Articles Posted in Civil Litigation

As a trial attorney handling serious injury and wrongful death cases in  Georgia, I have an intense interest in seeing that my clients are dealt with fairly, that the playing field is relatively level, and that the court system works reasonably well. Currently there is a proposal in the legislature to impose a sales tax…

Yesterday, for the fifth consecutive year, I served as program chair for the Georgia Personal Injury Practice Seminar sponsored by the Institute for Continuing Legal Education in Georgia.  As always, I followed my father’s advice to “surround yourself with people who are smarter than you” by recruiting as speakers some of the brightest lawyers in…

Though I have not personally encountered it yet, there apparently has been a recent proliferation of a defense tactic of offering to represent witnesses at no charge in order to limit the plaintiff attorney’s access to the witnesses.  This may be particularly a problem in medical malpractice cases but it could occur in any type…

I was pleased to see that Judge Henry Newkirk of the State Court of Fulton County made the “short list” for the Superior Court seat being vacated by Judge Stephanie Manis taking senior status.  While Judge Manis was one of my classmates at Emory Law School, I first met Judge Newkirk at Furman when he…

Recently I wrote about the crisis in judicial salaries.  Today I got some private feedback from an old friend who went from a very successful private practice to a judgeship several years ago. I’m not even going to hint at who, where, or what level of court.  This judge said that, other than retirement accounts, he…

A judge in Queens County, NY, recently wrote a 13-page order awarding double the standard compensation for a sign language interpreter and spotlighting a severe shortage of court-certified interpreters in American Sign Language for the deaf. He noted that even in Rochester, NY, which has the largest per capita deaf population in the country, only…

Most of the top Atlanta law firms have now joined the trend to raise starting salaries for Atlanta associates to $145,000.  Without adjusting for inflation, that is exactly ten times my starting salary as a prosecutor thirty years ago. Of course, spiraling starting salaries lead to hourly billing requirements that leave no time for a…

Jury selection (really deselection) is more art than science and involves at least as much luck as skill.  However, the public attitudes of a time and place are a factor.  That’s why I read public opinion surveys with a great deal of interest. From June 28 to July 3, 2007, Peter D. Hart Research Associates,…

A study published yesterday in The Archives of Internal Medicine, reached the conclusion that doctors’ disclosures about themselves fail to either help patients or establish rapport with the patients. Rather, the study showed that many doctors waste patients’ time and lose their focus in office visits by interjecting irrelevant information about themselves.  The researchers started…

“Judge” Pearson’s $54 million suit against a Washington dry cleaner for an allegedly lost pair of pants went down in flames today.  No damages were awarded to Pearson, and he was ordered to pay the dry cleaner’s court costs.  The dry cleaner’s attorney fees will be awarded only if the court determines the claim was…