Trial Attorney Blog

This Tuesday federal regulators from the FDA urged makers of many kinds of medical devices that contain heparin to test their supplies. These concerns arise from previously discovered supplies of Chinese made heparin contaminated with a look-alike ingredient that mimicked heparin in standard tests of drug potency and purity.

The FDA announced last month that it had identified the contaminant as a modified form of a common nutritional supplement. That substance is cheaper to produce than heparin, leading to suspicions that it may have been intentionally added somewhere along a complex and lightly regulated supply chain in China.

China is the world’s leading supplier of heparin, a blood thinner often made from a substance in the intestines of pigs. It is commonly given to prevent blood clots in heart surgery and dialysis patients

A new study reports that from 1991 to 2005, nearly 40,000 people older than 65 were injured while riding escalators, an average of 2,660 a year. The report, published in the March issue of the journal Accident Analysis and Prevention, is based on an analysis of data collected by the Consumer Product Safety Commission.

The rate of injury more than doubled in that period — to 11 per 100,000 population in 2005, the latest year for which figures are available, from 4.9 in 1991. There were no fatalities, but more than 2,500 people were hospitalized, mostly for broken bones.

The researchers could not explain why the rate is rising. but noted there are more active older adults.

An analysis of 41 million Medicare patient records, released April 8 by HealthGrades, a health care ratings organization, found that patients treated at top-performing hospitals were, on average, 43 percent less likely to experience one or more medical errors than patients at the poorest-performing hospitals.

From 2004 through 2006, patient safety errors resulted in 238,337 potentially preventable deaths of U.S. Medicare patients and cost the Medicare program $8.8 billion, according to the fifth annual Patient Safety in American Hospitals Study.

The overall medical error rate was about 3 percent for all Medicare patients, which works out to about 1.1 million patient safety incidents during the three years included in the analysis.

Our Atlanta based medical malpractice lawyers frequently handle cases involving medication errors in hospitals. Some of these cases result in catastrophic damages.

A research study published in the April issue of the journal Pediatrics determined that medicine mix-ups, accidental overdoses and bad drug reactions harm roughly one out of 15 hospitalized children. The number is far higher than earlier estimates and bolsters concerns already heightened by well publicized cases such as the accidental drug overdose of actor Dennis Quaid’s newborn twins last November. Quaid’s twins got life-threatening heparin overdoses in a Los Angeles hospital.

Researchers found a rate of 11 drug-related harmful events for every 100 hospitalized children. That compares with an earlier estimate of two per 100 hospitalized children, based on traditional detection methods. The rate reflects the fact that some children experienced more than one drug treatment mistake. The new estimate translates to 7.3 percent of hospitalized children, or about 540,000 kids each year, a calculation based on government data.

On Friday, April 4, 2008, the District Court of Appeals, First District, State of Florida upheld the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation’s suspension of Allstate from writing insurance in the State of Florida.

Allstate had been suspended weeks before for refusing to produce documents during an investigation of the company. The Florida market comprises 17% of Allstate’s national sales.

The court found Allstate guilty of arbitrary reductions of “bodily injury claim payments to its policyholders and beneficiaries by up to 20%.” It also determined that Allstate was engaged in ongoing criminal activity by failing to cooperate with the Office of Insurance Regulation’s investigation of a crime, and that this constituted a danger to the public health, safety or welfare of citizens.

Our Atlanta personal injury attorneys are constantly monitoring emerging rends in the legal field. Recently, a controversial test that is supposed to detect “malingering” is gaining popularity among defense experts in personal injury, workers’ compensation and other cases.

The “Fake Bad Scale” is being offered by medical experts as evidence that plaintiffs are fabricating or exaggerating their pain or other medical symptoms.

A few courts have ruled on the admissibility of the test, including three Florida courts that excluded testimony about it last year. In one of those cases, a trial judge in Hillsborough Country, Fla. ruled that the test was “not an objective measurement of effort, malingering or over-reporting of symptoms” because there was no manual for administering or scoring the test.

If you think the prescription drug you took for headaches caused your heart attack, the Food and Drug Administration says you can’t sue the maker for injury if it met agency standards. The Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) says you can’t sue a mattress maker if your mattress bursts into flame despite meeting CPSC standards. Companies making sport utility vehicles would get similar protection from suits brought by people injured or the families of those killed in rollovers under National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) proposals for stronger roofs.

Consumer advocates call this “silent tort reform.” It is part of the tension between state and federal law that has existed since the nation’s founding. If there is a conflict, state laws must yield under Article 6 of the Constitution. But where there is no federal law, federal courts must defer to laws of the state where a lawsuit is heard. Big business and insurance companies are now using this to avoid responsibility for negligent actions and omissions at the expense of innocent consumers.

Under the Bush administration, a developing body of judicial opinion could place new limits on the rights of those who buy or use products. It also could mean the savings of billions of dollars by companies insulated from lawsuits.

A study released yesterday contained bad news for makers and buyers of portable defibrillators, devices that deliver electrical shocks meant to revive victims of sudden heart In the first major study of their use in household settings, researchers found no evidence that the devices produced significant life-saving benefits. The study, of more than 7,000 heart patients, concluded that patients in homes equipped with the gear died at the same rate as those without it.

Defibrillators were originally designed for ambulance crews. However, they have recently been marketed to consumers for use in homes.

Importantly, the study noted that the life-saving potential of the automated external defibrillators was well established in hospitals, emergency vehicles and in public settings like airports and casinos. At public locations there are typically employees close at hand who are trained to use the defibrillators.

Many wrongful death lawsuits have been brought against the manufacturer of the popular police taser device but according to the manufacturer’s boasts which are in the public record, no such lawsuits have been successful. And yet, practically every week it seems, another person is killed by the use of this product.

Our wrongful death and injury lawyers read last week a news article about a teenager who was killed by the use of a taser after an altercation inside of a grocery store near Charlotte, North Carolina. Apparently, a 17-year old teenager got into an argument with one of his supervisors at a grocery store and police officers were summoned to the scene. When the officers arrived, the teenager allegedly was highly agitated and allegedly refused all verbal demands. A police officer used a taser on the teen to subdue him. The taser killed the teenager, age 17. It appears from the news accounts of this incident, the death of this teenager was not warranted by his non-violent conduct as he had not committed nor was he charged with any crime. He was merely upset and agitated and was not a threat to anyone as he apparently had no weapons on his person.

Over and over again it seems that people are killed by this device and yet the device continues to be used by the police. While every case is different, of course, in many cases we read about the use of these tasers in cases where the suspect is not known to be violent, has committed no major felony or other violent crime, and yet is intentionally stunned with this product, sometimes with fatal results.

Thirteen (13) people have died (and many more injured) as a result of burns and other injuries sustained in the explosion at the Imperial Plant in Port Wentworth, Georgia. Investigators have expressed the opinion that sugar dust ignited and caused the explosion which resulted in these injuries and deaths. Because most of the people burned, injured or killed as a result of the explosion were employees of Imperial Sugar, unfortunately, they will be barred by law from suing their own employer. This is the state of law in Georgia. Workers’ Compensation benefits are available to injured employees but injured employees cannot sue their employer. The one exception to this “non-suit” rule is where a third party’s acts contributed to the injuries and/or caused the same. The employer still cannot be sued, but other “third party” companies can be sued if their acts contributed to the damages sustained.
From newspaper reports, it appears that Imperial Sugar contracted with a company called Stokes Contracting to clean sugar dust at the plant. Obviously, a full investigation would be required to see what the contractual duties and undertakings were, but assuming the newspaper reports are true, those injured and/or killed may have claims against Stokes Contracting and/or any other entity that provided such cleaning services. If the failure to properly clean the sugar dust out of the plant was a proximate cause of the explosion, then there could be third party liability claims brought against that third party, in this instance, apparently, Stokes Contracting.
Cases of this nature are always tragic for the families involved and for those seriously burned or injured. While only time will tell whether there are valid third party claims to be made, one would hope that the injured and severely burned would have remedies other than those provided under Georgia’s Workers’ Compensation statutory scheme. The Georgia Worker’s Compensation statutory scheme is quite limited in the remedies it provides to those injured on the job. For example, pain and suffering is not awarded at all and lost wage benefits are typically quite low, usually below $500.00 per week, which is very difficult for those who have been injured to live on. While Workers’ Compensation medical benefits are good, because these types of burn injuries can last for years and years, it is evident that those involved in these incidents will suffer for a lifetime and yet they receive no pain and suffering compensation under Georgia’s Workers’ Compensation scheme. This it is why it is important that someone involved in an incident of this nature confer with competent counsel to make sure that any third party remedies against third parties who may be also liable for their damages can be pursued.