A New Jersey jury has awarded $25 million in compensation to a man who suffered severe brain damage, concluding that the Plaintiff's doctors misdiagnosed his cyst that led to an aneurysm.
Our lawyers are now are investigating potential Thoratec HeartMateII lawsuits throughout the country in light of the recall issued last week for the Thoratec HeartMate II Left Ventricular Assist Systems (HM II LVAS) that had serial or catalogue numbers 1355 to 102139. The FDA has told patients with the Thoratec HeartMate II to contact their doctors.
The problem with the Thoratec HeartMate II is that the percutaneous lead that connects the Thoratec HeartMate II Left Ventrical Assist System with the System Controller has not, at least in some cases, been able to stand the test of time. Should this percutaneous lead fail, pump function could potentially be interrupted resulting in the need for surgery. The complications from this problem can range from minor to fatal. To date, there are reports of 5 deaths and at least 27 cases of wear and fatigue to the percutaneous lead requiring surgery to replace the blood pump. Different Thoratec HeartMate II patients are going to have different medical options to deal with this issue. Again, the FDA suggests that Thoratec HeartMate II patients contact their doctors for an evaluation of their condition and their options.
Thankfully, these defects with Thoratec HeartMate II have been caught fairly quickly. This product was just approved in April and only 2,000 patients have been implanted with the Thoratec HeartMate II, but this is no consolation to those 2,000 patients who have the device implanted in their chests.
If you or someone you care about has been injured by this Thoratec HeartMate II and would like to learn more about the Thoratec HeartMate II lawsuits that are pending around the country, call 800-553-6000 or click here for a free Internet case evaluation by a Thoratec HeartMate II lawyer.
The Accident and Injury Lawyer Blog has gotten a good bit of traffic regarding an email to me that I posted from Justice Oliver E. Diaz, Jr., a current Mississippi Supreme Court justice who is running for reelection. The New York Personal Injury Attorney Blog has a good post this week about why electing judges is a bad idea.
I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that Justice Diaz would agree with me.
The FDA issued warnings yesterday to Bayer over marketing linked to two aspirin medicines, saying that Bayer Women’s Low Dose Aspirin Plus Calcium and Bayer Aspirin With Health Advantage had been marketed medical claims for which there is no evidence. The FDA said it intends to take further action against Bayer for the violations.
A student at Missouri University was awarded $450,000, a jury in Missouri found this week. The student was struck on a bike while crossing an intersection and then hit a second time and dragged by a Columbia Water and Light truck. Jurors determined that the driver of the first car and the City of Columbia were to blame for 25 percent of the accident.
The verdict was for $1.8 million but under Missouri's comparative negligence law, the defendants are responsible for their portion of 25% of the fault.
An FDA warning has prompted LabCorp to stop sales of a controversial blood test for ovarian cancer. Experts have raised questions about whether OvaSure is effective. OvaSure had been offered without FDA approval because diagnostic checks are sometimes exempt from federal regulation if they are developed in a single laboratory. However, OvaSure was developed in conjunction with Yale University.
Hopefully, this gets sorted out quickly. If it is a good test, we want OvaSure on the market. But we have to test it to make sure it does not do more harm than good.
The Baltimore Injury Lawyer Blog offers thoughts on legal writing.
A Tennessee woman has filed a lawsuit against Starbucks accusing the coffee giant of causing first and second-degree burns to her hand and thigh. According to the lawsuit, the coffee cup lid was not properly secured and the spill resulted in significant disfigurement and injuries.
This case is nothing like the McDonald's case. This is a pure negligence case. But we are going to get approximately 1,000,000 comparisions of this case and the McDonald's coffee case in the media.
The widow of a man whose brain was allegedly taken without permission for medical study has filed a lawsuit against the hospital and the medical examiner who performed the man's autopsy. According to the lawsuit, neither plaintiff or her deceased husband signed an organ donation card and the brain is still missing.
The lawsuit seeks $4 million against Mount Sinai in damages. This woman, while I am very sorry that she lost her husband, does not want me on the jury. My question would be why are you and your husband not organ donors? I hate these kind of lawsuits and I wish these type of claims never found a lawyer who would take them.
I tried a case last week. We did not get a good outcome because, in the end, the jury did not believe my client was still suffering from her injuries. These kind of cases just don't help.
AIG will pay $18 million to settle a lawsuit filed by a man who suffered a serious brain injury after he was struck by a truck in the parking lot of an apartment complex. The settlement nullifies a $75 million judgment reached in a North Carolina superior court after an AIG subsidiary declined to defend the case. Why they declined to defend the case is anyone's guess but it certainly was a screw-up that probably increased the value of this case.
The Mississippi Supreme Court last week affirmed a $4 million in compensatory damage award in the case of Carthage woman who died from a lethal dose of painkillers after being misdiagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Plaintiff's decedent had been given large volumes of the painkiller Dilaudid while she was at a hospice. Incredibly, the woman's autopsy showed that the woman never had cancer in the first place. The court also dismissed $500,000 punitive damages against the medical director of the hospice at the time of the incident.
The hospice in this case tendered their $1 million policy before trial. The medical malpractice case proceeded against the doctor who ordered the medication. The doctor's defense at the malpractice trial was that patients at hospices often need high dosages of medication because they build up tolerance to the drug that takes away their pain. I appreciate this argument but there has to be a balance between giving people the medication they need and not killing them. Did the doctor in this case really try to find that balance? Certainly, this Mississippi jury in this medical malpractice lawsuit did not believe that the doctor sought that balance.
Jury Verdict Research recently released a new study looking at the average personal injury awards in Michigan: $1,089,638. As always, big personal injury verdicts conflate the average; the median personal injury compensation award in Michigan is $99,506. Interestingly, plaintiffs receive a financial recovery in 44% of personal injury lawsuits that go to trial compared to the national average of 52%. These numbers are misleading because the type of case has a huge bearing on both the average recovery and the plaintiffs' success rate. But this data from Michigan is still interesting to personal injury lawyers and accident and malpractice victims in Michigan.
A Crawford County, Wisconsin jury awared a brain damaged child and his family $11.4 million last week after a three-week medcial malpractice trial.
The article I have read did not break down the economic versus non-economic damages of the award. Wisconsin has a cap on pain and suffering damages in medical malpractice cases of $750,000.
Here we go again. A man in Louisiana has filed a lawsuit against Oprah Winfrey, alleging she and her lawyer made false statements that led the FBI to arrest him on charges that he tried to extort the talk-show host.
The problem with all of this is that potential jurors read this stuff and it leads them to conclude that the system is out of control when, in fact, there should be an entire judical system set up just for celebrities because there are so many lawsuits involving them. This bleeds into juror's preceptions of accident and injury lawyers and their clients not just in Louisiana but all around the country.
Tractor trailer and bus drivers in the United States have suffered seizures, heart attacks or unconscious spells behind the wheel that led to deadly bus and truck accidents on highways, according to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration.
Okay, as awful as this “news” is, it really is not news, right? Regrettably, people die behind the wheel of a car or truck every day. But here is what is “news”: Hundreds of thousands of drivers have commercial licenses to drive trucks and buses but they also qualify for full federal disability payments. In other words, they cannot hold down any job of any kind but they can drive a 40 ton weapon. Tell me how to explain this without using the phrase “the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration needs to get its act together.”
The Associated Press found that truckers violating federal medical rules have been caught in every state. According to the most recent data available, Texas, Florida, Georgia, Maryland, Indiana, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, Alabama, New Jersey and Minnesota were states where truck drivers were sanctioned most frequently for violating medical rules.
Our truck accident lawyers handle truck accident cases thoughout the United States. If you have been injured in a truck accident, call 800-553-8082 or click here for a free consultation
The Texas Supreme Court heard arguments yesterday in a strange rehearing of a ruling that Texas lawmakers and other groups say deprives injury victims of their rights. The issue of whether contract employees covered by workers’ compensation are able to seek damages against work site owners for on-the-job injuries. A bipartisan group of Texas lawmakers, labor groups and accident victims have protested the decision saying the Texas high court erred in granting extended immunity provisions that were not part of legislative intent.
Interesting case. The Texas Supreme Court decision was unanimous but they get a rehearing because everyone thinks it was an awful call. Probably the best approach would be for Texas lawmakers to rewrite the law.
A Jury Verdict Research study found that the median compensation award for personal injury case that go to trial in Texas is $22,360. Plainitff's recover about 52% of the time (which is consistent with the national average).
If you have been injured and need a personal injury lawyer anywhere in Texas, call our malpractice, product liability and car accident lawyers at 800-553-8082 or click here for a free, confidential Internet case evaluation.
Related Posts
When a lawyer gets a verdict or settlement in a 7 figure case, the lawyer can join the Million Dollar Advocates (of which I am a member). Last week, after a Texas jury awarded $1.5 million in a truck accident involving two men seriously injured after a semi crashed into their car, an Indiana based trucking company entered a more ignominious group of trucking companies that have had million dollar truck accident verdicts entered against them based on truck accidents that occurred within a year, both Texas truck accidents. In 2005, Celadon took a $17.5 million jury hit in a truck accident case involving the death of a U.S. Army lieutenant, who was killed after getting rear-ended by a Celadon truck. The venue? Texas.
In this most recent case, two men were driving in their car on a highway in Waxahachie, Texas (near Dallas) when a Celadon Trucking Services tractor-trailer struck their car. The Plaintiffs' Texas truck accident lawyer alleged in Plaintiffs’ lawsuit that Celadon negligently hired the truck driver and that its driver caused the truck accident. The jury agreed.
One of the men suffered a fractured vertebra; the other sustained a serious injury to his right knee, which required several reconstructive surgeries. The latter man also suffered a mild traumatic brain injury and damage to his collarbone.
I appreciate that Celadon is a big, publicly traded company that has a lot of truck drivers on the road. And I realize that this verdict may have been less than Plaintiffs' demand. But given Celadon's history in Texas, you would think they might work a little extra hard to settle this truck accident case before trial.
Mr. Miller:
Hi, I am a Maryland attorney and would like to get little mentoring on any differences between an unidentified motorist claim and an uninsured motorist claim. Please call or send me an email and I promise I'll be brief. Thanks so much for any help!
Dear Maryland Attorney:
There is uninsured motorist coverage under victim's, or the victim's resident relative, own car insurance policy. You will find in your client's uninsured motorist endorsement that there is coverage for a hit-and-run vehicle (you don't need an actual hit, just an unidentifed or phantom vehicle) whose operator or owner cannot be identified and which hits or causes an accident resulting in bodily injury or propety damage. See Section 20-601(c) of the Maryland Insurance Article and Section 19-509.
An accident lawyer can make a phantom vehicle case in Maryland though the testimony of the Plaintiff or, better yet, independent witnesses.
Good luck, I hope this helps. - Ron Miller
Los Angeles City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo filed a lawsuit accused Anthem Blue Cross of California of attempting to pay off plaintiffs involved in a class action over insurance rescissions.
Paying off plaintiffs with money? How awful! Wait, I thought that was the point...
Newsday reports that a New York jury awarded a woman $10.7 million in a medical malpractice case against a hospital in Queens. The woman became partially paralyzed after waiting two hours for a brain scan at a Queens hospital. The jury found the woman was cleared for a brain scan two hours before she got one. The purpose of the test was intended to check for bleeding.
The Plaintiff lapsed into a coma in the emergency room less than an hour after the scan. The Plaintiff is now in a wheelchair.
New York's brand of tort reform caps the fees of New York medical malpractice lawyers as opposed to the award to the malpractice victim. In the end, the real loser is medical malpractice victims because lawyers will not take their case because the risking potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars is not worth the risk (most medical malpractice lawyers front the costs and the victim is not obligated to pay the monies back if there is no recovery). But this case certainly did not fall into that category and is one of the few that actually meets the goals of this otherwise warped New York medical malpractice statute.
Jurors found New York Hospital Medical Center of Queens was negligent in caring for Candida Diego after she fractured her skull in a fall in September 2004. A spokeswoman says the hospital doesn't believe it is liable for the 71-year-old's condition and is appealing the Oct. 3 decision awarding her $10.7 million.
A Kentucky jury awarded $3 million to a woman in a medical malpractice case against a doctor who it found improperly attaching a hose that helps pump blood and oxygen during relatively routine heart surgery. A hospital co-defendant had already settled with the Plaintiff.
The total verdict was The total verdict was $9,864,175.78 but the jury found the doctor to 31% responsible.
I wrote last week about potential Spiriva inhaler lawsuits, noting that a JAMA article disagrees with Pfizer's own analysis of the data. What I meant to write but ran out of time is that I cannot say for certain who is on the right side of this issue of whether heart attacks and strokes are caused by the Spiriva inhaler. But I can say that in the battle for credibility, I chose an article in a respected peer review jounnal like JAMA about 10 million spots ahead of Pfizer.
A Boston Globe article today proves my point. The Globe reports that Pfizer suppressed a large European study suggesting their blockbuster medication Neurontin was ineffective for chronic nerve pain, and they plotted to silence a British researcher who wanted to go public with the data, according to documents produced in a Neurontin case in Boston. In 2004, Pfizer pled guilty to criminal conduct and paid $430 million in fines involving allegations that it illegally marketed Neurontin for "off-label" uses, ranging from manic depression to hiccups. That's right. Hiccups. Is it hard to understand why plaintiffs' lawyers are so skeptical about any claims Pfizer makes?
So, yeah, until proven otherwise, I'm going to go with findings I find in JAMA than what Pfizer tells us about the safety of the Spiriva inhalers.
In the insurance law class that I teach, we are often discussing the fine line between accidental acts covered by insurance and intentional acts that are generally not covered in most policies. The reality is that coverage in most states is interpreted very broadly and, as a result, acts that we all agree are intentional in the vernacular are not intentional in the insurance law context. The San Diego Injury Lawyer Blog has a good post about a recent California case where the insured's son threw someone into the shallow end of a pool at their home and fractured the victim's clavicle.
The son was charged and later pled nolo contendre to a misdemeanor so, obviously, it was a little more than negligence because battery - by definition - is an intentional tort. The court does an end run around this - as most courts do - by finding that the son did not intend or expect the consequence. Obviously, in the world of torts, this does not negate an otherwise intentional act.
The classic case on this premise in the torts context is the one we all remember from law school: Garratt v. Dailey, 279 P.2d 1091 (Wash. 1955). In that case, a 5 year-old boy who pulled a chair out from under his aunt committed a tort if he knew that the likelihood of his action was that she would fall to the ground. Obviously, the insured in this case knew that the person he threw in the pool would land in the pool and that there was not consent for the act.
For a similar case in the insurance law context that is in most modern insurance law textbooks, read AMCO Ins. Co. v. Haht, 490 N.W.2d 843, 845 (Iowa 1992), which also includes a dissent that articulates the insurance company's point of view in these types of cases.
The Journal of the American Medical Association reports that Spiriva HandiHaler patients may face increased risk of heart attacks or strokes and other cardiac problems.
The Spiriva HandiHaler (generic: tiotropium bromide inhalation powder) is an inhaler for long-term treatment of bronchospasm linked with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). This disease is commonly described as emphysema and chronic bronchitis.
On the market for about four years, the Spiriva Handihaler is made by Boehringer Ingelheim. Pfizer also markets the Spiriva Handihaler. Boehringer also makes Atrovent, (generic name: Ipratropium bromide inhaler). The Atrovent inhaler has been around for about 10 years. Over five million people use these two inhalers. The Spiriva inhaler and Atrovent work the same: it opens pathways for effective breathing and preventing spasms that narrow airways in the lungs.
These inhalers have served that purpose by all accounts and that Spiriva is generally well tolerated but patients with few side effects. But this new JAMA study indicates that these inhalers could be linked to these potentially fatal cardiac conditions. The study looked at other drug trials and found that people taking Spiriva or Atrovent had a 58% higher risk of developing cardiac problems, including fatal heart attacks and strokes. Stating the obvious, if Spiriva has few side effects but one of those side effects is heart disease, that is a pretty big side effect we ought to be talking about.
This is not the first indication of concern with the Spiriva inhaler. In March 2008, the FDA raised concerns about the possible connection between side effects of Spiriva Handihaler and an increased risk of strokes.
There is no question that COPD is a serious disease. A slowly progressive airway disease that causes significant deterioration of lung function and chronic breathlessness, COPD can result in severe disability. Incredibly, in spite of the fact that there is not a lot of media attention around COPD, it is the fourth leading cause of death in the world. While it is great that Spiriva is efficacious for COPD, our lawyers question is whether Spiriva's warning adequately informed patients of the increased risk of cardiac problems, whether Spiriva was properly tested for cardiac concerns and whether there are other safer drugs available with the same cardiac risks. With respect to the latter point, the question is not whether patients would be better off not taking any medication for COPD, which is notoriously an undertreated disease, but whether there are safer inhalers than Spiriva (and Atrovent) available.
While we are still learning more about the cardiac risks associated with Spiriva, our lawyers believe there is enough evidence to begin evaluating Spiriva lawsuits. If you would like to speak to a Spiriva lawyer, call 800-553-8082 or click here for a free Spiriva lawsuit consultation.
Extendicare, a group of Washington nursing homes, is the defendant in a nursing home lawsuit alleging it took on way too many patients to provide adaquate care. Paintiffs' nursing home also say that Extendicare violated a Washington law that bars nursing homes from making its clients sign a form waiving liability for Extendicare's negligence.
Plaintiffs in this nursing home case a man whose daughter died at Aldercrest Health & Rehabilitation Center in Edmonds and two other residents.
You can find the article here.
Yesterday, the Illinois Supreme Court ruled that a wrongful death lawsuit against the city Park Ridge can move forward because the city is not immune from a lawsuit. An Illinois trial court had granted the city's motion for summary judgment.
This wrongful death case is gathering attention because of it bizarre facts. A 15 year-old boy's father called 911 and reported that his son was unconscious and needed resuscitation. Paramedics arrived 5 minutes later but did not treat the patient. We have no idea why. The father called back at about eight hours later. When the paramedics arrived, the boy was in cardiac arrest. Tragically he died at the hospital of a overdose of cocaine and opiates, records show.
Bizarre facts. The a lawyer for the city of Park Ridge says he cannot talk about the case until in comes out in court. Please.
The Florida Injury Attorney Blog has good post providing some good news on national car accident statistics from 2007.
I'm pleased to see the number of fatal car accidents falling relatively precipitously (given how constant the data has typically been). I'm not concluding this is the only cause of the drop in car accident fatalities but it is worth noting that a wonderful byproduct of extremely high gas prices is less auto accident deaths. (My suggestion: raise the gasoline tax.)
