Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog

New lead paint decision from Maryland's high court

The Maryland Court of Appeals rendered an opinion in Ross v. Housing Authority of Baltimore City last Friday that is important not only to Maryland lawyers handling lead paint cases, but to any plaintiffs' attorney who is putting up an expert at trial. That's all of us. The plaintiff in this case alleged that she had sustained permanent brain damage from lead exposure at two homes in which she spent her childhood. She enlisted the help of an expert witness to establish that the defendant’s building was the source of her exposure and her elevated blood lead levels. After the circuit court granted the defendant’s motion to exclude the expert testimony, the plaintiff appealed.

The circuit court’s decision was based on Maryland Rule 5-702, which reads:

Expert testimony may be admitted, in the form of an opinion or otherwise, if the court determines that the testimony will assist the trier of fact to understand the evidence or to determine a fact in issue. In making that determination, the court shall determine (1) whether the witness is qualified as an expert by knowledge, skill, experience, training, or education, (2) the appropriateness of the expert testimony on the particular subject, and (3) whether a sufficient factual basis exists to support the expert testimony.

The circuit court concluded that the first and third prongs were not satisfied. More specifically, the circuit court found that the expert, who was a pediatrician, was qualified to testify as an expert on pediatrics and childhood lead-poisoning but did not have the credentials to interpret lead test reports and to answer questions and give opinions on the meaning and significance of those reports. In regard to the third prong, the only factual basis for the testimony was a single positive test reading from a window sill from the second home.

The Court of Appeals agreed with the circuit court. Although the expert was a qualified pediatrician, she was not an epidemiologist or a toxicologist, and she had no technical knowledge regarding lead testing. The expert was not trained to identify lead hazards, nor did she have experience identifying causality with respect to relative exposure from various sources. The expert gave a general statement of causality that lead from the two homes caused some part of the plaintiff’s elevated blood lead levels, but could not specify how much of that increase was attributed purely to lead from the defendant’s property as opposed to lead from other sources, such as the environment. In addition, the court also agreed that there was no factual support for the testimony.

Finally, the court determined that the testimony would not “assist the trier of fact to understand the evidence or to determine a fact in issue.” The expert not only failed to adequately explain why one of the homes was the source of the lead exposure, she also testified that she only identified the risks associated with exposure but relied on the Health Department to find the actual source. In addition, there was evidence indicating various other sources of lead exposure in the homes. Because the expert’s opinion ultimately appeared difficult to distinguish from a lay opinion, the court concluded that the testimony would likely confuse rather than assist the jury.

Next, the court examined whether summary judgment was appropriate. Because the expert testimony was excluded, the circuit court granted summary judgment to the defendant due to lack of evidence as to causation. To establish causation, the plaintiff must prove that the defendant’s negligence was a “substantial factor” in causing the plaintiff’s injury. In cases involving exposure to lead, the plaintiff must show a link between the defendant’s property and the lead exposure, a link between the exposure and elevated blood lead levels, and a link between the increased blood lead levels and the plaintiff’s injury. Here, the plaintiff had to establish that the home was a source of lead exposure, that the exposure contributed to her elevated blood lead levels, and that the increase was significant enough to contribute to her injuries. Expert testimony in this case was crucial to demonstrating the first link. In particular, the expert testified that the defendant’s property was the source of the plaintiff’s lead exposure.

However, the court stated that even if expert testimony was not available, causation could still be determined using circumstantial evidence. The plaintiff only needs to have evidence that “amounts to a reasonable likelihood or probability rather than a possibility.” Although the plaintiff could no longer use the expert testimony to establish the three links, she could still rely on circumstantial evidence such as the lead investigation reports and other discovery materials. As a result, the court concluded that summary judgment was not appropriate and remanded the case for further review.

You can read the full opinion here.

Subway just got hit with a lawsuit alleging that its foot long subs are not actually a foot long. Plaintiffs who ate what is probably an 11 inch sub, are seeking money damages for their injuries. The case was filed in New Jersey.

I stick pretty close to personal injury related issues here. So why am I writing about a frivolous lawsuit claiming that a foot long sub is not a foot long? Because I think it is related. Lawsuits like this - and celebrities that sue for every possible slight - really sends a message to people, who later become jurors, that the judicial system is not often a place for serious justice. So when an injured plaintiff begins a trial, she does not begin on the 50 yard line. She starts deep in her own territory. That's not an impossible mission for a worthy plaintiff by any stretch - people flip quickly when they learn facts. But it makes the hill a tougher climb and it can change the way they value personal injury cases.

Subway says the word "footlong" should not be taken literally, as it is a trademark and "not intended to be a measurement of length." But they are misleading people. They misled me. I thought it was a foot long till I read this story. But consumers who think like me have two reasonable choices: (1) decide not to buy the Subway subs because they are mad at the false advertising, or (2) remain annoyed but say, "Hey, Subway is not perfect, I don't think many big companies are, but I think make a good sandwich and I'm going to eat it." (I pick the latter. Subway makes a good low fat sandwich, albeit with a ridiculous amount of sodium.).

Continue reading "Subway Footlong Lawsuit" »

I read a few opinions last week that did not rise to to the level of a full post on this blog but are still worth noting:

• Cromer v. Children's Hospital (Ohio): appellate court orders new medical malpractice trial because of a flawed standard of care instruction.
• Carroll v. Bristol Park Medical Group (California): the insanity of the California's draconian statute of limitations in medical malpractice cases is on full display.
• Illinois State Bar Association Mutual Insurance Co. v. Greenfield(Illinois):: Lawyer screws up a will and does the right thing, writing a letter to the beneficiaries informing them of the mistake. Legal malpractice insurer says that by failing to inform it of the letter before sending it, Greenfield violated a condition of his malpractice policy and refused to provide him a defense to the legal malpractice claim that ensued. "What a jerk move," an Illinois appeals court said, finding the malpractice carrier could not bail on their client. (Please note: I might be paraphrasing.) Anyway, if you have insurance through ISBAMI, keep in mind they will pull this kinda garbage on their clients who try to do the right thing.
• Bougere v. Northrop Grumman (Louisiana): wrongful death claim's statute of limitations begins to run not from asbestos exposure but from decedent's death. Maryland would rule similarly.
• New York v. Appellate Judges: I was amazed that New York voters dumped three appellate judges. In Maryland, we just rubber stamp these things.

A Florida judge was disqualified from a wrongful death tobacco case after comparing the defendant's former CEO to Nazi war criminal Josef Mengele.

No brainer decision? I'm not so sure. Here is what happened. During trial, a hearing was held outside of the presence of the jury on whether a 1971 - remember 1971 - videotape of Philip Morris's CEO Joseph Cullman should be admissible at trial. In the video, the CEO says that lower birth weights caused by smoking may actually be better for women who "might prefer having smaller babies."

All right, so exactly what is the appropriate response. "Gee, that remark is unfortunate," probably does not quite cut it. So the judge took it a little further, comparing the remark to Dr. Josef Mengele who conducted some of the most evil experiments on humans in modern times at Auschwitz.

Continue reading "Judge Compares Defendant CEO to Nazis" »

In Bailey Lumber & Supply Company v. Robinson, the Mississippi Supreme Court reversed a $1 million award in a slip and fall case, finding that while plaintiff's medical expert - an internal medicine doctor - could testify about the plaintiff's hip problem, he did not have the expertise to offer the opinion that the slip and fall aggravated the man's osteoarthritis, necessitating hip replacement surgery. This opinion is a good reminder for personal injury lawyers in Maryland that, when in doubt, make sure you have an expert that is qualified to give the opinions you need at trial.

This case is a pretty good slip and fall case on liability for the plaintiff. Defendant operated a building-and-lumber-supply retail store. Plaintiff needed paint. Defendant's employee says, "Follow me back to a dark, creepy and dangerous room" (I may be paraphrasing) that was for employees only. The room was dimly lit and plaintiff tripped over a two-inch step in the threshold of the doorway between the two rooms. Plaintiff says defendant's employee said we “should have fixed that floor a long time ago.” (To me, this sounds made up.) Plaintiff drove himself home.

I'm not feeling a million verdict at this point. Are you? Oh, yeah, and he has osteoarthritis, eventually necessitating hip surgery.

Continue reading "Wrong Experts Means Bye-Bye Million Dollar Verdict" »

As the Maryland appellate courts continue their summer of personal injury enuni, we turn our attention to a uninsured motorist case issued by the Supreme Court of Rhode Island, in New London County Mutual Insurance Company v. Karoline Fontaine. This opinion works through some issues about uninsured policy provisions, something we find ourselves doing quite frequently at Miller & Zois in our sometimes mad quest to find insurance coverage to get our clients compensated for their injuries.

The facts on this one are both simple and tragic. A husband and wife were on their motorcycle, and got into a collision. As is too often the case in motorcycle accidents, the husband was killed. The accident was not the couple's fault, which is also often the case in fatal motorcycle accidents. But, of course, that is little consolation to the man's family.

Neither the other vehicle nor its driver was insured. The motorcycle was insured by a policy with Foremost Insurance Company, and Foremost paid the full $100,000.00 under the uninsured motorist provision.

Continue reading "New Uninsured Motorist Opinion from Rhode Island" »

A few months ago, the Maryland high court ruled in Tracey v. Solesky, that in dog bite cases involving a pit bull or cross-bred pit bull mix, a plaintiff no longer needs to show that the dog in particular, or pit bulls in general, are dangerous in order to bring a claim against both the dog's owner and the landlord - the deep pocket in many dog bite claims. (You can find my posts on this case (here and here). This opinion was one of the most controversial tort opinions issue by a Maryland court in recent years. (NOTE: THIS LAW DID NOT PASS BUT THE MARYLAND HIGH COURT ACTED ON ITS OWN TO REVERSE PART OF THIS RULING.)

The new law may not last long. The Maryland Senate took a quick break from its efforts to bring table gambling within 100 yards of every man, woman, and child in Maryland and passed a new law that would create a strict liability standard for owners - but specifically not landlords - in all dog bite cases. The vote was a whopping 41-1, with Carroll County Republican Joe Getty casting the only dissenting vote. Senator Getty apparently claims that dogs are people too, just like corporations. (I may have made that up.)

Continue reading "New Dog Bite Law Would Flip Maryland Court of Appeals Ruling" »

New Dog Bite Opinion in Minnesota

We have our own issues here in Maryland with dog attacks and dog bites, particularly now that no one really knows what the law is and whether it’s going to change with regard to pit bulls (see our post on Tracey v. Solesky). Right now, the legislature seems poised to come up with some solution to the high court’s problematic ruling that pit bulls are inherently dangerous.

The question is one of what the solution will be—a return to the status quo and the “one free bite” rule; or a rule that all dog owners are responsible for any injuries caused by their dogs. One thing is for sure—the legislators should read up on Minnesota’s rule for guidance on how to best craft their rule.

Minnesota’s rule is problematic, as indicated by this month’s Minnesota Supreme Court ruling, Anderson v. Christopherson. Minnesota’s rule (Minnesota Statutes § 347.22) is deceptively simple:

If a dog, without provocation, attacks or injures any person who is acting peaceably in any place where the person may lawfully be, the owner of the dog is liable in damages to the person so attacked or injured to the full amount of the injury sustained. The term “owner” includes any person harboring or keeping a dog but the owner shall be primarily liable. The term “dog” includes both male and female of the canine species.

Reading just the rule, it appears to make sense. To me, it sounds like “the owner of any unprovoked dog who attacks or injures a person is responsible for those injuries.” That is a good, common-sense rule. If you own a dog, and that dog causes harm, you are responsible. Doesn’t matter if the dog is a pit bull or a poodle. Doesn’t matter if the dog never harmed a fly, or has bitten ten people. That rule seems to place responsibility squarely on the shoulders of people who should accept that responsibility—the dog owners.

Let's be clear: this would not be an anti-dog rule. No one Reasonable people do not blame the dog when they bite. It certainly does not mean that the dog should be put down. It means the dog's owner is obligated to take responsibility because the owner should bear the loss instead of the person who got bit. Many of the comments to my prior posts on Maryland's new dog bite law for pit bulls (here and here) were from dog rights activists who also believe this should be the law.

Anyway, back to Minnesota which has a hodgepodge of judicial opinions interpreting the decision, some contradictory, and they mutate what seems like a simple rule into something that is anything but simple. A prior court opinion interpreted the phrase “attacks or injures any person” to mean one of two things: (1) attacks means that the dog moves with violent intent; and (2) injures means nonhostile behavior (like playfully jumping up on a person in greeting) that injures a person. Never mind that “injures” actually means “to cause injury.”

So now we have a law that a dog owner is responsible for injuries caused when the dog attacks a person, or causes injury to a person when not acting violently. In this case, the Minnesota Supreme Court was then asked to decide in Anderson whether a dog owner was responsible in this scenario: Dog A (50 lbs) attacks Dog B (20 lbs). Dog B’s owner was lawfully walking Dog B. Dog B’s owner tried to save his dog, and falls in the process, breaking his hip.

Continue reading "Win for Dog Bite Victims in Minnesota (Sort of.)" »

This is a collection of blogs and news articles I read last week while I was on vacation that I though many of you might find of interest:

• The vast majority of injury lawyers are not "ambulance-chasers," and anyone who tars all of us with that label is pushing a political agenda, Kennerly writes. Personally, I don't have the energy to fight the misconceptions. I think I'm helping society which is why I chose to do what I do. (But, too many personal injury lawyers think they are doing God's work and ours is the most noble profession of all. Please. You are not saving the world as a personal injury lawyer and, honestly, you are not even trying. You are just a spoke in the wheel, albeit a productive one that helps society.) No one is going to change their mind by anything that I say. So, I'm just going to help our clients the best I possibly can, feed my family, and let the world be the world.


• "There are some folks who think that all trip and fall lawsuits should be dismissed outright. This short posting is designed to change their minds." I think the reality is that most slip and fall cases are complete nonsense. But, some are meritorious claims. The lesson, as always, listen to all of the facts and figure out which is which.


• Do English-only product-safety warnings constitute adequate warning for the purpose of tort claims? I think it has to be. We can't make product warnings in a zillion different languages and expect to keep our businesses competitive. If you are using a product and you don't know the language of the warning, you need to make sure you take the appropriate steps to make sure you know what they are.


• A California jury awarded more than $36 million to a couple whose car was hit by a tractor-trailer in 2010, resulting in the wife requiring 24-hour care. I would love to learn why in the world this case made it to trial.


• A Texas jury awarded $2.2 million to a woman seriously injured when the car in which she was riding was struck by a drunken driver. The other woman in the struck vehicle died at the scene of the accident. Just senseless and awful.


• The Justice Watch blog looks at the class-action landscape, a year after Wal-Mart v. Dukes.

• A Virginia judge upheld a jury's negligence verdict against the state in favor of two families of victims of the Virginia Tech shooting, but he reduced the award to each family from $4 million to $100,000 because of Virginia's cap. The lawsuit stemmed from the university's delay in warning the campus community about shooter Seung-Hui Cho's first killings; the families argued that a warning could have prevented the second round of shootings.
• On the Maryland dog-bite decision, Overlawyered writes, "Why is it somehow not surprising that in Annapolis the views of attorneys would hold more sway and those of dog-rescue folks less?"
• You never want to see a toilet recalled because it can cause lacerations.
• Should I feel better that other jurisdictions make dumb technical interpretations of a local government torts claims act's notice requirements? Or worse?
• I really hope Pennsylvania does not do this.
• Retro: IUD lawsuits

The University of Baltimore School of Law has a new dean. Ronald Weich, former Assistant Attorney General for Legislative Affairs at the Department of Justice, will take the helm at UB.

I discuss now Dean Weich and the other candidates for the top spot at UB law school here. He was my original second choice who was later ( via sour grapes ) upgraded to my first choice.

Weich has a great pedigree. He went to law school at Yale and was chief counsel to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, counsel to former Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter and the late Massachusetts Senator Edward M. Kennedy. He has been at the Justice Department since President Obama was elected.

The downside to my new boss at UB? When you are in the game as deeply as Weich has been, you invariably find controversy. He has been accused of falsely telling Senator Chuck Grassley that the agency does not allow guns to “walk” into the hand of criminals when the infamous "Fast and Furious" gun tracking operation was doing just that.

It will be interesting to see how this all play out. There are so many crosswinds impacting UB right now it is hard to know. The two biggest? We are moving into an amazing new facility at the same time everyone is getting wise to the idea that a good law school education may not lead to a good job in this economy.

• Max Kennerly writes about "overzealous advocacy" in three injury cases: one involving a defense lawyer who got mean with the plaintiff, a second involving a legitimate complaint marred by an unreasonable demand, and a third about "mistrial by pantomime."
• A Pennsylvania man can proceed with his lawsuit against state troopers, a federal judge has ruled. He alleges that he crashed his motor scooter while fleeing the troopers, became doused in its gasoline, then caught fire when the police used a Taser on him several times.
• The Philly Phanatic (whom the Philadelphia Daily News has dubbed a "big green litigation machine") has been sued for personal injury. Again. This time, a woman claims she was injured when the fuzzy, green, bottom-heavy, megaphone-snouted mascot threw her and the chair on which she was sitting into a too-shallow hotel pool during a performance.
• Also out of Philly, a jury has awarded $6.4 million to the family of a man who died of a massive heart attack, whose warning signs were missed months earlier by Temple University Hospital personnel.
• A Tennessee jury has awarded $1.2 million to the parents of a teenage boy killed when his pickup truck was struck by a pickup driven by a woman who was on drugs. The verdict is notable because it holds financially responsible not just the woman, who is an adult, but her parents as well, on the theory that they negligently entrusted their vehicle to her, given her history of drug abuse and car crashes.

Most personal injury appellate opinions involve a high level of human suffering. If you stopped and connected with every opinion that involved human suffering, you would spend all day looking into the abyss. Every wrongful death case is awful. But this appellate opinion last week from Indiana just has unbelievably depressing facts.

A woman asks the defendant, her boyfriend's stepfather, if she and her children - ages 3 and 4 - can stay with him. He says no. But while he is away, she has a pool party at his house. He comes home and says what you think he would say: "Get out." She asks if she can stay until the morning after breakfast. Defendant reluctantly agrees.

Defendant goes to work in the morning. Defendant's stepson lets the boys play outside around 10:30. Mom was, of course, still asleep. She wakes up, sees the kids playing outside, and goes back in the house leaving them to play by the pool. The woman comes back to find her son, but can't locate him. They look everywhere until it finally occurs to them that he might be in the pool. The boy is at the bottom of the pool. He was taken off life support the day after the incident when it was determined that he was brain dead.

It is easy to be judgmental of other parents. You have to try to fight the compelling urge to judge because you can't put yourself in anyone else's situation. Walk a mile in their moccasins and all of that. But I don't have any energy to fight that judgmental feeling on this one.

Continue reading "Defense Verdict in Tragic Drowning Death Affirmed" »

Will strict liability for pit bulls in Maryland cost the state $30 million in state and local tax revenue and cut back rental incomes to the tune of $144 million? Hard to believe. But these folks have numbers to make their argument. If these estimates are even half right, it would be a power example of the law of unintended consequences.

• Overlawyered comment where I found the study
• An overview of dog bite cases in Maryland
• Premises liability cases in Maryland
• Tracey v. Solesky
• Statistics on dog bite claims

This blog post is an exception to the usual "personal injury related only" rule on this blog. The Maryland Court of Appeals (Maryland's "supreme court") ruled unanimously today that Maryland must recognize as married same-sex couples who legally wed in other states.

A married same sex couple from California sought a divorce here in Maryland. Prince George's County Judge A. Michael Chapdelaine denied the divorce petition because the marriage was “not valid” and “contrary to the public policy of Maryland.”

Continue reading "Same Sex Marriage Recognized By Maryland High Court" »

• Plaintiff's lawyer names expert two days late. Defendant names experts two months late. Defendant moves to strike plaintiff's expert. The Mississippi trial judge applies some common sense.
• Every time I hear talk of the "saving statute" it always ends the same way: "Still, you blew the statute of limitations."
• Plaintiff's get a rare preemption win.
• A big mistake medical malpractice lawyers make: assuming their experts can speak to causation because they can speak to standard of care.
• Tennessee effectively tosses the locality rule in medical malpractice cases.
• Defensive medicine rant from defendant's expert in a malpractice case leads to a new trial.

My Revised Opinion on Pit Bulls

Friday, I wrote a blog post about the Maryland Court of Appeals opinion in Tracey v. Solesky that imposes strict liability for pit bull owners and, seemingly, landlords, in dog bite cases. I've offered an opinion generally supportive of the court's ruling and argued that the court should go a step further and hold all dog owners accountable when their dog bites another person (or animal for that matter).

I think I'm right on the latter point. If your dog bites someone and causes serious injury, I think you should be liable for the harm that was caused. But I got a lot of comments and emails from people who strongly disagreed with some of the loose facts that I threw out. While some of these comments were just crazy aunts and uncles peeking out of their attics and basements, others provided real insight about these dogs that demonstrated a far greater appreciation of facts and studies about pit bulls than I have.

Continue reading "Maryland Pit Bull Law: A New Opinion" »

The Maryland Court of Special Appeals issued its opinion on Friday in WMATA v. Williams, a workers' compensation claim that addresses how far the chain for causation can go before the court decides that a later "related" injury is just too attenuated. Although I do not handle workers compensation cases, I think the legal issues here are interesting and have broader implications beyond workers' compensation cases.

The plaintiff (I know, you call them claimants in comp; it just sounds weird to me) hurt his knee on the job. While attending "work hardening" therapy, the driver of a car in the parking lot put her car in reverse, backed into the plaintiff, resulting in an injury to his other knee for which he also sought workers' compensation benefits.

I can see this from both sides. At first glance, I think it seems pretty attenuated to argue a causal relationship just because you coincidentally got injured going to lunch from therapy. There has to be some difference between causation in fact and proximate causation. This would seem to jive with the Maryland high court's holding in Mackin v. Harris. In that case, the court explained that for every injury, there are innumerable acts whose absence would have prevented the harm. It is the butterfly effect. Going back to Palsgraf, that is not and cannot be how proximate cause is defined. I'm a plaintiffs' lawyer and even I get this.

Continue reading "New Workers' Compensation/Forseeability Opinion" »

A divided Maryland Court of Appeals has made new law today. In Tracey v. Solesky, the court ruled that in dog bite cases involving a pit bull or cross-bred pit bull mix, it is no longer necessary to prove that the dog in particular or pit bulls in general are dangerous. Is this a win for plaintiffs' lawyers? Is it an anti-dog opinion? Will it lead to changes in homeowners' policies throughout Maryland? With apologies to Steven L. Miles, let's talk about it. (August 21, 2012 Update: Incredibly, the court has reversed itself on a key portion of this opinion.)

This case involves a pit bull named Clifford who lived in East Towson, just two blocks from York Road and the Towson University campus. While a big fellow like Clifford the Big Dog, this Clifford was a bit more viperous. One day, Clifford attacked two boys on the same day in Towson, Maryland. The injuries to the second boy were serious: he needed five hours of surgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital to address his injuries, including surgery to repair his femoral artery. He spent seventeen days in the hospital, had additional surgeries, and spent a year in rehabilitation. I'm not sure how old the boy was but, either way, it's just an awful thing.

The boy and his parents brought suit against the owners of the pit bull that mauled him and the owners' landlords. The owners of the dog went into bankruptcy and received a discharge of their debt. The only defendant standing was the landlord (Although the Long & Foster lease executed allowed Clifford's owners to keep an "American Bulldog Terrier" on a property that did not have a fence.).

Continue reading "Strict Liability for Pit Bulls in Maryland" »

There were no personal injury related appellate opinions this week in state or federal court in Maryland this week but there are a few cases elsewhere worth a read:

• In Morse v. Davis, the Indiana Court of Appeals affirmed a $1.25 million verdict (actually $2.5 million reduced by the cap) in a colon cancer misdiagnosis case. Defendant made two arguments we see in various permutations in our practice. The first is the whole idea of whether an expert can speak directly or indirectly to the ultimate issue of fact for the jury. The second is the extent to which an expert can make credibility determinations about another witness. I think this is often an issue not worth fighting for plaintiffs' lawyers when the defense is calling a plaintiff a liar. Rich Friedman's book Polarizing the Case is an illuminating read on whether it is a good thing to make the trial about whether your client is a liar.
• In Horak v. Building Services Industrial Sales Company, the Court of Appeals of Wisconsin found that invoices produced by the company's lawyer, that documented the sale of products that contained asbestos, are admissible even without an authenticating witness under the ancient-documents exception to the hearsay rule. Given the value of asbestos cases, that is a pretty valuable invoice to find.
• In Saeco Electric & Utility, Ltd.v. Gonzales, a Texas appellate court reversed a $5 million verdict, finding that the case should have been submitted to the jury as a premises defect action, as opposed to straight negligence. The dissenting opinion found that because the utility was not in control of the premises at the time of plaintiff's injury, but was responsible for creating the dangerous condition that caused injury, this is not just a premises liability case. I think it is odd that in some states the dissenting opinion is filed in a separate opinion. You can find more details on the jury's verdict and the plaintiff's awful injury here.
• Riegel v. Medtronic claims another victim, this time a man alleging that a Medtronic drug pump and spine catheter caused him to become a paraplegic. Sadly, no one is talking about the Medical Device Safety Act to remedy this injustice anymore.

You can find the four appellate opinions you should read from last week here.