Articles Posted in Litigation

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A Louisiana volunteer firefighter, Rodney Champagne, who works for the Duson Volunteer Fire Department was injured around June 28, 2010, while testing fire hoses at the fire department. After the hose wall blew out, the hose struck Mr. Champagne in the head, ultimately causing permanent mental injuries. The contact also fractured his skull. In response, Champagne and his wife filed a tort suit, both individually and on behalf of their minor child.

A tort is basically just a wrongful act that someone does that causes them to be legally liable. These acts are not necessarily illegal, but rather, are acts that cause someone else to suffer loss or be harmed unfairly. In this case, the plaintiffs are claiming that the hose wall blowout that led to Champagne’s head injuries is the tortious act for which someone should be legally liable.

The plaintiffs filed suit against several defendants, but two in particular, Lavergne (another fire fighter at the same department) and AAIC (Lavergne’s insurer), tried to get a motion for summary judgment passed to excuse them from the suit. The motion for summary judgment argued that Lavergne was immune from tort liability because he is a co-employee of Champagne.

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Medical treatment is always a sensitive legal issue. In one instance, a patient, Ms. Finley, received an improper diagnosing from her local ER. The trial court granted Ms. Finley’s motion for summary judgment against an Emergency Room (ER) doctor for breaching the standard of care by misdiagnosing her during examination. The Court of Appeals reversed and remanded the case because summary judgment cannot be based on a factual finding. The plaintiff appealed the trial court’s failure to grant a motion to strike the defendant’s opposition to the motion for summary judgment, but was unsuccessful because the trial court has discretion concerning service of process.

Ms. Finley was accepted as a patient at the Christus St. Frances Cabrini Hospital ER of Rapides Parish on August 30, 2002. Although a medical review panel opinioned that Dr. Ugokwe did not breach the standard of care and took all reasonable steps in an attempted diagnosis of a difficult to determine health circumstance, Ms. Finley filed suit on May 11, 2005.

The plaintiff’s motion for summary judgment was based on depositions from the defendant’s expert witness that allegedly agreed with the plaintiff’s expert, proving the applicable standard of care and its breach. Dr. Ugokwe filed his objection and the opposition was left in the mail slot of the Plaintiff’s counsel’s building. The Plaintiff received the opposition and filed a motion to strike.

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Louisiana, like many other jurisdictions, has adopted the doctrine of comparative fault. Prior to comparative fault, many plaintiffs were denied recovery from a negligent wrongdoer if they also were negligently at fault (according to the doctrine of contributory negligence). Comparative fault alleviated this harsh rule of contributory negligence and, for some time now, Louisiana Law has provided relief for an injured plaintiff, even if said plaintiff was negligent as well. For instance, if an injured plaintiff filed suit and the jury decided that the defendant was responsible for 15% of your injuries, that defendant would be liable for 15% of the damages. Such a rule promotes a fairness, but how does this rule comport with legal fees?

Trial itself isn’t free, and in many cases expert testimony is crucial. The general rule is that the percentage of fault assigned applies to court costs as well.

In a recent case, Davis v. State of Louisiana, there was an automobile accident where the jury found DOTD 25% at fault but the judge, rather than assigning DOTD 25% of the costs, assigned them 100% of expert fees and clerk’s costs.

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In the summer of 2007, a woman was dining at a hotel restaurant in Alexandria, LA, when she was injured, allegedly by the restaurant’s negligence. Exactly one year later the aggrieved, Ms. Holmes, filed suit, naming Choice Hotels, Inc. as the defendant. Within weeks Choice Hotels responded, asserting it had no connection whatsoever with the hotel where the accident occurred. It seems that, through unfortunate circumstances, Ms. Holmes mistakenly named and served the wrong party.

Within a month of receiving notice of her mistake, Ms. Holmes amended her petition, correctly renaming the defendant. However, by the time they were served with notice, fourteen months had passed since the date of the injury. Granting the hotel owner’s motion for “exception of prescription,” the trial court dismissed the case.

Exception of prescription occurs when the prescribed amount of time to file a complaint expires. It is a procedural rule developed to protect a defendant from the burden of defending stale claims, but since it is developed purely for protecting the defendant against prejudice, where prejudice is absent, Louisiana law provides a doctrine that will allow the amended complaint to “relate back.” An amendment “relates back” to the date the original complaint was filed so long as the action asserted by the amended complaint “arises out of the conduct, transaction, or occurrence” of the action asserted in the original complaint. La.Code. Civ.P. art. 1153. The Supreme Court of Louisiana has set forth specific requirements prerequisite of an amended complaint that mistakenly named the wrong defendant in 1983.

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In continuing the last post, an automobile accident took place where a variety of damages awarded to the plaintiff were mitigated by the allocation of fault. After the court of appeals reversed the allocation of fault and rendered that Mr. Artigue was 100% at fault, the court addressed four remaining assertions of error. Ms. Richard asserted that the jury committed manifest error in determining each of the four monetary values defined, arguing that the values were lower than the lowest reasonable value that could be determined by the facts at trial.

The jury’s determination of damages is a finding of fact, and much discretion is left to the jury (or judge in a bench trial where he or she is the trier of fact). Therefore, a trial court’s finding of fact cannot be reversed unless it is clearly wrong. i.e. that a reasonable factual basis does not exist for the finding. The court of Appeals affirmed the loss of future wages, past wages, and general damages. However, the court held that the award for future medical expenses demonstrated manifest error and amended the judgment for future medical expenses

Ms. Richard also argued that the amount reached by the jury for future earnings was erroneous because it was below what either economist testified to as her future lost wages. However, both estimations assumed that she could not ever work again, and the facts show that Ms. Richard didn’t cease working until slightly over 2 years after the accident (when she was fired). Therefore, the jury could have reasonably found that Richard may return to work in the future.

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On a rainy morning in Lafayette Parish there was an accident on I-49, and traffic was even more congested than usual. However, a subsequent accident is the subject of this post. Ms. Richard was driving southbound when she came upon the accident and stopped. The vehicle behind her did the same. A third automobile, a truck driven by Mr. Artigue, failed to stop, struck the second vehicle and pushed it into Richard’s vehicle. In the wake of the accident, Richard filed a claim and Artigue subsequently asserted the affirmative defense of sudden emergency.

The Jury determined the damages to be $225,000.00 for future lost wages, $555,833.00 for future medical expenses, $10,000.00 for past lost wages and $325,000.00 for general damages. However, the jury only allocated 60% of the fault to Mr. Artigue. The jury attributed the remainder to sudden emergency/third party fault.

Ms. Richard appealed, asserting seven assignments of error. The first three issues relate to the jury’s allocation of fault, and are the subject of this post. The final four relate to the jury’s damage awards and are the subject of the following post.

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A high percentage of personal injury lawsuits are based upon claims of negligence. Negligence and intentional torts are both similar in that they result in harm to others. However, negligence actions differ from intentional torts because they are the result of a non-intentional action. There are essentially four elements of a negligence claim that must be met in order to prevail in a lawsuit. There must be a duty of cared owed to another, a breach of this duty of care, actual harm as a result of this breach, and causation. An individual will be on the hook for any harm that arises due to his or her’s negligence actions. If one’s standard of care deviates from that of a reasonably prudent person under same or similar circumstances, then the individual’s actions may be considered negligent.

The concept of the first element of a negligence claim of a duty of care is highlighted in this recent case. Ms. Ponceti and her daughter, Katilynn, lived in an apartment complex located in Louisiana owned by First Lake Properties (“First Lake”). While Katilynn was playing in the courtyard of the apartment complex, a teenager lost control of his bicycle and injured her. Ms. Ponceti sued First Lake, claiming that it was negligent in allowing the teenager to ride bicycles on the sidewalks of the apartment complex.

This is a personal injury lawsuit based upon the previously discussed negligence tort theory. In claiming First Lake was negligent in allowing bikes on the sidewalks, Ms. Ponceti needed to show that First Lake owed her daughter a duty to take reasonable care by preventing people from riding bicycles on its sidewalks that may potentially cause injury. Here a critical issue comes into play: does First Lake owe her such a duty?

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In order to hear a claim a court must have jurisdiction over the matter. Essentially, that means that the court must be legally able to hear the case. For example, some courts are only legally allowed to hear certain types of cases, like the Tax Court, which only hears tax cases. In addition, some courts may be precluded by administrative agencies. If an administrative agency is supposed to address the issue, then the court is generally not allowed to step in to fill the administrative agency’s role. The laws occasionally create small areas where the court can act, but in order to fit in those areas, your case has to have a certain type of very specific facts.

A case arising from the Parish of East Carroll explains these conflicts. In that case, a woman working at Shady Lake Nursing Home was attacked by a resident. The resident was outside of his room when he was not supposed to be, the women told him to go back to his room, and he attacked her in a fit of rage. In this instance, the woman was obese and had high blood pressure. She started having blood pressure issues shortly after the attack and was subsequently rushed to the hospital. She died approximately one hour after the attack.

Because the attack occurred at her workplace while she was working, workers’ compensation covered the attack. However, her family also attempted to sue Shady Lake Nursing Home for damages. They argued under two major exceptions to workers’ compenstation law: intentional tort law and heart conditions.

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In the previous post, we looked at the background and majority opinion in Khan v. Normand, et al, which involved the tragic death of Nayeem Khan after he was hog-tied by deputies of the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office. This post will delve into the dissent written by Judge Garza.

Judge Garza wastes precious little time in strenuously objecting to the majority’s conclusion. He writes:

The district court in this case concluded that the facts surrounding Khan’s death fell somewhere in between Gutierrez and Hill, but that Hill ultimately controlled. The majority has taken a different route to the same conclusion, opining that Gutierrez was a narrow holding that cannot be extended to the facts of this case, and that our decision in Hill makes it difficult to say that the law was clearly established.

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Precedent is an absolutely vital part of American jurisprudence. Judges look to previous court cases to help guide them through their decision making process. Judges attempt to distinguish cases that are different, and analogize similar cases. Precedent adds an amount of stability to our justice system. But what happens when the outcomes of seemingly similar cases appear contradictory? The case of Khan v. Normand, et al. helps illustrate the importance of precedent in the context of the tragic death of a man in police custody and illustrates how judges can look at the same precedents and reach very different conclusions.

On July 17, 2007, Nayeem Khan, a man with a history of mental illness, began to run around a grocery store yelling that people outside were going to kill him. While visibly upset and delusional, Mr. Khan was also suffering from a drug-induced psychosis at the time of this incident. After managing to handcuff him, store security guards, and an off-duty sheriff’s deputy that happened to be in the store at the time of the incident, contacted the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office. When deputies began to remove Mr. Khan from the store, he physically resisted. Eventually deputies restrained Mr. Khan by handcuffing both his hands and legs behind his body and connecting his hand and leg restraints with another pair of handcuffs. This meant Mr. Khan was in a four-point restraint which effectively hog-tied him. Mr. Khan began to have great difficulty breathing almost immediately, and deputies removed the restraints and administered CPR until an ambulance arrived. Mr. Khan began to breathe again, but tragically died later that night.

Mr. Khan’s parents sued the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office and the individual deputies involved in their son’s restraint alleging excessive force and violations of Nayeem’s constitutional rights. The Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office sought a summary judgment alleging that the deputies were protected from liability on the basis of qualified immunity. The district court agreed, and granted the motion for summary judgment on the grounds of qualified immunity which prevents government officials from being sued while in the course of performing their official duties.

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