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Med Mal News
Report Names 2016's Judicial 'Hellholes'
The American Tort Reform Association issued its annual “judicial hellholes” report on Dec. 15, 2016. As per usual, New York City was near the top of the list, beat out for top billing by the City of St. Louis (2016's worst “hellhole”) and the entire State of California. Several other jurisdictions and courts were also named, such as Madison, IL, the Florida Supreme Court and the area of South Florida, where, according to the report, “aggressive personal injury lawyers wait like hungry gators to seize upon the litigation opportunities the [Florida] high court so predictably provides.”
Responding to the report's publication in a written statement, Linda Lipsen, the CEO of the American Association for Justice, a group made up of plaintiff lawyers, called the annual report a “publicity stunt” that has been “ridiculed, debunked, and exposed as nothing more than propaganda paid for by corporations seeking to evade accountability for wrongdoing.”
American Tort Reform Association spokesman Darren McKinney, who served as editor in chief of the report, responded to Lipsen's comment by saying, “They are entitled to their opinion. Our report is based on the facts. We are not making up the court cases that we are citing. Any reader can click and go find the original sources.”
Sperm Bank Loses Bid To Move Fraud Suits to Georgia Federal Court
Defense attorney Robert “Dusty” Sanford, of counsel at J. Supple Law in Sausalito, CA, says his client, sperm bank Xytex Corp., will be gearing up for multiple trials now that the U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation has denied the defense's motion to consolidate all the federal actions against the sperm bank and some of its employees. The Dec. 7, 2016, decision means that six federal suits filed outside of Georgia will go forward in their original venues rather than being moved to the Northern District of Georgia, where two other cases currently await action.
The Georgia-based Xytex is being sued for providing one particular donor's sperm to several women while failing to inform them that he was a convicted burglar who had been prescribed anti-phsychotic medications to treat schizophrenia. The claimants further allege Xytex told them that donor No. 9623 was a doctoral candidate with an I.Q. of 160, when in fact he had an I.Q. of around 130 and no college degree at all. Women in multiple states and in Canada have given birth to 36 children via artificial insemination using doner No. 9623's sperm. Although none of these children have yet shown signs of mental illness, the onset of schizophrenia often occurs in the teen years or early adulthood. The suits seek medical monitoring for the children.
Another attorney for the defense, Ted Lavender, said after the motion to consolidate was denied: “Xytex sought consolidation in order to streamline the cases it is defending, but will now continue defending the individual cases in the jurisdictions where they are pending.” An alternative reason the defense might have preferred a Georgia venue for all the cases is that, although the suits have been styled as ones for product liability, consumer fraud and the like, the defense insists the women's claims sound in wrongful birth — a cause of action not recognized by Georgia courts.
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