The National Law Journal tells us about a Pediatrician being sued for malpractice who doomed his own defense with his anonymous blog. Dr. Robert P. Lindeman was forced to admit, at trial, he was the writer of “drfleablog,” a web-log detailing his hatred of malpractice litigation and revealing information about his own case.

Lindeman had done a web search on the plaintiff’s attorney and found a power point presentation she had used for a lecture. He posted a link to her presentation on his blog. The plaintiff’s attorney surprised the good doctor by asking him, on the stand, if he was Doctor Flea. He admitted he was the writer of the blog. The next day, he settled out of court.

Lindeman said on his blog that his attorneys had told him that only 3 percent of a jury’s decision come from medical details. The rest is based on the defendant’s character. He said the only the only way a doctor could lose a malpractice suit is if the plaintiff can show the doctor to be “drooling, blithering idiot.”

Doctor Lindeman has deleted the content from his blog.

There’s been some controversy in the courts and legislatures of this country about the use of the death penalty for crimes other than murder.  A few states, for instance, allow imposition of the death penalty for forcible rape of a child.  In the federal system, treason is punishable by death.  Even in these extreme circumstances, views are mixed. The United States Supreme Court held that the imposition of the death penalty for the rape of a 16-year-old girl was cruel and unusual punishment prohibited by the Constitution.

Stacy Clay Driver didn’t get to take his case to the Supreme Court, though.   The Texas father was essentially crushed to death by Wal-Mart employees who suspected him of returning $94 worth of stolen merchandise in exchange for gift card credit.

It appears that no criminal charges were filed against the employees who caused Driver’s death by asphyxiation, but Wal-Mart has agreed to pay $750,000 in compensation to his widow and 2-year-old son.

A Texas jury entered a $9 million verdict in favor of a black man who was beaten by four young white men in 2003. The victim now resides in a nursing home, receiving care necessitated by the permanant brain damage he sustained in the beating. Criminal charges were filed against the young men, who had apparently lured the man (described as “slow”) to an underage drinking spot, fed him alcohol, taunted him, and then beat him and left him unconscious in the pasture. None of them served more than sixty days in jail, and it seems that was just fine with the local district attorney, who pointed out that the beating was “one punch” and seemed to suggest that it was only natural for the jury to be sympathetic to these first-time offenders.

I practiced criminal law for years, and I’m a big fan of giving a break to first-time offenders. Young kids who are headed off to college and do something stupid like shoplift on a bet and end up arrested–by all means, let’s prevent a felony record and get them back on track. The twenty-year-old college kid with a beer in his hand six months before his birthday, or with a quarter of an ounce of marijuana in his pocket…let’s shake him up a little, clean him up, and send him home. (Ironically, mandatory minimum sentences in some states and in the federal criminal justice system would offer no leeway–that kid would serve a lot more time than the ones who rendered Billy Ray Johnson unable to care for himself for the rest of his life.)

But luring someone to a remote location, getting him drunk, verbally abusing him, and then beating him to the point of unconsciousness and leaving him alone in a field, potentially to die of his injuries, is a shade different from stealing your neighbor’s car to take a quick ride around the block before you have your driver’s license. Fortunately, this Texas jury sent a clear message that human life is valuable, regardless of color or intellect or financial means. It’s unfortunate, though, that it had to do so on the heels of a criminal system that said the opposite.

A Judge in the Northern District of New York set a June 18 trial date for the pending challenge to the constitutionality of the state’s attorney advertising rules, which took effect on February 1, 2007.

One of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit is New York law firm Alexander & Catalano–a firm well known for its flamboyant advertising.  The state objects to “patent falsities” in Alexander & Catalano’s advertising; those “falsities” include the ability to leap tall buildings in a single bound and a sketch in which an alien wants to fight an insurance company’s denial of claims for damages to its spaceship.  Tellingly, Public Citizen, Inc., the Washington D.C.-based consumer advocacy group founded by Ralph Nader, joins Alexander in challenging the restrictions.

Even more disturbing, however, is the provision prohibiting attorneys from contacting victims or their families for thirty days following a personal injury.  While it may seem on the surface that the provision provides a useful protection against vulnerable injury victims being pushed into hasty decisions, the fact that there is no such prohibition on insurance company contact renders the provision a dangerous one for consumers.  Perhaps the greatest risk to an injury victim in the immediate aftermath of an injury is misinformation from an insurance company designed to compromise the victim’s claim, and the larger the potential claim–that is, the more serious the injuries and losses involved–the more incentive the insurance company has to lead the victim into statements against his interest, provide misleading information, discourage him from hiring an attorney, or encourage him to waive critical rights or future claims in the interests of getting medical bills paid.