Free Republic

<p>Gov. McGreevey went to a New Jersey Turnpike rest area yesterday to frame the announcement that low-income motorists can purchase auto insurance for a dollar a day in the state with the nation's highest premiums.</p> <p>"There is no longer any excuse for any citizen to refuse to drive without auto insurance," said McGreevey at the Turnpike's Molly Pitcher Rest Stop.</p>

Thank you all very much. Please be seated. Thanks for the warm welcome, and thanks for inviting me to join you in this 20th anniversary of the National Endowment for Democracy. The staff and directors of this organization have seen a lot of history over the last two decades, you've been a part of that history. By speaking for and standing for freedom, you've lifted the hopes of people around the world, and you've brought great credit to America. I appreciate Vin for the short introduction. I'm a man who likes short introductions. And he didn't let me down. But...

I asked a patient who came for an office visit today why she was suing me. Mrs. X assured me she was not. I showed her the complaint. "Oh, that," she said. "A lady called and asked if I wanted to join the class-action suit about Rezulin. I told her Okay, but not to drag you into it, because you're my doctor, and I know you were just trying to help me." "But you weren't harmed by the drug," I said. "Why are you suing?" The patient said she didn't know, except that "the lady said I'd make money when...

Law firms Brown Rudnick Berlack & Israels and Lieff, Cabraser, Heimann & Bernstein now say they'll sue the state of Massachusetts for the whole $2 billion they say they're entitled to -- a 25 percent contingency share of the state's $8 billion tobacco-settlement booty -- rather than accept the measly $775 million they've been awarded in arbitration. The Associated Press says the firms "risk becoming poster children for attorney greed at a time when the profession is already under attack for high damage awards. 'This lawsuit is about greed and it's about selfishness. They should be ashamed of themselves,' said...

America's most obnoxious corporate critic, Michael Moore, is living high on the hog thanks to the perks two corporations have provided him for the West Coast leg of his book tour. Moore was flown around California aboard a private jet, reports the San Francisco Chronicle, courtesy of media mega-corporation Time Warner. And while he wasn't enjoying the corporate high life at 30,000 feet, he was tooling around the Golden State in the kind of vehicle anti-corporate environmentalists routinely decry as public enemy No. 1 - an SUV paid for by his publisher's corporation, Warner Books. Moore's man-of-the-people image was further...

HIPAA, the stringent new federal medical-privacy law, took effect in April, and soon had what may be some rather drastic unintended consequences in the town of Craig, Colo.: "To protect the privacy of those needing medical help, 911 dispatchers stopped mentioning residents' names in radio calls to emergency response teams. That made it more difficult for the teams to find addresses," which critics charge may have contributed to the death of a local heart attack victim. Moreover, thousands of doctors "have stopped sending out appointment-reminder postcards, figuring the cards could be read by someone other than the patient. Some doctors...

Drs. Siva Sriharan and Srinivas Chakravarthi may never get rich staying in this small auto-producing city little more than a stone's throw from downtown Detroit, but they can eat all the hamburgers, ribs and potato skins they want for the rest of their lives at Casey's Bar and Grill. For the next year, they can also get their hair cut free at the Touch of Class beauty salon, and lease a Pontiac Grand Am without charge from a dealer in nearby Essex. Patients have pledged free house repairs and landscaping for their properties, and nurses have teased them with offers...

"Three years after more than 60 lawyers, county employees and medical professionals were arrested on charges of bilking Florida's Miami-Dade County out of millions of dollars through fraudulent personal injury claims, the county has filed a civil racketeering lawsuit against the accused perpetrators and others." In the 715-page complaint, Miami-Dade County charges that 85 defendants, including nearly 70 South Florida lawyers, were implicated in schemes in which "attorneys who filed personal injury lawsuits against the county paid kickbacks to county risk management employees in return for expedited and inflated settlements. Miami-Dade Police Director Carlos Alvarez has said that county claims...

Dear Friends, It's time to put the issues that affect the lives of millions of Americans on the front burner again. The people I talk to are worried. They feel as if no one in the Bush Administration is listening to them, no one in the Republican-controlled Congress cares. They have a lot of questions and they're not getting any answers. "How am I going to pay my bills? How can I keep paying for my family's soaring health coverage? And what about my children's education? What happens if I lose my job? In this down economy, will I be...

<p>Doctors in the Washington area are facing a crisis, much like their counterparts throughout the nation. Malpractice insurance rates and government restrictions on Medicare payments are making it tough to go about the day-to-day business of treating patients. Some doctors are giving up high-risk practices completely, leaving their patients with fewer options for treatment. Would-be doctors are entering medical school only to change their career goals as they see the hard realities ahead. "You have a situation where the viability of a physician's practice is in great jeopardy," said Dr. Donald Palmisano, president of the American Medical Association (AMA). The AMA says the financial and liability difficulties of doctors in 19 states are bad enough that doctors are giving up high-risk procedures. Another 26 states are reaching the same point, including Maryland, Virginia and the District. "The overall costs of practicing medicine are increasing while payments are decreasing," Dr. Palmisano said. Some doctors — both locally and nationally — are doing what would have been unthinkable several decades ago: They are leaving the profession, either by retiring early or taking different jobs. Sam Roberts will decide in December whether he will continue his obstetrics practice in Elkins, W.Va. That's when his medical malpractice insurance company will tell him his premium rate for 2004. If it rises above the $55,000 a year he currently pays, he will pull out of obstetrics completely, keeping only a family medical practice. "I'm basically paying as much as I make in obstetrical practice," Dr. Roberts said. "I'm doing it because I love it." If he leaves, he will end a two-generation obstetrical practice that has included deliveries of more than 9,000 West Virginia babies.</p>

A lawyer's attempt to save a time-barred malpractice suit by wrapping it up as a federal RICO and civil rights case has drawn an unorthodox sanction: Rather than dock the lawyer for fees, the judge ordered him to take courses in federal practice and procedure, professionalism and legal ethics. U.S. District Court Judge Stephen Orlofsky noted in his Aug. 15 ruling that he imposed sanctions only after giving the lawyer written notice of a potential violation of Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 11 (b)(2), which requires lawyers to ascertain that their claims are "well-grounded in fact and law." Frank Branella,...

One subtheme at the Association of Trial Lawyers of America's annual meeting, held this summer in San Francisco, was ATLA's big plans to develop influence within the Republican Party to go with its strong clout among the Democrats. A trial lawyer/GOP caucus expects soon to have chairpersons in all fifty states. "Asked by the lawyers how to talk to representatives who see them as the enemy," a pollster and former Newt Gingrich aide offered several pieces of advice including, as a National Law Journal reporter paraphrases it, "tell them you want to give them money". (David Hechler, "The Elephant and...

New York City may soon be left with only a single independent center for natural childbirth: "The Brooklyn Birthing Center says its insurance company has stopped covering midwives, and a costlier new policy could push them out of the baby-birthing business as well. The news comes less than a week after the highly regarded Elizabeth Seton Childbearing Center, which delivers more than 400 babies a year, announced it will shut down its West 14th Street [Manhattan] birthing rooms on Sept. 1 because of malpractice insurance costs it says have quadrupled." All three independent midwifery centers in New Jersey closed in...

Former football star O.J. Simpson, who was found liable for the murder of his wife in a civil trial, expressed sympathy in an interview released Friday for Scott Peterson, who is accused of killing his pregnant wife. "Look at Scott Peterson," Simpson told Playboy Magazine. "Ask anyone in America about him. They'll say the guy is guilty. But we haven't heard one shred of evidence." Fertilizer salesman Peterson of Modesto, California, is accused of killing his wife Laci last Christmas Eve and dumping her body into the San Francisco Bay. A preliminary hearing in the case starts next month. In...

While Hillary is fighting for the values and policies we care about, the right wing is waging a personal attack against her. They’ve already launched their campaign to defeat Hillary in 2006, using the same old politics of personal destruction, sending out hate-filled mail charging she is “…anti-woman, anti-child, anti-family…” You can help Hillary fight back against these untrue, unfair attacks by joining Hill’s Angels — a very special group of friends who are working right now to be sure she has the support she needs. Hill’s Angels know that we can’t sit back while the right wing organizes —we...

State Supreme Court Justice Oliver Diaz Jr. became the first justice in Mississippi history to be indicted on felony charges. Authorities say the five took part in a "scheme to deprive the state of Mississippi and its citizens of their right to honest services" and that the judges gave Minor an unfair advantage in return for him paying off or guaranteeing loans, making cash payments and in one case paying a judge's legal expenses. "One of the FBI's top priorities is to combat public corruption at all levels, including the judiciary," said Edwin L. Worthington, special agent in charge of...

The Texas case we covered on May 23 and Jun. 26, 2000 and Mar. 17 of this year has now eventuated in a suit by DaimlerChrysler against the Kugle Law Firm. A trial court dismissed the Kugle firm's $2 billion suit against Chrysler and imposed sanctions of $865,000 against three of the firm's lawyers after finding that the steering decoupler of the sued-over Dodge Neon had been altered to simulate mechanical failure and that Mexican policemen had been asked to change their accounts of the accident giving rise to the suit. An appeals court called the firm's conduct 'an egregious...

Democrats are expected to muster the 41 votes needed to kill medical liability reform in the Senate today, so why are Republicans smiling? Perhaps because they know they're teeing up what promises to be one of their better issues going into 2004. Democrats have long made the Senate the graveyard of any and all legal reform. The news is that they're having a harder time getting away with it. The scandal of asbestos litigation has forced them at least to bargain on that issue, while momentum is also building to limit class-action suits. It says something about Tom Daschle's devotion...

Christine Mills found the lump in her breast in March. But later, when she tried to get an appointment for a mammogram, the 43-year-old Orlando woman was told she would have to wait until September -- nearly four months. Mills, whose family has a history of breast cancer, knew waiting that long could put her life at risk. So she worked the phones until she managed to get an appointment in May at a Longwood facility. The tumor proved to be malignant, and Mills had surgery in June. Her fight for what many consider to be a basic, lifesaving test...

On a recent Saturday afternoon, John Banzhaf, a plus-size professor of law, finished off his chocolate fudge brownie, washed it down with a Diet Coke, and ambled up to the front of a packed Northeastern University lecture hall to talk about suing the food industry for making people fat. Prof. Banzhaf, an architect of the tobacco lawsuits that cost Philip Morris and others hundreds of billions of dollars to settle five years ago, teaches a course in public interest law at George Washington University. He calls it his "sue the bastards" class, and students must file a lawsuit to receive...