How Much is My Claim Worth?
How Much Money is My Personal Injury Claim Worth? is a detailed explanation of the various factors that affect the range of outcomes for a personal injury claim under our tort liability system. It's an oldie but goodie.
August 09, 2006
August 08, 2006
How Not to Influence People
Lawyers who bring medical negligence claims have good reason to worry that the "tort reform" campaign has unduly influenced potential jurors, and struggle with ways to make sure jurors have not been swayed. This report shows how a courageous judge in Scranton responded to a particularly blatant and direct attempt to instill such bias. Pennsylvania Law Weekly: A Poison Pen Letter
A letter to the editor of a local newspaper promoting medical malpractice tort reform published by a doctor's wife at the start of her husband's trial proved to be a costly and ultimately unsuccessful tactic for influencing a jury. Lackawanna County Common Pleas Judge Trish Corbett took a dim view of the move last year, ordering Dr. Davis J. Caucci to pay $13,286 in legal expenses to plaintiffs Lawrence and Louise Mekic after finding the letter had likely tainted the jury.
According to this report, the mistrial ruling was upheld by the Superior and Supreme Courts, and the case is awaiting retrial. The judge's comments left no doubt about the court's distaste for the defendant's conduct.
There is no question that the content of the letter published in a newspaper whose general circulation is primarily in Lackawanna County on the evening of the first day of trial by the defendant's wife was vexatious. This is especially true in light of the fact that the defendant was aware that the letter could taint the jury and was fully aware that its content addressed issues which would be decided at trial.
Judge Corbett observed the doctor defendant making "sarcastic grins and other obtuse facial expressions and gestures at every opportunity ... To the court, the defendant's behavior showed an obvious disdain for its authority and a total lack of respect to the court and the entire process."
Strong words indeed. But the campaign led by insurers and medical associations to impose arbitrary limits on recovery, that would cause the most harm to the most seriously injured victims, is merely a subtler form of such disrespect to the civil justice system and the integrity of the jury system, more broadly directed.
August 06, 2006
Does Your Lawyer Have Insurance?
Disciplinary Board of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania
Does my lawyer have to have malpractice insurance?There is no requirement that a lawyer in Pennsylvania maintain malpractice insurance, or that the lawyer inform a client of the lack of such coverage.
In an extensive and otherwise excellent FAQ, this one bit of advice recently became obsolete and I hope the Board updates this page soon.
A new rule for Pennsylvania attorneys took effect on July 1, 2006. This is kind of a negative option disclosure rule: it doesn't require lawyers to have insurance. But, Pennsylvania lawyers who are uninsured now must tell their clients. In fact, elsewhere on the site, the Board posted its news release about this change. http://www.padisciplinaryboard.org/newsroom/rules/2006/0403.php
They summarize the new rule this way:
a lawyer in private practice must inform a new client in writing if the lawyer does not have professional liability insurance of at least $100,000 per occurrence and $300,000 in the aggregate per year, subject to commercially reasonable deductibles, retention or co-insurance, and shall inform existing clients in writing at any time the lawyer’s professional liability insurance drops below either of those amounts or the lawyer’s professional liability insurance is terminated.
So, are long as a lawyer has 100/300, he doesn't need to say word one about his coverage.
The rule is an interesting compromise. Simpler, more direct methods are easy to imagine. Like:
- Mandatory insurance, as with automobiles
- Full disclosure for all lawyers, of whether and how much insurance they have
As Pennsylvania takes this first step of insurance regulation, apparently the political wherewithal did not exist to impose a mandatory floor of protection. There may have been concerns that the insurance premiums would impose a hardship on solo lawyers, small firms, or starting lawyers. There may have been reluctance to dictate business practices, freedom of contract and all that.
As to full disclosure, I don't know if any published comments about this new rule actually stated this, but let's be frank: when a lawyer is meeting a new client, the incentive is to accentuate the positive. The remote possibility of a bad outcome, especially an outcome arising from the lawyer's negligence, is not something any lawyer (or any other professional or business person for that matter) wants to highlight when they're building a new client relationship. Even with a large limit on my firm's policy, I don't know how I can smoothly work that into the dialog: "by the way, our firm has a big malpractice policy." "Oh? Why would we need that?" "Well, if I screw up, you can get another lawyer and sue me."
So, at the end of the day, this new rule should have the same practical effect as a mandatory coverage requirement. Most lawyers (at least those who are interested in building and maintaining their client base) will find the notion of mandatory disclosure of lack of insurance a very strong deterrent. The cost of insurance premiums should be a drop in the bucket, compared to the likely loss of current and future clients.
Pennsylvania Ethics Enforcers Host a Consumer-Oriented Site
Disciplinary Board of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania
The Disciplinary Board of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania announces the launch of its newly designed, user-friendly Web site, www.padb.us.
This is an impressive effort for an official web site; some obvious care and thought was put into making the procedures and rules for attorney regulation accessible to lay consumers. Notably, it includes an online search to look up the records for individual attorneys, so you can check an attorney's to see if they've are in active status or have been subject to public discipline sanctions -- and, to report complaints as weill.
August 05, 2006
LAWSIG remembered
Out of curiousity, I did a Google search for the Lawsig group I mentioned in an earlier post, and found a lot of familiar names in this article, written by one of the regulars.
Back in the early 1990s, before "the Internet" had achieved any sort of universal coverage, there were small pockets of people living online in various other venues. For some of us, our primary online home was the Legal Forum on Compuserve: LAWSIG.
August 03, 2006
My Archives
Long before the Internet and hi-speed broadband, computer users could share ideas with "Bulletin Board Systems", or BBS. I got online back around 1990, with a commercial service called CompuServe. Just as my sons can't imagine life without cable TV, people who have only known Web browsers might have trouble imaging a system where you had a dialup modem, at 2400 baud (or less), with no graphics or links. Not only was the experience crude, but you paid a high hourly rate for the privilege. But Compuserve had a great legal forum.
Back in the day, Compuserve had a very active exchange of views going on in its discussion forum, and a file storage area. Most sections of the forum were open to all Compuserve members.
Lawyers on the forum would try to answer questions that people had about the legal system, and we'd write FAQ files about various topics when the questions became frequent enough. For an example, I'm going to dig out the Personal Injury FAQ I wrote back then, and post it on the Legalview site, and you can find it here: Answers to Frequently Asked Questions About Personal Injury.
Another terrific essay was an answer, well, not really an answer, but an explanation why we couldn't answer, a very important question: How Much Is My Claim Worth?. I can't really take credit for this: it was a collective effort of forum members and I just edited it a little bit.
Introductory Statement
I'm Bill Marvin (formally William D. Marvin, Esq,). I graduated from Temple Law School in 1981, and since then have represented plaintiffs in the Philadelphia area, 99% of the time. I've worked up and tried cases with car accient, medical malpractice, highway design and maintenance design, product defects. I had my own solo practice, and even spent a few years in a big firm. I'm most comfortable in a smaller firm setting, like Cohen, Placitella & Roth.
I view this blog as a chance to comment about any developments affecting the personal injury field, which is a political hot potato these days. There's a struggle between mighty political forces. Trial lawyers proclaim that they are guardians of public safety and innocent, injured victims. Our opponents claim that we exploit the system to extort windfall jackpots. Both sides are a little self-righteous for my taste, but the truth is a LOT closer to our side.