About Harris Meyer
Harris Meyer is a veteran legal and health care reporter and editor who has written for Super Lawyers, American Lawyer Media, ABA Journal, Kaiser Health News, Health Affairs, Medscape, Modern Healthcare, and many other publications. He is a graduate of Northwestern University and lives with his wife, Deborah, in Chicago.
Articles written by Harris Meyer
‘Human Damages’
How Cody Dishon won a $59.7 million verdict for a paralyzed friend—from a Jefferson County juryIt was Cody Dishon’s first medical malpractice trial, and it was a tough one. In August 2019, at age 33, Kiet “Ricky” Tuan Do, a personal friend of Dishon’s, suffered paralysis in most of his body due to a rare blood clot on his cervical spine that essentially suffocated his spinal cord. Dishon, representing his friend, claims that a delay in treatment of nearly 30 hours allegedly due to negligence by Baptist Hospital in Beaumont and several physicians caused Do’s catastrophic …
Yes, Chef!
How real estate attorney Zac DeLap ended up on Food FightersWhat do you do if your fiancee is driving a beater of a car, but you’re in your final year of law school without the means to help her out? An enthusiastic amateur cook, Zac DeLap conceived the longshot idea of competing on a cooking show. “We knew we wanted to leave the LA area as soon as I finished law school,” DeLap says. “But I thought I’d try to get on a show first and make some game show money.” Now a real estate partner at Hillis Clark Martin & Peterson in Seattle, DeLap …
Interesting Times
Perennial Super Lawyers listees on adjusting to two decades of changeKelly Overstreet Johnson remembers when most lawyers, including herself, scoffed at the idea of mediation. Now, it’s what she does. Dinah Stein recalls the days when appellate lawyers got involved in cases only after trial. Now, she says, they may log more courtroom time than trial lawyers. Eddie Suarez notes the shift to electronics to present evidence in court. “In the old days, you showed up with cardboard blowups of your documents,” he recalls. David Prather misses the days when …
Seeking Victory for the Vulnerable
Kevin Biniazan’s team lands a $360 million award for young behavioral-health patientsFor years, teenage female patients at Cumberland Hospital in New Kent, Virginia, told staffers they were sexually abused during intake exams by longtime medical director Dr. Daniel Davidow. Many of the girls had mental health issues related to prior sexual abuse and may not have been believed. Enter Kevin Biniazan in 2020. After talking to former Cumberland patients and their parents about alleged abuse at the hospital, which is part of the Universal Health Services (UHS) chain of behavioral …
Seeing Around Corners
Paul O. Lopez’s superpowers include crafting strategy and keeping his coolComing out of law school, Paul Lopez knew there was only one job for him: trial lawyer. “I didn’t know there was any other kind,” he says with a laugh. Lopez made his wishes known to Tripp Scott, where he had clerked the previous summer, when the firm hired him. “They promised to let me be in the courtroom. I didn’t want to be a bookworm doing research and writing. I volunteered to try any type of case that was scheduled for trial, whether it was an auto accident case or a breach of …
Randy Schaffer’s Best Decision
An uphill death row case led the litigator to a new niche—and filmmaker Errol Morris to The Thin Blue LineIn 1982, an elderly woman from Ohio entered the Houston office of criminal defense attorney Randy Schaffer with a case that changed his life. The mother of convicted cop-killer Randall Adams, who was serving a life sentence, she implored Schaffer to handle her son’s post-conviction appeal. It seemed like a lost-cause case for which she could only pay him $300 per month—the entirety of her Social Security check. He had already twice turned her down by phone. But this time, he had opened his …
Repping ‘the Boy in the Cage’
How Seth Rosenberg tackled racism in Seattle schoolsEmployment lawyer Seth Rosenberg had no experience with cases of discrimination against students based on race and disability until 2019, when a woman called him to complain that a Renton school had released her son after a disciplinary incident into the custody of his father, an ex-offender. The father beat up the boy, who was hospitalized with a ruptured spleen and broken arm. “My colleague and I both have kids, and we were appalled,” Rosenberg says. The Renton school officials claimed …
Relentless
Michelle Suskauer relies on persistence—and niceness—to bring people around“Hi, detective, I thought this case was going away.” Michelle Suskauer conducts much of her criminal defense practice while navigating South Florida traffic jams in her low-slung BMW 840i coupe. She’s often on one phone call after another with cops, prosecutors, defense co-counsel, clients current and potential, and staff assistants. Sometimes her two daughters interrupt this succession of calls to discuss their adventures as actress-singers in New York. “It’s like being the BMW …
Second Chance
How Donald Lomurro and Christina Harvey got the state Supreme Court to consider a path back for disbarred lawyersA 1979 ruling by the state Supreme Court, In re Wilson, established a strict disbarment-with-no-reinstatement policy for attorneys found to have knowingly misappropriated client funds. Pretty cut and dried, right? Not to Donald Lomurro, who has long been troubled by the ruling’s effect on New Jersey attorneys he considered skilled practitioners who faced permanent disbarment on the grounds that they had mishandled client funds—even when they hadn’t caused those clients any financial …
The Helping Habit
Lisa Kelley credits her mom with her dedication to volunteer workLisa Kelley’s mother has a refrigerator magnet that reads: “Stop me from volunteering again.” It’s a family joke—like mother, like daughter. Kelley, a medical malpractice plaintiff’s attorney in Tampa, is renowned in her community for her volunteer work. Betsy Stecher raised Kelley and her two older brothers as a single mom. “She joined Junior League and she volunteered for everything,” Kelley recalls. “That was my example. As long as she’s got breath and her legs are …
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