Litigation

Everything contained in this issue, in an easy-to-read format.

Attorneys representing property owners are often requested to document arrangements for very short-term and temporary usage of property. "I don't want a lease; just a license agreement will be fine," is the frequent form of the request. Assuming that the client's request is not merely an attempt to keep the legal fees down, is such a request one that makes sense from an owner's point of view? More important, can a careful attorney respond positively?

National rulings of interest to you and your practice.

Recent rulings you need to know.

Given how large the awards are when there is a verdict against a physician, many in the medical profession and their defense teams have come to believe that juries are random and unfair. The conventional wisdom seems to be that judge-made decisions are a safer bet for med-mal defendants. Is this true?

Courts have historically been divided over several key elements with respect to what a plaintiff must prove to support a claim for medical monitoring. In this article, we review recent decisions regarding medical monitoring and assess whether there has been any consensus among the courts as to whether an actual, present physical injury is required to support a medical monitoring claim and whether class certification is appropriate for medical monitoring claims.

Recent rulings of interest to you and your practice.

In a little-noticed paragraph of the significant decision in Wissink v. Wissink, 301 AD2d 36 (2d Dept. 2002), the court held that evidence of certain economically abusive behavior was relevant in a custody case and should not be excluded. This is a very important holding that should be examined by judges and attorneys and applied in other cases.