The Court of Appeals heard spirited arguments May 31 on whether New York should become the second state to legalize gay marriage. The judges did little to tip their hands as to how they would vote, greeting both sides with wide-ranging, skeptical questions. The arguments covered the four joined decisions that each held that New York state law precludes same-sex couples from marrying: the First Department case <i>Hernandez v. Robles</i>, 805 NYS 2d 354 and the Third Department cases <i>Seymour v. Holcomb</i>, 811 NYS 2d 134; <i>Matter of Kane v. Marsolais</i>, 808 NYS 2d 566; and <i>Samuels v. New York State Department of Health</i>, 811 NYS 2d 136. Judge Albert M. Rosenblatt recused himself, reportedly because his daughter, a Los Angeles attorney, has worked on same-sex marriages cases in New Jersey and California. That left only six judges to hear arguments.

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One of the least understood areas of law that New York matrimonial lawyers may encounter is the equitable distribution of military benefits. This is largely due to the relatively small number of military personnel who have traditionally resided in New York, the even smaller number of military personnel who divorce here, the paucity of the decisions dealing with them, and the lack of sufficient interest to spark Continuing Legal Education providers in this state to devote attention to the subject. Still, there are more than a few military personnel in New York, so any attorney may one day find him/herself having to decipher the intricacies of federal military retirement and disability laws on behalf of a client. Therefore, an understanding of each of the military benefits that can be distributed upon divorce and the circumstances under which they can be distributed may one day prove useful.

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The peer review process is indispensable to promotion of quality in medical facilities. A major component of the process is honesty; without open investigation and discussion of adverse events and their causes, meaningful reforms for avoiding the same occurrences again are less likely to be made. To ensure open discourse, nearly every state has enacted laws protecting the confidentiality of peer review proceedings. However, federal law may not always be so deferent to the privacy concerns of the peer review committee. In certain circumstances, what most participants thought would be a closed record under state law might be opened by competing federal law enacted to protect the disabled.

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It is now common knowledge that the Centers for Disease Control and the American Medical Association consider obesity to be a high-priority medical problem. To combat the growing epidemic, bariatric surgery, which is indicated for 'severely' or 'morbidly' obese patients ' generally defined as a body mass index (BMI) over 40 (a 'normal' BMI is 19-25) ' has become increasingly popular. Surgery may also be indicated for patients with a BMI between 35 and 40, if there are significant co-morbid conditions.

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Modern understanding of medical malpractice is based upon the presence of a physician-patient relationship. This specific relationship gives rise to a special duty on the part of the physician, the breach of which is one of the requirements for finding professional negligence. Although this consensual relationship is often discussed and thought of in terms of an express contract ' that the relationship is created when professional medical services are 'offered' voluntarily and those services are 'accepted' voluntarily by another ' most courts have held that the creation of the relationship need not satisfy the formalities of a contract.