June 2009 - Ed Stauss elected President of the Trinity Episcopal Day School Board of Trustees. The Board is charged with the general supervision of the school's faculty and staff, including control and direction of all expenditures. Stauss will also serve as chair of the Board's Executive Committee, the Head of School Support & Evaluation Committee as well as the Committee on Trustees. In addition to serving on the Board's Finance Committee, Stauss will appoint all other Board Committee chairs. Furthermore, he will schedule and conduct all of the Board's monthly meetings as President of the 16 member Board.

April 24, 2009 - Gracella Simmons was one of twelve nationally-recognized attorneys selected to participate in a mock trial hosted by the American Board of Trial Advocates (ABOTA) in St. Louis, MO on April 24, 2009. She gave the closing argument on behalf of defendants.

Key ruling - Keogh, Cox & Wilson obtains key ruling which will impact practice of medicine nationwide: Court limits CRNA scope of practice and declares interventional pain management is solely the practice of medicine. 

April 13, 2009 - The Louisiana Supreme Court denied writs in Spine Diagnostics Center of Baton Rouge, Inc. v. Louisiana State Board of Nursing, No. 2009-C-0188 and No. 2009-C-1044. Now final, this decision will have nationwide impact concerning the practice of medicine. In this litigation, our firm represented trained physicians who sought to prohibit certified registered nurse anesthetists from performing interventional pain management procedures typically performed by physicians. A permanent injunction was granted in favor of the physician group on the basis of testimony that nurses do not have the training possessed by physicians to perform many of the involved medical procedures.

The Louisiana First Circuit in Teague v. St. Paul Fire & Marine Insurance Company, No. 2006-CA-1266R confirmed an insurer's sole and exclusive right to decide whether or not to settle a professional liability suit where there is no "consent to settle" clause. The Appellate Court ruled that the defendants (represented by our firm in this litigation) caused no damage to the plaintiff. In the process, the Teague Court held that a failure to post a jury bond does not constitute actionable legal malpractice and that a legal malpractice claimant can not recover emotional damages unless the subject matter of the underlying litigation exclusively involved non-economic claims such as child custody disputes.

December 2008 - Scope of Practice: Appellate Court upholds permanent injunction preventing CRNAs from attempting practice in the field of Interventional Pain Management.

Keogh, Cox & Wilson partner, John Wolff and other members of the firm served as lead counsel in a significant case that serves to clearly delineate the lines that separate medicine from nursing. The case was initiated when the Louisiana Board of Nursing (LSBN) unilaterally declared that CRNA could practice interventional pain management procedures to include epidural steroid injections, peripheral nerve blocks and spinal facet injections. In the first phase of the case, Keogh, Cox & Wilson represented Spine Diagnostics, a local group of physicians with Dr. Michael Burdine and obtained a preliminary injunction from the 1^st Circuit Court of Appeal after the court found that the evidence submitted at trial established a prima facie case that CRNAs did not traditionally practice in the field of interventional pain management.

Keogh, Cox & Wilson was then retained by the American Society of Intervention Pain Physicians (ASIPP) along with Spine Diagnostics to pursue a permanent injunction preventing the CRNAs from practicing in this field. After 3 days of trial testimony, the trial court ruled, among other things, that the practice of interventional pain management is solely the practice of medicine and that it was not within the CRNA scope of practice.

The 1^st Circuit affirmed the trial court after a full discussion of the evidence. The court carefully examined the rigorous training requirements and regulation that physicians impose on this subspecialty. In contrast, the court noted that CRNAs do not receive training in this field as part of their certification and further noted that nursing organizations do not impose any regulation on CRNA practice in this field. As such, the court noted that CRNAs do not traditionally practice in the field, and therefore, the court upheld the permanent injunction prohibiting such practice.