The Huns are at it again. Not satisfied with controlling the Governor’s Office (Tea Party darling Rick Scott) and the Florida Legislature (both chambers have large Republican majorities), the US Chamber of Commerce and its right-wing allies are mounting a campaign to unseat three moderate Florida Supreme Court Justices. If…
A deposition is the gathering of sworn verbal testimony under oath. Except for communications that are protected by attorney/client privilege and the 5th amendment right against self-incrimination, witnesses are required to answer deposition questions. If a lawyer feels that a question is confusing, misstates testimony, lacks foundation, or assumes facts…
Prior to 1990, Florida employers had a common law qualified privilege to discuss current and former employees with prospective employers. The leading case was Nadar v. Galbreath, 462 So.2d 803 (Fla. 1984). For an employee to overcome the privilege, and thus hold the employer liable for defamation or intentional interference…
The Republican Establishment has chosen Willard Mitt Romney to lead its people to The Promised Land. It points to his success in making large sums of money as the primary qualifying factor for the selection. G-d chose Moses to lead the Jews to their Promised Land. Interestingly, what persuaded G-d…
Most freedom-loving Americans believe that intelligence, skill, character, and temperament are the most important qualities of a judge. Not so Florida Governor Rick Scott. Ideology is what matters most to this governor … right-wing ideology at that. In a blatant effort to subvert a free-acting judiciary, Governor Scott is seeking…
Arbitration has become the procedural remedy of choice for the business community in almost every type of civil dispute, from employment matters to nursing home negligence. Arbitration involves the resolution of civil disputes by a panel of costly private arbitrators rather than by government-paid judges and citizen jurors. If for…
America’s civil and criminal justice systems are grounded on the Mosaic Code. The Law, contained in the Torah’s Books of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, pre-dates Roman laws and is the first to incorporate humanism and the democratic spirit into a written Judicial code. Four centuries before Christ, the Jews…
Corporate America has campaigned for more than 30 years to turn the thinking of average citizens against the civil justice system. Sadly, the campaign has worked, fostering views that are contrary to one of the fundamental principles on which America was founded, namely, that the individual should be able to…
Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a test that uses a magnetic field and pulses of radio wave energy to make pictures of organs and structures inside the body. In many cases MRI gives different information about structures in the body than can be seen with an X-ray, ultrasound, or computed…
The subject of this blog dovetails nicely with the current Wall Street protests over corporate greed. It was recently learned that State Farm Insurance raised between $2.4 and $4 million for the 2004 election campaign of an Illinois judge. It was the most expensive race in U.S. judicial history. The…