Commercial Litigation Update

When hospitals and doctors treat patients who are injured in car accidents, the health care providers reasonably expect that their rights to be compensated for the care they provide will not be conditioned upon their willingness to participate in their patients’ personal injury lawsuits against allegedly negligent drivers. A common pleas Court in Ohio applied this sensible reasoning in a recent decision, dismissing a car-accident plaintiff’s attempts to force the hospital that treated her to participate in her lawsuit against the driver who allegedly caused the injuries ...

Mark Twain once said: “Trial by jury is the palladium of our liberties. I do not know what a palladium is, but I am sure it is a good thing!” If Mr. Twain were alive today, he wouldn’t be quite so sure that jury trials conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic are really such a good thing.

Recent news reports suggest that a vaccine may not be available until next spring at the earliest, and it may take months before that vaccine can be widely distributed. But the demands of justice do not rest, and courts—already overburdened with growing dockets before the pandemic—are struggling to ...