Et Tu, Counselor: may an in-house attorney file a qui tam action against the attorney's employer?

Most corporations probably do not consider their in-house counsel to be potential qui tam threats. That may be a naive assumption. Case law provides an illustrative view of the legal ramifications involved when an attorney brings a qui tam suit. In general, there is no prohibition on attorneys who wish to bring these actions. Nevertheless, a corporation can take preventive steps to eliminate the likelihood of attorney qui tam actions. In addition, the corporation can take advantage of state professional ethics laws to mount a defensive action against the attorney who files any such action.     

RECOMMENDATIONS OF THE COMMITTEE TO STUDY FAMILY ISSUES IN THE ARIZONA SUPERIOR COURT

Justice 2002, a strategic agenda for the Arizona court system over the next five years, has the goal to build public trust confidence in the Arizona courts. A focus of Justice 2002 is the protection of children, families, and communities. One of the number of projects that have been initiated is the establishment of The Committee to Study Family Issues in the Superior Court (Committee). On October 22, 1997, Chief Justice Thomas A. Zlaket established the Committee and charged the members to: "[E]xamine the manner in which cases involving family issues, including cases involving minor children, presently are processed and determined in the Superior Court,… leading to improvement in the manner in which these cases are resolved in the court system; and report to the Arizona Judicial Council its findings and recommendations…" This article is a summarization of the Final Report presented to the Arizona Judicial Council (AJC) in December, 1998. The reader will find that the report is rather general. The Committee has functioned under the assumption that an implementation committee would be formed to work out the details, should the AJC choose to adopt the recommendation to establish a Family Court in Arizona.     

Fixed Investment and Economic Growth in China

This paper attempts to investigate empirically the investment-growth relationship in China. Using the exogeneity framework pioneered by Engle et al. (1983) and Engle and Hendry (1993), we find that fixed investment is a key determinant of China's economic growth, which, surprisingly, has not been rigorously examined in the literature. The super exogeneity test results suggest that there exists a robust (or structurally invariant) relationship between capital formation and income growth, thereby giving credence to policy evaluation.     

Image analysis of gunshot residue on entry wounds. II--A statistical estimation of firing range.

A statistical investigation of the relationship between firing range and the amount and distribution of gunshot residue (GSR), used automated image analysis (IA) to quantify GSR deposit resulting from firings into pig skin, from distances ranging between contact and 45 cm. Overall, for a Ruger .22 semi-automatic rifle using CCI solid point, high velocity ammunition, the total area of GSR deposit on the skin sections decreased in a non-linear fashion with firing range. More specifically there were significant differences in the amount of GSR deposited from shots fired at contact compared with shots fired from distances between 2.5 and 45 cm; and between shots fired from a distance of 20 cm or less, with shots fired at a distance of 30 cm or more. In addition, GSR particles were heavily concentrated in the wound tract only for contact and close range shots at 2.5 cm, while the particle distribution was more uniform between the wound tract and the skin surfaces for shots fired from distances greater than 2.5 cm. Consequently, for future scientific investigations of gunshot fatalities, once standards have been established for the weapon and ammunition type in question, image analysis quantification of GSR deposited in and around the gunshot wound may be capable of providing a reliable, statistical basis for estimating firing range.     

Methods for Understanding and Analyzing NIBRS Data

The National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) is an incident-basedcrime reporting program for local, state, and federal law enforcementagencies. Within each criminal incident, NIBRS captures information onoffenses, victims, offenders, property, and persons arrested, as well asinformation about the incident itself. The ability to link and analyze thisdetailed information is a significant improvement to the existing UniformCrime Reporting (UCR) summary reporting system. As one might expect,however, this increase in crime data significantly complicates the life ofthe data analyst, particularly when cross tabulating the NIBRS data. To dealwith the complexity of NIBRS data, one must understand its structure. Thisarticle provides an overview of the NIBRS structure and methods formaneuvering within it to present and interpret correctly cross tabulationsof the NIBRS data.     

Rationing care in the community: engaging citizens in health care decision making

This article examines the theoretical and practical logics of community engagement exercises in health care rationing. To evaluate such exercises in Canada, it is necessary to compare suspected rationing exercises (such as those in Nova Scotia and Saskatchewan) with clear examples of rationing. The Oregon Medicaid reform process is considered an important example of transparent and community-level rationing from which Canadian executive-driven governments can learn a few valuable lessons. While the Oregon experiment seems to have been a (qualified) success, in the Canadian context, formal citizen participation in decision making might be incompatible with social rights and present an incongruous and antagonistic pairing of executive and popular sources of authority.