Recently in Injury & Tort Law Category

You’ve probably noticed that we seize every chance we can find to write about Louisiana football in this blog. And we thank you for your indulgence.

Usually, the relationship between the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals and Louisiana’s gridiron greats is tangential. Sometimes, football players find their way to the appellate court for their off-field pursuits, so we at least feel justified writing about them. This week, we started crossing our fingers that the Saints bounty program — one of the biggest scandals in the NFL history — could eventually make its way to the Fifth Circuit.

Most people want to avoid prison, and rightly so. Despite the abundance of reading time, it’s crowded, the food’s terrible, and it’s fairly stressful to live knowing that you could be shanked at any second for looking at someone the wrong way in the prison yard.

Not to mention the complete loss of personal freedom.

There are three cases over the last two years that make observers extra-nervous about prison conditions in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals’ states: Duvall v. Dallas County, Waganfeald v. Gusman, and Depriest v. Epps. Let’s go through these case-by-case, and discuss why you should keep fighting to keep your clients out of prison.

There are 13 medical schools situated within the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals' geographical reach. Any of those medical schools can dismiss a student based on his suitability for the practice of medicine.

There are ways for a student to appeal dismissal based on a public university's decision that he is not "suited" for medical practice. Suing the school for "major depression" discrimination is not one of those ways, according to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals made a great argument for homeschooling last week: Schools are not constitutionally required to protect students from rapists.

We’re not talking about teachers and principals taking extraordinary measures to wrest kids away from bad guys. The school in this case released a nine-year-old girl to Tommy Keyes — who was not authorized to sign her out from school — at least six times. Keyes took the girl from the school, raped her, and returned her to school. (He is now in prison.)

It was bad to be one of the tourists stuck in New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina struck in 2005. It was even worse to be one of the tourists stuck in a New Orleans jail during the storm.

Robie Waganfeald and Paul Kunkel Jr., two Ohio tourists, were arrested for public drunkenness in New Orleans two days before Hurricane Katrina hit the Crescent City. They remained in jail for a month after the storm -- well beyond the 48-hour holding period limit.

Waganfeald and Kunkel sued Orleans Parish Sheriff Marlin Gusman for false imprisonment, and a jury awarded them over $650,000 in damages. Monday, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals tossed that award, finding that the storm emergency trumped the 48-hour rule, reports The Associated Press.

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last week that the Army Corps of Engineers (Corps) is liable to property owners who suffered billions of dollars in damage during Hurricane Katrina, reports the Associated Press.

The court affirmed District Judge Stanwood Duvall's 2009 decision in the matter on Friday, finding that the Corps is not protected by qualified immunity under the Flood Control Act.

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld summary judgment in favor of a Texas city this week, finding that a police officer's use of deadly force against an armed, suicidal teenager did not amount to excessive force.

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled this week that displaced hurricane evacuees may not sue the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) for formaldehyde exposure under the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA) because the plaintiffs lacked subject matter jurisdiction.

The plaintiffs, evacuees who were placed in FEMA Emergency Housing Units (EHUs) in Mississippi and Alabama, filed a class action FEMA trailer lawsuit against over 100 defendants, including the federal government, alleging that the EHU trailers that FEMA provided for displaced Gulf Coast residents after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita jeopardized the plaintiffs' health.

The federal False Claims Act (FCA) creates a cause of action for any person retaliated against by his employer for attempting to prevent an FCA violation. The cause of action, however, was not accompanied by a statute of limitations, so federal courts have been stuck applying the most-closely analogous state statute of limitations.

Courts don't always pick the right statute.

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last week that a Texas district court erred in applying the Texas Whistleblower Act (TWA) statute of limitations to a FCA retaliation lawsuit.

Cameron International Corporation (Cameron), one of the litigants in the Deepwater Horizon oil spill litigation, is asking the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals to reconsider the scheduled nonjury trial in the matter, which is set to begin on February 27 in New Orleans. U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier is slated to preside.

Cameron, which designed and manufactured the blowout preventer used on the Deepwater Horizon rig, claims that a nonjury trial under the current plan would violate its constitutional rights.