The following is a summary of notable changes to the rules governing civil practice in Arizona’s state courts based on orders issued by the Arizona Supreme Court following its August 2024 Rules Agenda.  They become effective January 1, 2025. 

Rules of Civil Procedure

Rule 7.2 – Good Faith Consultation

            A straightforward amendment to Rule 7.2(a) reminds parties of their obligation to confer before filing a motion in limine.  Rule 7.2(a) now requires a party to file a good-faith consultation certificate under rule 7.2(h) concurrently with any motion in limine.  Rules likely will continue to be amended to explicitly require…
Continue Reading 2025 Changes to Arizona Rules of Civil Procedure

It is that time of the year again. The big insurance companies are flooding the airwaves with advertisements urging seniors to take advantage of all of the wonderful extra benefits they can receive, if they only sign up for the company’s Medicare Advantage plan. And who doesn’t want free, extra benefits? Be careful, if you are considering joining a Medicare Advantage plan. There is a reason these companies can afford to offer extra benefits.

There are lots of complaints about Medicare Advantage plans. They are owned and operated by the largest health insurance companies. They have used questionable practices to…
Continue Reading Look Before You Leap

As I have remarked from time to time, doctors and nurses are human beings like the rest of us.  All of us are flawed in some way or other.  Should we really be surprised to discover that some doctors and nurses do things that deliberately harm patients?  Probably not, but murder?  Here are some stories about the most horrible of crimes.  They should keep you up at night.

A nurse in Italy administered lethal injections to 38 of her patients because they or their families annoyed her.  Sometimes she took selfies of herself with the recently departed.  She was described…
Continue Reading Murder Most Foul!

I did my Air Force pilot training in West Texas in the heart of the Permian Basin, an incredibly rich, oil producing region.  The area enjoyed oil booms and suffered through oil busts.  A resident posted a sign during one of the down periods, “Please, Lord, just one more oil boom.  We promise not to screw it up this time.”  The sign speaks to the propensity of human beings to be shortsighted and to make a mess of things.  That propensity has been on full display when it comes to the use of antibiotics.

Antibiotics have been around since the…
Continue Reading The Bugs Are Coming! The Bugs Are Coming!

In the 50 years I have been practicing law, I have seen the pendulum of jury sentiment sway back and forth.  When I began practicing juries were often sympathetic to injured people and willing to hold negligent parties responsible for the harm they caused.  Over the last twenty years, however, that has been less true as juries have been skeptical about people suing to recover for personal injuries, especially if the alleged wrongdoer was a doctor or hospital.  That may be changing.
Over the last twenty years, if you were a doctor or hospital and a malpractice case against you…
Continue Reading Big Verdicts in Malpractice Cases Are On the Rise

For all the medical malpractice that is out there and all the different ways a health care provider can screw up, I still see many of the same things over and over.  In light of how common some of these occurrences are, you would think the doctors and hospitals would do a better job of stopping them.  On the other hand, since many of them are rooted in the foibles of human nature, they are going to be exceptionally resistant to change.

Communication Errors:  Think of the old game of Telephone.  As the message is passed from person to person,…
Continue Reading Recurring Problems in Medical Malpractice

Many employers, who were trying to keep a lid on the cost of medical treatment for their employees, hired pharmacy benefit managers (PBM’s) to assist them.  PBM’s market themselves as being an agent of the employer for whom they can negotiate prices with drug companies and keep down drug costs.  Sounds really good in theory, doesn’t it?  Someone who knows their way around the drug industry and can keep them from overcharging you.

As is so often the case in our convoluted and inefficient medical delivery system, “Not so fast.”  In the view of many who want to improve our…
Continue Reading Bait and Switch

As health care becomes more complicated, the role of administrators becomes more important.  Decisions made by administrators affect the decisions and activities of doctors and, by doing so, affect the patient care they deliver.  Health care professionals have known this for years, but never had a name for the damage caused by administrative decisions.  Now the problem has a name:  Administrative Harm (AH).

One hundred years ago, doctors practiced by themselves or in small groups.  They were independent of the hospitals to which they may have sent their patients.  They and they alone made the decisions about what care their…
Continue Reading An Old Problem Finally Gets A Name

Mother Nature knows best.  There is a lot of truth to that old adage.  Our bodies are the result of a process of natural selection that has been going on for millions of years and is still going on today.  Our bodies were optimized for a certain way of living.  As we have changed our way of living (think junk food and sitting in front of the TV), our bodies are trying to catch up, but cannot keep up over the short run of only a century or two.  Changing the way we live has had some very bad effects…
Continue Reading Exercise – The Wonder Drug

Our health care delivery system is deeply flawed.  It is obscenely expensive, delivers spotty care that depends largely on where you live and how much money you have, and leaves many Americans out in the cold.  These flaws create ripples that cause problems across society.  One of the effects of the flawed system is exemplified by the very large malpractice verdicts arising out of birth injuries.

One of the great joys a person can experience in this life is the birth of a child.  It is almost literally a miracle that there is a new person in the world who…
Continue Reading Another Ripple Effect Of Our Flawed Healthcare System

That is the story with Medicare Advantage plans.  It seemed like a good idea at the time.  The concept was given birth by the ideologues who believe that private industry can always do a better and more efficient job than the government can.  Medicare was spending a lot of money paying for care for its senior enrollees.  What if we let private industry in on the program?  Surely, private industry could provide the same or better care for less money than those wasteful bureaucrats over at the Medicare offices.  It didn’t turn out that way or come even close.

In…
Continue Reading It Seemed Like A Good Idea At The Time

Recently I posted about deceptive techniques hospitals are using to enhance fees. Today I am writing about an article by Dr. Marty Makary, a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and a frequent critic of the many failings of our health care delivery system.  A recent column by Dr. Makary in the Washington Post discusses how Medicare’s payment system has unintentionally played a role in incentivizing hospitals to create these money-making schemes.

The starting point here is the fact that hospitals charge a great deal more for a procedure performed inside the walls of the hospital than the…
Continue Reading Hospitals Are At It Again

Free markets and the laws of supply and demand have been very good to us.  We have a strong economy, good worker productivity and a huge variety of products available at affordable prices.  In order for the laws of supply and demand to work efficiently, however, they require certain conditions such as transparency about prices and the absence of large barriers to entry.  Both of those important factors are missing from the healthcare marketplace and we see the results all around us.  Healthcare deserts, outrageous prices for drugs, widely different prices for the same service in the same local area,…
Continue Reading Healthcare Is Too Important To Be Left To The Marketplace