Accident and Injury Lawyer Blog

Yesterday, a California judge has granted preliminary approval to a class action settlement between General Motors. The settlement would entitle an estimated 20 million plaintiffs thoughtout the country in the car litigation class action lawsuit to $50 to $800 per repair for performance problems in almost three dozen General Motors car lines.

The lawyers' fees in this case where the claimants will at most recover $800 is $16.5 million. In mass tort cases, lawyers certainly get large fees as well. But from the standpoint of a personal injury lawyer, it is odd that lawyers would get such large fees in cases where the clients have such a small vested interest.

Steve Cohen writes a column in the West Virginia Record on lawsuit abuse today in West Virginia. Like the editorial I discussed last week, it is just silly. No effort to obatin the real facts is made. The lawyer complaints that the problem is with West Virginia personal injury lawyers. Yet, none of the cases he cites are personal injury cases. Is the insanity of this lost of everyone at the West Virginia Record?

The latest case of which he complains is a Kanawha County jury verdict that awarded a Charleston surgeon $5 million in compensatory and $20 million in punitive damages, deciding that hospital executives smeared Hamrick's reputation and wrongfully revoked his privileges in a dispute over the doctor's malpractice insurance. Setting aside the fact that this is not a personal injury case in any way, shape or form, how Mr. Cohen - who knows so little about the case he thinks it is a personal injury case - feels comfortable calling the very lawsuit absurd is a slap in the face to the Kanawha County jury that listened to the evidence and rendered a verdict.

A plaintiff who is required to submit to an "independent medical examination" may videotape the exam according to the Oklahoma Supreme Court. Click here for more on this ruling.

Mississippi personal injury lawyer Zach Scruggs denied conspiring to bribe a state judge, but plead guilty Friday to a felony that will cost him his legal career.

I have never written about this story before so I began to start giving a little history but then I figured I would just refer you the Insurance Coverage Law Blog which is the most extensive analysis I have ever seen of a defense case since the O.J. trial. This blog breaks down the players, the lawyers, and everyone connected to the case.

I just cannot imagine being a billionaire - which I think Dick Scruggs was - and putting yourself in a position where you are going to spend five years in jail and your actions led your son to disbarment and a felony conviction so you can get more money in a fee dispute case. I think this is far more mind boggling than Eliot Spitzer, which was mind boggling in its own right.

Jeremy Roebuck of The Monitor in South Texas writes an interesting article about, unlike Friday's blog post, Allstate going on the offensive against abuses in the personal injury system.

In this case, Allstate has brought a fraud lawsuit against a group of Rio Grande Valley chiropractic clinics and their lawyers, claiming that they improperly recruited personal injury victims, suggested patients undergo unnecessary treatments and then persuaded their patients to file personal injury lawsuits against Allstate.

Allstate alleges the clinics, Chiropractic Strategies, has telemarketers that encourage people to visit their clinics for a free evaluation. Once there, Allstate claims they were are diagnosed with injuries they did not have and overtreated for the injuries they did have. The article does not say but I’m assuming they are calling people who have been in auto accidents based on looking at police reports or some other means to find injury victims.

In what certainly is a smart tactic, Allstate also sued the South Texas personal injury lawyers that received the referrals from the chiropractic group, including one easy target that has an extensive history of disciplinary reprimands from the State Bar of Texas and has been convicted of theft and conspiracy to commit barratry - a third-degree felony charge aimed at lawyers who improperly solicit clients.

It is worth nothing nether Texas or local authorities in South Texas have brought fraud charges against this chiropractic group or these lawyers which calls into some question the strength of these claims. But, for once, I’m rooting for Allstate to put these guys out of business if these charges are true. I hope Allstate enjoys its brief time on the other side of the v.

California Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner has ordered Allstate to reduce its auto insurance premiums in California by 15.9 percent. Commissioner Poizner's order follows a lengthy dispute between the Allstate and the California Insurance Commissioner.

For more on Allstate's problems elsewhere, click here and here.

A New Jersey jury Monday awarded Freehold (NJ) woman and her 10-year-old son who was born with severe brain damage and cerebral palsy.

The West Virginia Record has an editorial about how the three of the top verdicts in the country came from West Virginia and derided plaintiffs’ lawyers as “tort barons” destroying industry in West Virginia and through the country.

Okay, the problem is West Virginia personal injury lawyers (tort lawyers). Just for fun, let’s look at the fact and see about all of these tort claims. The big verdict was a $404 million award in Roane County v. Columbia Natural Resources. In that case, 10,000 other royalty owners who questioned the price they were being paid for natural gas produced from their property. This is not a tort claim. This is a company stealing from people. Exactly how should such a claim be handled? Should the plaintiffs have allowed this to go on without question for the “good of industry?” How many folks on the Editorial Board of the West Virginia Record would have refused payment if they were in the class? It is just plain silly.

The second case cited, a $251 million verdict against Du Pont in Clarksburg was not a personal injury case but a lawsuit over Du Pont’s handling of the environmental cleanup created by a West Virginia zinc-smelting facility. This is was not a single insured person. This was a lot of people who had been hurt by a very large company in a case where the jury found they did not give due consideration to the environment or the surrounding property owners. Approximately 7000 people suffered harm to their property and we subjected to significant health risks. What would the Editorial Board of the West Virginia Record do if they sat on the jury in this case?
The final verdict in the top 10 was a $219 million verdict against Massey Energy. The Plaintiff was another big company who was suing for breach of contract. Perhaps if one big company breaches a contract against another big company, they should not be able to sue for breach of contract. Wonderful logic.

This West Virginia Record’s editorial is pathetic. I could argue their position better than they did. There is an intellectual argument that can be made calling some aspect of our tort system in question. I don’t agree this argument – I think it is dead wrong - but it can be made based on facts and it held by reasonable people. This argument is just plain silly and is an embarrassment to the West Virginia Record and the people it has misled.

Oklahoma does not require nursing homes licensed in Oklahoma to carry insurance. Oklahoma State Senator Richard Lerblance submitted this session a bill requiring nursing homes to carry liability insurance. The Journal Record (OK) quotes an opponent as saying, “Would you rather take care of the patient or pay liability insurance? With low reimbursement rates, it’s almost impossible to do both.”

What a false choice. If you cannot make a profit and still pay for insurance, you should get out of the business because you are not running a profitable company.

How can it possibly make sense that auto insurance is mandatory but medical malpractice insurance and nursing home insurance is not mandatory?

People who live or have loved ones who live at Westside Health Care and Nursing Home, a long term care nursing home that recently received a surprise inspection, will have to wait a little longer before receiving the Cincinnati City Council’s health committee has been canceled report on how Westside Health Care and Nursing Home is caring for its patients. A report had been expected today, according to the Cincinnati Enquirer.

Cincinnati police described conditions at the Westside as “deplorable,” and reports showed residents living with fleas, flies and filth. Residents told police that laundry had not been done in three months. In the affidavit filed to secure the search warrant, Cinncinnati Police Office Aaron Layton said wrote that the conditions presented "a safety, health and fire hazard to the occupants of the premises and surrounding properties." Upon inspection, according to the Cinncinnati Enquirer, a fire door tied shut, accumulation of vomit was in an entryway, smoking was permitted near oxygen tanks, the sprinkler system did not work, and there were loads of structural defects.

When I was a kid, I was bouncing around in the back of my parents car without a car seat in sight. Today, that is child abuse but it was normal back then. If you are wondering what was seem awful 10 years from now, I think it will be the way we treat our elderly. I don't think the Westside Health Care and Nursing Homes of the world will exist in 10 years.

According to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, anti-psychotic drugs were prescribed to 26% of nursing home residents without a diagnosed psychotic or related condition, in other words, off label prescriptions to sedate patients that may or may not need it. Connecticut was second only to Louisiana in dispensing such medications.

Nursing homes in Connecticut and elsewhere are prohibited by federal law from dispensing medications for the purposes of discipline or convenience of the nursing home. (I don't know about you but it depresses me that anyone would think to give an anti-psychotic drug as as discipline.) This has not stopped a lot of nursing homes from dispensing these drugs for reasons that having nothing to do with the patient's best interests.

In Connecticut, I would keep a close eye on Chelsea Place Care Center in Hartford and Wethersfield Health Care Center in Wethersfield two facilities that have had problems but are beginning to improve, according to the federal government.

A recently released federal report shows that

On Friday, there was an article in the Boston Globe on the Baxter heparin cases discussing the issue that heparin is manufactured in China. Miller & Zois attorney Ron Miller, who is handling heparin cases, is interviewed for the article.

Maryland Department of the Environment fined eight landlords nearly $240,000 total for violating lead paint laws, including a $65,000 fine to one landlord for failing to comply with lead paint standards.

Most jurisdictions leave the the judge's discretion whether to admit photographs from a car accident for the purpose of demonstrating the extend of the injuries of the occupants of the car. In Davis v. Maute, 770 A.2d. 36 (Del. 2001), the Supreme Court of Delaware took a minority view, holding that a party in a car accident may not directly argue that the seriousness of the injuries from an auto accident correlates to the extent of the damage to the cars, unless there is testimony from an expert witness that makes a correlation.

Accordingly, lawyers in Delaware may not argue by implication what the lawyer could not argue indirectly and attempt to suggest that the lack of property damage reflects the minor injuries.

This is great for Delaware plaintiffs' lawyers in car accident cases who have minor property damage and claim injuries. Still, our lawyers prefer the majority rule because if you have a serious injury/serious impact case, you want to get the pictures to the jury to show the severity of the injuries and the Davis v. Maute holding can backfire on plaintiffs.

The family of Chelmsford woman who died a day after thyroid surgery at Brockton Hospital was awarded $14.5 million by Middlesex County, Massachusetts jury in a medical malpractice case this week after five hours of deliberation. Pursuant to favorable provision of Massachusetts law, the award included more than $5 million in interest.

Plaintiff’s decedent was a 30 year-old woman who went to the doctor because of a lump on her thyroid gland. Her surgeons did a biopsy on the benign lump but in recovery someone noticed that her abdomen was swollen and her stomach and legs had turned blue. She apparently developed abdominal compartment syndrome from air that had gotten into her stomach.

The doctors did what they should have done initially. The operated again and released the air. Unfortunately, the surgeons immediately closed the wound immediately without letter all of the air escape. She was flown to Boston Medical Center for surgery but died later that day.

I cannot imagine how this case went to trial. Often the doctor’s medical malpractice lawyers defend these cases on the basis of the difficulty of diagnosis of abdominal compartment because it often occurs in patients with other causes of circulatory or respiratory failure. So the plaintiff’s medical malpractice claim is usually defended on the basis that the doctor did not diagnose abdominal compartment syndrome because the patient’s symptomology was consistent with other problems and the patient died or suffered severe injury before the condition was uncovered. In this Boston medical malpractice case, diagnosis was not the problem. Instead, it was the conduct after of the doctors after they knew of the condition that led to the medical malpractice.

One more comment about the case: when the woman was in trouble, they transported her by helicopter to another Boston hosptial. If I'm getting elective surgery, I much rather do it at the hosptial where they are going to be sending me if a problem does occur.

You can find the Boston Globe story on this case here.

A truck driver whose wife was tragically killed at a crossing at a Mississippi truck stop failed to allege facts sufficent to defeat a motion for directed verdict, Mississippi Supreme Court ruled in a 5-4 decision. Plaintiff's lawyers had alleged that the truck stop operators negligently failed to provide adequate lighting and had placed a propane tank and advertising in its parking lot, obstructing the view of pedestrians and drivers of oncoming traffic. But the Mississippi Supreme Court found that the danger of crossing the public roadway should have been obvious to the truck driver's wife. Four of the judges disagreed, finding that even though the truck stop did not own the area in question, there was testimony at trial that it was generally known that truckers parked in the area, even those that were not customers at the truck stop. Unfortunately for the Plaintiff, he was one judge short.