Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

My Dave moment as a quasi-judicial employee of the US Dept of Commerce? A woman inventor was mad at me. She felt I handled her case poorly, disagreed with my decisions, etc.

I tried to explain my reasons, why I did what I did, but she wasn’t having it, would go back to yelling. Finally I said “maybe you should find yourself a new Patent Office.”

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

Okay, so this TX law is so stupid I can't really believe that what I've read about it so far is accurate. But the whole fucking world is collapsing in an orgy of idiocy, so it might be true. Anyway, here goes:

1. It gives private citizens the right to sue (or prosecute?) abortion providers who they think might be violating the law.

2. This was done to avoid a constitutional challenge that would accrue from having state actors enforce the law.

3. This was also done to avoid a constitutional challenge that would accrue from allowing women to be sued (or prosecuted?) for having abortions.

Um... How are the impact (subverting the right set forth in Roe) and the motive (intentionally thwarting a federally recognized right) not paramount? The law is using citizens as proxies, and attacking doctors rather than patients, to subvert a constitutional right under Roe.

And how does anyone determine probable cause? Say some officious shitball "citizen deputy" wishes to investigate a violation. How the fuck does this nitwit get around HIPAA?

Is this thing as dumb as it looks, or am I missing some diabolical genius in its construction? Seems to me all TX has done is pass a law so fucking stupid it'll take a few novel but hardly complex arguments, and a little more time than usual, to strike it.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

Re: HIPAA. I've never had a tweet go viral before yesterday. That said, plaintiff's lawyers routinely pay hospital staff for PHI. Not sure how this would be different.

There are more insidious parts of it:

* Imposes costs on defense COUNSEL if they do not prevail. And they must prevail in all points or else they have not prevailed. No costs on plaintiffs.
* That applies to challenges of ANY abortion laws in Texas.
* Can sue in any county in Texas and defense cannot change venue. Which means city docs and abettors are going to be hauled across to the most podunk, pre rigged counties in the state.
* Abet or INTENDS to abet an abortion.
* There's an emergency provision, but it's written in a way that we have to fucking wait for people to start bleeding out before we can terminate.


This is a diabolical, evil law that should have been struck down with prejudice. But given the make up of the Court, it's not surprising in the least.

We're going to have a lot more women die in childbirth. We're going to have a lot more bad babies. We're going to have a lot more OBs sued. The MFM docs are going to leave en masse.

And the legislature does not give a fuck. In fact, they're gleefully drafting more abortion restrictions as I type because they clearly got the go ahead from their buddies on the Court.




Biden should federalize docs, send down a fleet and open USA Abortion Clinics down here in all of the post offices.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

I know it is no comfort short term, but the personal empowerment to be the plaintiff shit seems double unconstitutional (umm I basically took con law pass fail, but still). And I still distinguish/hope for a difference between granting an emergency stay and a reversal of Roe. I may be wrong, but I am still hopeful that they won't do such a reversal.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

It seems hard to be too cynical about what the five most conservative justices are doing to the Constitution and the Court.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

GoDaddy took the site down "for violating their terms of service."

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

Then moved, then taken out again.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

https://www.google.com/amp/s/nypost....apartment/amp/

Omar died.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

Plaintiff's lawyers, and defense lawyers, seek records with a plaintiff's consent. A plaintiff bringing an injury or med mal suit has to agree to disclose his medical records to prove his case.

Here you have some yokel suing a doctor and demanding the medical records of a third party patient to prove his case, running smack into HIPAA.

That'll probably withstand a challenge. Don't see any unconstitutional element there.

That's a great way to infuriate judges and gridlock the court system with frivolous horseshit. The forum non conveniens challenges alone could crash a small town docket.

That's probably unenforceable as written. Unless there is an actual abortion, where's the injury?

This law is evil. It's despicable not only in its aim, and its deprivation of the rights of others, but also in its disrespect for the judicial system. It turns courts into romper rooms for right wing troglodytes. No sane judge wants this sort of garbage clogging his docket, and to the extent it delays and degrades the quality of services courts provide to deserving litigants, it victimizes the population far beyond the women and doctors it targets.

BUT... This thing is going down, and quickly. There is no way a law this stupid - and it is really fucking stupid - will withstand the first challenge it gets after some nitwit is dumb enough to file suit under it.

Everyone - and I mean everyone, including even a healthy percentage of sane Republicans, who realize how politically imbecilic this law is (which is why so many are quiet about it) - want this fakakta piece of shit stricken.

It's rare to be able to say the following about something political. Usually, one can separate politics from people and find something to like about someone with whom he or she disagrees with politically. But not here. If you like this law, you are a hideous cur, a societal shitstain. And that's not an opinion. It's a fact. You're simply awful. Shameful, subhuman. You should not be allowed to vote. You should not even be allowed to speak. You're perverted in the deepest sense -- a living example of all that is wrong and wretched in human nature. May the four winds blow you into oncoming traffic, and you live just long enough to feel the vultures pick at your roadkill carcass.

ETA: Where's the injury to any plaintiff here? How is some fundamentalist twit injured because a doctor across the state performed an abortion?

ETA2: And isn't this state sponsored champerty? Wouldn't the authors of this bill who are lawyers be engaged in unethical conduct to the extent champerty violates TX bar rules?

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

You think a law is going down because it's stupid when it's first heard in front of judges who snack on horse paste during the recess and ultimately gets appealed to justices who measure their self-worth based on the amount of applause they get at the Fed Society Gala?

Never bet against the stupidity or vanity of the judiciary.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

Lol.

If someone gets a cancer traceable to a particular tortfeasor his or her phone will get more phone calls from plaintiffs' lawyers than most of us get about our car warranty. The phone (coincidentally, linked to the number given to the hospital) will literally melt from such calls.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

Hospitals leak that info to plaintiff's counsel? That's a straight up violation of HIPAA (and probably several other statutes and common law torts).

Aren't firms afraid of using that info? I could see a criminal investigator looking into that sort of leaking. One would assume the firm was somehow paying off people in the hospital for the info. Why else would someone in health care risk their job and possible civil or maybe criminal sanction?

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

A lot of assumptions I hold fail me. One that does not is a firm belief the greatest incentive on Earth is the promise of work avoidance. And, of course, that incentive becomes increasingly powerful as the nature of the work sought to be avoided becomes increasingly annoying.

This law will irritate the shit out of judges. Imagine the forum change applications, discovery disputes, heavy handed attempts to drag medical professionals into depositions. Fucking disaster. Everything will be appealed. And nobody will back down because there will be private donor money backing both plaintiffs and defendants.

Sure, a few disgusting judges who like to legislate from the bench and have no respect for women will rule in ways that assist the vile aims of this statute. But the majority of people I've known from TX are not crazy. They tend to be decent, sane folks. Maybe I'm nuts, but I don't see many of the judges, a majority of whom hail from normal areas filled with normal Texans who respect women, and desire a functional court system, supporting this abusive kind of shit. And I certainly don't see this nonsense legislation surviving after someone finds a way to challenge it within a case before a federal judge who is not a member of the Federalist Society and closeted John Birch admirer.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

It's not the hospitals. It's the aide in the ER or on the wards who overhears something and has a buddy that will pay for any info that could lead to a suit.

And so long as the subpoena includes a letter of assurance (that they've notified the patient and there's been enough time to object), then covered entities are more than able to release medical records for third parties.

Also, HIPAA does include a whistleblower provision which may or may not apply in this case. It's very specific (and most idiots in healthcare facilities looking to sell patient data aren't going to understand it), but since it was designed for Qui Tam cases, it absolutely allows a healthcare employee to give PHI to a lawyer (who the employee has retained). I'm not sure if OCR is going to interpret this provision to apply to the Texas law, but it does make me pause in saying that HIPAA absoltuely does not allow employees/covered entities from using PHI to claim a fucking bounty:

That said, the only criminal sanctions that OCR has imposed on individuals has been for selling PHI for personal gain, and I'm very, very hopeful that they're aware of this law and slam hard anyone found to have sold out their patient's information for this travesty.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

Fuck if I know. Yeah and it's probably a violation of every single ethical canon in every state. I just know that the dudes who are getting these cases are flying in G-5s while I am trying to score frequent flyer bitch miles.

Playas. Playas. Big dick playas. Swinging past your knees.

Or you can grow a conscience in the next five minutes and see where that takes you.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

In that instance, why would a subpoena be needed? If the PI lawyer represents the Plaintiff/Patient, all he needs to submit is a medical records request on behalf of the Plaintiff/Patient.

Under the TX law, the Patient is a third party to a lawsuit between the abortion provider and a Plaintiff suing the provider. The Plaintiff there (let's call him "Shitball," because that fits) sues the provider and then demands the records of a third party patient whom he alleges received an abortion.

The provider has to notify the Patient before turning those over. Patient then objects to disclosure of private information in a case in which Patient is not even a party.

Do you see a judge overruling the privacy interests of a third party - privacy interests in the most personal and sensitive forms of information imaginable - to satisfy discovery requests from a litigant suing a third party under a statute nakedly enacted for purely political purposes over broad public objection?

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

Reminds me of that quote attributed, perhaps falsely, to Jeb Bush:

“The truth is useless. You have to understand this right now. You can't deposit the truth in a bank. You can't buy groceries with the truth. You can't pay rent with the truth. The truth is a useless commodity that will hang around your neck like an albatross -- all the way to the homeless shelter."

Ethics could be substituted for truth, and it certainly seems, if you look at Wall Street, and big PI, and just about any business where you can acquire enough to own and operate a G-5, it's preferable to ask forgiveness later rather than permission now. Wherever they are, Bill Lerach and Angelo Mozillo aren't living badly.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

Because some medical providers take authorizations and throw them in the trash. Others throw the authorizations and the subsequent subpoenas in the trash. They say "fuck you, get a court order." Which they sometimes respond to. They figure, "We ain't wasting no time with no bullshit".

I am thinking that is going to be the route here.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

I handle subpoenas /requests for one of our facilities, and most of the time plaintiffs just use authorizations to get their own records. Sometimes they'll go the subpoena route just to get the affidavit, but usually it's cheaper/easier just do to a request. And they don't end up fighting with medical records departments (me) about letters of assurance, which I still insist upon even if the lawyer is representing the patient.

Sometimes the judge overrules. Most of the time (in my experience, anyways) the patient doesn't bother to object. I suspect because the patients don't have lawyers/don't know how. It doesn't happen very often where third party records are requested. Usually products liability cases or the like, but even then the lawyers need to have identified the third party and have a sense of what was going on with them.

Note: I do get a lot of third party in the case of medical board subpoenas, but the healthcare oversight exception to HIPAA applies in those instances and usually the patient is the person who brought the complaint, anyways. And of course, criminal subpoenas, which are in the law enforcement section of HIPAA and don't require the letter of assurance, at least on the prosecution side.

If anyone is ever interested in the exceptions to HIPAA 45 CFR 164.512 is the place to go for most of them.

As for "how will judges react", I suspect that the authors/advocates of this bill know EXACTLY which courts to file the suits in and those judges are geared up and raring to go against baby killers and their assistants.

I'm frankly more worried about how OB/GYNs will react. More bad baby cases. More maternal fatalities. Maternal Fetal Medicine folks leaving the state because the risk of practicing in that area is just not worth it. Residency programs losing their ACOG accreditation because they can't train on abortion, therefore not attracting good OB/GYN residents to the state.

The authors of this bill Do. Not. Give. A. Shit. about any of this.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

Just wanted to tell you all that I love you. I always think of you and everyone that came before on 9/11. Being on the Findlaw boards on that day and the immediate aftermath will always be part of my memories of the event. We banded together in a way that became super important, and I think is the reason that we remain close here (and elsewhere) two decades later.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

Thanks. A lot. Some of us who were there but barely touched, maybe get a little bit of survivor's guilt.

I did everything I could to tune yesterday out completely but then the Mets/Yankees game (which thankfully, I sold my tix to for a fortune) and the endless speeches and interviews with Joe Torre, etc. just had me tune that out.

However, as fucked up as 9/11 was, this country did come together. Post 9/11 there is no way that there would be a divide over whether a terrorist had the right to access a cockpit.

However 9/11 pales in comparison to the events of 2016 forward which started the real downfall of this country leading to the vile divide it is facing today.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

This place is a good example of people disagreeing but ultimately compromising. There are arguments here that can get quite bitter, but they usually resolve with some form of agreement that a compromise would be the only way to resolve the issue about which we are arguing.

Perhaps naively, I think - or maybe it's more hope - a majority of the powerful and influential people in the country behave in the same fashion.

What's causing the current polarization I think started way, way before 2016. Kurt Anderson nails is quite well in Evil Geniuses (god is that a great fucking book). It's been a long time coming, and Trump was the creation of the myriad causes, rather than its creator. But we can disagree on that.

Fuck, we could disagree on a whole ton of shit. But being thoughtful and circumspect, we'd ultimately compromise where it was required to allow society, govt, both, to function.

What scares me is what I think partly makes RT, and me, and most of us here, fond of the place. Yes, if you were here pre-9/11, there was a moment of bonding in that horror. RT describes it well, and reading her description took me right back to that very day, and the posts made on it, and where I was sitting, and the surreal aspect of what I was trying to grasp as the enormity of the thing came into focus.

But also, though RT doesn't say it, it's implicit: The people here are uniquely smart. It's hard to have an affinity for the dumb, and to come back to your point about polarization, it's the dumb who are causing all the problems. The dumb won't compromise. And there's a whole lot more of them in the country, in various areas, in various schools of thought, than there are the smart.

I may not agree with everyone here all the time, but I know what I'm not going to get when I come here: Dumb. The place is a refuge in that regard. And one can't help but having an affection for that in this day and age.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

If I’m being honest I wish flower would quit and then Paigs could come back{sad face}

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

Thanks for this, here and on FB.

Love and respect to you all. Even Sebby.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

I can probably convince The Daintiest Petunia to make a comeback.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

Deal!!!

From the Yes, It’s a Banana Republic Desk
 

The Sussmann indictment has to be one of the most frivolous things ever floated.

We’re going to waste how many millions to prosecute someone for engaging in sleazy, hardball politics?

I’m not excusing the behavior, but really? Like, maybe, just maybe, we’ve slightly more important alleged criminal acts on which to focus?

Re: From the Yes, It’s a Banana Republic Desk
 

Good thread on this by Popehat:

https://twitter.com/Popehat/status/1438887582520147979

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

I was thinking about you all the other day. About this place. I was 1 year post law school working in a big Chicago firm on 9/11... Never forget.

Anyway, meant to log in to say hello, but life has been crazy recently, so I didn't get around to it until just now.

Glad to see the familiar faces are still mulling about. Hope you all are well.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

Welcome back.

Re: From the Yes, It’s a Banana Republic Desk
 

Two takeaways from that solid analysis:

1. The evidence is limited to a conversation with a witness with a dicey recollection of what was said. That indicates a situation where prosecutorial discretion should dictate refraining from seeking an indictment.

2. If the indictment is as long as the author suggests, and filled with woe-is-Trump sentiment, Durham has debased his office. It's bad enough to charge on facts so flimsy, and on which there's a better than usual chance that the govt will lose. To use it as a political tool and wreck the guy's life (Sussmann appears to be an asshole from what I've read, and clearly has poor judgment, but that's not a basis to destroy him) is vile.

I think Durham set out on a witch hunt (I know, but the term fits) and came up with nothing. But as so many in his position do (Ken Starr, Mueller to an extent, etc.), instead of admitting there's nothing there, he decided dammit, he'd find something to prosecute. And so now Sussmann is the sacrifice he can serve up to those who wanted heads to roll, and also his cover for those who claim his witch hunt was a witch hunt.

Re: From the Yes, It’s a Banana Republic Desk
 

I want to know the daintiest petunia's take on this.

Re: From the Yes, It’s a Banana Republic Desk
 

The oral statement before one person is especially surprising to me.

Once upon a time, I practiced with a former FBI agent and was involved in a couple of his investigations. The travel in pairs thing was so deeply ingrained in him - if his phone rang, he'd ask someone to come into his office and listen in on the call. There was always a witness.

Re: From the Yes, It’s a Banana Republic Desk
 

I asked. Here was the response:

“Hahaha, LOLZ, whut??!??? Um, tl; dr. Ha ha, blah blah, please send me lots of tweets with max wordage and min fun, srsly is this a real thing people do? Hahaha!!!!!!!!”

Re: From the Yes, It’s a Banana Republic Desk
 

Petunia :eek::eek: posts were always littered with emoticons. I think you spoke to a fake. IIRC NTTAWWT ha ha JK :P:o:rolleyes:

Re: From the Yes, It’s a Banana Republic Desk
 

Maybe, like many of us, Petunia has grown, changed, evolved. I can’t say for sure, but based on our limited exchange, I think I was communicating with a more confident, mature, and centered Petunia.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

Anyone know a South Carolina med mal attorney?

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

I would have 2 weeks ago, but I quit that Atlanta-based insurance litigation firm. :o)