December 26th, 2007

My Car Accident – A Short Postscript


I had an accident on a local parkway on December 7th that I wrote about, after a car stopped suddenly in the left lane, I stopped, and was then rear-ended.

So here is the end of the story: There were no injuries of any kind to anyone that I know of. The little twinge I felt the night of the accident was just that, a little twinge of zero significance.

As to the property damage, my loss was covered 100% by the car that plowed into me. This isn’t always the case, as new blogger Jim Reed discusses today.

Since I occasionally take my shots at various insurance companies on this blog for various acts of malfeasance, then fairness dictates I should also acknowledge a company when it does the right thing. The car that hit me was insured by Liberty Mutual.

 

December 26th, 2007

Blawggies and Blawg Review

Two law blog items:

First, if you didn’t get enough Christmas yesterday, you can go back for more with the Christmas Eve themed Blawg Review #140 presented by Jonathan Frieden at E-Commerce Law. Frieden mixes commerce and Christmas with law blogs in his 12 Days of Christmas (plus stocking-stuffers).

Next up, Dennis Kennedy gives out his 2007 “Blawggies” for the best law oriented law blogs, and gives one to “niche blogs” as the most important trend. What is a niche blog? According to Kennedy, they “have titles like [State Name] [Practice Area] Law Blog.”

While it’s an interesting concept, it seems that the vast majority of law blogs actually fall into the category of “niche” once you get past the name, including his own on law technology and the one for best blawg about blawging (to Kevin O’Keefe, of course), among others he has chosen. As a percentage of the legal blogosphere there are really very few law blogs that focus outside of a niche.

While it’s true that some blogs have descriptive names, such as this one, this is often done to give new readers a quick overview of where they landed. But it isn’t the name that creates the niche but the content. If I used my name for a title instead of my practice area, would I no longer be a niche?

 

December 26th, 2007

New York’s Million Dollar Dog Bite

Headlines like this always catch my eye: PUTTIN‘ $1M BITE ON DOG ‘OWNER’. It comes out of the New York Post and catches my eye for the obvious reason that NY personal injury law is my thing, and therefore the headline screams out something to me that the casual reader doesn’t see: The attorney who brought the million dollar lawsuit doesn’t really know personal injury law.

How do I know this? Because in New York you aren’t allowed anymore to make that monetary demand for damages when you file a lawsuit. (See: New York Cleans Up Claims Act.) We dumped that idiotic rule in the mid-80s for malpractice suits and dumped it in 2003 for the rest of the personal injury suits.

A read of the article shows absolutely nothing remarkable about the suit except for two things: The amount claimed and access to a publicist to pitch the story based on the very tangential pseudo-celebrity “news” that the defendant is a former wife of Morton Downey, Jr., a deceased talk talk show host who used a trash talk format.

I’m tempted to write about the story barking at me, it’s a real woofer, etc. but I find little humor when I see such headlines that ultimately disparage the profession, since the article doesn’t specify any damages worthy of such a demand. Moreover, such articles alter the perceptions of potential litigants to unreasonably think that every claim will result in a million dollar result. The law just doesn’t work that way.

 

December 21st, 2007

Random Notes

The Center for Justice and Democracy sends some must-read “fanmail” to the American Tort “Reform” Association, based on its “dishonest” Judicial Hellholes “report,” which essentially surveyed its own big business membership to find out which jurisdictions were least likely to afford immunity for negligent conduct (via TortDeform);

Legal Literacy hosts Blawg Review #139;

Law, risk and insurance meet up at the Cavalcade of Risk, hosted by American Consumer News;

David Harlow hosts the Health Wonk Review at HealthBlawg;

CIGNA Insurance waffles on a liver transplant for a girl, and she dies. (The Consumerist);

The Vioxx setlment is showing cracks, as some of the plaintiff’s with better cases are opting out (Pharmalot) and the lawyers face the predicted ethical issues of recommending settlements (Ted Frank at Point of Law rounded up the posts on November 13th, at the 9th bullet point);

NYT–Study Shows Marathons Aren’t Likely to Kill You (whew).