Some of us just can’t stop thinking about football–after all, the next Super Bowl is only 363 days away. (Especially here in Boston, where fans are jubilantly celebrating the New England Patriot’s third Super Bowl victory in four years.)

And those of us mediator types who also happen to be football junkies sit up and take notice when a news story combines our two passions. Seems that the Cincinnati Bengals and the National Football League have just agreed to mediate a federal anti-trust suit filed by Hamilton County, Ohio. They’re working on selecting the mediators right now.

Stay tuned, sports fans.

To continue with the topic from February 5’s posting concerning the power of the apology in reducing litigation over medical errors, today’s Boston Globe carries a story unnervingly captioned “The horror of awakening during surgery“. (Yikes.)

The advice to anesthesiologists in the event this befalls a patient on the operating table? ”If a mistake was made, the doctor should apologize.”

Moral of the story: Never mind malpractice reform.

Just say you’re sorry.