Justinian Lane

Monday Roundup

Dirty Deeds Don’t Come Cheap: A common charge levied by the business community is that trial lawyers and plaintiffs are corrupt.  Greedy Trial Lawyer comments on a hospital which felt the best way to defend itself in a malpractice case was to destroy evidence and encourage employees to lie.  Their deceit cost them $1.3 million in sanctions.  Another news story, which is no longer on the web, claimed that the hospital’s attorney was sanctioned as well.

There are hospitals that take the concept of risk management too far. From the Associated Press account of the conduct of one hospital’s risk manager (and the likely assistance of other hospital folks) we learn post-malpractice deceit and concealment can be a management tool.

Source: Hospital Risk Management Carried To Its Dishonest Extreme - Greedy Trial Lawyer

Did a drug addict help get your meds approved by the FDA?:  As you probably know, an important part of getting a drug approved by the FDA is a clinical trial.  Who runs those trials?  Doctors, with the help/backing/assistance of the pharmaceutical company.  How do the pharmaceuticals choose the doctors?  One must wonder:

From 1997 to 2005, at least 103 doctors who had been disciplined or criticized by the state medical board received a total of $1.7 million from drug makers. The median payment over that period was $1,250; the largest was $479,000.

The sanctions ranged from reprimands to demands for retraining to suspension of licenses. Of those 103 doctors, 39 had been penalized for inappropriate prescribing practices, 21 for substance abuse, 12 for substandard care and 3 for mismanagement of drug studies. A few cases received national news media coverage, but drug makers hired the doctors anyway.

Source: Pharmalot » Scraping The Bottom Of The Medical Barrel: Despite Sanctions, Docs Get Paid For Studies

BofA is down with the OCC: Most people don’t know what the OCC is, let alone what it does.  The OCC is the Office of the Comptroller of Currency.  The agency is charged with (among other things) regulating national banks, such as Bank of America.  The OCC’s preemptive authority has been expanded to the point that a state cannot prohibit a shopping mall from selling gift cards with misleading fees and hidden expiration dates.

The problem is that by focusing on the activity rather than the actor, the Court endorsed a broad understanding of the OCC’s preemptive authority, and one that could possibly extend to oust state regulation of all kinds of commercial actors, none of whom are actually “national banks,” and none of whom are therefore expressly protected by federal statute. Justice Stevens, in his eloquent dissent, raised the specter of such a possibility, and the First Circuit, yesterday, proved Justice Stevens prophetic.

Source: Concurring Opinions: Why Watters Matters: An Early Lesson from the First Circuit

No wonder corporate defendants appeal so often: Attorney Anne Reed comments on a new study from Cornell Law Professor Theodore Eisenberg which shows defendants are far more likely to win on appeal than plaintiffs.  And “reformers” complain about appellate courts being unfair to defendants!

[D]efendants were far more likely than plaintiffs (41.5% versus 21.5%) to successfully reverse an adverse trial outcome. Indeed, from the perspective of a plaintiff victorious at trial, the appeals process offered a chance to retain victory not far from what a coin-flip would predict. For defendants, by contrast, victories at trial were far more secure.

Source: Deliberations: Tip: On Appeal, Bet On Defendants And Bench Trials?

A different kind of immigration problem: I did not know that illegal workers were entitled to workers compensation.  For better or for worse, they are.  I would prefer that they be subject to tort claims, thus discouraging the usage of illegal workers.  However, until that happens, I don’t think employers should get their injured workers deported when they file for workers comp.  That’s low.

In a truly startling case, an undocumented worker who was maimed in a chainsaw accident at work was arrested and deported just before a hearing on his workers’ compensation claim.

Edgar Velázquez told a reporter that he believes his employer called immigration agents to court.

Source: Undocumented worker deported just before workers’ compensation hearing - Greensboro Personal Injury Lawyer

A fair application of the death penalty: If it were up to me, bribing a governmental official or accepting such a bribe would be a capital offense.  But it’s not up to me, and corruption in this country means a light sentence.  It’s rare, but here’s a time where I think the Chinese government got it right.

The former director of China’s top food and drug safety agency was sentenced to death on Tuesday after pleading guilty to corruption and accepting bribes, the state-controlled news media said…

The death penalty wouldn’t be excessive punishment for Zheng,” said Wang Yigao, a professor at the Hunan Academy of Sciences. “Zheng was simply using the power given by the state to pursue his personal ambition.”

Source: China Sentences Former Drug Regulator to Death - New York Times

Cross-posted to Corpreform

Posted at 1:52 PM, Jun 04, 2007 in Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)