Legal News and Appellate Tips

If you were a lawyer drawing breath in summer 2022, you heard about the “victory bell” case. A prominent defense attorney, returning to base camp with a stunning victory after defensing a medical malpractice case, rang his firm’s victory bell and announced, the victim “was probably negligently killed, but we kind of made it look like other people did it.” The comment was captured on video, and the internet did its thing.

A common hot-take was that the video would undo the verdict. But many appellate attorneys scoffed: an attorney’s puff talk after trial, the cooler heads responded, is not a trial irregularity.

Enter Brooke Bove, who wrote the successful new-trial motion in Garcia v. Quraishi that got the judgment vacated. Brooke gives an insider look at trial, and why the defense attorneys reference to an empty chair particularly galled the trial judge.

Bove, an Army communications specialist before becoming an appellate attorney, shares her insights into the case and what is coming next, as well as top legal tips and strategies.

In this timely episode of the California Appellate Law Podcast, health care litigator Rick Jaffe joins Jeff Lewis and me to discuss the maelstrom of lawsuits challenging vaccine mandates in state and federal trial courts and appellate courts throughout the nation.

Rick’s practice focuses on cutting-edge medical and legal issues across the country, and he is the author of *Galileo’s Lawyer*, a book telling the stories of medical mavericks and giving an insider’s view on high-profile and controversial medical cases.

We discuss why medical-rights litigation is different from other types of litigation. Rick then explains the three basic types of vaccine lawsuits that the courts are facing in late 2021 and early 2022: (1) challenges to the federal agency and police power; (2) religious conscience challenges; and (3) challenges to the state police power.