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You haven′t seen too much in this space lately because the practice of law always trumps blogging.

But these items jumped out at me and deserve a read:

The truth about Texas tort “reform” (TortDeform);

Last week Ted Frank took to task Marc Rodwin, the author of a study that debunks the idea of a crisis in medical malpractice premiums. Rodwin responded; And then Frank fired back.

Dear Diary, Ruthie had put up Blawg Review #160. Please check it out

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Today’s New York Times has an editorial on doctors saying they are sorry for mistakes, and the dramatic decrease in litigation that results. This philosophy of apology is anathema to many doctors, who according to a study, still cling to the White Coat of Silence in covering up their mistakes and those of their colleagues.

A couple dramatic examples from the Times editorial, which follows a May 18th story on the subject:

At the University of Illinois, for example, of 37 cases where the hospital acknowledged a preventable error and apologized, only one patient filed suit. At the University of Michigan Health System, existing claims and lawsuits dropped from 262 in August 2001 to 83 in August 2007, and legal costs fell by two-thirds.

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Double amputee Oscar Pistorius of South Africa can compete in the Olympics with prosthetic legs, according to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (ABAJournal and JammieWearingFool, with video);

New York lawyers sue attorney general over pension probe (Adjunct Law Professor Blog);

A study debunks the medical malpractice crisis (Ambrogi @ Legal Blog Watch);

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Another day, another idiot. I see the headline, “NY man sues airline over flight spent in toilet,” with a demand for two million bucks, and all I can think is, Did the tort ‘reformers’ pay them to do that?

It isn’t even Christmas yet. Not even close. And yet there seems to be this compulsion to hand gifts to corporate protectionists trying to slam the courthouse doors closed.

The basic facts of the story are that the plaintiff was allowed to board a packed Jet Blue flight, but was then told he had to sit in the toilet for the second half because a flight attendant needed his seat. While the facts seem ludicrous, I′ll give the guy the benefit of the doubt for the moment that someone effed up by putting one too many people on board, and that he deserves compensation of some kind (and that the FAA should investigate). If everything he says about the facts were true, as reported in the newspaper, a free ticket or two would certainly be in order. That’s why we have Small Claims Court.

My beef is with the idiotic demand for millions for “extreme humiliation″ in New York’s Supreme Court.

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A new account of the JetBlue toilet lawsuit by Gokhan Mutlu is now out, differing substantially from the original story. The version that was in the news on Monday resulted from a $2M suit filed in New York for forcing this passenger to sit in the toilet. The story sounded “ludicrous” to me, and I said so (See: Jet Blue Hit With Toilet Lawsuit).

While JetBlue didn′t respond in public to the allegations, another version, albeit third hand, dripped out in the comments in my blog in the post above.

According to this account, Mutlu was riding free and the captain was the one who got him on the flight: (more…)

I’d previously written of how Dennis Quaid′s newborn twins were victimized by malpractice when they received a massive overdose of heparin.

And I’d also written how he sued Baxter Healthcare over the mix up.

Today he testified before Congress. This is the most important quote:

“Like many Americans, I believed that a big problem in our country was frivolous lawsuits. But now I know that the courts are often the only path to justice.”

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Raymond Marquez smoked for 30 years and then quit. Then, after being locked up at Rikers Island for 29 months awaiting trial, he got bladder cancer. He blamed the City of New York for the cancer, since the city’s Department of Corrections runs the jail and permitted indoor smoking while he was there. Smoking is the leading cause of bladder cancer.

According to Marquez, smoking indoors was permitted between 1998-2001 when he was awaiting trial, and that the secondhand smoke traveled through the ventilation system. The policy changed in 2003 to ban indoor smoking.

While Marquez said he had smoked from age 15 to 45, he also said that he had stopped for 23 years. He also claimed, incredibly, that he never inhaled. The medical underpinning of the suit was his claim that after 20 years of smoking cessation the risk of bladder cancer is as low as that of a non-smoker. The 78 year old plaintiff said, therefore, that the cancer must have come from the jail house smoke.

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Judge Robert Bork has settled his slip and fall case against the Yale Club, according to the Associated Press. The action had subjected Judge Bork — active tort “reformer,” conservative icon and former Reagan appointee to the Supreme Court that was shot down in the Senate — to widespread ridicule due to both the nature of the action and the outrageous and legally impermissible demands that he made. I’ve covered the suit here extensively.

This accident occurred, according to the Complaint, because of a lack of assistance or handrails while he was stepping up onto the podium to speak at the Yale Club for a conservative function. But the heart and soul of the scathing criticism that followed was due to the outrageous demands he made in this apparently routine slip-and-fall case (or trip and fall, the Complaint wasn’t really specific). Among the demands were:

• An amount “in excess” of $1,000,000 in compensatory damages;
• Punitive damages;
• Legal fees
• Pre-judgment interest.

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From a family doctor at Musings of a Dinosaur, comes this worthwhile read: Managing Risk:

“Despite its bad rap, the legal system really does work more often than it doesn’t”

The Mommy Blawg hosts Blawg Review #158;

John Guyette from the Center for Justice and Democracy gets the call for jury duty, which he recounts at The PopTort; and

Brooks Schuelke puts up Personal Injury Law Round-Up #61, that includes among its nuggets this medical malpractice story of a screwdriver being substituted for a titanium rod in back surgery.

The brouhaha that started out on Long Island with part-time private lawyers being listed as full-time public employees in schools and getting pension benefits, has now mushroomed into a full blown scandal. According to tomorrow’s New York Law Journal, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo is predicting that “hundreds and hundreds” of attorneys will ultimately be implicated in his office’s investigation of government entities improperly enrolling non-employees in public pension funds.

And this is the scary part, while “there will be people beyond lawyers” found to be receiving improper public pension benefits, “the predominant class will be lawyers.”

The story broke February 15th with this story in Newsday after an investigation by auditors with the New York State Comptroller’s Office: Five districts falsely reported lawyer’s job status. At that time a part-time municipal attorney found to be on the employment rolls of five different school districts defended himself by saying it was “common practice.” It appears now that that may have been true, that it was common practice. But if everyone in your area runs a stop sign, it is no defense when you get busted to say that everyone does it.

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