To me, the key points raised in my recent talk with Joan Bibelhausen, Executive Director of Lawyers Concerned for Lawyers (LCL) for Minnesota Litigator readers (or, specifically, the lawyers among you) were: (1) Do not wait until a difficulty becomes a disability; (2) Minnesota lawyers need to take care of ourselves and one another. Lawyers […]
Corporate America, defense lawyer associations, business trade groups, insurance companies, and politically conservative ideologues decry jurors who they claim are more interested in using the court system for income redistribution rather than for meting out justice — the proverbial runaway juries. What about juries that run in the opposite direction? Ever notice that there simply are […]
Update (February 19, 2016): The decision this week in favor of Plaintiff DeCook was a win for “the little guy” and a win for justice and fairness in my opinion. Note that the case was a very close call, with three justices dissenting in part. The dissenting justices might disagree that the result was a win […]
Three years ago, I questioned whether the biblical edict, “Love thy neighbor as thyself,” really holds up when applied to reality. Like many questions we read on the internet, to ask is to answer the question. The answer is “No.” (This is Betteridge’s Law of Headlines.) This week, an appellate decision involving Mr. Jay Nygard, a […]
Update (February 12, 2016): California lawyer, Steven Lobbin, the sanctioned lawyer (see earlier posts, below), sought appellate relief (his voluminous brief, here, and the response, here) and, this week, got none. Will Aviva Sports, Inc. or its lawyers finally get the sanctions award??? Update (December 19, 2014): Without comment, a generous reader took the time […]
U.S. District Court Judge Patrick J. Schiltz (D. Minn.) recently denied an insurer’s motion to dismiss an insurance coverage claim (for “personal and advertising injury”) by a Minnesota cell phone financial services company (Cachet) and a Minnesota broadband internet service company. If you have any interest in trying to follow how insurance coverage disputes are resolved, […]
Update (February 8, 2016): If a company says that “Jane Doe has left the company and now we have hired someone for her position who will further enhance a culture of legal compliance at the company,” has the company defamed Doe? The statement says nothing false about Ms. Doe but isn’t there at least a hint, a trace, whiff, inkling, […]
Notwithstanding the familiar meme of “run-away juries” and “frivolous lawsuits,” both of which exist but as flukes, statistically weak anomalies, our legal system generally short-changes the vast majority of meritorious litigants (whether plaintiffs or successful defendants). As discussed in the immediately preceding post (below), for example, many types of damages and harm are deemed “speculative” and, […]
21 percent of practicing attorneys qualify as problem drinkers, 28 percent struggle with some degree of depression and 19 percent demonstrate symptoms of anxiety. We can question the numbers. We can discount the numbers as the result of a single study whose methodology we have not scrutinized. (You think the study sponsor, Hazelden, might have a […]
There are countless instances in life where people and businesses are hurt by wrongful acts or omissions by others but the harm suffered is “speculative,” and therefore not compensable in a court of law. The most obvious example is defamation. If someone talks trash about you, in almost every instance, you will be hard-pressed to tie the calumny […]