I’m a trial lawyer for injured people and businesses at The Beasley Firm. Founded in 1958, we have recovered over $2 billion for our clients through hundreds of verdicts and settlements in excess of $1 million. We’re listed in Super Lawyers, Best Lawyers in America, U.S. News’s Top Lawyers, [...]
Beautiful Time Lapse Video of Antarctica
At Holy Web!, a video by Anthony Powell: Go to http://www.antarcticimages.com for a better quality version of this clip. Blog: http://www.frozensouth.com ... Continue Reading
Do “Archaic” Professional Ethics Hurt Consumers of Legal Services More Than They Help?
Legal Blog Watch links to a post by Larry Ribstein at Ideoblog about the decline and collapse of several big law firms: Most other industries could evolve to meet the new challenges. But the law business can’t change as easily because it’s choked by ethical rules that developed based on a century-old model of law practice that seeks to preserve the illusion that law practice is a “profession” rather than what it plainly is – a business. … These rules have been developed by lawyers, for lawyers. They are not in clients' long run interests. The obvious retort is ... Continue Reading
Reminder: Contract Disputes Act Requires You Exhaust Administrative Remedies Before Suing the United States Government
You can see the impulse to try to sue directly in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania: "Plaintiff entered into a lease agreement with defendants dated July 16, 2003 for a term of five years for a space located at the Philadelphia Navy Yard, Building 6, Suite 320, 4900 S. Broad Street, Philadelphia, PA 19102 which was occupied by the United States Department of Agriculture. The lease ended on August 31, 2008 and plaintiff alleges that defendants [the Department of Agriculture] have failed to vacate the premises despite plaintiff's demands that they do so. Paragraph 6(d) of ... Continue Reading
” Virgin: the world’s best passenger complaint letter?”
Courtesy of The Telegraph, a tour de force in evocative writing. I reprint only the opening salvo. Dear Mr Branson REF: Mumbai to Heathrow 7th December 2008 I love the Virgin brand, I really do which is why I continue to use it despite a series of unfortunate incidents over the last few years. This latest incident takes the biscuit. Ironically, by the end of the flight I would have gladly paid over a thousand rupees for a single biscuit following the culinary journey of hell I was subjected to at thehands of your corporation. Look at this Richard. Just ... Continue Reading
“How should Obama reform health care?” in The New Yorker
Via KevinMD, Atul Gawande has a lengthy and thoughtful article entitled "Getting There From Here:" In 2007, fifty-seven million Americans had difficulty paying their medical bills, up fourteen million from 2003. On average, they had two thousand dollars in medical debt and had been contacted by a collection agency at least once. Because, in part, of underpayment, half of American hospitals operated at a loss in 2007. Today, large numbers of employers are limiting or dropping insurance coverage in order to stay afloat, or simply going under—even hospitals themselves. Unfortunately, Gawande spoils an impressive history of other Western countries' experiences ... Continue Reading
Shareholder Suits Launched in the Merrill Lynch / Bank of America Fiasco – Who Fibbed, Thain or Lewis?
Kevin LaCroix at The D&O Diary delivers news that surprises no one, a securities class action based upon Bank of America's untimely disclosure of Merrill Lynch's catastrophic losses: As has been well-publicized, within a matter of weeks of closing its acquisition of Merrill Lynch, Bank of America announced previously undisclosed 4Q08 operating losses at Merrill of $21.5 billion that required BofA to obtain an emergency $20 billion cash injection from the U.S. Treasury, as well as an additional $118 billion asset backstop. BofA’s stock market valuation has dropped more $100 billion since the day before the merger was announced through the company’s ... Continue Reading
More on Defensive Medicine – WhiteCoat’s Reply
After my post yesterday, "Differential Diagnosis, Defensive Medicine and Medical Malpractice: Coumadin Edition," the original physician responded on WhiteCoat's Call Room at length: Max Kennerly is another lawyer that posted a response on his blog “Litigation & Trial.” He accused me of being afraid to use the “basic principle of clinical medicine known as differential diagnosis” - which he defines as “a process of elimination by which physicians reach a diagnosis by eliminating the most serious and unlikely diagnoses first before continuing their basic evaluation.” What Mr. Kennerly is apparently suggesting is that, rather than use medical education and heuristics, physicians ... Continue Reading
The Terrible Philadelphia Gas Works Bond Deal That Will Cost Customers $60 Million Extra
Starting January 1st, PGW bumped up rates by over 5%, even as natural gas prices remain low and consumers elsewhere see cuts. Why? Because CDR Financial Products, the financial advisory firm close to former Mayor Street (and previously, and currently, under FBI investigation), was paid $225,000 to set up a terrible "bond" deal with JP Morgan to finance $310 million PGW bonds in 2006 that netted JPM millions and will leave PGW's customers holding the bag. Part of the deal was merely a bad idea: instead of issuing traditional fixed-rate bonds, PGW engaged in an "interest-rate swap," which is a specialty of CDR, a complicated form of variable-rate ... Continue Reading
Differential Diagnosis, Defensive Medicine and Medical Malpractice: Coumadin Edition
The magazine Emergency Physicians Monthly hosts a blog called WhiteCoat’s Call Room, which recently posted a complaint about “defensive medicine:” Why was I ordering all of these things when my clinical judgment led me to believe that they would “probably” not lead to any changes in the patient’s management? The answer is because in our culture, “probably” doesn’t cut the mustard any more. Clinical medical judgment has been supplanted by the demand that physicians disprove the improbable. Society has made it so that physicians are more concerned with proving that unlikely diagnoses with the possibility of a “bad outcome” don’t ... Continue Reading
Martin Luther King, Jr., Day of Service and An Example of Service from Sri Lanka
Today is Martin Luther King, Jr., Day of Service. MLKDay.Gov tells us, Millions of Americans are expected to honor Dr. King and answer President-elect Obama’s call to service by volunteering on the January 19 King Holiday. More than 11,400 service projects are taking place across the country, more than double last year. Americans will make it “a day on, not a day off” by delivering meals, refurbishing schools, reading to children, signing up mentors, and much, much more. Of course, you don't need a holiday to serve your nation. On January 8, 2009, Lasantha Wickramatunga, Chief Editor of Sri Lanka's ... Continue Reading
