Law Blog

In an interview, the great Bruce Lee once expounded upon the amazing qualities of water.  He viewed its properties as a guiding philosophy to be followed by martial artists looking to improve their fighting abilities.  And he was right, water is pretty impressive.  When it’s a torrent it can tear down a forest, as a stream it can gradually split a mountain, and at the same time we drink it to keep hydrated and stay alive.  But apparently if you drink too much of it you can die from something called water intoxication, which is exactly what happened to a woman 2 years ago.  Remember that case?

Well, the family of the deceased wife looking to win a Nintendo Wii for her kids sued.  Now after two years of litigation, the jury has finally reached a verdict in favor of the aggrieved family and levied a damage award of $16.6 million to be paid by the radio station.

In case you guys have forgotten about this one (and I don’t blame you as I can barely remember whether or not I brushed my teeth this morning) the woman’s name was Jennifer Lea Strange.  She was a 28-year-old mother of three children who entered into a radio contests in California to win the then very elusive Nintendo Wii (which, by the way, is no longer quite as elusive and cheaper to boot).  The contest required contestants to drink large amounts of water and then hold in their urine.  The contestant who could drink the most water while resisting the urge to use the bathroom the longest would win the coveted video game system.  Strange won the contest, but ultimately and unfortunately lost her life in the strange (no pun intended) process.

Now some of you may be wondering why in the hell would anyone subject themselves to this kind of suffer for what is essentially an electronic toy.  Well, regardless of whether or not you have children, I think everyone (except probably my parents) can all understand the very pressing need to get a person we love that “perfect gift.”

More importantly, however, Strange’s case serves as a reminder to corporations, businesses, and people in general everywhere of why you should think twice before committing poorly thought out acts that can lead to serious harm or death.  And that should you decide to go forward with said poorly thought out act, if you’re a radio station have enough sense to stop and heed the deluge of warnings from your listeners.

The sad truth is LegalMatch receives many wrongful death cases every year, cases that could have been easily prevented but for the negligent actions of another party.  Wrongful death cases are not just incredibly costly from an economic standpoint (i.e. lawyers fees and the potential for incredibly large jury awards for compensatory, punitive, and emotional distress damages), but from a purely human perspective, cases of negligence resulting in serious injury or wrongful death means that a person has suffered deeply and permanently.  And that the harm is not only limited to the immediately damaged party, but also that party’s family.  The toll is emotional, physical, and financial.

So what’s the lesson here?  It’s the same one that my dad has been telling me since I was born: Don’t be stupid.

Rush Limbaugh is in the news again and this time it’s not because he said something horribly insensitive, stupid, narrow-minded, and/or racist.  It’s because someone else made up an insensitive, stupid, narrow-minded, and/or racist quote and attributed it to him.

Specifically, that someone was CNN’s Rick Sanchez, who claimed on air that Limbaugh said:

“I mean, let’s face it, we didn’t have slavery in this country for over 100 years because it was a bad thing. Quite the opposite: slavery built the South. I’m not saying we should bring it back; I’m just saying it had its merits. For one thing, the streets were safer after dark.”

Ouch.  Harsh words, whether Limbaugh said it or not.  Check out the video here (the bogus Limbaugh quote comes up about 1 minute and 14 seconds in).

Limbaugh was understandably steamed at the fraudulent attribution.  No one wants to be called a racist, unless of course they actually are one, then they’re probably okay with it.

So now the inevitable question being asked by political pundits around the country, “Will Rush Limbaugh sue for slander?”

The answer (in my opinion anyway): probably not.  Rush will probably just want some sort of apology from Sanchez and CNN, which he already received via Twitter, though he’d probably would want more of a formal one.  If anything, he’ll just use it to further push his far-right republican conservative agenda.  “More evidence of liberal bias, using me as a target to demonize…blah blah,” is probably how it will go down.

Though if he did sue, he probably wouldn’t have too tough of a time convincing a jury to award him money.  Since he’s (arguably) a celebrity, he’d be considered a public figure and would have to satisfy the higher actual malice standard set out in The New York Times Co. v. Sullivan in order to prevail on a defamation lawsuit against CNN and Sanchez.  Basically he’d have to prove that the CNN and/or Sanchez knowingly or recklessly made false defamatory statements about him.  And in light of the fact that the CNN Twitter post admitted to this, it would at least appear that Rush has a good case.  Though CNN could probably throw up some defense by publicly admitting and correcting their mistake, in my opinion it looks like Limbaugh would have a strong case.

Celebrities have it tougher when it comes to proving libel and defamation – it’s one of the few times where all us little people have an edge.  All we have to do, essentially, is prove the false statement damaged our reputation.  Though it may seem like defamation wouldn’t be a huge problem for non-public figures, LegalMatch does receive its fair share of defamation lawsuits.  So don’t be afraid to press your rights.  Unless you’re Rush Limbaugh, in which case you should probably reevaluate your life and try to figure out why people would so naturally believe you’d make such an outlandish racist statement.

A recent annual check-up got me thinking about healthcare.  Healthcare reform is all the rage right now.  But if you are like me (not a doctor and/or someone with limited medical background) the current debate is often too confusing to follow and you are not sure exactly what to think.

Medical malpractice and tort reform are one such aspect of the debate where you see the convergence of medical and legal issues searching for a solution.  To put it simply, medical malpractice has to do with professional negligence on the part of the care provider that results in some type of harm to the patient.  Because of these potential for errors, medical practitioners carry malpractice insurance to help offset the costs of a potential problem.

Doctors argue that frivolous lawsuits and high jury verdicts have driven up the cost of malpractice insurance to such levels that some doctors refuse to practice the more litigation-ridden areas of their profession or have resorted to conducting costly unnecessary test and procedures to further shield themselves from lawsuits.  While it is true that some attorneys have made millions on medical malpractice suits, many lawsuits bring with them legitimate claims that should continue to have a voice in the American legal justice system.

LegalMatch provides attorneys for both sides of a medical malpractice claim.  The most common situations in which this is found are:

• When there has been a failure to perform surgery
• Delay in treatment
• Failure to properly explain medical procedure or potential side affects
• Prescription errors
• Failure to properly diagnose a medical condition
• Improper treatment

No matter what side of the debate you are on, there are solutions.  As a NY Times article put it, “the goal is not to reduce malpractice lawsuits, it is to reduce malpractice.”  But that is the difficulty: to develop a system that allows providers, doctors, and patients to maintain a trust in the health care system while keeping costs down.  Now we just need to do it.

Accidents are a part of life, right?  That’s why they have erasers on the ends of pencils.  Because when you make a mistake you learn from it.  And even if you don’t, in today’s modern society there are all sorts of fail-safes to ensure that even when you screw up, there will always be someone or some way to make it all right again.  Which is why if someone rams into you with their car, you have nothing to worry about.  Other than the increased insurance premium that you’ll likely have to pay, the person responsible for the accident will pay for their mistake, or at the very least their insurance carrier will.  So everything works out in the end, cake and ice cream for all.

Not quite.  According to the latest statistics from LegalMatch, of the cases received relating to automobile accident claims, nearly a quarter of them are against defendants who aren’t insured.  Weird, right?  Seeing as how it’s illegal (in most states) to drive uninsured.  But is that really a surprise?  I mean, when was the last time that making something illegal was able to deter a hundred percent of people from committing the prohibited act?  It’s like training a cat to use the litter box, at some point their instincts will kick in and they’ll want to use something more natural.

LegalMatch’s statistics fall in line with what’s happening on a national scale.  In 2007, it was estimated that about 23 percent of drivers in America remained uninsured.  It’s a pretty frightening statistic considering the average costs associated with a car accident, let alone the cost to simply own a car.  With medical bills on the rise, one bad accident can easily wipe you out if you have no one (or way) to cover.

And don’t think that those of you who are uninsured can get off free either.  Because you’re just as susceptible to everything I mentioned earlier with one exception.  You also get the pleasure of possibly being racked up on criminal charges.  Nice, huh?

Still, like I said earlier, criminal penalty along has never been a perfect method to deter bad apples.  So what is there to do if you’re on the receiving end of a rear-ender from a dead-beat driver?

Well, you better hope your insurance is up to date and that you have good enough coverage to get you through the nightmare that’ll ensued.  You might also want to consider going after the person responsible for your injury by filing a lawsuit.  But as we all know, no one likes to file suit against another person if they can’t get money out of it.  It’s a fruitless endeavor right?  Again, not necessarily.  If someone is broke, they’re broke.  But at the very least you’ll be able to recoup some of your losses.  It may not seem like much, but when you’re in a really bad accident, every little bit counts.  Plus, you also get the satisfaction of having your claim and plight justified before the eyes of the law.

I know, I know, money is still better…

For anyone who likes weird news like I do, you’ll be tickled to know that Sean McGinn, the loser at love who made a lawsuit out of his unfortunate nickname (which I just gave him), has dropped his lawsuit against Match.com.  Why did he drop it?  Because he’s a sensitive boy and can’t take all the meanie-weenies leaving ridiculing (and hilarious) comments about him on the internet.

For any of you unfamiliar with the site, Match.com is a dating website that purports to get over 86 million searches a month from its members looking for a love connection.  McGinn originally claimed in his class action suit that the website defrauded him because it didn’t tell him that most of its members have either cancelled their membership or have never become full members.  McGinn claims this deceptive practice led to many of his emails going unanswered which caused him emotional distress (and I’m sure many sleepless night pulling petals from roses).

Now to be fair to the crybaby…er… I mean McGinn, yeah, definitely meant McGinn, this was a class action suit with 15 other people joining McGinn on his crusade against loneliness (which also means there were 15 other equally sad and pathetic people).  Okay, I’ll stop now.

But this story got me thinking about whether McGinn actually had a leg to stand on.  I mean to most people this sounds like a funny, albeit frivolous lawsuit.  But he did state a claim that he was able to plead validly enough to be accepted to be heard before the court.  Though that’s still not saying much since we all know how easy it is in America to sue anyone for literally anything.

So this case would’ve come down to the evidence he had against Match.com and whether it showed his claim had enough of a legal basis to warrant awarding him his request for $5 million.  From not knowing anything else about the case other than what’s been released in the news, I’d say the answer is no.

Why?  Well, as much as we would all love to sue every company that advertises how great their product is, that’s just not possible.  Anyone familiar with basic contract law knows that the mere puffery (basically an advertising opinion designed to get people interest in a product, e.g. a car company that says their cars are the best) is not a valid claim for a lawsuit.  Though McGinn was suing on what appears to be a tort claim and not a breach of contract, I think the court would probably side with my assessment since allowing him to prevail would have open the floodgates to all kinds of other crazy lawsuits, especially class actions since they can be litigated for years on end.  Recent LegalMatch statistics show that most class actions involve more important matters, such as defective products and exposure to toxic substances, and not being lovelorn.

Courts want people to utilize the legal system to correct wrongs, but they don’t want to clog it with a lot of pointless claims; which sucks because I really thought I had a good false advertising lawsuit against these people.  I’m still waiting for my money back…