Miscellaneous

• ACL Burn Victims File Personal Injury Suit

  Brooks Schuelke | January 30, 2008 10:03 AM | 0 CommentsAustin, TX

  In September, we reported about a fire at the Austin City Limits Music Festival. Today, the Austin American Statesman reports that the fire victims have filed a personal injury suit for their damages. The article sets out the basis of the complaint:The fire was caused, the suit says, when the propane tank was overfilled by the leasing company; the valve that was supposed to stop overfilling...

• Brain Injuries Go Undetected

  Brooks Schuelke | January 22, 2008 9:08 AM | 0 CommentsAustin, TX

  New York injury lawyer Michael Kaplan reported in his blog last week on a new study from the Army that up to 20 percent of the troops returning from combat have undiagnosed brain injuries. As a result, the Army is alerting returning troops about the symptoms of brain injury and encouraging those with symptoms to get treatment.But undiagnosed brain injuries are not unique to the Army. According...

• Tort Reform Doesn't Help Health Care Systems

  Brooks Schuelke | January 21, 2008 9:36 AM | 0 CommentsAustin, TX

  Texas Watch has recently released a new study that finds that states with no "tort reform" have better health care systems than those with "reform," The executive summary of the study reads:In state after state, patients continue to be told that the silver bullet for improving healthcare is to enact severe and arbitrary limits on patient access to the legal system. The argument made by...

• Tort-"reform" Backing Insurance Company Commits Fraud on the Court

  Brooks Schuelke | January 12, 2008 10:00 AM | 0 CommentsAustin, TX

  A Texas court has ruled that Texas Mutual Insurance Company, a big backer of tort reform, committed fraud by falsifying a medical record in pending litigation. The company filed suit to attempt to overturn a state of Texas ruling that a person suffered injuries in a work-place accident. After finding that the record was falsified, the Court held that the insurance company had no additional...

• The Value of Listserves

  Brooks Schuelke | December 29, 2007 9:22 AM | 0 CommentsAustin, TX

  Earlier this month, there was an interesting exchange between Des Moines personal injury lawyer Steve Lombardi and Carolyn Elfant, a well-respected lawyer blogger, on the value of listserves. Like many situations, listserves have become popular in the practice of law. The listserves range from formal nation-wide groups to informal groups of friends that e-mail one another to exchange ideas on...

• Insurance Company Denies Coverage For Teen's Transplant

  Brooks Schuelke | December 21, 2007 2:01 PM | 0 CommentsAustin, TX

  This is not necessarily a personal injury story, but it is horrific nonetheless. In California, a 17 year old girl who was battling leukemia received a bone marrow transplant from her brother. After the transplant surgery, her liver failed. On December 11, the girl's doctors determined she needed a transplant and sent a letter to CIGNA insurance. Cigna refused to pay for the transplant. ...

• "Tort Costs" Decline in 2006

  Brooks Schuelke | December 20, 2007 9:01 AM | 0 CommentsAustin, TX

  The Tillinghast Insurance Consulting practice of Towers Perrin (a large consulting firm) has just released its 2007 Update on US Tort Costs, their 11th study on the subject. This study, which has traditionally been criticized for being pro-insurance, concluded that tort costs went down 5.5% in 2006. Compare that with an annual increase in the US Gross Domestic Product as growing at 6.1% in...

• Fake Personal Injury Claims - the dark side of personal injury law

  Brooks Schuelke | December 19, 2007 4:48 PM | 0 CommentsAustin, TX

  A Philadelphia area lawyer was charged this week with allegedly having associates fake personal injury accidents and make claims based on those fake accidents. That this is wrong, illegal, and a blight on the profession goes without saying. But I'm just curious how this could happen in today's world. We keep track of how various insurance companies, and even adjusters, treat cases, and I...

• Texas Legislators Criticize Texas Supreme Court

  Brooks Schuelke | December 13, 2007 2:03 PM | 0 CommentsAustin, TX

  Last August, the Texas Supreme Court handed down a ruling in a case involving an on-the-job accident. In the case, a property owner hired a company to perform maintenance and construction services on the plant located on the property. The owner also bought workers' compensation insurance to cover the company's employees. After one of the company's employees was injured in a worksite accident,...

• Tort Reform Is Discriminatory

  Brooks Schuelke | November 30, 2007 9:38 AM | 0 CommentsAustin, TX

  A new, scholarly study from two law and economics professors at Emory University finds that tort reform discriminates against women, children and the elderly:The results from our empirical analysis are consistent with our theoretical predictions. We find that the impact of tort reform varies substantially among demographic groups. When we consider the net effect of all the reforms in our study...