If that headline made you blink, don’t worry – you read it correctly, and it accurately states what happened. The case is Markel v. Douglas Technologies Group, https://ecf.ca8.uscourts.gov/opndir/20/08/192637P.pdf (8th Cir.
Every conceivable segment of our lives has been impacted by COVID-19 and by our responses to it. In an effort to reduce the possibility of being exposed to the virus by touching an unsanitized surface and then touching your face (which you’re not supposed to do anyway), we’ve adopted hand sanitizers as a staple of our daily lives. But are they in fact effective in reducing the risk of contracting COVID-19?
Let me begin with a disclaimer.
Jeff Catalano, a longtime client of ours, is one of Massachusetts’s leading medical malpractice / products liability / personal injury attorneys. He recently wrote this article for his firm’s occasional email newsletter, and he has graciously consented to our request to reprint it here.
One Important Immunity Achieved: Healthcare Providers from Lawsuits
By Jeffrey N. Catalano
“What exactly is a medical toxicologist?” I have been asked this question by physicians and attorneys alike. The technical answer is that medical toxicology is a subspecialty officially recognized by the American Board of Medical Specialties. The American College of Medical Toxicology defines it as the field of medicine dedicated to the evaluation and treatment of poisoned and envenomated patients. This includes the adverse health effects of medications, occupational and environmental toxins, and biological agents.
(Dr. Stephen Thornton is board certified in emergency medicine and medical toxicology and is one of Vident Partners’ leading experts in those fields. For more information about him, see https://www.videntpartners.com/blog/2020/emergency-medicine-medical-toxicology-expert-witness.)
In this installment of my ongoing chronicle of sports-related litigation, https://www.videntpartners.com/blog/sports-law, I’m pleased to report on a recent decision that will be of particular interest to the baseball fans among our readers.
In evaluating a complex medical malpractice case, where review by one or more specialists could be costly, the plaintiff’s attorney may want a preliminary flat-fee merit review (sometimes called a screening review) to help determine whether the case is worth pursuing. We are pleased to announce that Vident Partners now provides this service. Our reviewer is board certified in internal medicine and has 38 years of experience in primary care, hospital medicine, quality control, utilization review and legal consulting. The fee is $850 for up to 4 hours of work, $350/hr thereafter. If you’v
This recently-filed sexual assault case resonates, for three reasons: the event occurred on an airplane, which, while not unheard-of and certainly underreported, is relatively rare (see https://www.star-telegram.com/news/local/crime/article238558198.html); it involves a reversal of the usual gender roles; and it’s an early glimpse of the approaching wave of coronavirus-related litigation:
As every trial lawyer knows, the admissibility of a vast array of evidence is committed to the trial court’s discretion. (Or “sound discretion,” as some appellate courts put it, though as far as I can tell it means the same thing.) Consequently, one of the unavoidably nerve-wracking aspects of litigation is that Judge A and Judge B might reach opposite conclusions on the admissibility of the same evidence, yet both rulings could be upheld on appeal because neither ruling was an abuse of discretion. So, without in any way denigrating the importance of our skill and experience in trial adv
