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According to an article in today’s Washington Post, the Obama administration will intentionally proceed slowly in appointing new U.S. attorneys.
Advisers to Obama say they have learned from past mistakes, including Clinton’s decision to require all U.S. attorneys to submit their resignations.
Critics said that move threw law enforcement efforts into disarray.
The issue is different in Mississippi than in some places. In Mississippi, both U.S. attorneys resigned and the positions are being held on an interim basis. In some places the U.S. attorney has not resigned and the Obama administration must decide whether to ask for their resignation. In any event, the U.S. attorney positions are not like open judicial seats where there is no one in the position until it is filled.
The acting U.S. attorneys in Mississippi are experienced and capable of competently holding the position indefinitely. So while there is intrigue and speculation in Mississippi, the issue may not be high on the administration’s priority list.
Whatever Mississippi Public Safety Director Steve Simpson did to the guys at folo, it didn’t justify a post with this picture in it. I’m not sure who the competition was for King of the Biloxi St. Patrick’s Day parade, but there can’t be too many people willing to wear that outfit. I guess all the leprechaun suits were already rented out.
Why am I writing about this? Because Steve Simpson is rumored to be a possible 2010 challenger to the Supreme Court seat currently held by Justice Dickinson. Simpson is a former Circuit Court judge in Harrison County. I’m not sure locking up the Irish vote will command the respect on the Coast that it would in someplace like Boston.
On Thursday the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal had a story about the two vacant U.S. attorney positions in Mississippi. The story named only two potential appointees: Forest attorney Costance Slaughter-Harvey and Oxford attorney Christi McCoy. Booneville attorney Ron Michael has removed his name from consideration.
I thought that Slaughter-Harvey had also removed her name from consideration. Natchez attorney Deborah McDonald is said to be a candidate, as is Jackson attorney Cliff Johnson. It is believed that at least one (and perhaps both) of the appointments will go to a minority attorney. Johnson and McCoy are white. McDonald and Slaughter-Harvey are African-American.
It is unknown when President Obama will make the appointments.
On March 5, 2009 the Natchez Democrat reported that Natchez Regional Medical Center will file suit against its former management company, Quorum Health Resources. The story is here.
The suit will allege that Quorum mismanaged NRMC. Quorum managed NRMC from 1992-2008 under a contract that was to run through 2009. According to the article, Quorum is suing NRMC for $260,000 in management fees in a separate action. I was unable to locate Quorum’s suit on pacer. According to Quorum’s website, the company manages six hospitals in Mississippi, including Hancock Medical Center in Bay St. Louis.
According to the Neshoba Democrat , Mississippi Democratic Party Chair Jamie Franks identified Jackson attorney Carlton Reeves as the likely appointee for the United States District Judge position formerly held by Judge William Barbour. Judge Barbour still serves on the bench, but has taken senior status. Franks was speaking at a Federalist Society luncheon.
According to Franks, a committee consisting of himself, Rep. Bennie Thompson, Rep. Gene Taylor, Rep. Travis Childers, Attorney General Hood and Speaker Billy McCoy would or already have made recommendations to President Obama for judicial appointments.
Franks said Republicans should remember that the Democrats won, and any federal judge nominees are not going to look like Northern District Court Judges Mike Mills or Sharion Aycock, but more like attorney Carlton Reeves. When asked if Reeves was just a random example, Franks only laughed.
Reeves has been the front runner for the open district judge seat since election day. A graduate of Jackson State and the University of Virginia School of Law, Reeves has experience in the Justice Department and private practice. He is a longtime supporter of Bennie Thompson and is highly respected within the Mississippi Bar, even by individuals who do not agree with his politics. If nominated and confirmed, Reeves would join Bush appointees Dan Jordan and Sul Ozerden as Southern District judges in their early to mid-40’s who could easily serve on the bench for the next twenty-five or thirty years.
On Friday the Clarion-Ledger reported that Hinds County Circuit Court Judge Swan Yerger stayed Eaton Corp. v. Frisby Aerospace pending a determination of whether former Eaton lawyer Ed Peters improperly influenced Judge DeLaughter when he had the case. Eaton is the plaintiff and alleges that former Eaton employees stole $1 billion in trade secrets and gave them to Frisby. If there is a bigger case pending in Hinds County I do not know what it is.
Frisby is represented by Jackson attorney Allen Perry. According to the Ledger:
Perry argued Wednesday that Frisby has been put through “a lot of stuff because of what Peters and DeLaughter did to us.”
“We know there was improper communications and he has admitted that fact,” Perry said in court. “We have been done wrong and we are asking for justice.”
Eaton attorney Reuben Anderson countered that Eaton is the real victim as the victim of the trade secrets theft.
My initial reaction upon reading the article and Perry’s quotes was that Frisby is full of it and the case should not be stayed. Upon further analysis, I changed my mind and agree with Judge Yerger’s decision. It is prudent for Judge Yerger to stay the case until more of the Peters-DeLaughter facts are known. But unless more allegations surface that are directly related to this case, Frisby is probably going to have to defend the case on the merits. Otherwise, Judge Yerger probably would have already dismissed the case.
In its March 7, 2009 print edition, the Clarion-Ledger editorializes about the 60% decline in premium costs for medical malpractice insurance for physicians since the passage of tort reform legislation. I was not able to find the editorial on-line in order to link it.
The Ledger points out that the plaintiff’s bar wrongly predicted that malpractice premiums would not decline following tort reform. While this is a true statement, the Ledger is wrong to give all the credit to legislative tort reform. I believe that there were at least two other factors that had a significant impact on malpractice premiums.
First, a court-imposed change in multi-plaintiff joinder laws. In the late 1990’s and early 2000’s, physicians were being named as defendants in pharmaceutical and other mass tort cases filed in Mississippi. In many instances, the physicians were not really target defendants and were sued in an effort to prevent out of state corporations from removing the cases from state court to federal court. But the physicians’ insurance carriers had to hire lawyers to defend the cases. And since the nature of multi-party mass tort cases makes them more expensive to defend, medical insurers had to spend a ton of money on defense costs in cases that the doctors should not have even been in.
At some point–and I do not remember the exact year–joinder laws were changed so that each plaintiff had to file and litigate his case individually. Once that happened, out-of-state mass tort lawyers largely left the state and the number of filed cases in which doctors were “venue” defendants decreased significantly.
The second factor not identified by the Ledger was the perception by some in the plaintiff’s bar that the Mississippi Supreme Court would not affirm a plaintiff’s verdict in a medical malpractice case. This had a chilling affect on the number of malpractice cases filed. It should be noted that in recent months the Supreme Court has affirmed at least two medical malpractice verdicts.
If the Ledger was correct that tort reform was the sole reason that doctors’ insurance premiums declined, then wouldn’t all liability premiums be lower? My personal experience with insurance premiums is that my malpractice premiums have gone up and my personal general liability coverage has not decreased.
Hopefully, the sea-change in the litigation climate will settle down physicians and decrease the open hostility by some doctors towards the plaintiff’s bar.
A reader of this blog emailed me and suggested that Malcolm Harrison would be a strong candidate in a special election to fill Judge DeLaughter’s seat should the position become open. Harrison is the current county prosecutor, has a solid reputation, lives in the Raymond area (seat of the 2nd judicial district), is African-American and has previously won two county-wide elections. These are strong credentials for the position.
Another suggested possibility to fill the seat was Jackson attorney Melvin Priester. It has been a number of years since any of the Hinds County Circuit Court Judge positions were vacant. A vacancy would no doubt cause a huge amount of political intrigue and jockeying.