Iowa's Governor Wants to Ban Traffic Violation Cameras
Iowa’s Governor Branstad is not happy with what he perceives as the unfairness of traffic cameras. He says he’d sign a bill banning the use of them in Iowa. He's wrong. They are working on some roads especially on I-235 between Des Moines and West Des Moines.
See Branstad Says He Would Sign Traffic Camera Ban, KCRG, TV-9. Apparently while visiting Arizona he was mailed a $200 traffic ticket after his speed was 10 miles over the posted limit while driving across the desert in a rental car.
As a personal injury attorney I don't find the outright ban encouraging. Anyone who has driven on I-235 from West Des Moines to Des Moines before the traffic cameras were installed knows what that was like. It's a race track with no traffic cop. Interstate 235 needs cameras. There are some locations where traffic cameras have helped to slow down the traffic and reduced the number of accidents and near accidents. Totally banning cameras would only encourage the morons who drive like they are on the Newton Speedway. Why should the Governor give them the green light?
At what point in life do people begin to believe Facebook postings are real life?
A recent article I read interested me from a professional standpoint towards workplace safety but I thought it missed a major point about litigation. This article of interest explores the dangers of being a farmer, but ignores the contribution of civil trial lawyers. With this I take exception.
For today’s article we have several real life rollover accidents. The 
Today’s litigation brief looks at a recent accident involving one car pulling out and being broadsided by an oncoming truck; the truck driver appears to have the right-of-way. As a young lawyer you have to ask yourself whether the guy pulling out is completely at fault or whether there is other evidence of negligence.
Here is a trial tip: The lawyer with an intersection collision case should get a copy of the video from the intersection traffic camera. Which means we have to learn where these cameras are located. As for clients who are in an intersection collision it’s better to get a lawyer onboard sooner rather than later. This is also a reason for the lawyers to get out to visit the accident scene. You just never know where a camera may be recording the events. The camera may be on a nearby building used as a security camera.
My office mate and I recently litigated and successfully settled a cow-in-the-road case in southern Iowa. The facts are as simple as a black cow weighing 1,000 pounds out on a county road after dark where there are no lights doesn't show up in your headlights until it's too late to stop. In that case the driver's wife died. The driver was a family doctor and we thought that would help him in the community with farmers who admired his dedication to Iowa families. Think again. No one in the community came forward to admit ownership of the cow.
Dead Men and Punitive Damages - In Iowa you can't sue an estate for punitive damages. 
Oral arguments before the Iowa Supreme Court are now live and 
Without a plan the long tail of your marketing plan can get chopped off 
As officers of the court we lawyers are ethically constrained from openly criticizing the court. As a practical matter we just won’t criticize publicly because to do so risks angering those who rule for or against our clients. My opponents would love nothing better than for me to openly criticize the judges and justices. If I did my clients would soon seek out another lawyer who was more constrained and less likely to anger the Court.
The lawyers for plaintiffs' and injured workers are still (barely) in business, because the defense lawyers and the insurance companies need us so they can continue to make huge profits by ripping off the public through 'promoting the float'. Without us there would be no need to have defense lawyers or so many insurance adjusters; and it's the defense lawyers and legions of adjusters who create the illusion there is a need to protect the insurance float from greedy people who get injured through no fault of their own. Most people believe this nonsense until it's them that is the injured one.
Is the legal system rigged against people; and in favor of big business or does it just seem that way?
Where do I find a big fat paycheck in the practice of law?
The joke goes, how cold is it outside? It’s so cold I saw a lawyer with his hands in his own pockets!
You can do this personal injury work only so long before it’s clear to you that the system is rigged to make money for insurance executives and not to resolve personal injury claims. To the insurance executives that run our insurance system, injured people are nothing more than a necessary evil, a mere nuisance. For that matter so am I. They love to hate me. The system simply tolerates injured people while claiming payments to them are a waste; all the while the system is the waste that feeds the pigs running it.
To put this case in perspective I need ask only one question. Can road conditions, including snow and ice, really cause a car accident?
FARMER SNOOK: "YOU CAN'T MAKE A SILK PURSE FROM A SOW'S EAR"
What is an elocution?
If you’re going to bash gays you may at least have the decency to do it openly and without the guise of hiding your fears and anger behind a smear campaign against judges that you know aren’t going to be able to defend themselves.
Today was “tomorrow” yesterday so let’s revisit the 
Many of my clients say they want justice, but mean fairness; judges tell me fairness has nothing to do with justice, but they intend to convey they are fair. Young lawyers, not necessarily young in age, seek fairness for their clients, but they do so in the name of “justice” or so they say. Which do you prefer?
I’ve been known to complain to lawyers against whom I practice that when it comes to business most lawyers are the dumbest businesspeople on the planet. Today I want to point out one lawyer, Maggi Moss, who is not in that category. Maggi is a colleague and friend of mine. She’s a businesswoman with a lifestyle that many lawyers should consider, because attorney Moss is successful in whatever she chooses to do. Currently her occupation isn't the practice of law.
Many years ago I found myself away from the city and in some rural part of Iowa talking to a jury when one elderly woman told me there is nothing wrong with this generation that a good depression couldn’t cure. This is a wise old woman. We won that case and that's pretty amazing because that farm wife sat listening to a young lawyer with a heavy Rhode Island accent that dropped r's where they belonged and then added those r's back onto words where they should not have been. I started in this practice more than 30 years ago and to every rural Iowa jury I showed my love of the law practice, common sense and no fear of hard work or insurmountable odds. Back then we didn’t use computers, cell phones and iPods weren’t even being discussed. We used things like paper, pens, typewriters, Dictaphones and recorders. We wore out the leather on the bottom of our shoes investigating cases along with the leather on briefcases. God I’m feeling old. Maybe I shouldn’t be writing this?
Do you believe lawsuits are about blame? Do you say to people that we need to kill all the lawyers? If so, you’re missing the point and should ready yourself for the day when the unreasonable and the irresponsible rule the world. As trial lawyers our goal is to explain to a fact finder in simple terms what made America the greatest country on earth.
There is a scam being played out across the Midwest having to do with a quick confidence game involving lawyers, a potential client and law suit funding companies.
Yes, I'm posting again. I was sleeping but then then I realized life was happening without me and I had to get up and write. Today is all about law school. The 
At the University of Iowa a staff person was injured when eight balloons exploded during transport. The worker filled what is reported as 
Yesterday we discussed lawyers providing estate and trust services to a man later charged with the killing of another man; the effect was to make the grieving widows efforts to enforce a civil judgment somewhat difficult. My point was that what the lawyers did was ethical and that it wasn’t the lawyers’ job to delve into the motives or reasons for the accused farmer asking for that legal advice. Today let’s go a step further with what the general public doesn’t get and seems it will never get because they aren’t schooled in the law. Let’s say the Iowa Bar Association’s ethics committee decided to investigate the lawyers who created the trusts and executed the transfers of titles for the accused farmer and his wife. Would they be successful in gathering evidence? No they would not. Because even if the Iowa Bar Association investigated the lawyers those lawyers under investigation would never be able to disclose what they had learned from the farmer and his wife at their meetings that took place following the killing. What a client says to a lawyer can’t be disclosed without the clients consent. And it’s doubtful the client would ever consent to such a disclosure. It’s called the attorney-client privilege and it’s there to protect the client – which someday may be you.
