AHLA's Speaking of Health Law

The Lighter Side of Health Law – October 2021

October 26, 2021 AHLA Podcasts
AHLA's Speaking of Health Law
The Lighter Side of Health Law – October 2021
Show Notes Transcript

AHLA's monthly podcast featuring health lawyer and blogger Norm Tabler's informative and entertaining take on recent health law and other legal developments. 

To learn more about AHLA and the educational resources available to the health law community, visit americanhealthlaw.org.

Speaker 1:

Hi, I'm norm tablet with this month's edition of the lighter side of health law, not a leg to stand on from the department of you. Can't make this stuff up. When a former prisoner sued his doctor alleging that poor medical care resulted in the amputation of both legs. The judge threw the case out ruling that he didn't have a leg to stand on. Seriously. Ex-prisoner Craig Savani sued Dr. Marta Castillo claiming it was her fault that he lost his legs. The judge ruled that Dr. Castillo's treatment was in fact below par, but that savant, he still didn't have a case. How could that be? Because Avani had not alleged medical malpractice. He had sued for deprivation of his eighth amendment rights, alleging quote, deliberate indifference to his wellbeing. And since there was some medical treatment, he could not prove deliberate indifference. Why didn't he Sue for medical malpractice? The statute of limitations had run the cases of Ani vs. Corazon health, Southern district of Florida. How to say yes, a couple of months ago, we discussed the case of a man who didn't know how to say no. He was not protected from robocalls because he told the caller he was not interested rather than simply saying, do not call. Here's a case of a man, a Harvard professor who didn't know how to say yes, he's on trial for grant fraud and tax crimes. When the government prepared to play a tape of his conversation with federal agents, his lawyer objected arguing that the government had proceeded with the interview. Even though the professor had asked for a lawyer, the government responded that the professor had not asked for a lawyer. So exactly what had the professor said, quote, I guess I think probably I should have, uh, an attorney, the judge ruled in favor of the government, finding that the hedging language guests think probably and should made the statement too ambiguous to constitute a valid request for an attorney. The case is us vs. Lieber district of Massachusetts. If you want something done, right? You know the saying, if you want something done, right, do it yourself. Well, according to a testimony in the Elizabeth homes, there are no fraud trial. Elizabeth apparently believes in the say, Elizabeth wanted to persuade Walgreens to use their nose, blood testing machines, and what could be more persuasive than endorsement by internationally known pharmaceutical giants like Pfizer and shearing plow. But wait, what if the endorsements aren't as glowing as Elizabeth wanted? No problem. Elizabeth simply had her own people create Pfizer and sharing pile letterhead and write the glowing reports. How do we know the endorsements were fake? Two ways. First, the company said so second sharing plows name was misspelled on the letterhead. The case is us versus homes Northern district, California. Oh no, not our own words. TEV pharmaceuticals is a defendant in the giant opioid lawsuit that New York and two of its counties have brought against opioid manufacturers. Teva is desperate to prevent the jury from viewing videos that are according to Teva, quote, incredibly prejudicial and incredibly inflammatory what's in the videos. Well clips from movies like Austin Powers and a few good men with voices dubbed in saying Teva and Salesforce are doing a lot of illegal stuff and laughing about it. Who in the world would produce videos, documenting all this illegal stuff by Teva, Teva. That's right. Teva produced the videos. It doesn't want the jury to see there's been no final ruling on the case. But during the proceedings, the judge recently said, quote, you produce them. You've got to live with them. Period. Ouch. The cases, opioid litigation, Supreme court of New York, Suffolk county and attorney. I don't envy. I wouldn't like to be the Hartford insurance attorney in the litigation with Lapore and sun for damage to its construction equipment. In the wake of hurricane Ida Hartford's position is that flood damage was specifically excluded from the policy. Lapore his response was okay, here's the policy. Show us the exclusion. That's when the Hartford lawyer had to say, well, we meant to put the exclusion in, but we forgot. But Hey, it's what we meant. That counts the cases in the Eastern district of Pennsylvania. I'll let you know how it comes out. Don't try this at home attorney. Jim's a mood. I had a crackerjack idea for delaying the hearing on whether it's firms should be disqualified from a case before judge McGee at four 30 in the afternoon, before the hearing he filed on 829 page motion to disqualify the judge. Why should the judge be disqualified? Because attorney Jim alleged the judge's wife had some unspecified financial relationship with the defendant instead of documenting the alleged relationship. He filled his motion with photos of the judge's wife, but why stop there? He also included photos of the whole McGee family taken from the public pages of Facebook. They weren't relevant to the motion, but they help fill up the 829 pages. The judge's response. He find attorney Jim$30,000 and ordered him to take the photos down the cases Draeger versus Dolan, Pasternak 14th, judicial circuit, Illinois, no wonder people, hate lawyers. Attorney Matthew Donnelley was in a car in a restaurant parking lot. The restaurant was directly in front of him and cars were parked on either side. He was ready to back out. When an Amazon truck stopped directly behind him. He asked the truck driver to move so it could get out. The truck driver said, he'd have to wait a couple of minutes and proceeded to go into the building, leaving his truck behind Matthew's car. He was gone two or three minutes before getting back in the truck. When Matthew threatened to complain to Amazon, the truck driver said he didn't care. Mocked Matthew and drove away for reasons known only to himself. Matthew decided that proof. He is a bigger jerk than a truck driver. He filed a lawsuit against Amazon for false imprisonment and humiliation demanding$150,000. Apparently it's a new kind of imprisonment. The kind where your car is blocked for two or three minutes, but you're free to get out, walk around and pick a pointless Quora with a truck driver. I'm surprised he didn't Sue the cars on either side of him. Uh, most important character, a punctuation mark can be worth a lot of money. A couple of years ago, we discussed a case where a missing comma in a main statute was worth a cool$5 million to food delivery truck drivers. Now it's a missing apostrophe in Australia, real estate agent. Anthony is ed Rafiq was angry. His former employer, Stewart GaN. He believes Stewart had not paid into his government retirement system. The Australian counterpart of our social security. So I wrote on Facebook quote, Stuart GaN sells million dollar homes, but can't pay as employees, retirement contribution, but he didn't write employees with an apostrophe before the S which would have made clear that Andrew was talking about only one employee himself. He wrote employees with no apostrophe, which indicated that he was talking about all stewards employees. Underpaying one account can be an oversight or technical error, but underpaying, all employees would be a serious crime, which is why Stewart filed a defamation suit and why the state court of new south Wales has allowed the case to go forward, which proves yet again, that punctuation marks can be very important. Characters. Doctor dies. Patient pays the price. Her doctor died, and it costs Dana meat. Dearly. Danna is one of the innumerable plaintiffs who have sued the manufacturer of pelvic mesh, claiming it injured them. The court had already rejected most of the theories of her case, such as fraud and breach of warranty, but she still had one theory that was alive and well failure to warn under this theory, if the manufacturer's warning had been stronger, that would have altered the decision of the doctor who prescribed the mesh. There was just one problem for Dana. Her doctor had died before the issue came up. So he couldn't testify that yes, indeed. He would have acted differently if the warning had been stronger. No problem argued. Dana's lawyer will have an expert testify. How Dana's doctor would have behaved Nope. Rule the judge without the prescribing doctors own testimony. Dana has no case summary judgment for defendant. The case is, or was Mead vs. Ethicon Eastern district of Arkansas. Well, that's it for this month's edition of the lighter side of health law. I hope you enjoyed it. Check your AHLA weekly and health law connections magazine for the next edition.

Speaker 2:

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