Day: April 18, 2014

Actor Dennis Quaid and his wife sued the makers of heparin Tuesday after their newborn twins were inadvertently given massive doses of the blood thinner at a hospital. The product liability lawsuit, filed in Chicago, seeks more than $50,000 in damages. It claims that Baxter Healthcare Corp., based in Deerfield, Ill., was negligent in packaging different doses of the…
Every day, more and more gas drilling rigs pop up all over north Texas, mainly around Tarrant, Johnson and Parker Counties. And with the increased drilling activity comes a greater risk of injuries, both to workers and to those living around the wells. Today many residents in this area watched as huge flames and a billowing cloud of black…
Because of a mislabeled tissue sample that led to a misdiagnosis, Darrie Eason of Long Island, New York had both of her breasts removed to save her from a cancer that she never had. Thanks to insurance industry “tort deform” that swept through Texas in 2003, non-economic damages in a medical malpractice suit like Ms. Eason’s would be capped…
Historically in Texas, there were no particular rules regarding the division of fees among lawyers or the payment of a referral fee from one lawyer to another for forwarding the case. In 2005, however, the Texas Supreme Court enacted new referral fee rules which do away with “pure” referral fees (those where the referring lawyer has no role in…
For the trial lawyers out there, here’s a great new book by Rick Friedman and Patrick Malone: Rules of the Road: A Plaintiff Lawyer’s Guide to Proving Liability. This book emphasizes how jurors are called upon to make a collective decision about subjective concepts like “reasonableness,” and how defense lawyers use complexity, confusion and ambiguity to derail the plaintiff’s…
Good article about the dangers of amusement park rides. Hey, I’m not opposed to the well-run outfits, but even the most-professionally run parks have had some problems. What really scares me to death are the traveling carnivals that set up in mall parking lots, at county fairs, and such. I worked on a case years ago involving a machine…
Women, children, the elderly, minorities and those who are less-affluent, according to a study done by two professors at Emory University. Here is the abstract to the article: “Tort reform may not affect all segments of society equally. Studies have shown that many tort reforms disproportionately reduce compensation to women, children, the elderly, disadvantaged minorities, and less affluent people. This…
Good article in the Texas Observer dispels one of the big myths foisted upon Texans by the insurance industry in pushing “tort reform” back in 2003. Quote: “Proposition 12, and the far-reaching changes in Texas civil law that it dragged behind it, was built on a foundation of mistruths and sketchy assumptions. The number of doctors in the state…