Average Medtronic Settlement Is $33,000 Dollars

Somewhat coincidentally, I drove past a Medtronic facility the day this was announced.   

“Medtronic is pleased we were able to negotiate terms that were mutually agreeable to the parties,” Christopher Garland, a company spokesman, said in a telephone interview. The settlement covers about 8,100 cases, or “virtually all” U.S. claims, Garland said.

The settlement resolves cases in both federal and state courts.

$33,000 Average Payout

It will provide an average payout of more than $33,000 to patients who have defibrillators with wires that have broken or are considered likely to break. The amount will depend on the extent of the injuries and defects.

Source: Medtronic to Pay $268 Million, Settle Suits Over Defibrillator Wire Flaws - Bloomberg

Class action lawsuit over questionable charges for medical record retrieval

One of the little frustrations that pop up in every product liability lawsuit is ordering medical records.  Ordering medical records is always complicated, expensive, and takes too long.  What should be a relatively simple process can turn into a multiple-month ordeal in which the medical provider has to be contacted multiple times. 

While this lawsuit won’t make ordering medical records any quicker, it may make it just a little cheaper: 

LITTLE ROCK — A class-action lawsuit alleges a Georgia company has been illegally overcharging Arkansas medical patients who request copies of their medical records.

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The bill includes a “basic fee,” a retrieval fee, a copying fee, a fee for shipping and handling and a “sales tax” of $1.71.

Source: Class-action lawsuit alleges Arkansans overcharged for medical records | Arkansas News

Are Twombly and Iqbal Up For Review?

The Forbes law blog thinks they might be: 

The Supreme Court may announce as early as Monday that it plans to revisit the controversial issue of pleadings standards under Rule 8 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. 

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Critics of Iqbal respond that unless they can get past the pleadings stage and engage in discovery, they have no way of proving that senior officials were directly involved.

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If the Court takes any action on Ashcroft’s petition at Friday’s conference, it will announce its decision on Monday.

Source: Terror-Related Case Has Supreme Court Poised To Revisit Pleading Standards Controversy - On the Docket - Inside the courtroom - Forbes 

I'm not hopeful that the current makeup of the Court will overrule Twombly and Iqbal.  Nor am I hopeful that any court can give an objective test to determine whether an allegation is "plausible" or not.  Several years ago, an allegation that Bernie Madoff was running a multibillion-dollar Ponzi scheme wasn't plausible, but it was factually true.

I-1082 = Higher Taxes On Washington Small Business

I don't know of a lot of small businesses in Washington who can afford to see their premiums go up by 28%:

As written, I-1082 would virtually eliminate oversight of workers’ compensation claims, leaving injured workers in the lurch. I-1082 is also a terrible hit on small business owners — increasing their tax burden at a time when many are barely hanging on. This is the wrong time and the wrong economy to force businesses to shoulder the entire burden of higher industrial insurance premiums.

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Under the current system, employees pay 28 percent of their industrial insurance premium costs. Their employer picks up the remainder.  What Initiative 1082 does is shift the entire financial burden to employers for an 18-month period while the initiative is phased-in.

Source: Initiative would eliminate valuable oversight of workers’ comp - Endorsements by The Olympian - The Olympian - Olympia, Washington

That is just one of many reasons to vote no on I-1082. 

Twombly and Iqbal Are Being Applied To Affirmative Defenses

You can probably guess that I'm not a fan of Twombly and Iqbal, which I see as creations of an activist Supreme Court.  However, the silver lining to the decisions is that they're at least being used to get rid of some of the ridiculous affirmative defenses being used by defendants:

The fallout from the [Twombly and Iqbal] decisions has been significant: multiple bills have been proposed to reverse the holdings, which have been cited thousands of times by federal courts as defendants successfully move to have suits dismissed based on the heightened pleading requirements.

But now some defendants are feeling the sting, because a growing number of federal courts are applying the reasoning of Twombly-Iqbal to affirmative defenses.

“What’s good for the goose is good for the gander,” said Tim Schulte, a partner at Shelley & Schulte in Richmond, Va. who recently won a motion applying Twombly-Iqbal to the defendant’s affirmative defenses.

Source: Wisconsin Law Journal » Blog Archive » Courts split on affirmative defenses

I'm hoping one of the bills to overturn Twombly and Iqbal make it through Congress, but I doubt they will.