REEL TORT REFORM, JUDGES WE’LL MISS (SOUTER), AND AVOID (LOPEZ)

It’s been an exciting week in the world of torts, and the law in general.  What follows is a wrap up of some of the more pertinent developments.

• Tort “reformers” take aim at captive audiences in movie theaters .
• DC MedMalBlog  reports that the idea of physicians “fleeing” from the threat of medical liability is no more than a myth in their neck of the woods: Washington, DC, Maryland and Virginia.
• Justice Souter’s replacement is likely to be not only liberal, but Latina .   See the Gothamist’s take on Bronx-born legal powerhouse and current jurist, Sonia Sotomayor, with whom I had the pleasure to work in the old days when I was a summer associate. (I’m the only one who aged.)
• Ashby Jones, at the WSJ  Law Blog , interviews Mayer Brown’s Evan Tager on how Justice Souter’s departure from the U.S. Supreme Court may affect “Big Business.”
• From Chicago, a reason to consider judge shopping:  the ABA Journal  reports that Cook County Associate Judge Mark Lopez held a female attorney who appeared before him in a child support hearing jailed on civil contempt charges due to an alleged error she made in a draft order.  The ABA Journal’s Martha Neil wrote that the attorney “was handcuffed, strip-searched and insulted by jail guards before being released the next day.”   No comment yet from Judge Lopez.