Is it a bad idea to “friend” your boss?

It may be bad for your boss.   Blurring the line between work and friendship works best in smaller companies, imho.

Bosses who "friend" their subordinates on social networking sites may seem warm and harmless, but they've got liability risk written all over them. So warn employment lawyers.

Managers sending friend requests to staff via Facebook, Twitter and other sites constitute a growing trend in the workplace. And it's one that needs to stop, the lawyers stress, because online relations between boss and employee can trigger or exacerbate a host of legal claims, including harassment, discrimination or wrongful termination, as well as touch off cries of favoritism if the boss friends only a select few subordinates.

Source: Law.com - Lawyers Warn: Bosses Who 'Friend' Are Begging to Be Sued

Lawsuit Alleges That Nursing Home Let Man’s Penis Rot Off

It’s a cruel irony that so much tort “reform” is directed at protecting nursing homes from their residents, when what we need to do is protect nursing home residents from nursing home negligence.

During the four months that followed the initial notice of the wound, Bradley's genitals essentially broke apart bit by bit, the complaint contends, while the elderly man steadily lost weight. The injury was not treated until Bradley was taken to the Providence Medical Center on March 13, 2008.

Initially diagnosing Bradley with pneumonia, doctors there found only an infected, open wound on the man's groin, according to the complaint. Doctors later determined that Bradley was afflicted with penile cancer; Bradley died two weeks later.

Source: Nursing home cited, sued after elderly man's genitals disintegrate

If these allegations are true – that a man was neglected while his penis rotted off over a period of months – I’d like to see someone do some jail time.

What’s wrong with the current health insurance system?

How about this?

This is the house they've built: an insurance market where plans are written for the healthy and all legal efforts are made to exclude the sick. That's meant premiums are somewhat lower than they'd otherwise be, but only because the people who most need health-care insurance aren't able to afford it, or in some cases, aren't able to convince anyone to sell it to them. Now that arrangement is ending and they're scared that they can't provide an affordable product to the people who need it. They may be right, but it's evidence of how deeply perverse their business has become, not of what's wrong with health-care reform. When they say that the individual market would be cheaper in the absence of health-care reform, they're saying the individual market would be cheaper if they could continue refusing to sell affordable insurance to people who need health-care coverage

Source: Ezra Klein - The House That Private Insurance Built

I did not know that Apple was a pawn of trial lawyers and labor unions.

Could the Chamber of Commerce be any more full of it?  To claim that Apple’s opposition to the Chamber’s policy on climate change is really just due to trial lawyers and unions?

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which has seen a handful of member companies quit over its opposition to pending climate-change legislation, fired back Friday with a letter saying its critics were organized by "our normal adversaries-- trial lawyers, activist unions [and] environmental extremists."

The letter from David Chavern, the chamber's chief operating officer, was sent out to local chambers of commerce before noon Friday, with the idea that it would be passed on to member companies.

In it, Chavern stands by the confrontational stance that led companies like Pacific Gas and Electric, Apple and Levi Strauss to resign their memberships.

Source: U.S. Chamber Fires Back at Critics After Departures - washingtonpost.com

I’m now officially ashamed that I used to be a member of the Chamber of Commerce.

Well, technically, it IS a pre-existing condition

If you define pre-existing condition as a condition you had prior to buying a policy, then yes, being a woman is a pre-existing condition.  Other than that little logical error, I’m with them.

Is having a uterus a pre-existing condition?
The insurance companies seem to think so, says the National Women's Law Center, an advocacy group for women's legal rights that is on a mission to end unfair insurance company practices toward women. And it believes it's making some headway

Source: Law.com - Advocates Say Being a Woman Is Not a 'Pre-Existing Condition'

SEC Sued For Negligence

I totally agree that the SEC was asleep at the wheel with the whole Madoff thing.  But I don’t see this lawsuit succeeding.

After the relentless pounding the Securities and Exchange Commission has received for failing to expose Bernard Madoff's fraud, it was probably only a matter of time before the agency was sued for negligence.

That time came Wednesday, when attorneys at Herrick Feinstein filed a complaint against the government (pdf) in Manhattan federal district court. Herrick represents two of Madoff's victims -- disabled retiree Phyllis Molchatsky and Dr. Steven Schneider -- who lost more than $2.4 million between them.

. . . .

What will be harder is overcoming the defense of sovereign immunity that the government will no doubt raise. Elisofon admitted it would be a "formidable impediment" to the suit, but said he will argue that this case fits within the exception to that doctrine.

Source: Law.com - Alleging Negligence, Madoff Victims Sue SEC for $2.4 Million

My prediction is that the decision throwing the case out will include the words “floodgates of litigation.”  As in, “If we allow this suit, we’ll open the floodgates of litigation against the government.”  Floodgates.  Just you wait.

Did Delta Hack Email Accounts Of a Passenger Rights Group?

That’s the allegation made in the following lawsuit:

Oct. 13 (Bloomberg) -- Delta Air Lines Inc. is accused in a lawsuit of using “stolen e-mails” from a consumer group as part of an effort to stem passenger-rights legislation in the U.S. Congress.

The suit from Kate Hanni, executive director of the Coalition for an Airline Passengers’ Bill of Rights, was filed today in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas in Houston.

Hanni alleges that her e-mail account was hacked starting in 2008 and continuing into this year, according to a news release from the law firm handling her case. An employee of a Delta contractor said in an affidavit he was fired after his company confronted him over e-mails with Hanni. Delta was concerned the information would be used to enact passenger- rights legislation, according to the affidavit.

Hanni’s group, also known as FlyersRights.org, has been spearheading efforts to persuade Congress to pass legislation requiring airlines to let passengers off planes stuck on tarmacs after three hours. Airlines oppose the bill, saying it may worsen delays.

Source: Delta Accused of Using Stolen E-Mails Against Group (Update2) - Bloomberg.com

It’s bullshit that they can keep you locked in a plane for three or more hours.  I’m curious as to whether anyone has ever filed a false imprisonment lawsuit against an airline for that policy?  I would suspect such a lawsuit would be preempted by federal law, though…

Peter Dreier: Health Insurance Industry Exposes Its Insatiable Greed

The title caught my eye.  So did this:

Baucus' Finance Committee is scheduled to vote tomorrow on the bill, which includes:

• An individual mandate requiring all those without coverage to buy private insurance - in other words, tens of millions of new paying customers for the private insurance companies.
• Subsidies for moderate income people to buy insurance.
• No meaningful price controls on what insurers can charge in premiums, co-pays, deductibles, co-insurance and other fees.
• No meaningful reforms on insurance denials of care recommended by doctors that the insurers don't want to pay for.

You'd think the insurance industry CEOs and lobbyists would be jumping for joy with this massive taxpayer subsidy for the already profit-soaked industry.
But you'd be wrong.

Source: Peter Dreier: Health Insurance Industry Exposes Its Insatiable Greed

We’re never going to get real healthcare reform. (sigh)

Tort “Reformers” Bitten By Tort “Reform”

If you’d like to know what gives me schadenfreude, look no further than this:"

Now many of the investors are stuck with securities that pay ridiculously low yields. In some cases, the securities will never mature, so the investors will never get their money back unless they sell them for a fraction of what they paid. Those who thought they were being safe and cautious in fact were taking huge risks.

The biggest losers so far are corporations that bought the paper but now find they are not covered by settlements some Wall Street firms made to reimburse individual investors. But there are still individuals who are stuck with the securities, either because their brokerage firm refused to settle or because they moved from one firm to another and found that neither firm was willing to reimburse them.

Some of those corporate purchasers may recall the old saying, “Be careful what you ask for. You might get it.” Those buyers of this paper are finding they cannot successfully sue because of a 1995 law that was strongly backed by corporate America as a way to curb frivolous lawsuits.

Source: High and Low Finance - When Law Obscures the Facts of the Auction-Rate Debacle - NYTimes.com

The best part is that if tort “reform” laws hurt enough wealthy corporations, they’ll be repealed. 

Washington State Supreme Court Strikes Down Meritless Certificate-Of-Merit Law

Many states have passed a tort “reform” measure that requires injured patients to file a certificate of merit along with a medical malpractice lawsuit.  The Washington State Supreme Court has held that law to be unconstitutional:

On Sept. 17, justices found unconstitutional a state law requiring patients, at the initial filing of a lawsuit, to submit a statement from a medical expert certifying that there was a reasonable basis for the allegations. The court unanimously said the certificate-of-merit statute encroached on the court's ability to set its own procedural rules, violating the separation of powers between the Legislature and the judiciary. In particular, the court found that the law conflicted with an existing rule barring additional verification of a case.

Source: AMNews: Oct. 12, 2009. Certificate-of-merit law struck down by Washington Supreme Court ... American Medical News

My biggest objection to certificate-of-merit laws is that many of them require you to file this certificate of merit before or simultaneously with the lawsuit.  This has the effect of shortening the statute of limitations because a plaintiff has to:

1. Order his or her medical records
2. Find an expert witness
3. Hire the expert witness, and pay him or her to review the records
4. Wait for the expert to submit the certificate

This can easily shave 2 or more months off already-short statutes of limitation.

Jury Gets It Right In Libel Case

There aren’t many hard-and-fast rules in the law.  One of them has been that truth is an absolute defense to libel, meaning that if I print something unflattering about someone, that person can’t sue me for libel if what I print is true.  Journalists especially love having that kind of certainty with respect to what they print.  Thankfully, a jury in Massachusetts understands how important that is:

It's the libel case that set free speech advocates reeling: Noonan v. Staples Inc. In February a federal appeals court held that truth is not always an absolute defense to claims of libel -- and kicked the case back to a jury.

Now the people have spoken. Late last week, a Massachusetts jury found that a mass e-mail sent out by Staples about an employee who was fired for violating the company's travel and expense policy was not sent with actual malice.

The jury issued its verdict on Oct. 8, eight months after the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals kept alive former Staples manager Alan Noonan's lawsuit, which sought to hold Staples liable for the humiliation caused by the e-mail even though the information in the e-mail was true. The court ruled that the e-mail could give rise to a libel claim because it singled him out and humiliated him.

Source: Law.com - Jury Says No to Libel Claim Over Truthful E-Mail

I read this article and thought about the discovery implications

Of course, since I look at everything through a litigation lens, that’s no surprise.

Why wait for a response to an email when you get a quicker answer over instant messaging? Thanks to Facebook, some questions can be answered without asking them. You don't need to ask a friend whether she has left work, if she has updated her public "status" on the site telling the world so. Email, stuck in the era of attachments, seems boring compared to services like Google Wave, currently in test phase, which allows users to share photos by dragging and dropping them from a desktop into a Wave, and to enter comments in near real time.

Source: The End of the Email Era - WSJ.com

Most of the hype over e-discovery is a scam.  I’ve been on the IT end of it, and I can assure you that it’s not a big deal for a corporation’s IT department to produce every email or document with a certain word in it.  I had to do that very task for a 25-30 person financial services firm, and it took me about two hours.  I have no idea how I’d go about aggregating every employee’s Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIN, and other social networking profile in such a search.  I don’t even have a Google Wave invite, so that’s just another issue to think about for future discovery disputes.

Because you’re an idiot if you think that corporate employees aren’t using third-party services to exchange communications and documents.  Some do it specifically to make sure the communications aren’t discoverable.  Others do it because their IT policies suck.  And still others do it because they’re just workaholics.  But the bottom line is that anyone suing a corporation better make sure they go over the personal email/social networking info for all the fact witnesses.

Nope, this isn’t usurious at all

(sigh)

“I was caught in a debt trap,” said Patricia Nelson, a 64-year-old Waukesha, Wis., retired nursing home worker who said she ended up paying $2,700 in interest on a $550 loan from payday lenders.

Source: Obama pushes consumer protection agency - Consumer news- msnbc.com

Illinois Supreme Court Lets Defendant Choose Jury Size

And why not?  After all, it’s not the prosecutor’s ass on the line.

The Illinois Supreme Court has ruled that if a criminal defendant wants a jury with fewer than 12 people and the judge allows it, a state prosecutor can't stop it.

In a unanimous opinion, the court rejected DuPage County State's Attorney Joseph Birkett's request for a writ of mandamus to force DuPage County Circuit Court Judge Peter Dockery to deny a request for a six-person jury made by defendant William Krolik, who is charged with attempted home invasion and armed robbery. The court said that it was an issue best left to the discretion of the trial judge and that the defendant has a right, under Illinois state law, to choose a smaller jury.

"The state has not established that the seating of a 12-person jury is simply a ministerial action allowing it absolute veto power to foreclose a defendant from requesting, and the circuit court from considering, the empaneling of a jury of a lesser number," the Supreme Court said in its Oct. 8 opinion.

Source: Law.com - Illinois High Court Lets Defendant Choose Jury Size

Benevolence is an abuse of discretion

One often wonders just what a trial court judge has to do to abuse his or her discretion.  In Florida, it turns out that showing “benevolence and compassion” is sufficient.

"Benevolence and compassion" have no place when it comes to setting foreclosure sales, a Florida state appellate court ruled in a stern order.

The 3rd District Court of Appeal judges said they "thoroughly disapprove" of a decision by Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Valerie Manno Schurr to give an extra month to a couple trying to sell their home before a foreclosure sale, Senior Judge Alan R. Schwartz wrote for the panel last week.

Source: Law.com - Fla. Appeals Court Takes Judge to Task for 'Benevolence'