Superior Court Judge Gordon Godfrey is asking the court to mandate that Grays Harbor County commissioners provide an additional $75,000 to his court’s budget. Otherwise, he said in a declaration filed with the injunction, the budget cuts imposed on the court can only be met by requiring 31.65 mandatory furlough days of the court’s four employees. And the court will run out of money on Nov. 16 “and will have to close until the new budget year begins on Jan. 2, 2013.”

You can read more about Grays Harbor’s problems here.

In Lester v. Allied Concrete Co ., a wrongful death lawsuit pending in Virginia state court, lawyer Mathew Murray instructed his client to remove 15 photographs from his Facebook page. His client, likely not knowing better, removed the photographs. Compounding the issue was the fact that Murray’s client denied having a Facebook page under oath when the defense took his deposition.

When the trial court found out about the removal and Murray’s involvement, it issued one of the heaviest sanctions I have ever seen. Murray was ordered by the trial court to pay a $522,000 fine for instructing his client to remove the photographs. His client, who did not escape the court’s wrath, was ordered to pay a $180,000 fine.

To date, I have not seen much discussion about Facebook pages as evidence in Washington court opinions. At this point, the best practice would be to treat Facebook pages like any other piece of evidence.

But what is a life worth? Many personal injury lawyers and juries have grappled with this question since the creation of our civil justice system. Despite the difficulty of this question, many federal agencies have assigned a money “value” to a human life. Currently, the Environmental Protection Agency values life at $9.1 million. The Food and Drug Administration values life at $7.9 million. The Department of Transportation values life at $6 million. You can read more here.

The civil justice system appears to be on par with federal agencies with regard to the value of life in wrongful death actions. For example, in Michaels v. CH2M Hill, the estate of Mike Cmos was awarded 7.6 million for the wrongful death of Mr. Cmos.

Reblogged from West Virginia Personal Injury Lawyers:

Charles Allen, the best deposition taker in the country, will tell you that one of the biggest mistakes that lawyers make is not respecting silence.  The first witness stops and the plaintiff’s lawyer feels obligated to start moving their mouth.  Silence and a long stare will often times trigger a fountain of great information.

Understand that when someone stops talking they expect the other person to pick it up as if in a relay race and when they don’t the silence is awkward.  This isn’t preferable in everyday life; however, in a deposition, it implicitly puts the burden on the witness to say more and it’s usually more than they really want to.

Click here to read the entire article.

I think Keenan has a great point. Thoughts?

Reblogged from spokanephysicaltherapist:

Another surprising find by the study was the fact that individuals who, politically, identify themselves as “Independents” have a propensity to award damages 17% below the national average. To put this finding in context, Democrats have a propensity to award damages 33% above the national average whereas Republicans have a propensity to award damages 15% below the national average. I am at a loss to explain why individuals who identify themselves as independents are the most guarded of the political groups in awarding money for personal injury lawsuits.