The Lighter Side of Health Law – August 2023

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

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This episode of A H L A speaking of health law is brought to you by A H L A members and donors like you. For more information, visit american health law.org.

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Hi, I am Norm Taber with this month's edition of the Lighter Side of Health Law. Call me insensitive. Call me insensitive, but I have a hard time setting with Dr. Anuj Pada . In his fight with Colorado's Centura Health, you decide a week after accepting a job offer from Centura and before ever reporting to work, Dr. PTA informed URA that he had physician burnout and would need quote several months off to recover before it could start. When he refused to sign a new contract, URA said he had turned the job down. This being America, Dr. PTA naturally sued URA for violating the A D a. I'm all for giving employees sick leave, but it seems to me that before you're entitled to several months of sick leave, you ought to show up for at least one day. The case is Pada versus Catholic Health Initiatives District of Colorado. Irony of the Month. This month's irony of the month involves the ever mounting evidence that Dr. Francesca Gino of Harvard Business School is guilty of fabricating the data she used to support her dozens of research papers in highly regarded peer reviewed journals. Where's the irony? You're wondering, is it the fact that Dr. Gino is highly regarded in her field, that she's on the faculty at Harvard? Not really. It's her primary subject matter. She's an authority on honesty. Yes, honesty. Her work focuses on how small adjustments in behavior can improve the honesty of test subjects. One well-known experiment showed that when people fill out a tax or insurance questionnaire, they're more honest if asked to attest to the truth of their answers at the top of the questionnaire rather than the bottom. Now, experts, including her own co-authors, are coming forth in droves to indicate that she fabricated or at least manipulated the data she used to support her conclusions. So the irony of the month is that a worldwide authority on honesty stands accused of dishonesty in her research on honesty, honestly, a very expensive shortcut. When lawyers with the eminent law firm, Proscar Rose drafted a partnership agreement for venture capitalist client, Dr. Robert Edelman, founder of Ven Bio . They had a crackerjack idea on how to save themselves time and their client money. They would simply cut and paste provisions from another agreement. What could possibly go wrong? Allot . It turns out one provision they pasted in gave another man the power to decide to have the partnership enter into quote , strategic transactions and also the power to decide what was and was not a strategic transaction. That other man exercised the power costing client Edelman to lose an amount. He calculates at $636 million. Now, the client has sued Proscower for his $636 million, but hey, they probably saved a good half hour by cutting and pasting. The case is Edelman versus Proscower Rose Suffolk County Superior Court, Massachusetts, the meanness defense. Here's a new defense. Texas attorney Nicholas Mosser was charged with unprofessional conduct and contempt after he repeatedly made disrespectful comments about a judge, including accusing the judge of quote , atrocious conduct of an individual masquerading as a judge and of not knowing the law. A contempt tearing was set before a three-judge panel and Nicholas was ordered to appear. Nicholas being Nicholas moved to disqualify all three judges. The motion failed. He did not appear. His lawyer explained that Nicholas didn't have to appear because he hadn't been formally served with an order setting the date. The lawyer did not explain how he, the lawyer knew the date. What was Nicholas's defense? Well, his lawyer explained quote , he's just mean, but his meanness doesn't really hurt anything. The court upheld the charges and sanctioned Nicholas $3,600. Well, that fixes that. Well, there was a problem with the justice system in Lincoln County, Oklahoma, but not to worry it's been taken care of. The problem Well, when presiding over a trial of a man accused of murdering his girlfriend's two-year-old son, instead of paying attention to the proceedings, judge Tracy Soderstrom spent hours, hours on her cell phone , texting and scrolling through social media sites. How do we know? Because it was picked up on the courtroom camera. When the video went public, the citizenry was outraged. But not to worry. Judge Tracy has addressed the problem, her solution. She moved the camera so that she's no longer in the picture. Now she can scroll in peace . You can't make this stuff up. Attorney suspended for pretending to be an attorney. You have to hand it to New Jersey. Attorney Ralph Gonzalez. He managed to get suspended for pretending to be an attorney even though he is an attorney. How did he do it? Well, he was on a three month suspension for weapons charges, not to be confused with his earlier three month suspension for a road rage incident. While Ralph was suspended, his friend Christopher Stoner, was facing suspension of his driver's license, and Ralph being a standup guy, wanted to help his friend , so he shut up for stoner's traffic hearing. When the bailiff asked for identification, Ralph handed him a business card. Reading John A. Underwood attorney at law. Things were going well until a D M V employee did an internet search of John Underwood and not surprisingly discovered that the Underwood on the screen did not look the least like the man representing Stoner. The employee was puzzled. But stoner's D M V file included the record of a telephone inquiry from a Ralph Gonzalez and an internet search of that name produced a photo that was a dead ringer for the man representing stoner in traffic court . Well, of course , that meant that Ralph was not Attorney John Underwood in good standing. He was Ralph , not in good standing , but suspended that fact. Plus Ralph's earlier, ethics violations resulted in a brand new one year suspension. The Church of Holy Clorox, okay, they didn't really call it the Church of Holy Clorox. They called it Genesis two , church of Health and Healing. But they should have called it Holy Clorox because the Miracle Healing Solution they pedaled was homemade bleach. They cooked up in the backyard. Mark Grin and sons, Jonathan , Joseph and Jordan call themselves the archbishop and bishops of Genesis two Church, and they peddled their bleach as a cure-All that could cure 95% of the world's diseases including cancer, Ebola, H I v aids, Alzheimer's, and autism. Did it cure any of those things? Of course not. Did it sicken people and send them to the er? Of course it did. Charged with conspiring to illegally distribute the substance as well as violation of an injunction against it. They chose to represent themselves and they got their money's worth. After a two day trial, the jury took all of 30 minutes to convict all defendants on all counts. The case is US versus Grin , Southern District of Florida, owner of the biter , father of the victim. What happens when a state's parental immunity doctrine collides with its dog bite statute? The question arose in New Jersey. When Frank Bukowski's, new Rottweiler Blaze attacked and injured Frank's son, Frankie Frank sued the kennel that sold him Blaze claiming it had told him Blaze was good around children. The kennel Counterclaimed arguing that unto the dog bite statute, Frank himself as Blazer's owner, was solely liable for all damages. Frank responded that he had not brought the suit under the dog bite statute. He'd alleged misrepresentation and false advertising besides parents are immune from liability, accepting cases of willful and wanton behavior. Remarkably, the trial court agreed with Frank ruling quote , this is not a dog bite case, but the appellate court disagreed holding that it was a dog bite case and that the dog bite statute trumped parental immunity under the dog bite statute. A dog owner is always liable for damage to a person lawfully on the owner's property. Of course, Frankie was lawfully in Frank's home. He lives there. Therefore, Frank alone was liable for Frankie's injuries. The case is Burkowski versus Weber Training School, New Jersey Appellate Division head scratcher of the month. This month's head scratcher of the month comes from the Ohio Court of Appeals. The estate of Scott Boldman sued nurse Sandra Ward and related entities for causing Scott's death during an emergency appendectomy. The trial court instructed the jury to answer two questions. Was nurse Sandra negligent and did the negligence cause Scott's death? The judge also said, if a juror answered the first question, no, i e , that Sandra was not negligent, then that juror should not answer the second question, i e whether her negligence caused Scott's death. The jury ruled in Sandra's favor, but the appeals court reversed. Why? Because the appeals court said the trial judge should have instructed the jury that even jurors who found that there was no negligence needed to answer the question, whether that that non negligence caused Scott's death. You can't make this stuff up. The cases Hild versus Good Samaritan Health, Ohio Court of Appeals Complaint Department walk back. Have you noticed that politicians and their lawyers and spokesmen no longer correct or retract earlier statements? No. They walk them back. A recent headline in the Washington Post read, the White House keeps walking back. Biden's remarks. We think we know what that means, but do we really take the headline? Did the White House retract a statement, reverse it, qualify it, condition it? We don't know. And one reason that we don't know is that the phrase is always used by someone else. President Biden ever said, I walk that back. No one ever has. It's always somebody saying that someone else walks something back. So what we're getting is a secondhand hearsay statement that is as ambiguous as you can get. And on top of all that, there's no walking involved. It's talking, not walking. I say, let's put the phrase out of its misery. Stop confusing talking with walking and say what we mean. Well, that's it for this month's edition. I hope you liked it. I'll be back next month with another edition of the Lighter Side of Health Law.

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