John Morgan Wants the Jags to Hire Tim Tebow!

What better way to spend your hard-earned money than to take ads calling on your favorite football team to hire The Tebow:

Orlando-based lawyer John Morgan has developed an ad aimed at cajoling Jaguars owner Shahid Khan into signing Tebow.

The spot has been posted by the Orlando Sentinel.

“I’m John Morgan of Morgan & Morgan, and I wanna talk Tebow for one minute. 

Here’s the evidence.  Tim Tebow played on two national championship teams.  He won the Heisman as the best college player in the country and was drafted in the first round by the Denver Broncos.  Somebody knew somethin’.  And after he got his only chance to start, the Broncos were 1-4 and he led them to the AFC playoffs, and beat Pittsburgh.

“The Jaguars are 27-42 in the last five years, one of the worst records in NFL history.  And more in store for this year.  We can’t even fill an entire end zone.

“Tebow is one of us.  He has class, character, and he’s a winner.  Let’s win, Mr. Khan.  Once upon a time, so-called experts probably doubted your potential, and now look at you.

“Give our guy a shot.  I’ll even buy that box your tried to sell me.  Remember this:  You can’t TiVo Tebow.  Let’s do this Mr. Khan.  For the people.  Let’s win.”

Maybe John should have spent more time and money in Tally fighting recent legislative restrictions affecting plaintiffs?

(The elimination of the Frye standard and the adoption of Daubert seems pretty big, though we've been dealing with that in federal court for a long time.)

Thoughts?

Frye v. Daubert Steel Cage Death Match!

I've spent literally decades learning how to apply the relatively ancient (1923) Frye standard to expert testimony in state court.

Now come some whippersnappers (Big Business?) who want Florida courts to "get with the times" and adopt the newer (1995) federal Daubert standard.

But what will I do with all that "useless and pointless knowledge" -- I guess file it away right next to my 8-Tracks, cassette tapes, and broken VCR machines.

You can read the text of the bill here.

For an industry defense perspective go here; for a consumer perspective go here.

Personally, I love this quote from Joel Perwin:

"It's an attempt to make it much more difficult to get expert testimony before a jury. It takes decision-making away from the jury. It encourages tremendous judicial activism. It's ironic that these conservative legislators give judges all that power," he said.

Oh well -- at least Daubert hearings come cheap!

Question -- should our state judges add to their workload and begin conducting complex and lengthy inquiries into highly technical or scientific matters where experts offer competing and contradictory testimony?

Don't they have enough on their (severely underfunded) plate?

Daubert Happens.

Lest any of you forget that whole "gatekeeping thing," the 11th reminds us by affirming Judge Moore in a case where an otherwise well-respected, accomplished, and qualified expert offered an opinion that was not deemed reliable either as to general or specific causation.

Here's a key passage on the expert's flawed "differential diagnosis" methodology:

Kilpatrick is correct that differential diagnosis itself has been recognized as a valid and reliable methodology. But that is not the issue about which the district court found fault. Rather, the district court found that Dr. Poehling’s application of this methodology was flawed. In order to correctly apply this methodology, Dr. Poehling must have complied a comprehensive list of potential causes of Kilpatrick’s injury and must have explained why potential alternative causes were ruled out. However, Dr. Poehling only ruled out two causes – thermal energy and gentian violet contrast dye. He clearly testified that he could not explain why potentially unknown, or idiopathic alternative causes were not ruled out. Dr. Poehling also admitted that neither he nor anyone else in the medical community “understands the physiological process by which [chondrolysis] develops and what factors cause the process to occur.” Thus, the key foundation for applying differential diagnosis was missing, and based on these deficiencies, the district court found that Dr. Poehling failed to apply the differential diagnosis methodology reliably.

Why doesn't the darn doc just do some good, old-fashioned epidemiological studies?

Oh yeah, there is this:

Kilpatrick’s argument that conducting any epidemiological studies would be unethical, because it would require the potential destruction of a person’s shoulder cartilage, has some merit.

I'm not seeing the problem.