Frivolous Lawsuits

The ATRA and CALA are trying to stop minor cases from receiving enormous sums of money which will dampen the economy. The subject matter of these cases varies to some length including but not limited to medical and car insurance. In a case against Rich Mountain Nursing and Rehabilitation Center of Mena, jurors found the defendant, Mena, guilty of malpractice in the death of Margaretha Sauer, a ninety-three year old woman. The non-economic punitive damages cash award for the suffering and pain of the Sauer family to be paid by Mena was seventy-eight million dollars. Punitive damages is one of the issues that the ATRA is trying to combat. If nursing homes continue to have pay large sums for punitive damages, they will not be able to survive. The premium average liability offered by nursing homes has increased from $820,000 in 1999 to $11.6 million in 2001. With the liability premiums continuing to rise, the prospects of profits continue to dwindle. They will have no chance at retaining a profit and thus will have to close. It will also mean that doctors will charge more for their services, which leads to fewer health insurances carrying

On Tuesday, September 29th my partner and I had the opportunity to interview a 55-year-old patient named Tom at LA County Hospital, admitted nine days prior for injuries he sustained after being struck by a city vehicle. His injuries were quite apparent the moment we sat down with him: his right foot bandaged up, having been crushed by the vehicle’s tires, abrasions and bruising all over his lower limbs and worst of all, a broken pelvis. Yet despite the bad shape he was in, Tom was kind enough share his life story with us and provide the limited knowledge he had about his insurance history.

[There are several factors that contribute to the excess numbers of cases in the court system today. One of the influences is the Supreme Court case of Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U.S. 335, a landmark case, which ruled that under the Fourteenth Amendment states will provide counsel to individuals charged with a crime who cannot afford to pay for an attorney themselves. Prior to this addition, Judges decided cases and the cases moved much faster through the system. However, the addition of lawyers to each case and the need for trials grew, in turn the speed of the system slowed.

In the article “Despite Counsel, Victim Is Hindered by tort laws.” The author Becca Aaronson, explains that sometimes tort laws may not feel fair. Connie Spears is just an ordinary woman who went to the Emergency because she felt some pain in her legs which she told the hospital she is known to have blood clots but, after being checked by the doctors they sent her home with a minor diagnoses. Just a short few days later she ended up in a different hospital with serious illness that caused her to loose both of her legs. She then filed a medical malpractice law suit but, she had to produce adequate expert reports within 120 days of filing their cases or she will be ordered to pay the defendants court fees. Connie Spears argues that

The Plaintiffs felt that since the hospital was licensed and accredited that they should be held responsible for their employees and their actions. It states in the regulations that any infraction of the bylaws imposes liability for the injury. At any time if Dr. Alexander had questions or concerns he could have reached out to an expert in this field to consult

On the month of September 2007, Amy Jo Hicks applied for Social Security Disability Benefits. With help from counsel Eric C. Conn in preparing her application, she testified at an administrative hearing and was soon after awarded benefits. At some point years later, authorities discovered a Social Security scam that involved Conn, administrative law judge David Daugherty and four doctors. The basis of the scheme involved Conn creating a template medical form that would allow doctors to falsify a claimant's medical examination. By July 2014, the SSA’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG) identified 1,787 people--all which were Conn’s clients-- who submitted that medical template sometime between 2007 and 2011. Amy Jo Hicks’s unfortunately,

Health insurance fraud is what drives up health insurance premium costs, wastes taxpayer’s money, but can also endanger beneficiaries or leave them uninsurable. In 2015, Medicare Strike Force reported over $700 million in false billing by doctors, nurses, other licenses medical professionals, laboratories, and individuals (FBI.gov). This is a staggering figure that is only getting worse. In this fictitious federal case I will be describing the criminal offender, the crime that was committed, the charge handed down by law enforcement, and the judicial process from the beginning of the criminal case to the sentencing of Dr. Richard Heartman, an internal medicine physician.

There has been over three decades of debate over a reform that affects everything from insurance and health care premiums to the prices of goods and services. The Tort law gives civilians the right to put liability on a company and sue for a multitude of different things if something goes wrong. A main issue of the tort reform is noneconomic damages. Noneconomic damages are awards granted for “pain and suffering.” A solution to this ongoing problem is to set a cap, or ceiling, on the amount of compensation one can receive for his or her “pain and suffering.” An issue with setting caps is that they are argued against as “unconstitutional” and “violates the right to trial by jury” (Hudson) stated in the sixth

This lady named Elizabeth Jones Powell was working at a physical therapy office located in Helena, Montana from 2009 to 2013. She was accused of billing Medicaid for hundreds of physical therapy treatments for herself, her spouse and their children, which many of the treatment never happened. The investigators stated that Powell would then divert the Medicaid payments for the claims out of the therapist’s bank account for her own use.

Rising costs of healthcare is a valid concern for many households in America. A factor in the cost of healthcare insurance is fraud. Fraud is often very difficult to detect. The magnitude of healthcare fraud is unknown. Initial reimbursement and payment and billing timeframe of 90 days allows for fast payment of services, however, many times before there is an indication of fraudulent billing the company has closed up and moved on. Fraud in American healthcare, costs American’s millions perhaps even billions of dollars annually. Without doubt, behind every act of fraud lies a lapse in ethics. This paper will review several pieces of literature to look

The American judicial system is one that convicts and incarcerate prisoners for various crimes. When someone commits a crime, it is the judicial system’s responsibility to enforce and apply the laws. Under United States legislation, criminals are innocent until proven guilty in a court trial, but the judicial system during the twentieth-century did not properly give them fair trials. Instead, the court system convicted many prisoners guilty of crimes they “supposedly” committed. This situation created the start of a new and corrupt judicial system because prisoners could not plead their case in court. Kate O’Hare, Jack London, and Assata Shakur provide an accurate and historical view of the American judicial system as unethical because many

As stated in the title, business owners should be able to hire/fire anyone without interference from the government. Far too often do we hear of frivolous lawsuits in which the plaintiff is simply seeking a “pay day” from a business. In fact, 55 % of these cases are usually ruled in favor of the plaintiff (Common Good 2012). This can cost the defendants (businesses) $1.1 million on average (Glater 2008). If the current government regulated practices were allowed to continue, businesses won’t be able keep up.

To take it a step further this video tapped into how politicians spent this story so far past the truth it was used to enforce tort reform in the protection against these nonsense lawsuits.4 All the while the people that knew the truth about how serious and devastating this case was could not believe how the media wasn’t trying to report the facts but only version of what they thought the truth

Tort law is a very prevalent aspect of conducting business and daily life in the twenty first century. According to the textbook, The Legal Environment of Business, tort law provides “remedies for the invasion of various protected interests.” (Cross & Miller, 2012) In this essay about tort law, I will talk about a tort case that has personally impacted me. To do so, I will provide a background of the event, apply facts of the case to applicable law, summarize lessons of the week as they relate to this case and provide a plausible argument for the parties involved.

In this essay the reader will be able to identify the legal disputes presented in the Litigation an Alternative Video. The paper will converse the difference between the traditional litigation system and the nontraditional forms of Alternative Dispute Resolutions (ADR) which will include the risks that a company may encounter should they proceed with traditional litigation, when nontraditional ligation is appropriate to practice to avoid those risk. Alternative disputes presented, such as arbitration, mediation and min-trial are compared to determine which form will be more beneficial to the company.