States

April 9, 2013

Slip and Fall Law: Atlanta Claim Dismissed by Georgia Court of Appeals

I’m amazed at how many smart, well-informed people are under the impression that if an accident occurs on a business’ property, the business is automatically liable for any and all damage. In the real world, slip and fall cases present much bigger hurdles to climb.

Georgia Slip and Fall Cases Never Sees Courtroom

Last week, the Georgia Court of Appeals upheld a trial court’s summary judgment order denying a plaintiff relief in the case of Warner v. Hobby Lobby, a case illustrative of these challenges, even in a comparative negligence state like Georgia.

March 6, 2013

Georgia Slip and Fall Case Dismissed on Summary Judgment

by Ronald V. Miller, Jr.

A federal judge in Georgia recently dismissed a slip-and-fall case against Walmart finding that the company owed the woman no duty to keep its store safe from water hazards.

In Chapman v. Wal-Mart, Wal-Mart’s Customer Service Manager began instituting rainy-day procedures. Employees were instructed to place carpeted mats in the inside vestibule, inspect the vestibule and front store area throughout the morning for dampness, dry off shopping carts, hand out umbrella bags, and use brightly colored cones to warn customers of possible water on the floor.

When the plaintiff entered the store, the rain had ceased, but the weather remained damp. She entered the vestibule to grab a shopping cart, not looking down at the ground while doing so. On her way to the carts, she slipped and fell. Upon falling, she noticed a puddle on the ground. Plaintiff brought a slip-and-fall case in federal district court, alleging Wal-Mart acted negligently by failing to keep the store free of puddles and for failing to adequately warn her of puddles.

February 6, 2013

New Malpractice Opinion from Tennessee

by Ronald V. Miller, Jr.

In medical malpractice cases, form triumphs over substance way too often. Tennessee has been largely immune from this problem because, for years, Tennessee malpractice law did not require plaintiffs’ lawyers to jump through the hoops required by many states. Now, Tennessee has added a certificate of merit requirement and other technical obligations to filing a medical malpractice case.

tennessee medical malpractice You know, I’m fine with these requirements. What I don’t like is when potentially worthy plaintiffs are denied justice permanently because their lawyers screw up the details.

This is what happened in Williams v. Mountain States Health Alliance. In Williams, a 68-year-old female patient was undergoing myocardial perfusion imaging (a nuclear stress test) when she fell off the table to which she had been strapped. During the procedure, the patient made a sudden movement, broke free of the table straps, and fell onto the floor hitting her right side. Prior to the fall, the patient had suffered a stroke and paralysis to the right side of her body. Additionally, she was morbidly obese. The technicians who strapped the patient to the table allegedly knew (or should have known) this.

January 15, 2013

Huge Asbestos Verdict Taken Away by Virginia High Court

by Ronald V. Miller, Jr.

You get a big verdict. Defendant’s big bone of contention on appeal is an evidentiary issue. When this happens, and it has happened to me a number of times, you are feeling pretty good about your chances. Particularly when the standard is – as it is for most evidentiary issues – an abuse of discretion.

There were some Virginia lawyers probably feeling the same way. That is until last week when the Virginia high court flipped their $18 million verdict against Exxon.

Plaintiff got a wrongful death verdict against Exxon in a lawsuit involving a man who developed mesothelioma while working on Exxon ships. Suffice to say, the jury was not happy with Exxon, awarding $12 million in compensatory damages, $12.5 million in punitive damages and nearly a half a million in medical damages. The punitive damage award was knocked back to $5 million, still leaving the plaintiff with a nearly $18 million verdict.

December 20, 2012

Pre-Judgment Interest Medical Malpractice Case

by Ronald V. Miller, Jr.

The Indiana Supreme Court sent back to the trial court last week a wrongful death medical malpractice action involving the tragic death of a child after surgery for an undescended left testicle. The boy was just 13 months old. Just awful.

The issue in Alsheik v. Guerrero was something far less sad: prejudgment interest. This case went to trial and the jury awarded $1.165 million. The trial judge denied the plaintiff’s attorney’s request for pre-judgment interest. The plaintiff appealed this ruling.

In Indiana, for civil cases to qualify for prejudgment interest, the plaintiff must send a settlement letter. The purpose of the settlement letter is to give the defendant “notice of a claim and provide them with an opportunity to engage in meaningful settlement.”

December 19, 2012

Minnesota Wrongful Death Lawsuit Result in an Award of $591,000

by Ronald V. Miller, Jr.

After a week-long wrongful death trial in Minnesota, the family members of a twenty-two-year-old college student killed on a bicycle have said that while they are grateful for the jury award of $591,000. However, they would have preferred that the two men they blame for their son’s death be forced to spend time in prison. Felony murder and battery charges were dismissed against both defendants.

Sad details here. Apparently, the deceased disagreed with a member of a college hockey team. That member and several other players and recruits were said to have consumed 100 shots of alcohol that night. After the disagreement, the deceased apparently fled the bar on a bicycle, fleeing for his life while being chased by the boys. There were differing accounts of whether the boy was pushed, and by whom or whether his high level of intoxication caused him to crash. Regardless of fault, it is clear that the night was riddled with poor judgment and misconduct and that the death of this young man was absolutely senseless.

This garbage happens in college and usually does not end in death. Kids drink too much and do stupid things and, usually, no real harm is done. But sometimes things go really wrong, as they did in this case and this tragedy will impact this boy’s family for the rest of their lives.

October 15, 2012

A Product or a Service? Battle in Indiana

by Ronald V. Miller, Jr.

Trying to tell the difference between a product and a service may not be harder than deciding if a glass is half full or half empty, or if a tomato is better characterized as a fruit than as a vegetable, but it is certainly not easy.”
Whitaker v. T.J. Snow Co., 151 F.3d 661, 664 (7th Cir. 1998).

Is it a good or is it a service? This argument has been fought ever since the distinction between products’ cases and service arose. This distinction really mattered in a burn injury case in Indiana that was decided last week because the Indiana Product Liability Act does not apply to transactions that involve wholly or predominantly the sale of a service rather than a product. Barely, it would seem, a lawsuit against a maker of work shirts for burn injuries, allegedly caused because of the failure of a cotton uniform shirt to serve as expected, survived summary judgment last week in Indiana.

Here are the facts. Plaintiff was a welder/plasma torch operator who was operating a Pro Cut 80 plasma cutter made by the defendant. The Pro Cut 80 plasma cutter is used to cut through metal and steel. As you would expect, the plasma cutter fires off sparks when cutting metal. While using the plasma cutter, the plaintiff’s shirt catches fire causing serious burns.

Plaintiff sued a number of folks, including the manufacturer of the shirts saying these shirts just shouldn’t catch fire like that because everyone knows what the people in these shirts are doing, and the defendant has an obligation to make them safe for the intended use. The plaintiff’s argument that the negligence claim is not subject to the product liability act in Indiana because the relationship between the defendant and plaintiff’s employer was for the laundry service rather than the providing of work shirts.

August 28, 2012

Improving Pedestrian Safety By Reviewing Primary Types Of Incidents

by Ronald V. Miller, Jr.

One thing I think we can all universally agree on it that there are just too many pedestrian accidents and deaths. Clearly, Chicago is not an exception. A report of pedestrian and vehicle crashes released by Chicago Department of Transportation (CDOT) in 2011, focused on this problem and the types of crashes involving pedestrians. The authors of the study reviewed pedestrian accident data from police reports in the Chicago metropolitan area to determine how each incident occurred.

August 14, 2012

Damages for Injured or Killed Pets

by Ronald V. Miller, Jr.

New Jersey recently wrestled with a question of interest to all pet lovers. In McDougall v. Lamm, the plaintiff asked the court to decide what her pet was worth.

The facts of the case are simple, and our law firm frequently responds to calls like this. (We don’t handle them but we are glad to talk to you about it because we love animals, too.) The plaintiff’s dog was attacked by a larger dog, who picked it up, shook it, and dropped it to the ground, dead. The plaintiff saw her dog die. She filed a lawsuit against the attacking dog’s owner, who admitted that he was responsible for her damages. The court had to decide what her damages were.

The opinion touches on a number of issues, including the “zone of danger” rule (whether a plaintiff must be physically injured to recover for emotional damages received by watching another person suffer); the legal value of a dead pet; and whether a human can claim emotional damages for the death of a pet.

A few extra facts—the plaintiff told the court that she purchased her half-poodle/half-maltese nine years earlier for $200.00, and that she believed she could purchase a similar new puppy today for about $1,400.00. She of course testified that the dog was loved, knew many tricks, and was with her much of the day, particularly because she did not work out of the house.

The trial court dismissed the plaintiff’s emotional damages claim, noting that New Jersey did not recognize such a claim in the context of a pet’s death. The court rendered a verdict of $5,000, noting that the replacement cost alone would not compensate the plaintiff for the “loss of a well-trained pet.” Even though the court stated that it did not grant emotional damages, I think that’s what it did here. A quick internet review shows that these dogs live an average of 14-18 years, so this dog had another four to eight years of life. It cost $200.00. The purchase of a brand new dog, though untrained, would cost $1,400.00. I bet she could get a trained maltipoo for $2,000 without any trouble. It seems to me that the court awarded her $3,000 in emotional distress damages, without directly calling it that. Now, if the court believed that emotional distress damages were legally proper, maybe it would have awarded more. Sadly, it ruled (as did the appellate court), that such emotional damages were improper.

June 26, 2012

Insurance Law: Fortuity Revisited

by Ronald V. Miller, Jr.

In my insurance law class, I talk in Chapter 2 about the idea of fortunity. It is mostly a theoretical concept. Insurance is intended to provide protection against unknown events that occur in the future. So obviously, the law and common sense dictate that when you buy car insurance after a car accident, the “loss in progress” doctrine will bar coverage.

In Schwartz Manes Ruby & Slovin, L.P.A. v. Monitor Liability Managers, LLC, the 6th Circuit looked at whether or not the insured reasonably could have foreseen that a claim would be made prior to the signing of an insurance policy.

The case involved legal malpractice coverage. The law firm – an Ohio firm – clearly screwed up in defending a lawsuit. The client fired the firm. The new firm asked why the firm failed to appear at the trial, particularly since its file contained a notice for the trial. The law firm did one smart thing: they put their agent on notice who apparently told no one. Then, a new policy of legal malpractice insurance was issued.

The malpractice insurer disclaimed coverage becasue prior to its policy’s inception, the law firm knew it had a motza ball of a potential lawsuit hanging out there.