- Liability protection for doctors, premised on “best-practices” medicine: a proposal to address the federalism difficulties [Bernstein/MacCourt, MI Center for Medical Progress, PoL]
- Fraud in immigration law victimizes both U.S. and aspiring immigrants [NYT]
- Paralyzed while tackling opponent, high school footballer now suing Barre, Vt. school system [Barre-Montpelier Times Argus]
- Memo to Sen. Edwards: voters forgave Grover Cleveland the paternity, but they do mind lies [Mickey Kaus]
- Issue in New Orleans case: defamatory to call tour guides “thugs”? [Times-Picayune]
- No more Lux et Veritas: Yale press
wimps out on Mohammed cartoons [NYT, Moynihan/Reason “Hit and Run”, Steyn/NRO “Corner”, Hitchens] - More on NYC woman’s “wasted-tuition” suit against college [Mark Gimein, NY Mag via Genova, earlier]
- Do we really want to let CPSIA’s drafters within a mile of redesigning our health care system? [Inoculated]
Posts Tagged ‘medical’
Nancy Pelosi to address trial lawyers convention
She’ll be opening the AAJ annual convention tonight in San Francisco. Charles Krauthammer thinks the coziness between Big Law and certain parts of the political establishment may explain a lot about the faltering status of health care reform.
More: “Media Barred from Speaker Pelosi’s Speech to Trial Lawyers“. And John Steele Gordon at Commentary “Contentions” offers some ideas for health care reform that were probably not included in Pelosi’s speech.
National Journal bloggers’ poll
Apparently I’m the only “right-leaning” blogger who thinks the Obama administration has been reasonably skillful as a political matter in its pursuit of health care reform, even if I disagree with its goals. Maybe I’m just grading on the curve by way of comparison with the Clintonites’ fiasco.
June 7 roundup
- Pennsylvania Department of Labor launches probe on whether reality-TV show “Jon & Kate Plus 8” violates child labor laws [Pennsylvania Labor & Employment Blog, Hirsch/Workplace Law Prof via Ohio Employer’s Law]
- Dispute over termination of Navy aircraft contract called “Jarndyce v. Jarndyce of U.S. legal system” [WSJ Law Blog]
- Medical tourism, cont’d: “It appears that ‘we’re easier to sue’ is the uniquely American defense to medicine outsourcing.” [KevinMD]
- New Oklahoma law protects farmers from neighbors’ suits complaining of nuisance from farm activity [Enid, Okla., News]
- For unusually bad advice on how to save GM and Detroit, Michael Moore as usual comes through [Popehat]
- Lawyer reprimanded for telling party she should be cut up, shipped overseas [NJLJ, ABA Journal]
- Call for reform of UK laws banning press interviews of jurors after verdict [Times Online first, second articles and commentary]
- Coming soon: campaign against depiction of smoking in Raymond Chandler books, Edward Hopper paintings [CEI “Open Market”]
U.K.: “Lawyers use NHS as £100m cash cow”
Some in Britain are not happy about the combination of no-fee, no win lawyering (relatively recently legalized over there) and a taxpayer compensation scheme for medical negligence. [Times Online]. More: GruntDoc headlines his post, “In case you thought Nationalized Health would take the lawyers out of it…”.
New York med-mal lawyers reach for an Albany payday
And it’s a big one, buried in a state budget package: the lifting of two-decade-old restrictions on what they can charge clients. More: Point of Law.
March 25 roundup
- Driver on narcotic painkillers crashes car, lawyer says pharmacists liable [Las Vegas Review-Journal]
- Who’s that cyber-chasing the Buffalo Continental Air crash? Could it be noted San Francisco-based plaintiff’s firm Lieff Cabraser? [Turkewitz]
- Axl Rose no fan of former Guns N’ Roses bandmate or his royalty-seeking attorneys [Reuters]
- Cheese shop owner speaks out against punitive tariff on Roquefort, now due to take effect April 23 [video at Reason “Hit and Run”, earlier]
- Too many cops and too many lawsuits in city schools, says Errol Louis [NY Daily News]
- Law professor and prominent blogger Ann Althouse is getting married — to one of her commenters. Congratulations! [her blog, Greenfield] Kalim Kassam wonders when we can look forward to the Meg Ryan film “You’ve Got Blog Comments”.
- “Louisiana panel recommends paying fees of wrongfully accused Dr. Anna Pou” (charged in deaths of patients during Hurricane Katrina) [NMissCommentor]
- U.K.: “Privacy Group Wants To Shut Down Google Street View” [Mashable]
“The price of disability law”
As we reported a while back, a New Jersey rheumatologist has been required to pay $400,000 to a deaf patient for refusing to provide (at his expense) a sign language interpreter for her. (Instead, he exchanged written notes with help from her family members; there is no allegation that she suffered any physical harm.) Now Stephen Dubner of Freakonomics covers the case and notes that it could have an unintended and unpleasant consequence: doctors are now given a financial incentive to find excuses to turn away deaf patients from their practice.
“Nothing personal, doc, but I’ll see you in court”
But it is personal (cross-posted from Point of Law).
Update: Passalaqua v. Kaiser Foundation Hospitals
I got an email asking me what happened to the case in the following post:
While his wife, Jeanette Passalaqua, was giving birth, Steven fainted in the delivery room, fracturing his skull and dying two days later. This is, says the family, the fault of Kaiser Foundation Hospitals and Southern California Permanente Medical Group Inc. “‘This avoidable tragedy was a direct result of Kaiser’s ordinary negligence in failing to exercise reasonable care to prevent foreseeable injuries to Steven,’ according to the suit, which was filed last week in San Bernardino County Superior Court.” So if your maternity ward is rubber-padded next time you go there, you know why.
So I looked it up in the San Bernardino County Superior Court docket database: the case settled almost immediately. The docket does not report the amount of the settlement, which could conceivably have been for a token amount, but one can infer that there was some substantial money involved, because the settlement required proof of the purchase of annuities for the two plaintiff minors, which normally wouldn’t be worth the transactions costs if the sums were tiny. But that inference may be incorrect. If ever I find myself in San Bernardino, maybe I’ll check the paper record to see if there’s more public detail.