My new page on California’s Prop 213 can be found here.
In personal injury cases, the defense attorney is allowed to hire a doctor to examine the plaintiff and offer medical opinions at trial. Much like the doctors hired by the tobacco industry that routinely find that smoking is harmless, these “defense doctors” are routinely hired by the same defense firms and insurance companies, and routinely […]
Today, August 18, 2011, the California Supreme Court released an important decision affecting injured Californians who attempt to seek civil justice when they are injured. More analysis will follow. For now, I am simply providing copies of the opinion online. You can download a PDF of the Howell decision below. Howell v. Hamilton Meats The […]
(1) Was Hanif correct that a tort plaintiff can recover only what has been paid or incurred for medical care, even if that is less than the reasonable value of the services rendered? (2) Even if Hanif, which involved Medi-Cal payments, reached the right result on its facts, does its logic extend to plaintiffs covered by private insurance? (3) Does limiting the plaintiff’s recovery to the amounts paid and owed on his or her behalf confer a windfall on the tortfeasor, defeating the policy goals of the collateral source rule? (4) Is the difference between the providers’ full billings and the amounts they have agreed to accept from a patient’s insurer as full payment—what the appellate court below called the “negotiated rate differential”—a benefit the patient receives from his or her health insurance policy subject to the collateral source rule? We address these questions below.
The Court of Appeals for the first appellate district in California recently published a new case that will be of interest to Personal Injury Attorneys in Sacramento: Yanez v. Soma Environmental Engineering, Inc. Citation for Yanez v. Soma: (2010) 185 Cal.App.4th 1313 (Download a PDF of Yanez v. Soma) Click HERE to skip to the […]
