I recently received an inquiry from a caller from the internet who was hoping to force the City to clean up the Kensington neighborhood. This is not something you can sue over as the City has immunity for quality of life issues like this. Nevertheless, what is to be done? Kensington is a mess, an eyesore, a failure of our …
If you are a litigator, it’s time to get out the popcorn: Donald Trump Civil Trial
So, there are a lot of things that the general public does not know about litigation in the real world that lawyers who actually litigate cases consider litigation 101. Trump’s trial is going to reveal the basics to the public I guess. What are the basics so far? 1) request a jury trial at the time of your first pleading. …
What’s new in Mass Tort Law? Phillips CPAP and Hair Straightener Litigation
I was recently contacted about a developing mass tort situation involving Phillips CPAP machines and decided that the client did not have a case. The issue in these cases is whether a connection can be drawn between cpap machines and a patient’s cancer. After reviewing the literature and the patient’s pathology report it appeared that the one thing I could …
You Get What You Pay For: Mediation
I am in the middle of negotiating the end to a case with clear liability, clear damages, and some thorny legal issues. When I get towards the end of a case, mediation is often a way to resolve it. I rarely arbitrate cases these days. Mediation is basically a negotiation where both sides want the case to settle but …
Cloudy with a chance of a lawsuit?
If you don’t know the children’s book Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs and the movie, the townspeople never had to shop because their meals would fall from the sky fully prepared. Later on, climate change makes things dangerous. For me, the notion of things unexpectedly falling from the sky is instructive. For no apparent reason, I have been on …
How to Build a Book of Business or Are You Hungry?
So, “how to” is the most searched term in the internet. Interesting right. It makes sense. How many of us have ever searched how to build a book of business? For lawyers and professional services businesses like CPA’s or architects, building a long-term book of business should be important if you want to succeed. There are rainmakers and the worker …
Mink on the Loose in Pennsylvania: Nuisance
I love a good mink story. According to the New York Post, some animal activist released 6,000 mink from a mink farm in PA. I know next to nothing about mink or minks. What I do know is that mink farming forms the basis for one of the pivotal cases in nuisance law. I always have a few nuisance cases …
Influencers Gone Crazy / How it Affects the Law of Evidence:
It is getting harder and harder to trust anything online these days. Be careful what you read or consume is just no longer possible. To be fooled is easy for all of us. If you are somewhat attuned to the social media world, like I am at 55 years old, it is easy to miss fakes, deepfakes, photoshops etc. I …
How Much Does The Personal Injury Client Affect Settlement and Deposition Preparation?
It matters a lot. Are you a Roger Federer type or Novak Djokovic? Some people are just very genuine, approachable, and likeable people. Others are not. Most of us are somewhere in between. But, those likeable guileless people are going to get a better settlement for the same case. Why? Well, more than likely the deposition displayed the plaintiff as …
What happens When You Win a Motion for Summary Judgment or What I did this weekend on my way to Tenerife?
Tenerife you say? I had a chance to go visit the Canary Islands over the Labor Day holiday weekend and Tenerife is one of the largest and most visited islands in the chain. It’s a long but entertaining story. Anyway, the Islands are a bit like Europe’s Caribbean, I think. Beautiful, volcanic islands off the coast of Africa and …