Published articles, messages, chats about current legal newshttp://www.lawyers.comhttp://editorial.lawyers.com/common/image/favicon.icohttp://www.lawyers.com1616http://research.lawyers.com/news-headline/Missouri-Supreme-Court-rules-med-mal-theory-OK-for-expert-explanation-l:833392491.html?method=rss Plaintiffs can now bring medical malpractice cases that involve common medical knowledge that needs a medical expert's testimony to explain, the Missouri Supreme Court ruled. The legal theory of res ipsa loquitur - Latin for "the thing speaks for itself" - provides that, in some circumstances, the mere fact of an accident's occurrence raises an inference of negligence. It is used when it is not particularly clear what caused an injury, but all probable causes are under the defendant's control. Previous caselaw had seemed to indicate that expert testimony wasn't allowed when presenting such a theory. The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that such testimony was allowed. Twenty-eight other jurisdictions have permitted the testimony. Eight have rejected its use. Wed, 06 Aug 2008 12:00:00 -0400 http://research.lawyers.com/news-headline/Setbacks-in-Enron-case-threaten-other-prosecutions-l:833392442.html?method=rss WASHINGTON Almost seven years after the energy giant Enron collapsed, a series of court decisions have opened the door to new trials for some of the convicted corporate executives and threatened to hobble the Justice Department's efforts to pursue future corporate-fraud cases. In the wake of the scandal, prosecutors pursued executives for covering up the company's financial bleeding and unloading millions of dollars in stock. The Bush administration was under pressure to hold the company's executives accountable for what at the time represented the largest bankruptcy in U.S. history. More than 4,000 Enron employees lost their jobs, and investors lost billions. However, legal experts said the government's setbacks in court raised troubling questions about how federal prosecutors handled the high-profile cases and suggested that the Justice Department could face serious obstacles in other white-collar investigations: ¿ In one defeat for the Enron prosecutors, the usually divided Supreme Wed, 06 Aug 2008 12:00:00 -0400 http://research.lawyers.com/news-headline/Judge-to-unseal-anthrax-probe-documents-l:833392286.html?method=rss WASHINGTON (AP) -- The chief judge of Washington's federal courthouse on Wednesday unsealed hundreds of pages of documents in the FBI's nearly 7-year investigation of anthrax mailings that killed a Connecticut woman and four other people. The move by U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth came after consultation with Amy Jeffress, a national security prosecutor at Justice, and as FBI Director Robert Mueller prepared to brief the families of anthrax victims on details of the case. Wed, 06 Aug 2008 12:00:00 -0400