PWN3D!
Posted on 10/13/2005 6:47:00 PM PDT by kennedy
Oral arguments in a health care case ended abruptly Wednesday when Los Angeles lawyer Robert Olson collapsed to the floor during a brutal barrage of unfriendly questioning.
First District Court of Appeal Justices Carol Corrigan and Stuart Pollak had verbally hammered Olson for several minutes when he apparently fainted. His legs buckled and he fell backward, hitting his head hard on the floor.
The California Highway Patrol officers who provide courtroom security revived an obviously dazed Olson and took him by ambulance to St. Francis Memorial Hospital. An emergency room nurse later said he underwent tests and that there was no evidence of a stroke or other heart problems. He was later released.
Olson, a partner at Los Angeles' Greines, Martin, Stein & Richland, was representing Health Net of California Inc., which had been sued for breach of contract by the San Francisco Trial Lawyers Association after refusing to renew health care coverage in 2003, six years after the policies were issued.
During Wednesday's hearing in the appeal court, Olson, who graduated from Stanford Law School in 1983, was attempting to argue that Quidachay had no jurisdiction to hear the case and that the issue should be resolved by the state's Department of Managed Health Care.
"It's not a discretionary call for the trial judge to make," he insisted.
That didn't go over well with Corrigan and Pollak, who seemed incredulous that Olson would contend that the trial judge overstepped his bounds.
"Contract cases normally come before the court," Pollak said, "and that's what we have here, right?"
He and Corrigan demanded to know if Olson could point to language in the state's Knox-Keene Act — which governs health care service plans — that denies jurisdiction to judges. When he said he couldn't, Corrigan sharply rebuked him by saying that if the justices found it during their own research, they would tell him.
The interaction got more intense when Olson noted that the Department of Managed Health Care had issued a letter stating that Health Net's actions didn't violate any provisions of the Knox-Keene Act.
"That's different from whether Health Net met its contractual obligations," Corrigan snapped. "Are you suggesting this contract is unenforceable because of public policy?"
She and Pollak also seemed infuriated by Olson's suggestion that it should be implicit in all health care contracts that they are deemed invalid if insurers later find out they don't have the statutory authority to provide that particular coverage.
"Have you got a case where that was actually the holding?" Pollak asked.
Olson said he didn't have one "at the tip of my tongue."
Olson then tried to compare Health Net's situation to that of a person trying to practice law without authorization. "It's about whether you can continue to perform," he argued.
Corrigan stopped Olson short and asked if he "really wants to go down this road."
A second or two passed, then Olson said, "Excuse me, your honor," before crumpling to the floor. Several spectators gasped, while others ran for help.
Terrence Coleman and Arnold Levinson, partners at Pillsbury & Levinson representing the lawyers' association, never got an opportunity to make their case. But afterward they said the justices' questions indicated that victory would be theirs.
Judges taking the side of trial lawyers. That's so shocking, no wonder why he fainted [/sarcasm]
Shades of moot court!
PWN3D!
I thought when one fainted, one falls forward.
From your comment, we can conclude that you are an ambulance chasing platintiff's attorney.
The judges had him down on his knees, apparently..
The model for the professor in The Paper Chase was Richard Powell (who wrote Powell on Property, etc. He taught at Hastings College of the Law following mandatory retirement from Columbia (Hastings has a program of hiring such professors called the Over-65 Club).
And boy, was Powell mean. They wouldn't let him teach first year students after his first course, because he could make them puke at their desks. So he taught only Deeds, Trusts, Wills & Estates, which he had originated as a single course at Columbia Law School early in the last century.
Powell became a Hastings institution - you weren't a real student unless you survived his class. And I had him in his next to last year at Hastings.
The last question on my bar exam was a probate question. I KNEW I had aced it due to learning Everything in Powell's fear-motivated class. So I wrote one last sentence after the timer went off. A proctor came over to glare at me for doing so, then gave me a grin when I showed him the last sentence:
Long Live Richard R. Powell!
Several minutes of questioning? Is that all it took to take him down? He obviously didn't grow up with my relentless mother.
Is Dick your name or your description?
To think up arguments to counter the judges' barrage he needed to pump more blood to his brain which required a large heart which him being a lawyer and all ...
When you have the law but not the facts...
pound the law.
When you have the facts but not the law...
pound the facts.
When you have neither....
hit the floor.
Nope, backwards. Seen it, done it.
Lawyers have been fairly successful at making sure that can't happen
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.