In another recent snow and ice case, the Appellate Division, Second Department addressed the important standards for cross-claims for common-law indemnification and summary judgment asserted by a co-defendant.

A defendant moving for summary judgment on personal injury claims predicated on snow and/or ice has the burden of establishing, prima facie, that it neither created the icy condition nor had actual or constructive notice of it. In New York, this burden may be met by present

Joint And Several Liability

Tex. Civ. Practice & Remedies Code §33.013

Each liable defendant is jointly and severally liable for damages recoverable by the claimant if the defendant’s percentage of responsibility is greater than 50% or the defendant acted with specific intent to do harm and committed a felony (murder, kidnapping, etc.)

Jacqueline Toombs filed a medical malpractice case against Dr. Bruce Friedman, nurse practitioner Gena Markwalter and Acute Care Consultants, Inc. alleging that they were negligent in her husband’s post-surgical care. Charles Toombs, Jr. suffered a chemical burn to his left foot while at work in 2006. He underwent surgery at Doctor’s Hospital in Augusta, Georgia, to excise his wound and to apply a skin graft.

The attorney-client privilege has been a hallmark of Anglo-American jurisprudence for almost 450 years, yet its boundaries and confines remain subject to testing from litigants—including legal malpractice plaintiffs. Thus, the California Court of Appeal recently examined the applicability of the privilege in the context of intra-firm communications between attorneys regarding a dispute with a client in a subsequent action for malpractice by that client in Edwards Wildman Palmer LLP v. Superior Court (2014) 231 Cal.App.4th 1214.

The Court of Appeal, Second Appellate District, Division One (LA) recently addressed the following issue: “[w]hen joint clients do not sue each other but one of them sues their former attorney, can the nonsuing client prevent the parties to the lawsuit from discovering or introducing otherwise privileged attorney-client communications made in the course of the joint representation?”

In legal malpractice actions, jurisdictions have adopted differing approaches when applying the discovery rule to determine when a legal malpractice action accrues. In some jurisdictions, the statute of limitations for a legal malpractice action is deemed to begin to run when a claimant sustains some, but not necessarily all, damages.