Articles Posted in General Legal

The Voice of San Diego is out with an article about the impact the economic downturn is having on San Diego’s larger law firms. Nationwide, thousands of lawyers and support staff have been laid off, mainly younger associates that don’t yet have a book of business to sustain their own workload.

Luce Forward laid off 12 San Diego lawyers last month, and Cooley Godward, Paul Hastings, DLA Piper, and Latham & Watkins have all let lawyers go.

While the number of attorneys laid off is dwarfed by firings in other sectors, the law firm layoffs underscore the weakness in the economy because in past recessions, law firms have prospered in the “countercyclical” environment, because business is naturally more contentious when there’s less to share, and because lawyers are necessary to restructure failing corporations.

The American College of Trial Lawyers and the Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System has issued a report calling for major reform to the American civil justice system. Current rules allow attorneys to delay litigated disputes by demanding irrelevant or difficult to find information.

Current federal discovery rules, which require the sharing of information before trial, are antiquated according to the report. The current rules, mostly written in the 1930s, didn’t contemplate the volume of documents maintained by business today, or computers and email. As a result, the rules cause cases to go on for years, and drive people to settle or dismiss without regard to the merits.

Some other reforms suggested were setting requirement for expert witness testimony, assigning cases to a single judge to the life of a case, and allowing judges to provide mediation services on cases.

On Saturday, a Cessna 172 crashed into a utililty pole east of Oceanside Municipal Airport seriously injuring both the pilot and his passenger. According to reports, the plane was registered to California Flight Academy of El Cajon, but whether the plane was being used for training purposes at the time of the accident is unclear.

Oceanside policy have identified the pilot of the plane as Amandeep Singh, 24 and the passenger Harshdeep Multani, 18, both of whom were seriously injured. Singh remained in ICU as of Monday, and Multani was reported to be in good condition, but suffering from “several severed fingers.”

The plane was on its way from Gillespie Field to Torrance Muncipal Airport.

The new year will bring new laws to all California drivers. Just as the CHP is reporting that many Californians are ignoring the 6-month-old ban on using cell phones without a hands-free device – 42,000 citations have been issued – a few new laws will begin tomorrow.

• No text messaging while driving. This one seems like a no-brainer, but one-handed text messaging has become an epidemic on California roads, and now we have a law that bans it.

• GPS devises that are affixed to the windshield must be placed at the lower left hand corner of the window.

Most people who hire lawyers for personal injury cases want to settle their case for a fair value, but they also want to feel they have prevailed. For most people, this means a chance to share their opinions, tell their story, and let it be known that their pain and suffering are real. Sometimes this means a trial before a jury of their “peers,” but more and more often it means a mediation with an experience lawyer or retired judge.

It is well known that over 90% of personal injury cases settle before trial. And recent studies have shown that is probably a good thing for both plaintiffs and defendants. But is mediation a substitute for trial? The short answer is no. Trial and mediation differ in many ways, with greatly differing risk and costs. But both can offer the injured plaintiff the chance to obtain some of the emotional justice in addition to the money damages sought.

Consider a recent mediation we participated in here at Walton Law Firm. The case involved wrongful death, and the clients were the wife and children of the decedent. They were a very close family, and in the year-long period they were our clients their passion for justice never waned. After substantial litigation, the family agreed to mediation with the defendant. The mediation lasted the entire day, and included long discussions with the mediator about the merits of the case, the risks and benefits, and most importantly about the overwhelming loss felt by the family. By the end of the mediation, the family was able to express their loss and their anger with the defendant directly, who like the family, was in tears and expressing remorse. The case settled, and the costs and risks associated with trial were avoided. In this case, this is what this family wanted.