Intense marketing can easily cross the line into investment fraud, especially when the elderly are the target. Seniors can be ripped off via fraudulent telephone solicitations, with offers to help them avoid home foreclosure and even at free-lunch investing seminars.
According to a MetLife Mature Market Institute survey of reported swindles, 51% of scammers were strangers, but 34% were family, friends or neighbors. If you feel your parents are in danger, here’s what you can do: Continue reading
Excerpted from Texas Lawyer, January 22, 2013
The beneficiaries of a multimillion-dollar trust have sued an estate-planning attorney, his firm and an accounting firm, alleging professional malpractice related to a tax plan that led to litigation with the Internal Revenue Service. JohnstonTobey partner Robert Tobey represents the plaintiffs.
“It’s more than a lawyer offering bad tax advice. We’ve got the accountants (accounting malpractice) and the litigation attorneys also involved,” Robert, who represents the plaintiffs in G. Michael Hurford, et al. v. Joseph B. Garza, et al., says of the allegations in the petition. Continue reading
For a legal malpractice case to be winnable and attractive to a malpractice attorney, it needs to contain the following traits and characteristics:
by MARK WHITTINGTON and RANDY JOHNSTON
Reprinted with permission from the November 21,2011 issue of the TEXAS LAWYER
Cases involving business tort and negligence claims against professionals, such as Texas attorneys, accountants, engineers and health-care providers, are prime candidates for settlement through mediation. But they also require specific preparation by mediators and attorneys.
Professional liability cases lend themselves to early mediation for at least three reasons: insurance coverage, resource-drain and publicity. Speedy resolution may preserve the maximum insurance coverage available. Professional liability claims are complex, and as defense costs go up, coverage available for satisfying the claim goes down (which is why these insurance policies are known as cannibalizing or diminishing policies). Continue reading
There is an old story about the grandfather who was hit by a truck and his grandson told him he should sue the truck driver. The grandfather said he could not afford a lawsuit. The grandson reminded him that he could get a lawyer on a contingent fee and the grandfather said, “Oh, I got enough money to afford a lawyer. I cannot afford the judge.”
We talk all the time about lawyer’s ethics, but we also need to occasionally talk about judicial ethics. At the start of modern trials, one of the warnings that judges give to jurors is that the jurors are not to google the parties, or go drive by the site of the wreck, or do any independent research to help them decide the issues that will be presented to them. “Limit yourself to what you hear in court,” we tell them. Well, does the same thing apply to judges? Continue reading