Woller v. Scottsdale Ins. Co., No. 2024AP500 (Wis. Ct. App. Sept. 29, 2026) (unpublished). In May 2022, 14-year-old Landen Klockziem’s parents let him drive their International 656 tractor approximately 15 miles to school. In the parking lot, he ran over a fellow student’s foot. That student sued and named Scottsdale Insurance, who had issued a…
Laurel Hill Mgmt. Servs. v. La-Z-Boy Inc., 25-1727 (6th Cir. Aug. 19, 2026). Cent. States v. McClain, 25-2727 (7th Cir. Aug. 26, 2026) ERISA preemption is one of the golden tickets in health subrogation. It is this concept that allows ERISA plans to escape the confines of state-law anti-subrogation rules like made whole and common…
Dodge v. Didion Milling, Inc., 2025AP3 (Wis. App. Jul. 30, 2026) (per curiam). **“Per curiam” means the opinion was issued by the court as a whole rather than signed by one judge; this opinion is unpublished and generally cannot be cited as precedent in Wisconsin courts. One of the tradeoffs of Wisconsin’s workers’ compensation system…
The August 19, 2026 New York Times article, “How Wall St. Profits When Personal Injury Lawsuits Pay Out,” takes a hard look at the rapidly expanding world of litigation financing. Litigation financing can give an injured person short-term help with rent and other expenses while a personal injury claim is pending. But the same arrangement…
Understanding When HIPAA Applies One of the most common questions in workers’ compensation subrogation practice is whether HIPAA requires a signed release before medical records can be obtained or shared. The short answer is that HIPAA seldom prevents the exchange of records between medical providers and workers’ compensation carriers for the purpose of administering or…
For years, Alaska remained one of the last holdout states which had not provided any caselaw decisions to declare whether and what evidence of medical bill charges or payments could be introduced by the parties in a personal injury suit. In a personal injury case, was the “reasonable value” of medical bills incurred by the…
Bayham v. State of Louisiana, Through the Office of Group Benefits, 2019 WL 4073410 (La. App. 2019). In a line from the History Channel’s television series Vikings, Viking chieftain Ragnar Lothbrok looks down at the village of Kattegat with his son and gives some advice regarding power: Power is always dangerous. It attracts the worst and…
Recovery of Medical Expenses in Personal Injury Actions Generally To recover damages for past medical expenses in a personal injury lawsuit, a plaintiff must present evidence and prove that the medical expenses incurred were both “reasonable” and “necessary.” For more than 100 years, this simple formula was the least complicated aspect of a plaintiff’s personal injury…
A Philadelphia jury handed down a roughly $28 million verdict against Johnson & Johnson and Bayer AG on Tuesday, December 5, giving hope to tens of thousands of Xarelto plaintiffs after a series of defense verdicts in the federal multidistrict litigation (MDL) currently pending in the Eastern District of Louisiana. This is also very good news for…
After considering a motion brought by the plaintiffs in 46 actions pending in nine federal districts across the country, the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation (MDL) entered an order on Tuesday, transferring those actions to the Northern District of Ohio for coordinated or consolidated pretrial proceedings. Those cases represent only a fraction of the cases filed…