Surgery, Informed Consent, and Time for Another Drummer
The one thing not on your informed consent form for surgery. I think this guy used to play drums for Spinal Tap.
New Blog for Long Term Care Lawyers
The Unknown Long Term Care Lawyer is a new blog by a, well, an unknown long term care lawyer. He (or she) has been all over the AIG mess and the auctioning of Beverly Enterprises.
I’ll be a regular reader.
More Pics from the Hotel Del
The last session of the American Health Lawyers Long Term Care and the Law Conference got out at 3:40 today, so I finally had some time, and a little bit of sunlight, to take some pictures. This really is a gorgeous place.
This is one of the halls leading to the main lobby. As you can see, the place is richly ornate.
I took this standing on the second floor balcony just above the main lobby. I love the ceiling.
The elevator is one of those old-fashioned things, complete with an elevator operator in a red suit. Here’s the cage, sans elevator and operator, again from the second floor balcony above the main lobby.
As one would expect, the entire campus is immaculately landscaped:
The sign in front of this Dragon Tree reads:
Native to the Canary Islands this unusual tree was planted at The Del prior to the turn of the century where it thrives in our temperate Southern California coastal climate.
The Dragon Tree was used as a backdrop in the Marilyn Monroe movie Some Like it Hot, which was filmed at The Del in 1958.
The beach looks pretty good from the hotel, despite the lack of good sunlight this day. But notice the berm.
Cresting the berm rewards one with this fine view:
As Freaktoe would say, “Eeeeeewwww!” What is that, anyway? Oh. “Eeeeewwww!”
Luckily, a sewageless area isn’t too far away, and getting there gives you a nice view of the hotel.
Pictures of the Hotel Del
Below are some pics I took yesterday when I returned from the American Health Lawyers Association Long Term Care and the Law conference.
This is where I’m staying. Cabana Building, Room 4329.
The view to the East:
To the North:
And, a bit later, to the Northwest:
As you can see, the sun came out in the afternoon. And although it was a bit cool, it turned into a pretty nice day.
Sometimes Author
The creative tendencies I formerly applied to music I now mostly apply toward writing. Besides this blog and my Tennessee Volunteer sports blog, View from Rocky Top, I’ve written a Christian-themed legal mystery/thriller entitled Reasonable Doubt. Email me if you’d like a copy in manuscript form. As I write this, you can still find the novel online, but I’m considering taking it down. I’ve had a couple of nibbles from major publishing houses, but, so far, nobody on the string.
I’ve also had a couple of law review articles published:
Neither of the articles is available online, but there is an abstract of the Save the Cleavers piece. It’s pretty hard to make tax theory interesting, but I gave it the old college try. The copyright article is, I think, much more interesting. It explores how Michael Bolton lost a copyright infringement action against him for his song Love is a Wonderful Thing.
For other writings, check out the blog’s front page and look for the Most Popular Posts section.
Who Am I? Long Term Care Lawyer and Evader of Sharks
As a kid, I wanted to be a rock star, and so it’s only natural that I ended up being General Counsel with a health care company that owns, operates, and provides management consulting and other services to nursing homes. As you can imagine, those two industries have much in common. As my friend David Crow — an entertainment attorney in Nashville and weekend fiddler at the Grand Ole Opry — put it, the synergistic possibilities are endless.
Am I being coy about the name of my employer? Yep. Why? Well, I’ll tell you. But first a story.
I heard this joke for the first time during one of my bar exam prep classes from Glenn Reynolds, a.k.a Instapundit, a.k.a. the blogfather, a.k.a. my torts professor at UT. It goes something like this:
Two campers were sleeping in their tent when they heard a noise outside. When they went out to investigate, they realized that a bear was coming after them. One of them started panicking and the other sat down and started lacing up his shoes. The one said to the other, “What are you doing? You can’t outrun a bear!” The other answered, “I don’t have to outrun the bear, I just have to outrun you.”
That principle applies not only to eluding bears and passing the bar exam, but to a variety of other situations, including risk management in the nursing home industry. Plaintiff’s lawyers make their living suing people for bad outcomes, and they often don’t care whether it’s anybody’s fault. Some law firms specialize in suing nursing homes, having made the tactically shrewd observation that there are a lot of bad outcomes in nursing homes. Residents in nursing facilities get old, they fall down, and they break bones. Some even die. So, even though it’s usually not the nursing home’s fault, the nursing home gets sued and usually has to pay out some sort of settlement because its cheaper than defending the lawsuit. There are sharks in these waters, and my employer prefers to, in addition to providing good care, stand still and quiet, and let others splash around and attract attention to themselves.
There. Screed over.
