It is becoming cliché to say that social media is the next big thing in litigation discovery. In personal injury cases, I think social media captures the imagination of insurance adjusters and in-house counsel who inflate the likelihood of finding evidence on Facebook and Twitter that will be a game…
I’m not in the habit of offering advice to injury defense lawyers. Okay, actually I am. So here goes: defense attorneys, it is highly impolitic to combat a study suggesting that people who live near mountaintop mining operations are at higher risk of birth defects by saying the study didn’t…
We got an order in Anne Arundel County requiring a recidivist defense expert to produce his financial records before examining the Plaintiff. I think there is the assumption that my firm is involved in some jihad against IME doctors. Self-referential as this may be, I think we have done more…
On Tuesday, Medicare and Medicaid set forth new and revised conditional payment final demand letters that are reported to comply with Haro v. Sebelius, No. CV 09-134 TUC DCB, 2011 WL 2040219 (D. Ariz., May 9, 2011). The word on the street is that Medicare has six new conditional payment…
I have started a little series on David Ball’s Damages 3 book on how to prepare and try a case. I will keep that going. But, today, I will turn to another “must-read” book for plaintiffs’ lawyers (and, shhh, probably for defense lawyers too): Polarizing the Case by Rich Friedman.…
No, this isn’t another polemic about how personal injury lawyers should blog or tweet. I don’t care if you blog or tweet. Social media has been a boon for two types of people: stalkers and defense lawyers. Personal injury lawyers are not using social media offensively in great measure. Not…
You are the Plaintiff’s lawyer. You are bent on getting your case ready for trial from the moment you file a lawsuit. After you have almost completed discovery, you send out requests for admission to truly narrow the issues you will face at trial. Good job. You are more thorough…
Steve McConnell writes a post for the Drug and Device Lawyer Blog about an angry liar of a plaintiffs’ lawyer who keeps hitting 8-figure verdicts and settlements. How can this happen? Steve figures out the solution to this problem the way most of the vexing litigation challenges are solved. This…
“There is only one reliable tool for undermining defense experts,” David Ball tells us in Damages 3. What? There is only one? Really? This is a big deal because, as any trial lawyer will tell you, cross-examination of defense experts can sometimes make or break a personal injury case. Even…
Last week, I wrote an upbeat post about a U.S. District Court in Arizona opinion in Haro v. Sebelius as hopefully a harbinger for a less Draconian system governing the logistics of dealing with Medicare/Medicaid liens in personal injury cases. But the rain is getting a little heavier before the…