The Curse of Legal Knowledge

“That is a mouthful. So again, in general terms: The numerator is the number of patient days attributable to Medicare patients who are poor. The denominator is the number of patient days attributable to all Medicare patients. Divide the former by the latter to get the fraction ’expressed as a percentage.‘“

“If we consider Maciolek and Spencer together, what emerges is a workable standard for judges and juries to evaluate: The act must warrant alarm in a reasonable person for the safety of others.” 

“In each [of the above cases], the Court observed that using a different method required no change in the State’s statute, but only a change in an agency’s uncodified protocols. Here, all parties agree that Georgia would have to change its statute to carry out Nance’s execution by means of a firing squad. They dispute whether that fact switches Nance’s claim to the habeas track.”

When Teresa Sivil purchased her Eagle River, Alaska, home in 2014, she entered into an insurance agreement with Country Mutual Insurance Company through its Alaska broker, Melissa Izzat Insurance Agency, LLC (MIIA). That policy covered the peril of sudden and accidental water damage. When Sivil moved to Nevada three years later, she contacted an MIIA representative to remove personal-property coverage from the home policy. Allegedly without Sivil’s knowledge or consent, the representative also removed coverage for sudden and accidental water damage. When a pipe broke at Sivil’s Alaska home the following winter, she submitted the claim to Country Mutual, who quickly denied it, citing the modification of the policy to remove coverage for water damage. Sivil sues Country Mutual for breach of contract, breach of the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing, and violations of Nevada’s unfair-claims-settlement-practices statute.

Defendant Country Mutual Insurance Co., moves for summary judgment on the grounds of breach of contract and lack of evidence to support bad faith claims...

“Protective notices of appeal play an essential role in preserving appellate rights when a party seeks to appeal a district court order of uncertain appealability. In such circumstances, litigants are not forced to forgo good-faith objections to appealability in order to pursue an appeal on the merits. To the contrary, as officers of the court, would-be appellants are duty-bound to notify the appellate court of potential jurisdictional defects. The solution to this potential dilemma is straightforward: Appellants in such circumstances are advised to ‘consider a protective appeal.’”

“To prevail on [method of execution claim], a prisoner must identify a readily available alternative method of execution that would significantly reduce the risk of severe pain. In doing so, the prisoner is not confined to proposing a method authorized by the executing State’s law; he may instead ask for a method used in other States.This case concerns the procedural vehicle appropriate for a prisoner’s method-of-execution claim. We have held that such a claim can go forward under 42 U. S. C. §1983, rather than in habeas, when the alternative method proposed is already authorized under state law.”