Articles Tagged with Personal Injury

The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court affirmed a $328,135 jury award to a widow and her son based on her husband’s lost chance of recovery resulting from a doctor’s negligence in not treating his stomach cancer. This ruling based upon the theory of “loss of chance” damages is being applauded by plaintiffs’lawyers.

The court held that the family could recover even though the victim had less than a 50-percent chance of survival when he first sought treatment. The “loss of chance” doctrine eases the burden for plaintiffs. Under traditional malpractice rules, doctors may only be held liable if their negligence was a substantial factor in the injury or death. Under the “loss of chance” doctrine, a doctor can be liable if his failure to diagnose reduced the patient’s chance of survival.

The jury in the case found that the deceased was suffering from stage 2 adenocarcinoma at the time of his first visit to his doctor, who examined him and prescribed over-the-counter medication. A gastroenterologist who testified as an expert for the defense told the jury that stage 2 stomach cancer has a survival rate of 25 to 40 percent.

To identify the worst insurance companies for consumers, researchers at the American Association for Justice (AAJ) conducted a comprehensive investigation of thousands of

court documents, SEC and FBI records, state insurance department investigations and complaints, news accounts from across the country, and the testimony and depositions

of former insurance agents and adjusters. The AAJ final list includes companies across a range of different insurance fields, including homeowners and auto insurers, health insurers, life insurers, and disability insurers.

As Atlanta injury lawyers, we see many accident victims undergo knee and hip replacement surgery every year. Many of these victims are injured as a result of automobile and truck accidents and many result from work related injuries. The fact is nearly one million hips and knees were replaced last year in the United States alone. This represents approximately one-half (½) of the world’s total, making the U.S. the largest provider and user of implants.

Although the Food and Drug Administration is charged with monitoring devices such as artificial joints, the monitoring process is ineffective for several reasons. One reason is the FDA is overwhelmed by the vast number of products that it monitors. Another reason is that there is no system in place by which doctors can report problems with medical devices such as artificial joints. The sad truth is that the United States has no national database to track patients who receive artificial joints. Other nations, including Australia, Britain, Norway and Sweden have national databases which allow the monitoring of these medical devices. In these countries where “joint registries” exist, regulators are able to use data collected by the registry to force manufacturers of artificial joints to justify why poorly performing hips or knees should remain available and, in some cases have provided the data necessary for the complete withdrawal of products from the market.

For many years there have been efforts made to set up an open national registry in the United States; however, these efforts have failed. There are many reasons for this which include 1) medical providers not willing to complete paperwork, 2) fear that plaintiff’s lawyers would use such a database to either find cases or prosecute products liability cases and 3) perhaps because of suspected lucrative financial relationships between orthopaedic surgeons and the manufacturer of these products.

We have previously written about the federal government’s new policy restricting Medicare payments to hospitals for the extra care required to treat patients harmed by certain preventable infections and medical errors. Now the federal government is expanding the program in an attempt to to provide hospitals with a financial incentive to improve patient care.

Under the expanded policy, Medicare will not make payments to hospitals for care needed after patients suffer from certain surgical site infections (specifically for total knee replacement, laparascopic gastric bypass and gastroeneterostomoy, and ligation and stripping of varicose veins); deep vein thrombosis/pulmonary embolism (formation/movement of a blood clot); and extreme blood sugar derangement.

Medicare considered adding a number of other hospital acquired conditions to the nonpayment list: staphylococcus aureus septicemia (bloodstream infection); Clostridium difficile associated disease (a bacterium that causes severe diarrhea and more serious intestinal conditions such as colitis); Legionnaires’ disease (a type of pneumonia caused by a specific bacterium); Iatrogenic pneumothorax (collapse of the lung) delirium; and ventilator-associated pneumonia. However, none of these hospital acquired conditions were included in the final nonpayment rules just issued by the agency to be implemented on October 1, 2009.

On July 1 of this year the state of California provided a great example for the state of Georgia in prohibiting by law drivers in California from holding a phone and talking while driving. Under the new law, a driver is prohibited from talking on a hand held cell phone while driving. Blue tooth handless cell use is permitted. There is also an exception for emergencies under this new law, however, obviously, the law is intended to promote safety awareness by drivers who are oftentimes distracted while talking on their cell phones.

This law should be emulated by every state in the country, not to mention the state of Georgia. Our firm has seen many accidents where the drivers were on their cell phones at the time of the incident. Indeed, we currently have a case where it appears that our client will lose his foot and possibly his leg due to the inattentiveness of a driver who was on her cell phone at the time.

California has been known in the past to lead the way on innovative laws that are designed to promote public safety. Interestingly, the first state to ban handheld cell phones was the state of New York. Both Connecticut and New Jersey also have similar laws on the books. From 2001 to 2006, police in New York have issued almost 1 million citations to motorists for talking on their phones while driving. Obviously, the law is being ignored by many in the driving public. Nonetheless, laws like this will increase public awareness of the dangers and hopefully will decrease driver inattentiveness.

According to an Article in The Chicago Tribune, the Food and Drug Administration conclusively has linked 3 patient deaths to a foreign substance found in specific lots of Heparin, a drug manufactured by Baxter International. According to the news report, the FDA completed its review of 93 reports of deaths related to Heparin that were received from January through the end of March, a period when there was a huge spike in the potentially deadly allergic reactions from patients who had been injected with this medication. Three (3) of the deaths could be traced to lot numbers of Baxter products that had tested positive for an animal like substance known as oversulfated chondroitin sulfate.
According to Janet Woodcock, Director of the FDA’s Center of Drug Evaluation and Research, “We have what looks like a cause and effect in some patients. We know that they got contaminated Heparin and they died subsequently. This is one of the final links in the chain.”
Baxter recalled this product in February in the wake of the number of allergic reactions reported. Earlier this year, the FDA had announced that there were reports of more than 90 deaths and 1,000 adverse events associated with patients in the U.S. who had used this product. While some of the reported deaths now do not appear to have been related to contaminated Heparin, in many cases, the clinical information available was simply insufficient to specify the cause of death with “clinical certainty.” The government investigation continues.

Allstate Insurance Company is known by plaintiff’s attorneys for engaging in bad faith tactics. Last week, the Missouri Court of Appeals upheld a jury verdict that hit Allstate with more than $16 million in damages for bad faith tactics.

On March 24, 2000, Wayne Davis Jr., while drunk, drove his truck across the center line of a roadway and hit a compact car head-on. The force of the collision pushed the car back more than 100 feet. The driver and the passenger survived but suffered life-threatening injuries, and incurred combined hospital bills totaling $320,000.

The injured parties offered to settle with Davis for his insurance policy limits of $50,000. But, his carrier, Allstate, did not respond until six months later. That was after a statutory 60-day limit for accepting had expired.

According to the National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration, last summer, more than 380,000 defective tires were recalled from the market. What is more troubling than this number is the fact that experts agree that less than 20% of the public was aware of the recalls involved. Accordingly, 80% of the defective tires are still being used and are probably on the roads today. In short, recall notices are rarely received and thus the entire public remains at risk as a result of the continued use of recalled tires. To make sure that your tires are safe, you can log onto the NHTSA website and click on Safercar.gov to check on the recall list.
In the event of an incident involving a defective tire which separates, explodes or otherwise causes a car collision, one should investigate the possibility of whether the tire was recalled and/or whether the manufacturer of the tire properly recalled the tire and/or warned the motoring public of the dangers associated with its use. Dangerous tires threaten all members of the motoring public and thus increasing diligence is needed to protect against these defective products.

On April 30 of this year on a busy interstate here in Atlanta, a Ms. Katherine Armstrong was killed when involved in a collision with an armored truck on a busy interstate highway in Atlanta. The driver of the truck was later charged with vehicular homicide. Ms. Armstrong was cleared of any wrongdoing. Based on what we have learned about this tragic incident, however, the emotional, psychological, physical and monetary damage caused by this wrongful death incident does not stop with the death itself but continues.

Ms. Armstrong was airlifted to the Grady Memorial Hospital following this incident. When she got there, a hospital employee by the name of Tacuma Jawara stole her wedding and engagement rings. This despicable crime was uncovered and the employee was charged with felony theft by taking. Thus, not only did the Armstrong family lose the life of a loved one, they had to undergo the indignity of a hospital employee stealing from a victim of this tragedy. Apparently Grady never conducted a thorough investigation of this gentlemen, for whatever reason, even though as we understand it, he has now been charged with yet another offense arising from a similar theft incident.

The victim’s husband is now left to raise by himself young children ages 1, 4 and 5. Not only did he lose his wife to an apparent vehicular homicide, he was further victimized by a criminal who essentially desecrated his wife’s body and committed acts that are totally and completely despicable. While this is bad enough, the fact remains that the emotional and psychological wreckage from this wrongful death incident unfortunately is only just beginning.

In a major victory for consumers, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled last week that information that automobile and tire manufacturers submit to the government about crashes resulting in death, injury and property damage is subject to release to the public under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

The case was brought by the public interest consumer group Public Citizen. In its ruling the Court rejected the argument of the Rubber Manufacturers Association that it is exempt from FOIA’s disclosure mandates.

Since the 2003 enactment of the Transportation Recall Enhancement, Accountability and Documentation Act, manufacturers have been required to submit the information, referred to as “early warning data,” to the government. The U.S. Department of Transportation has been keeping the information secret while the Rubber Manufacturers Association appealed a trial court’s holding that the Act applied to the information.