Paralyzed Fordham Student Sues School After Drunken Fall: Gothamist

Paralyzed Fordham Student Sues School After Drunken Fall: Gothamist:

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Christie slams N.J. Supreme Court for fast-tracking challenge to judges' health-benefits law | NJ.com

The New Jersey Supreme Court agreed to hear directly (without waiting for the Appellate Division to rule) the State's appeal from the order of Superior Court Judge Linda Feinberg. She held that the state's constitution bars recent legislation which increases Judges' contributions to pension and health & welfare funds.

Christie slams N.J. Supreme Court for fast-tracking challenge to judges' health-benefits law | NJ.com:

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Jack Raykovitz, Chief of Second Mile, Resigns Amid Penn State Scandal - NYTimes.com

Jack Raykovitz, Chief of Second Mile, Resigns Amid Penn State Scandal - NYTimes.com: "STATE COLLEGE, Pa. — Jack Raykovitz, the chief executive of the Second Mile foundation for 28 years, has resigned amid a sexual abuse scandal involving the charity’s founder, the former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky."

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Is Penn State Liable for the Harm Done to Child Sex Abuse Victims?

Penn State - Nittany Lion shrine

Penn State's acting President Rodney Erickson has declared his regret to the eight or more victims of the alleged child sex abuse and the leadership's determination to restore the University's honor in the wake of the unfolding sex abuse scandal at its legendary football program. But it will be a long time before 108,000 fans at the stadium can again repeat with full-throated confidence the trademark call and response - WE ARE...PENN STATE".

 The tragedy at Penn State has garnered great attention - particularly the university's apparent failure to act effectively to protect young children from Jerry Sandusky - a retired coach alleged to have sexually abused eight boys, some of which acts occurred at the University's football training facility.    As I commented the day the Grand Jury's presentment was released it moved me personally because Joe Paterno has been an icon for me and other graduates of my (late, great) Jesuit high school Brooklyn Prep of whose alumni Paterno was among the most illustrious.

 Maxwell Kennerly of the Beasley law firm has prepared a good preliminary discussion of the tort liability issues: Can Sandusky's Childhood Sexual Abuse Victims Sue Penn State? Molestation Lawsuit Information

 NPR has prepared a Guide to principals and timeline


 Those whose acts are most likely to give rise to liability are McQueary and others on the coaching staff, the Athletic Department Director, and the university Vice President for Business. The latter two have been indicted for failure to report the alleged sexual assault to the campus or the state police and for perjury before the grand jury.


Among the issues are those of the credibility of an accuser - Michael McQueary (did he detail to university officials - including Paterno and V.P. Schultz that he actually saw the rape of a 10 year old boy by Sandusky or was his report ambiguous? Did McQueary meet his legal obligation but not his moral obligation, as Gov. Tom Corbett asserted on Meet the press today? That question is equally apt for head coach Joe Paterno.

A major obstacle to university liability may be sovereign immunity. Is the Pennsylvania State University a state agency? The Commonwealth Court has held in Doughty v. City of Philadelphia and Temple University that Temple - a Commonwealth University - is not a state agency. Penn State - a land-grant university - may have the benefit of sovereign immunity as do the colleges in the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education. In McNichols v. Dept. of Transportation (2002) the immunity doctrine was affirmed by the Commonwealth Court.
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Fuel Fix » Lawmaker calls on BP to pay oilfield supply workers hurt by drilling ban

Fuel Fix » Lawmaker calls on BP to pay oilfield supply workers hurt by drilling ban: "BP should compensate thousands of oilfield service companies and workers who lost business and wages after last year’s oil spill and a resulting moratorium on deep-water exploration, a Louisiana lawmaker said.

Rep. Jeff Landry, R-La., called on the British oil giant to compensate the workers and businesses, who currently are in a kind of legal limbo — ineligible both for payments under the Gulf Coast Claims Facility administered by Kenneth Feinberg and from a now-shuttered $100 million fund BP established for oil rig workers hurt by the spill."

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Obama's Health Care Law Is Upheld by D.C. Appeals Court | Main Justice

Obama's Health Care Law Is Upheld by D.C. Appeals Court | Main Justice:

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Medical malpractice reform efforts stalled - Brett Norman - POLITICO.com

Medical malpractice reform efforts stalled - Brett Norman - POLITICO.com: "By BRETT NORMAN | 11/7/11 10:29 PM EST

In a bid to win support for health reform from skeptical doctors back in 2009, President Barack Obama pledged action on an item near the top of their wish list — malpractice reform.

And he delivered an initial step: $25 million to test alternatives to the medical liability system. That won praise from the American Medical Association, among others. But since then, tort reform on the federal level has been put on ice, a victim of both tight money and bitter politics."

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Judge Blocks Graphic Cigarette Warnings - NYTimes.com

Judge Blocks Graphic Cigarette Warnings - NYTimes.com: "WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A federal judge blocked a rule requiring tobacco companies to display graphic images on cigarette packs, such as a man exhaling cigarette smoke through a hole in his throat.
District Judge Richard Leon sided on Monday with tobacco companies and granted a temporary injunction, saying they would likely prevail in their lawsuit challenging the requirement as unconstitutional because it compels speech in violation of the First Amendment."  
Leon wrote:  "It is abundantly clear from viewing these images that the emotional response they were crafted to induce is calculated to provoke the viewer to quit, or never to start smoking – an objective wholly apart from disseminating purely factual and uncontroversial information."
The opinion and order staying enforcement of the Rule in R.J. Reynolds v. U.S. FDA is HERE.  


Floyd Abrams and Prof. Steve Shiffrin debate the issue on NPR HERE
h/t Drug and Device Law Blog

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Hip implant litigation grows

Richard Meadow of the
Lanier Law Firm

Ellen Relkin of
Weitz Luxenberg

Metal on metal - a grinding problem - has led to many complaints among those who have had the devices implanted.  Plaintiffs lawyers like Ellen Relkin and Richard Meadow (with whom I worked on the Vioxx litigation) are taking on a big fight against the medical device manufacturers who have implanted hundreds of thousands such devices in the hips of patients suffering from falls, or arthritis.  According to an October 31 report in the National Law Journal the litigation is just getting rolling. - GWC

On May 6, the U.S. Food & Drug Administration, which regulates ­medical devices, ordered 21 manufacturers of metal-on-metal hip implants to conduct surveillance on their products and to assess the safety of the devices. DePuy, based in Warsaw, Ind., initiated a voluntary recall of all its ASR devices after fresh data in the United Kingdom indicated that the rate of patients who had to return to surgery within five years — the revision rate — was 12 to 13 percent. That was much higher than the industry standard, according to the FDA. DePuy recalled two devices: The ASR XL acetabular hip system, introduced to the U.S. market in 2005, and the ASR hip-resurfacing system, which was not sold in the United States.
More than 2,200 cases involving the devices are pending in a federal multidistrict proceeding in Toledo, Ohio. Another 1,000 are pending in state courts in California and 160 in New Jersey's state courts. 

Merger of Memphis and County School Districts Revives Challenges - NYTimes.com

Joseph Clayton, 79, a member of the board doesn't think that racial trust has increased much in Memphis where Martin Luther King led his last campaign - and where he was murdered. But now the poor city will merge its schools with the middle class suburbs.

We'll follow Memphis next semester in Remedies. - GWC

Merger of Memphis and County School Districts Revives Challenges - NYTimes.com: "MEMPHIS — When thousands of white students abandoned the Memphis schools 38 years ago rather than attend classes with blacks under a desegregation plan fueled by busing, Joseph A. Clayton went with them. He quit his job as a public school principal to head an all-white private school and later won election to the board of the mostly white suburban district next door."

A bit of the background can be found HERE on Huffington Post

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