Dakota co-op. How plausibly? [Business Insider]
- N.C. official: citizen who challenged road plans might be practicing engineering without a license [N&O]
Autopsy forensics
NPR, ProPublica and FrontLine collaborate on an extensive investigation of the many problems with coroners’ and medical examiners’ role in death investigation.
“‘New-Car Fumes’ May Have Contributed to Hit-and-Run, Expert Says”
Kevin at Lowering the Bar spots a promising new theory in a defense expert’s testimony, though it’s not clear the lawyers actually wound up making use of it. [Vail Daily, same at Denver Post]
Jim Hood’s expert loyalty
The Mississippi Attorney General keeps defending a capital conviction based on dubious bite-mark testimony [Radley Balko, Reason]