Sacred cows make great steaks, as one wit quipped. The usual way of doing things is being stood on its head and, in the realm of medical malpractice claims at least, is being replaced in many cases by fresh approaches and claim resolution templates. Specifically, historical norms of adversarial claim approaches are being supplanted by 'apology programs,' which receive increasing interest and publicity.
People injured by a drug or medical device often sue not only their medical caregivers and the hospitals where the devices were implanted, but also the drug or device's manufacturers. Smart move, but there may be other avenues for recovery that should be explored. There are many players in the process that brings a drug or device to the market, and it may prove valuable to question whether any of these had a role in causing the claimant's injury and whether they can be reached for recovery.
In addition to claims for medical negligence, medical professionals and the facilities for which they work may be exposed to claims for breach of contract based on a theory that patients are third-party beneficiaries of contracts between medical facilities and their physicians. Such actions may lead to liability for physicians who have no direct relationship with the patient at issue, but careful drafting of agreements between facilities such as nursing homes and hospitals and their physicians may prevent patients and their lawyers from bringing successful third-party beneficiary breach of contract claims.
What limitations does a municipality face in excluding religious uses in commercial or industrial districts? That issue has arisen in several cases over the last year and a half, most recently in <i>Western New York District, Inc. v. Village of Lancaster</i>. Although neither New York nor federal courts have definitively answered that question, it appears that municipalities enjoy more latitude to exclude religious uses in commercial and industrial districts than they enjoy with respect to residential districts.
'Disconnect Between In-House and Outside Counsel is a continuation of the discussion of client expectations and the disconnect that often occurs. And although the outside attorneys should be pursuing how inside-counsel actually think, inside counsel should make an effort to impart this information without waiting to be asked.
Do divorce lawyers have an obligation to disclose client confidences when it is in the best interests of the client's child to do so? The short answer of the rules of professional responsibility is 'no' because a 'yes' answer is deemed to be fundamentally inconsistent with the premises of the adversary system in which the divorce lawyer functions. The longer answer is that the rules encourage ' but do not require ' a divorce lawyer to counsel the client to authorize the disclosure because it is in the best interests of both parent and child.
Womble Carlyle's technology training and online learning programs were in need of an upgrade. Unprecedented firm growth, heightened emphasis on developing lawyers' core technology competencies, and a need to streamline and automate existing e-learning processes led the firm to initiate a fundamental shift.
Online ticket reseller StubHub faces lawsuits over allegedly unrefunded event tickets in California, after a federal judicial panel ordered that similar cases from jurisdictions in multiple states be coordinated.
