That’s the view of Tennessee trial lawyer John Rice (InjuryBoard.com, Feb. 20). Some readers wonder whether Rice has thought the matter through (via Kevin Pho, who also comments).
Posts Tagged ‘Tennessee’
Another Brockovich Medicare suit dismissed
This time it’s the federal court for the Eastern District of Tennessee that’s sent the glamourpuss bounty-hunter packing:
Plaintiff and his associate Erin Brockovich have filed 49 nearly identical complaints in jurisdictions across the country. Kris Hundley, Brockovich Teams Up With Local Firm, St. Petersburg Times, Dec. 21, 2006. Many of these complaints have already been dismissed . . .
Roy F. Harmon III at Health Plan Law explains why this one failed too (Mar. 13). For more, see Jun. 22 and Nov. 18, 2006 as well as, on the general Brockovich phenomenon, my October 2000 treatment in Reason.
Wilkes & McHugh sued over alleged Tenn. fee grab
Tampa-based Wilkes & McHugh, which has enjoyed much success filing suits against nursing homes in many states, “is now on the defense end of a suit that contends the firm knowingly violated Tennessee law regarding contingency fees.” Former client Debbie Howard, who hired the firm to sue a Memphis nursing home, says it “engaged in an unlawful scheme to collect 40 percent or 45 percent in contingency fees of settlement amounts, although Tennessee law caps fees to 33 and 1/3 percent in medical malpractice cases. The complaint says the law firm charged the higher and unlawful contingency fee to hundreds of clients in Tennessee.” In its response, the law firm says the complaint is “scurrilous” and based on falsehoods, and says Howard never appealed a Tennessee court order approving the fees. (Liz Freeman, “Tampa law firm faces contingency fees lawsuit”, Naples (Fla.) News, Jan. 14; Scott Barancik, “Firm gets a taste of dish it serves”, St. Petersburg Times, Feb. 17). For more on the law firm, see Mar. 13-14, 2001, Jul. 6, 2005, and Jun. 22, 2006, as well as Scott Barancik, “Law firm’s success against nursing homes has a price”, St. Petersburg Times, Jul. 24, 2004.
“Homicide conspiracy” indictments in Tennessee
Wants $1.5M for cops’ seizure of 114 frozen cats
Tennessee: “A Murfreesboro man charged with animal cruelty after more than 100 frozen bodies of cats were found in freezers in his home is suing authorities for $1.5 million. The lawsuit was filed exactly three years after authorities confiscated 114 frozen bodies of cats and kittens from William Terry Davis’ home in an upscale golf course community in Murfreesboro.” Davis is represented by attorney Harold H. Parker. (Clay Carey, “$1.5M suit filed over frozen cats”, Gannett/Murfreesboro Daily News Journal, Jan. 6; The Smoking Gun; “Man Sues Police For Seizing Frozen Cat Bodies From His Freezer”, AP/WTVF, Jan. 6; Nashville Scene, Jan. 5).
Potter v. Ford Motor
Betty Potter, who weighed 230 pounds, was driving her Ford Escort in the rain on bald tires, lost control of her car, and collided backwards into a tree at 30 mph. Her seatback collapsed in the impact, rendering her paraplegic when her head hit the back seat. She was allowed to argue to a jury that the design was “defective” even though her lawyers could not identify an alternative design that would have prevented the harm; Ford was held 70% liable for $10 million in damages. The Tennessee Court of Appeals affirmed the state trial court verdict. Of course, it’s impossible to design seatbacks to handle all conceivable combinations of collision direction and driver sizes; as the plaintiffs’ expert admitted, using a rigid seatback instead of a yielding seatback to withstand this sort of collision makes other types of injuries much more likely, and low-speed collisions where the yielding seatback has benefits are far more likely than high-speed collisions. The jury (and Tennessee court) is essentially punishing Ford for failing to have perfect foresight in matching its cars with the accidents the cars’ drivers will have. (Potter v. Ford Motor Co.; concurring opinion; via Products Liability Prof. Blog).
In other rigid v. yielding seatback lawsuit news, the Illinois Court of Appeals released on the web the Mikolajczyk v. Ford Motor Co. opinion for the case we discussed Dec. 1, 2006 and March 21, 2005. The same issues apply in that case, except there, the accident was caused by a drunk driver plowing into the back of a stopped car at over 60 mph.
Don’t
If you’re a judge who sentences violators to attend traffic school, don’t take kickbacks from the traffic school operators. Former Roane County, Tennessee Judge Thomas Austin has now pleaded guilty to three federal charges arising from allegations of that sort. Sentencing is expected in August (WVLT, Mar. 29).
Proliferation of Taser Suits
Taser International has experienced tremendous growth over the last few years, but now is facing a growing number of lawsuits. Some of these suits narrowly focus on police departments for their use of the Taser, while others name Taser itself in defective product suits. A quick scan of the news over just the last few days reveals suits in Georgia, Ohio, Tennessee, Canada, Florida, and Minnesota.
Taser claims that many of these suits have been dismissed. Taser faces some of the same problems faced by vaccine makers and even airbag makers – their product clearly saves lives vs. the alternative (i.e. getting shot with a real gun), but this “safer product” value proposition gets confused with “completely safe,” which leads to careless use and mistaken expectations.
Joys of bounty-hunting: internet sales tax
In Chicago, veteran class-action attorney Stephen Diamond has been profitably suing retailers that don’t collect state and local sales taxes from online customers:
Using a state whistle-blower law, Mr. Diamond since 2002 has filed about 95 suits in Cook County court here against retailers that failed to charge him taxes on Internet sales, alleging that they broke the law. In cases where the state of Illinois joins the suits and prevails, he is entitled to up to 25% of the financial damages, with the rest going to state coffers….
Because of settlement agreements between the retailers and the attorney general’s office, the state’s judges have agreed to keep the names of most of the retailers and the settlement amounts confidential.
The retailers, like their mail-order-catalogue counterparts, have in the past often taken the position that the responsibility for making sure sales tax is paid rests with the customer; disputes sometimes arise about whether a particular retailer has sufficient operations within a state to count as present within it for tax-collection purposes.
Mr. Diamond’s targets have included such firms as Wal-Mart, Office Depot and KB Toys. He has taken an interest in expanding his practice beyond Illinois to the three other states with laws allowing private citizens to enrich themselves this way, but his efforts in those cases have been less successful. After he filed about 30 tax suits in Tennessee, lawmakers there repealed their statute authorizing such suits, and passed the word to nearby Virginia which also repealed its similar law. That leaves Nevada, where he has filed 10 suits which the state attorney general has moved to dismiss. In Illinois, he would seem in little danger of being shut down any time soon: the office of state Attorney General Lisa Madigan, a key trial lawyer ally, has been willing to cooperate with his activities though disputing his right to as high a share of the booty as he would like. (Robert Guy Matthews, “Online Retailer Skips Sales Tax? You Might Sue”, Wall Street Journal, Oct. 14)(online subscribers only).
Deep pocket files: Foradori v. Captain D’s
On December 22, 2000, 15-year-old Michael Foradori Jr. walked into a Captain D’s seafood restaurant in Tupelo, Mississippi for dinner; while there, he started flirting with the girlfriend of one of the employees, which resulted in a shouting match. “‘This (employee) was kind of picking on him, he started threatening him, he even hit him with a wadded up paper,’ said Joey Langston, Foradori’s attorney.” (More on Langston at Point of Law, May 13.) A manager restored order by kicking everyone out of the restaurant; outside, a cook who clocked out for the evening got into an altercation with Foradori, and pushed him over a wall, breaking his neck and paralyzing him. (Naomi Snyder, “Captain D’s customer gets $20.8M”, Tennesseean, Oct. 13; “Jury awards paralyzed man $21M”, Clarion-Ledger, Oct. 13; Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal, Oct. 13).
For this, the national Captain D’s chain in Nashville was held responsible to the tune of $20.8 million by a federal jury that deliberated for two hours. Foradori’s attorneys argued that the manager should have “stopped the argument” and that training about workplace violence would have prevented the accident.