The Maryland Malpractice Attorney Blog has a post about medical malpractice rates in Oregon. They are falling all over the country. Yet, trust me, there will still be some sort of "crisis" of malpractice premiums that require more controls.
The Texas Supreme Court, in an 8-1 ruling, upheld a jury verdict that found Nationwide Insurance responsible for covering injuries sustained to a Texas family involved in a collision with one of its policyholders.
Nationwide's insured was chased by police before the accident where he collided with the Plaintiffs. Nationwide refused to pay the claim, arguing that their policyholder had forfeited his right to coverage when he began the chase. Plaintiffs' Texas accident lawyer argued that the logic of Nationwide's argument is if you try to run a red light, speed or take any other intentional act not intended to cause an accident in Texas, that would also be an intentional act for which there would be no insurance coverage. The Texas Supreme Court agreed ruling that "Texas mandates liability insurance for drivers but if ordinary Texans are unprotected from those who speed or run red lights, but intend no harm to others by doing so, then Texas is replete with non-coverage notwithstanding its mandatory-coverage requirement."
A spokesperson for Nationwide said the insurance company is "glad the high court has resolved the issue of whether a high-speed chase falls within the 'intentional acts' exclusion in Texas. Nationwide intends to comply with the courts ruling on this complex issue." So Nationwide just wanted the issue resolved - that was their goal in all of this? Please.
If you have been injured in a car accident anywhere in Texas, including Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, Fort Worth, Brownsville, El Paso, Arlington, Corpus Christi, Plano, Amarillo, and Garland, you may need a Texas accident lawyer. Call 800-553-8082 to speak with a lawyer today or click here for a free Texas auto accident lawyer consultation.
Obviously, it impossible to consider a few variables - even a multitude of variables - and come to a calculation of winning a medical malpractice lawsuit in Maryland. But the Maryland Malpractice Lawyer Blog provides some analysis as to the percentage of malpractice lawsuits that are successful and the types of malpractice lawsuits that are most frequently seen.
In 2007, the top five writers of passenger car insurance in Arkansas, according to A.M. Best Co. state/line were: State Farm, 22.8% market share; Southern Farm Bureau Group, 15.5%; Shelter Insurance Cos., 7.9%; Allstate, 7.4%; and Farmers Insurance, 7.3%.
State Farm has nearly three times the market share that Allstate has in Arkansas. I find this amazing.
A Fairfax County, Virginia jury has awarded $3.2 million to an Ikea shopper in Potomac Mills who had 350 pounds of countertops fall on her, crushing her pelvis and effectively ending her avid pursuits of hiking and biking around the world.
The lawsuit Plaintiff filed in Fairfax County alleged that the countertops were stacked upright on their short sides rather than their long eight-foot sides and were restrained only by an elastic bungee cord.
There are commonly lawsuits in these types of facility operations cases where heavy loads are not property stabilized.
You can find the Washington Post story here.
The Maryland Malpractice Lawyer Blog has a post about a doctor's lawsuit claiming that he was wrongful terminated from an OB/GYN practice. The doctor who fired him claims, among other things, that the OB/GYN doctor failed to come clean about a medical malpractice lawsuit that had been filed against him in Pennsylvania.
Virginia Lawyers Weekly reports on an insane case in Virginia where an emergency room doctor in Hampton received a defense verdict.
After a night of partying, the decedent and his friend got into a dispute over whether the decedent would drive drunk from Hampton back home to Atlanta with his 4-year-old son. The best friend did what best friends usually do - he stabbed him in the thigh.
The decedent was taken to the emergency room. Plaintiff's malpractice lawsuit claimed that the emergency room doctor should have sought out detailed information about the length of the knife. The defendant was told only that the decedent was stabbed with a knife and that the length of the blade was unknown. The defendant assumed it was a small blade.
Turns out it was a very large blade and his injuries did not resolve. As the decedent was deteriorating, following a transient response to the fluid resuscitation, the defendant called in a general surgeon who arrived three hours later and told the ER doctor that the decedent was in hemorrhagic shock secondary to a stab wound and blood loss. The general surgeon instructed the emergency room physician to transfer the decedent to the ICU. Sadly, the stabbing victim died.
Plaintiff's Virginia medical malpractice lawyer contended that the defendant should have responded more aggressively to treat the injury.
People who get stabbed and blame their injuries on medical malpractice usually don't fare too well at trial. So the defense verdict is no surprise. I was surprised that an offer of $500,000 was rejected. Usually, in a case where the jury has an easy target to blame - the criminal who stabs the victim - it becomes difficult to pin the injuries or death on medical malpractice. But in this case, they got a $500,000 offer. I wonder whether it was the family or the malpractice lawyer that suggested rolling the dice.
Pennsylvania malpractice lawsuits dropped about 11 from 2004 to 2007. In Lackawanna County, medical malpractice lawsuits plummeted 58 percent between 2000 and 2007. There were 30 Lackawanna County malpractice lawsuits were filed in 2007, compared with 35 in 2006 and 71 in 2000. In Lackawanna, Luzerne, Monroe, Pike, Sullivan, Wyoming, Susquehanna and Wayne counties, medical malpractice lawsuits dropped from 125 in 2000 to 88 last year.
Many attribute the decline to new Pennsylvania malpractice law that requires that "independent doctors" certify medical malpractice lawsuits before they can proceed. I don't disagree with the premise of requiring a "certificate of merit" or other like mechanism before the filing of a medical malpractice lawsuit in Pennsylvania because I think it does what it should do in most cases: weed out malpractice lawsuits that should not be brought.
A subsidiary Swiss drug maker of Roche Holding AG has announced a phased market withdraw of the injectable, psoriasis treatment drug, Raptiva because of Raptiva's link to a deadly brain disease. Genentech Inc. announced that at least three patients have been infected with the brain infection progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy (PML) since October.
RAPTIVA is supplied as a sterile, white to off-white, lyophilized powder in single-use glass vials for subcutaneous (SC) injection. Reconstitution of the single-use vial with 1.3 mL
Nevada's medical malpractice reform in 2004 is leading to another problem: Nevada medical malpractice cases with doctors who are refusing to settle cases. The Nevada Supreme Court in Las Vegas is looking to take matters into their own hands to avoid the backlog of medical malpractice lawsuits: a "settlement marathon."
Two judges will be assigned to conduct 18 malpractice settlement conferences per week on malpractice cases currently pending in Clark County District Court, to try to reduce the 400 pending medical malpractice lawsuits.
Jury Verdict Research found that that the median money damage award in vehicle accident cases in Arizona is $16,929. Plaintiffs win money damages in 53 percent of cases that go to trial.
JVR also breaks down the type of accident: rear-end accidents accounted for 27 percent of the total number of plaintiff verdicts; intersection accidents accounted for 13 percent; turning collisions accounted for 12 percent; truck accidents accounted for 11 percent; chain reaction collisions accounted for 9 percent. All other liabilities made up 8 percent or less of the total.
I'm not sure why truck accidents were given their own category in the type of accidents. But this Arizona verdict data is interesting and I think reflects the relative proportions of the different types of vehicle accidents nationally.
Calls for Yamaha to recall its Rhino ATVs fell on deaf ears for a long time. Yamaha’s defense to the recall argument was essentially, “Hey, we all know people drive these things like idiots, we can’t be surprised when they flip.”
This argument is now dead. Yamaha finally recalled the Rhino ATV when the death toll reached 46. Accordingly, Yamaha recalled the Rhino 450 and the Rhino 660 to make repairs to reduce the rollover risk and to improve handling of the Yamaha Rhino ATV to keep riders' extremities in the vehicle. These are the same risks that Rhino ATV lawyers have been screaming about at the top of the lungs for quite some time.
Yamaha’s solution before this recall was to provide polyethylene half-doors and passenger handholds for the Rhino at no charge, safety devices that are mandatory on the 2008 Yamaha ATV. It was the classic corporate half measure, solving a small part of the problem for less than half of its ATV customers. The recall now does focus on the problem that the Yamaha Rhino ATV rolls because the center of gravity on the ATV is too high, a design defect that makes the Yamaha Rhino ATV unstable. These problems are more pronounced for the passenger.
Rhino 450 and Rhino 660 owners should stop using these vehicles and call their local Yamaha ATV dealer to schedule an appointment to make the repairs under this recall. If you have been injured by a Rhino ATV in the United States and need a Rhino lawyer to handle your Rhino ATV recall lawsuit, call 800-553-8082 or click here for a free consultation with a Rhino ATV accident attorney.
Listed here are groups of Maryland legal links that mostly involve issues of interest to malpractice and accident lawyers, but there are also a few interesting employment and family law links included as well.
Pfizer has settled nearly 35,000 claims related to the withdrawn diabetes drug Rezulin for $750,000,000. A lot of money, to be sure, but Pfizer had set aside almost one billion dollars to settle these claims. Rezulin was recalled from the market in 2000 after scores of reports of liver failure.
In 2005, the doctors’ lobbyist (MEDCHI) outsmarted Maryland malpractice lawyers and won the battle of public opinion as to whether there was a malpractice crisis in Maryland. This led to medical malpractice tort reform, which created separate non-economic damage caps in medical malpractice cases in Maryland.
Maryland malpractice lawyers were not the only malpractice lawyers to get fooled. In 2004, television ads of doctors in Nevada walking out of the state resonated with Nevada voters, leading to a ballot initiative that placed a $350,000 cap on malpractice damages for pain and suffering. Las Vegas malpractice lawyers in particular have noticed that the cap has understandably emboldened doctors’ medical malpractice lawyers, who have refused to settle legitimate malpractice lawsuits because they do not fear the outcome at trial. Moreover, voters now realize that doctors in Nevada are no longer accountable. Accordingly, the Nevada legislature, like the Maryland legislature, is considering a bill to roll back tort reform by eliminating the cap and by increasing the statute of limitations from two years to five. AB495 was introduced only last week by the Assembly Judiciary Committee.
Gook luck to malpractice victims in Nevada and Maryland in getting these bills passed.
A Fulton County jury in Georgia ordered an obstetrician and a pediatrician to pay a combined $2.3 million for their treatment of an infant in a botched circumcision The malpractice lawsuit in this case alleged that the obstetrician and the pediatrician were negligently failed to provide care when part of the boy’s penis was severed during the procedure at South Fulton Medical Center.
The frustrating thing about this case is that it appears to have been negligence that could have been largely fixed. The doctor who circumcised him removed too much tissue. That was mistake number one. If the tip of the penis was placed in a biohazard bag, it could have been reattached if a urologist had attended to the boy within eight hours. But the jury found that the boy's pediatrician failed to respond when a nurse made him aware of excessive bleeding.
You can find an article on the story here.
Florida is looking to take its plaintiffs' work in-house The Florida legislature is considering multiple bills -- Senate Bill 1370 and House Bill 215 -- that would limit the state's attorney general's ability to contract with outside attorneys. Most states allow government officials to contract with private attorneys to work on larger cases, particularly large pieces of litigation.
Why this bill? People get upset seeing lawyers collect huge contingency fees from the state. But the state was not going to fund and stuff, for example, the tobacco litigation. But everyone is so worried about trial lawyers getting over on the public that they would rather have nothing than 60% of something.
