Mississippi Litigation Review & Commentary : Mississippi Personal Injury Lawyer & Attorney : Phillip W. Thomas Law Firm : MS Litigation Review & Commentary

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I watched the HBO documentary Hot Coffee on Monday night. Here are a few random thoughts.

• The Mississippians in the documentary were superb. Former Miss. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Diaz, Jackson attorney Rob McDuff, former Miss. Supreme Court Justice Chuck McRae and author John Grisham all spoke eloquently and convincingly.    
• I had forgotten how bogus the government's case against Diaz appeared. For me, the fact that the government prosecuted Diaz soiled the prosecutions of Minor, Teel and Whitfield. I don't have a problem with those prosecutions. But the decision to prosecute Diaz was a mistake and, in retrospect, looks politically motivated.  
• I felt stupid to have never connected the fact that taxpayers pay for the cost of tort reform. When tort victims fully recover in the Court system, Medicaid and Medicare are reimbursed and are not saddled with the plaintiff's future medical care. Under the cap system, people wind up back on the Medicaid rolls and these entities receive less reimbursement.
• It also reminded me that the system that Mississippi nursing homes use to shield their operators from liability also shifts the burden or paying for their negligence to taxpayers who are funding Medicare and Medicaid.
• I had never seem the pictures of the burns to the legs of the victim in the McDonald's coffee case or heard the actual facts of the case. The fact that people in this country were misled by her lawsuit is sad.
• The documentary solidified what I had already figured out: the general public does not understand tort reform. They believe that caps apply to frivolous lawsuits. In fact, the opposite is true. Caps only come into play in non-frivolous cases with extensive injuries. Big business has effectively and intentionally misled the public on this issue.

The film made me sad. Sad for the victims portrayed in the film, who were under compensated due to caps or kept from the courthouse due to mandatory arbitration clauses. Sad for the American public, who were duped into supporting tort reform by those they trust.  

The film also made me sad for my profession. The legal profession has had its image tarnished by greedy ambulance chasers who advertise that they can get large sums of money for accident victims who were not really hurt. They may not come out and say that in their ads, but that is what they are selling.

Have you ever noticed that in lawyer commercials with people who got a big check, the people don't look hurt? How it's never the family of the dead guy? Or the woman who lost her leg? Or the child who suffered brain damage and will never be able to take care of herself? Think these commercials could be a factor in public support of tort reform?       

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A Harrison County jury returned a defense verdict Wednesday in the defamation trial against WLOX television station:

A jury on Wednesday found that WLOX did not defame a homebuilding company in an “Action Report” in 2006.

The jury of six men and six women deliberated less than two hours before reaching its verdict.

Here is the Sun-Herald article on the verdict. The case stemmed from the station's report on a dispute between a home owner and a building contractor. The plaintiffs asked for $1 million in damages. Here is an earlier post on the trial. The Sun-Herald article continues:

In closing arguments, WLOX attorney Henry Laird told the jury, “They’re blaming WLOX for what Fairley said. The right to free speech is not a one-way street. This is also about the right for you to know and the right for WLOX to report the news.”

Tupelo attorney Jim Waide, representing the Hudsons with Jackson attorney Chuck McRae, said he thought the jury ruled for WLOX “because the TV station is held in high regard in Harrison County.”

In other words, Waide is saying the jury was biased. I wasn't there, but I find that hard to believe. I grew up on the Coast. In my experience people were fairly ambivalent about WLOX, which has to compete with New Orleans and Mobile stations for viewership of the local news shows. I suspect that the jury was fair and the plaintiffs just didn't prove their case.

This verdict is known because the Sun-Herald covered the trial. You never hear about most defense verdicts because defense lawyer's clients don't want the publicity and plaintiff lawyers aren't going to advertise a losing effort. Plaintiff lawyers, on the other hand, sometimes alert the press after a big win. That's why you see more plaintiff verdict stories in the papers.

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The Sun-Herald reported on Sunday about a rare defamation trial taking place in the Harrison County Circuit Court in Biloxi. You can read the article here.

In the lawsuit the father-son owners of a Lucedale construction company (Heath Hudson and Gerald Hudson) are suing Coast TV station WLOX. Anyone who has lived on the Coast in the last thirty years will recognize the players: long time sports anchor A.J. Giardina and news director Dave Vincent. The Hudsons allege that in 2006 WLOX ran a story that stated that the Hudson's construction company performed shoddy work and then walked off a job before completion. The Hudsons claim that the project owner was behind in payments when they pulled off the job and that WLOX knew that the allegations in the story were false.

The Hudsons' attorneys are Jim Waide of Tupelo and former Mississippi Supreme Court Justice Chuck McRae. WLOX is represented by Trent Favre and Henry Laird of Watkins Ludlam's Gulfport office. The judge is newly appointed Circuit Court judge John Gargiulo of Gulfport. The trial began on Tuesday and is expected to conclude this week.