By now, it appears that most of our regular readers have transferred to our main blog on our firm website. If you haven’t made the switch, we’ve had some interesting posts lately, including:
If you’re interested, please check us out.
We have transitioned this blog to the new blog on our main site. In the last month or so, our posts have included the following:
1. A look at some doctors requiring patients to sign “no sue” agreements before providing treatment;
2. A post on the phenomenon that hospital medical malpractice increases at night;
3. A story discussing the medical malpractice of an Austin area nursing home, and the effect of tort reform on its victims; and
4. A short primer on subrogation issues in Texas personal injury claims.
For the new readers, we’ve been trying to transition our traffic to the blog our main firm website. In the past month, we’ve had a series of posts on a Texas Supreme Court decision that makes it difficult, if not impossible, for a successful litigant to recover attorneys’ fees in uninsured/underinsured motorist litigation. The posts can be read here, here and here.
On the heels of that decision, we also have a post about a Texas Supreme Court justice who is asking the legislature to reimburse him for his own attorneys’ fees he incurred in defending an ethics charge.
There is also an interesting report from a local news station that Austin women are more likely to be injured in car wrecks than men, and a review of a luncheon with Stephanie Mencimer, a noted author on tort reform topics.
We hope one of these topics will interest you, and that you will take a look.
As you may know, we’ve been trying to transition our traffic to our blog at our firm site. Our two recent postings, not reflected here, are The Vanishing Jury Trial, part 2 (detailing various law professors’ attempts to get the Texas Supreme Court to reign in some of their opinions) and Some Texas Car Wreck Claims Get Tougher, discussing a December Texas Supreme Court opinion’s effect on uninsured/underinsured motorist insurance claims.
Regular readers and visitors to our website know our views about the Texas Supreme Court’s bias in favor of big business and insurance companies (we’ve previously written about this here, here and here). Our opinion has been reinforced by a law review article, Judicial Tort Reform In Texas, by Professor Dave Anderson at the University of Texas School of Law in the recent issue of the Texas Review of Litigation.
For the article, Professor Anderson surveyed Texas Supreme Court decisions for 2004 and 2005 to determine whether the Supreme Court is conducting its own version of Tort Reform. Professor Anderson’s startling findings including the following:
Defendants won 87% of the tort cases decided with opinion.
In the years from 1998 to 2005, the Texas Supreme Court decided twelve cases in which Wal-Mart was a tort defendant. In the rest of the country, state courts of last resort decided eighty-one such cases in the same time period. Wal-Mart won all twelve of its cases in the Texas Supreme Court, but only 56% of its cases in the rest of the country. Professor Anderson notes that there does not seem to be any significant difference between the Wal-Mart cases in Texas as opposed to the rest of the country.
Professor Anderson also tried to pinpoint the methods in which the Court was using to find for defendants. The most controversial method was the Court’s use of “no evidence” findings. In that situation, the Court looks at the evidence presented at the trial court and finds, despite jury findings to the contrary, that there is no evidence to support the plaintiff’s win. In the 2005 term, the Court sustained 79% of the no-evidence claims presented. Professor Anderson compares that with the Court’s 1986 and 1966 terms which each sustained only 25% of the no-evidence claims. Professor Anderson also notes that the Supreme Court has been active in adopting procedural rules that favor defendants.
Our criticism of the court isn’t alone. The article notes, “The authors of a law review article reviewing the court’s work say ‘politically motivated courts have taken up the task [of undermining the jury] by casting aside decades, even centuries of common law precedent to limit the role of lay jurors in deciding societal norms.’ An appellate judge has written that ‘the appearance of bias [in favor of defendants and insurance companies] leads one to the conclusion that the current Court favors its judgment over that of a jury.’”
Professor Anderson even quotes James Baker, a Republican Texas Supreme Court justice from 1995-2002 as saying that what the court is now doing with its no-evidence reviews “cannot be reconciled with the Texas Constitution’s prohibition of the Texas Supreme Court weighing evidence and judging credibility.”
Unfortunately, the full article is not yet available online (with the exception of a Lexis, Westlaw, or similar library). However, we encourage anyone interested in civil justice issues to contact the Review of Litigation and order a copy of the full article.
As we transition our blog, we have a post on our new blog regarding CNN’s report of insurance companies playing hard ball on car wreck cases. The special report was quite revealing, including conclusions that part of the goal of the plan was to pay so little that attorneys would stop representing those injured. To read more, click here.
The second part of Brooks’s interview with News 8 was shown this week. To watch a replay of the interview, click here and hit the play button.
And not to beat a dead horse, but we’re trying to slowly transfer the blog to our firm site. Please check us out there for more frequent posts.
We’ve often written about the demise of the jury trial and what we believe is one of the root causes — the appellate courts’ continued willingness to overturn jury verdicts. Recently, Professor Gerald Powell, on his own time and spending his own money, filed an inspired amicus brief with the Texas Supreme Court. Professor’s Powell’s brief attacks the Court’s propensity for overturning jury verdicts and describes the damage that the trend will have on jury trials. To read the opinion and a more thorough discussion of the issue, please visit our main blog (as many of you know, we’re slowly moving this blog to our main firm site).
Brooks was featured in a short interview on News 8 Austin about resolving car wreck property damage claims. Click here for a short article and the video.
And, not to be repetitive, but we are still continuing to transition our blog to our website. So please visit us there and sign up for our feed.
A Dallas Morning News article from yesterday describes the long, tortured journey of two homeowners’ search for justice. Bob and Jane Cull bought their home from Perry Homes more than ten years ago, but they are still waiting for some type of resolution. After a lengthy delay and numerous appeals, the Culls were awarded over $800,000.00 by an arbitrator. Whether they get to keep that award is now before the Texas Supreme Court.
The kicker? According to the article, Bob Perry, the owner of Perry Homes, is the largest individual political donor in the country. And among his political donations are hundreds of thousands of dollars donated to the supreme court justices now set to hear the case.
For a more detailed discussion of the case, including links to additional resources, check out the post on our main blog.
As always, we are attempting to migrate our blog over to our firm’s site. So please visit us there and sign up for our feed.
