Providing the complete litigation record for John Edwards

Wondered what sort of cases John Edwards (the VP candidate associated with John Kerry) has been litigating? FindLaw has the link. I've included summaries and commentary below.

Beyond representing clients in routine personal injury cases, Edwards developed a specialty in swimming pool injury cases. In one case involving a 5-year-old girl who was disemboweled by suction from a pool drain, the jury awarded her $25M, the highest personal injury award in North Carolina history at the time.

Aside from the one bizarre case (children disemboweled by pool drains?), the personal injury and product liability cases look less than wonderful. Most of them appear to involve stupid behavior by clients, such as diving into the shallow end ("improper supervision"), dying during a rescue attempt after a head-on collision ("wrongful death"), falling from a scaffold, or being crushed by a delivery box.

Another specialty Edwards developed was in medical malpractice cases involving problems during births of babies. According to the New York Times, after Edwards won a $6.5M verdict for a baby born with cerbral-palsy, he filed at least 20 similar lawsuits against doctors and hospitals in deliveries gone wrong, winning verdicts and settlements of more than $60M.

Lots of babies with cerebal palsy being blamed on doctors improper care that I don't have the medical knowledge to evaluate. One adult woman who committed suicide after being removed from suicide watch, which frankly offends me -- I believe in the right to commit suicide. Unless there was some medical reason why the woman could not be considered to be in her right mind, she should be able to make her own choices.

The non-baby, non-suicide cases (all two of them) look valid.

Another specialty Edwards developed was in motor vehicle accident and injury cases involving tractor-trailers.

And these are just classic ambulance-chasing, as far as I can see.