A Hydroxycutt class action lawsuit has been filed against Iovate Health Sciences, the makers of weight loss dietary supplement Hydroxycutt, in federal court in California. The plaintiffs' Hydroxycutt lawyers allege, among other things, that the manufacturer misrepresented the product as safe and effective in its advertisements.
The Orlando Sentinel (via Overlawyered) has an interesting article taking a detailed look at statistics surrounding theme park lawsuits. This is not your garden variety media article of a legal trend. It has detailed breakdown of the lawsuits filed against theme parks, and through statistics and interviews, sets the game plan of Disney theme parks, and I think to a similar but lesser extent, its brethren when facing a lawsuit: wage elongated war, make discovery brutal for accident lawyers and their clients, and settle the cases you think you might not win - particularly those cases you might prolifically not win.
Jury Verdict Research recent look a verdicts in personal injury cases in California shows the compensatory median award for personal injury trials in California is $150,000. This is a lot higher than the national average of less than $40,000. But plaintiffs receive money damages in only 45 percent of cases that go to trial, which is 5% less than the national average.
What does this data mean for personal injury plaintiffs in California? Not much but it is interesting data.
If you need a personal injury lawyer in California, call 800-553-8082 or click here for a free initial consultation.
The Maryland Auto Accident Lawyer Blog reports that the recent $45 million verdict reported in San Mateo, California is misleading because of the coverage issues that remain in the case.
Nursing home lawyers focus on the abuse and neglect that patients receive in nursing homes. The social good that derivies from this is that nursing homes have to be mindful that abusing patients comes with a cost.
The New York Times has an article off the radar screen of nursing home lawyers that can be just as awful for nursing home patients: abuse and neglect by family members.
The San Jose Mercury News reports on a medical malpractice lawsuit filed against the San Mateo Medical Center. Plaintiff alleges that his heart was permanently damaged after the center left a broken catheter in his heart and, even more seriously, that the hospital covered up the mistake. Although Plaintiff did not know about the catheter's break -which is the size of a drinking straw - until July 2008, it was clearly visible on x-rays and scans more than two years before. The first operation to remove the catheter was unsuccessful. Open heart surgery was required during which a heart valve was destroyed and had to be replaced with a valve from a pig’s heart. To make matters worse, the plaintiff has cancer.
I do not know what happened here and I think medical malpractice cover-ups do happen. But this is actually a rare sighting for medical malpractice lawyers. The vast majority of doctors and hospitals accused of medical malpractice were trying to do the right thing... but didn't.
The family of a man killed by police during an attempted arrest for a gang related murder has filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the city of Sunnyvale. The family contends the decedent did not attempt to run over the police officers and was not resisting arrest at the time of his death. The family filed a previous suit six months ago, but withdrew it after the city protested that it was too vague. The city plans to seek a dismissal of the case again. You can find one of the articles on this case here.
Sunnyvale is not the only city in California to face a similar lawsuit. In what would appear on its face to be a more compelling case invovling an innocent 20-year-old black man who had a wife and small child, a wrongful death lawsuit was filed against the city of Anaheim for fatally shooting this young man in his frontyard. You can find that story here.
It is impossible to prejudge a case with knowing all of the facts. But absent other factors which very well may exist, Plaintiff's wrongful death claim in the latter case seems strong.
The Los Angeles Times writes this morning about a tragic case in Los Angeles at Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Medical Center where an official Los Angeles County assessment has acknowledged for the first time that a woman who died shortly after writhing in pain for nearly an hour on the hospital's waiting room floor would not have died if she had received proper medical care.
The vast majority of medical malpractice cases in Los Angeles occur when doctors who are largely good doctors and good people had good intentions but medical mistakes were made. This is something very different. The only reason this woman's family has a potential wrongful death medical malpractice case is that a security camera videotaped a janitor mopped around the victim while a triage nurse dismissed her complaints.
Sad but true: video cameras and phones are helping make more and more medical malpractice and nursing home claims.
AstraZeneca is going to keep pushing Seroquel. Last week AstraZeneca asked the FDA to let it market the antipsychotic drug Seroquel for the treatment of schizophrenia in teenagers and for the treatment of acute manic episodes associated with bipolar I disorder in children and teenagers between 10 and 17.
It is amazing that there are over 13,000 Seroquel lawsuits and AstraZeneca is looking to expand the uses of Seroquel. Currently, two atypical antipsychotics are approved to treat adolescents and the literature to support their use with children is certainly not overwhelming. You have a drug under siege and you try to use that drug for a purpose for which pharmacological efficacy is highly questionable. This is called pushing all of your chips to the center of the table.
In other Seroquel news, About Lawsuits reports that the MDL judge in Orlando, Florida, who is overseeing all federal Seroquel lawsuits, denied a request by AstraZeneca last week to file motions in the Seroquel litigation under seal.
Note: For information on Seroquel class action cases involving diabetes and pancreatitis, click here.
If you think you may have a potential Seroquel lawsuit and have a question about the Seroquel class action lawsuit, you can call one of our Seroquel lawyers for a free consultation at 800-553-8082 or click here for a free Internet Seroquel consultation.
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...
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.
Good news for Medtronic defective lead patients: the FDA last week approved of a software update from Medtronic that will help detect fractures of Medtronic's Sprint Fidelis cardiac defibrillator lead. The new software package will allow Medtronic patients to rest a little easier knowing that the software will alert patients of a potential Medtronic lead fracture.
Our lawyers are handling claims for defective Medtronic Sprint Fidelis leads that were the subject of a October 2007 Medtronic "recall" because the leads were found to be prone to fracture in a small number of patients. I put recall in quotes because by necessity, most of the patients with the Medtronic Sprint Fidelis lead still have the device implanted in their chests because of the surgical risk associated with removal.
This cynic in me wonders if Medtronic's purpose in developing this new software was to decrease the potential damages to patients without fractures to improve their chances in the Medtronic medical monitoring lawsuits that are being filed around the country (currently consolidated in a MDL). Why didn't they develop this product sooner? But forget about that for now. Good job Medtronic in finding a product to help you patients deal with the concerns that they are having.
My two volume treatise Insurance Settlements is now available from James Publishing. The book discusses how to position a lawyer's car accident, truck accident, medical malpractice or product liability case to the best possible settlement at every step along the way (until the state's high court affirms the judgment).
Click on the James Publishing link. If you have any comments on the book, please email me at ronmiller@millerandzois.com under the subject "Insurance Settlements Comments."
The Desert Sun has an editorial or "tort abuse" that provides the following statistic: "Tort (sic) costs amount to $865 billion nationally each year — or 6.5 percent of the gross domestic product. That's a lot of lost economic output."
Can we get a footnote? And while I don't want to get too demanding, how about a cite to the actual study that supports this figure? It is absolutely outlandish. Does the Desert Sun have any criteria for what it will publish?
Here's another great one: "California also ranks near the bottom when it comes to farm owners' tort losses — that is, how much farm owners pay when an outside vendor sues them for an injury incurred on the farm owner's property. These losses translate into higher food prices for consumers everywhere."
Okay, ah, exactly how much does this cost California? And what exactly do you propose to do about it? The editorial has no call to action. Instead, it is a laundry list of complaints. It adds nothing to the intellectual discourse on this subject. Look, reasonable people are making the argument for tort reforms, although not many are complaining about California, a state with some of the most draconian laws against accident and injury victims, including an awful $250,000 cap on in California on noneconomic damages. But while tort reforms have a cogent argument - albeit one with which I strongly disagree - this Desert Sun editorial does not help their cause.
Our lawyers are reviewing Byetta claims after the FDA announced this week that the diabetes drug has been linked to severe pancreatic problems in dozens of patients. On Monday, the FDA warned patients taking Byetta to discontinue use if they develop symptoms of the disorder. Further the FDA said that doctor prescribing Byetta should consider other prescription options for patients with a history of pancreas problems.
Since Byetta was introduced into the United States in 2005, more than 700,000 patients have used the Byetta.
Our lawyers are now exploring potential Byetta lawsuits. If you would like to discuss your case with a Byetta lawyer, call 800-553-8082 or click here for a free consulation/case evaluation (or even to answer any question you may have). For more information on Byetta and the concerns with Byetta, click here.
In separate letters in The American Journal of Psychiatry, psychiatrists in California and Ohio describe prisoners drug-seeking behavior and addiction to Seroquel.
Incredibly, staff members at the Los Angeles County jail believe that as many as 30% of the prisoners by psychiatrists have faked psychotic episodes or symptoms in an effort to get a prescription for Seroquel.
Last week, Digitek manufacturer Actavis Totowa recalled over 65 different drugs made at their New Jersey manufacturing plant. The list of recalled drugs (in some form or another) includes such generic drugs as Bellamine, Buspirone, Carisoprodol, Oxycodone Meperidine, and Rifampin. This strengthens the conclusion that the New Jersey plant that made these drugs may be the cause of irregularities in Actavis medications.
In April 2008, Actavis recalled Digitek, a drug prescribed to treat heart failure and irregular heartbeat because it was discovered that Digitek tablets appeared to have double the thickness – and likely double the active ingredient – listed on the label. When Digitek is given in abnormally high doses it can lead to digitalis toxicity which, paradoxically, worsens the problems Digitek is intended to treat, causing nausea or lower blood pressure and other side effects from the Digitek overdose that can lead to the increased risk of stroke or a heart attack.
If you would like to speak to a Digitek recall lawyer about a potential Digitek lawsuit, call 1-800-553-8000. For more information on the Digitek overdose recall or a free consultation on your potential Digitek case, click here.
Zimmer's Durom Cup hip implants are likely to be the subject of a good number of lawsuits from patients with the Zimmer implants. But they will not be the only ones. Apparently, Zimmer’s own shareholders may agree that Zimmer left its hip implant on the market way too long. Last week, shareholders of Zimmer stock filed a class action in Indiana. Interestingly, the lawsuit seeks damages for shareholders who purchased stock between January 28, 2008 and July 21, 2008. This tells our Zimmer hip implant recall lawyers that these shareholders believe that Zimmer knew or should have known and issued a recall on or before January 28, 2008.
If your Zimmer Durom hip resurfacing cup was defective, call our Zimmer hip implant lawyers at 1-800-553-8082 or click here for a free consultation.
More information on the Zimmer Hip Implant Recall
History of the Zimmer Durom Cup Hip Implant Recall
More information on the Zimmer hip implant recall lawsuits
Jury Verdict Research(r) study reports that rotator cuff injuries reached a 7-year high in 2006 with a compensatory award median of $72,667. This is almost 50% higher than previous reported settlements and verdicts in rotator cuff injury cases.
Our lawyers have never understood while the national data in these cases was so low. Washington D.C. rotator cuff injuries have averaged well over $100,000 for rotator cuff settlements and verdicts so we have never understood why the national average was as low as it has been. In any event, for whatever reason, rotator cuff verdicts are on the rise.
Our lawyers handle rotator cuff injury cases throughout the United States. Our lawyers have handled scores of rotator cuff injuries in car and truck accidents, typically in side collision or "T-bone" accidents. Our lawyers believe that insurance companies do not give fair value in most rotator cuff injury cases and our lawyers will fight to get you the financial compensation you deserve. Call a rotator cuff lawyer to protect you at 800-553-8082 or click here for a free consultation and case evaulation.
Related Posts
What Is the Value of Your Personal Injury Claim? (how the value of rotator cuff and other person injury settlements are calculated)
Sample Demand Letter (sample letter demanding settlement in a personal injury case)
Handling Your Claim Without a Lawyer (tips and pratfalls)
A Malibu, California jury found that Johnson & Johnson's Children's Motrin was not responsible to a 11 year-old girl whose lawyers alleged she was blinded after using the drug. The California jury voted 9-3 against liability after a six week trial. California does not require that civil jury verdict be unanimious.
The lawsuit plaintiff's drug injury lawyers filed in Los Angeles Superior Courty claimed Children's Motrin's label was defective because it did not have a warning that it could lead to a rare, but potentially fatal allergic reaction with severe rash of the skin and mucous membrane called Stevens-Johnson Syndrome. Many users of the "stop smoking" drug Chantix have also reported Stevens-Johnson Syndrome.
Our lawyers are uninvolved in this litigation and cannot speak to the merits of the case. But what a tragedy that such a young girl would lose her vision. The only ray of hope is that the technology to overcome blindness really is growing at a rapid clip.
Lawyers representing Digitek overdose victims have filed nine lawsuits in New Jersey against Actavis Totowa LLL and its parent company Actavis Group, alleging a manufacturing defect in Digitek, namely that some Digitek tablets have contained twice the active ingredient of the drug. Digitek recall lawsuits have also been filed in West Virginia and California.
Our Digitek recall lawyers are reviewing these Digitek overdose cases in all 50 states expecting that a consolidated class action lawsuit will be appropriate (as opposed to this scatting of individual cases). If you want to discuss your case with one of our Digitek lawyers call us at 800-553-8082 for a free consultation or click here for a free Internet consultation.
The Legal Medicine Blog (Dan Frith and Lauren Ellerman of the Frith Law Firm in Roanoke, VA) have a good blog post today on a pressing issue for nursing home lawyers and their clients: whether mandatory arbitration clauses should be enforced in nursing home cases.
In recent years, nursing homes not only in Maryland and Virginia but around the country have been requiring patients to sign mandatory arbitration clauses before admitting patients. Of course, this stacks the deck against the patient because, among other reasons, it limits discovery into just how awful the nursing home is to its patients generally and the plaintiff in particular.
Many people never see this clause because they rarely read the small print. If they do, think think of the Hobson's choice given to these patients and their families. They can either hope for the best (don’t we always do that walking through the door?) and just waive the right to receive a fair shot at receiving compensation for the negligence of the nursing home or they can go look for a nursing home that does not have an arbitration clause. But, realistically, the decision to choose the nursing home is already made before they get to the arbitration clause.
Hopefully, help is on the way. Congress is looking at this issue. Rep. Linda Sánchez from California has offered a bill that would void any mandatory arbitration agreement executed by a nursing home resident. Not so coincidentally, Rep. Sánchez father recently went to a nursing home.
The San Diego Injury Lawyer Blog reports that the California Court of Appeals has extended the protections given to doctors under the Medical Injury Compensation Reform Act (MICRA) to emergency medical technicians (EMTs) transporting patients because EMTs were "inextricably identified" with the health and medical care of their patients.
The Medical Injury Compensation Reform Act of 1975 was obstensibly enacted in California to provide for affordable medical malpractice insurance for doctors because, you know, doctors are so poor and all. MICRA limits medical malpractice jury awards $250,000 in noneconomic damages and staggers payment for verdicts over $50,000 future medicals and lost wages. Making matters worse, doctor defendants in medical malpractice cases can introduce collateral sources to show medical payments made by insurance companies.
I don't question MICRA including EMTs. I question the logic of MICRA itself.
Los Angeles Deputy District Attorney Joseph Shidler told the media that he did not have evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Brittany Spears was aware that the paparazzo foot she ran over had been struck by the car. In fact, Mr. Shidler said that the “only way the victim's foot could have been where the video indicates it to be was by the victim placing it in that location."
Is he suggesting that the victim intentionally caused his own injury? In a normal situation, I would scream that this is classic blame the victim nonsense. In this case, in the bizzaro world that is Hollywood? Who knows?
On July 1st, California will ban drivers using a handheld wireless telephone while driving a motor vehicle. Of course, you can still text message while driving.
No, I cannot explain it. You could drive a truck through the flawed logic of the new California cell phone laws. There is no teeth to the new law either. Violators of the new law are subejct to a fine of $20 for the first offense and not more than $50 for each subsequent offense. No points on your license either. But I still think California is making a step in the right direction.
Plaintiff's claim against Philip Morris, R.J. Reynolds and others is time-barred by the "first injury" rule because her first smoking-related illness - chronic pulmonary disease - was diagnosed more than ten years after Plaintiff filed her complaint.
A California U.S. District Court found that California law provides that a limitations period begins to run when the claim accrues or when the cause of action is complete with all of its elements: wrongdoing, causation, and harm. The court found that plaintiff had actual or constructive knowledge of the existence of these elements when she was diagnosed with chronic pulmonary disease (if not long before). The court found misplaced Plaintiff's reliance on when a cause of action accrues in an asbestos case which has a separate statute-of-limitations accrual rule.
I don't like tobacco companies and I really feel for people who are suffering from smoking related illness. It's just awful. But I don't believe in the cause of the plaintiffs in the tobacco litigation because almost - agreed almost - every plaintiff knew or should have known of the risk to which they were subjected to and to which they subjected themselves. (One of the very few pro defendant positions I hold.)
A Los Angeles hospital has agreed to pay $1 million to settle a (sort of) medical malpractice case. The hospital dumped a paraplegic man in Los Angeles' skid row. Incredibly, this Los Angles hospital apparently left a this paraplegic man crawling around a Los Angeles' getto in a hospital gown and colostomy bag. Try and imagine someone actually doing this. I say "sort of" a medical malpractice case but this is not really malpractice: this is human beings doing something deliberately awful to another human being.
The hospital, Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center in Los Angeles, sounds like it is trying to do the right thing, settling the case for what I expect is more than it was worth and amending its discharge policies for patients who are homeless and indigent patients. That's all great. I just can't imagine - on a human level - the hosptial employees who saw fit to dump a paraplegic man and colostomy bag in the middle of the street with a hospital gown. Are these people still working for the hosptial?
These are the kind of cases where medical malpractice lawyers are making a difference. A part of the settlement also requires the hosptial be monitored by a former U.S. attorney for up to five years. Why did the lawyers and clients insist on this? It has nothing to do with money. But it has everything to do with justice.
You can find the Los Angeles Times article on this case here.
The University of California San Francisco reported that two years after California the state passed legislation increasing reimbursements from Medi-Cal, average nursing home income from the state's healthcare program went up to $152 from $124 daily. But average spending on direct patient care went down by 3.6 percent and, not surprisingly, complaints of patient mistreatment proven went up by 36 percent. The study discovered 16 percent of nursing homes in the state failed to measure up to California's minimum staffing benchmarks.
The average nursing home netted $248,047 in 2006, a 233% increase from 2004. Charlene Harrington, the California studies lead author, told the Los Angeles Times, "They got so much money, they should have been able to do something."
You would think.
California personal injury plaintiffs are among the best compensated injury victims in the country but that California juries need convincing that the defendant is liable. California’s median compensatory award in personal injury cases is 149,000, dwarfing the national median of $34,550. But California juries only award damages in 44 percent of personal injury case that go to verdict. Nationally, plaintiffs prevail in 52% of personal injury cases.
These California personal injury verdict numbers, not median or average settlements in personal injury cases. But settlement values largely reflect the median verdicts.
In litgation that is a byproduct of the Ford Explorer rollover lawsuits, Ford Explorer owners will be "compensated" in a settlement because of the loss of value of the Explorer because of the perceived rollover danger. This settlement covers about 800,000 people who purchased Explorers in California, Connecticut, Illinois and Texas.
Unfortunately, the only people who will get a significant recovery will be the lawyers who brought these claims. Explorer owners will only be eligible for vouchers for $300 to purchase new vehicles Ford or Lincoln Mercury vehicles (or $500 off the Ford Explorer). Practically, the car dealers will just negotiate a higher sales price on the car the sale of the car, reducing the list price less than they otherwise would.
Accordingly, this settlement is worthless to everyone except for the lawyers bringing these claims. The frustrating thing about this is that 800,000 people see this settlement and think, "Geez, what a scam, the only people that really profit from this are the lawyers." For personal injury victims and their lawyers, this does not help when one of these 800,000 people shows up on a jury.
A woman who was paralyzed after her Ford Explorer rolled over should receive $82.6 million in damages against Ford Motor Company, including $55 million in punitive damages, a California appellate court unanimously ruled last month. Ford had appealed the jury's award, arguing that the punitive damage award was improper in light of the Supreme Court's ruling in Philip Morris USA v. Williams. The California 4th District Court of Appeal had previously reduced the award from $369 million to $82.6 million.
"Based on our review of the record, plaintiffs' counsel was not asking the jury to punish Ford for harm done to third parties," wrote Justice Gilbert Nares in his 108 page opinion. "Rather, counsel was discussing the repeated nature of Ford's actions in arguing the reprehensibility of Ford's conduct. That argument was entirely proper and did not create a 'significant risk' the jury would punish Ford for injuries to third parties."
You would that these kind of economic and public relations would motivate car companies to make their cars safer and not allow for compromises in design the way Ford did with the Bronco and the Explorer. But car making is big business and while this verdict sends shock waves throughout the product defect lawyer community, it has little impact on Ford’s bottom line.
We are seeing similar fact is the Yamaha Rhino ATV lawsuits that are being filed around the country. The company chalks up the Yamaha Rhino rollovers to the fact that ATVs are generally unsafe, as opposed to doing everything that is reasonable to make them as safe as possible. Implicit in Yamaha’s calculus is that the injuries sustained in Yamaha ATV cases are going to lead to less in litigation related costs then they will make in sales of the Yamaha Rhino ATVs. This is why states like California, unlike Maryland for example, allow for punitive damages in these kinds of cases. Yamaha should not be surprised if they end up just like creates revenues sufficient to sustain the legal costs, settlements and verdicts that Yamaha will undoubtedly endure. As the Ford Pinto cases told us years ago, companies with high selling and profitable products make these kind of painful cost/benefit decisions all of the time
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.
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.
Yesterday, Blue Cross of California relented and agreed to stop using a letter that asks doctors to report conditions that would give the insurer cause to cancel new patients’ health insurance coverage.
"This letter was part of Blue Cross' pattern of unfairly canceling policies when people need coverage most," said Richard Frankenstein, the California Medical Association president. "We're relieved that Blue Cross is ending this particular tactic but continue to have serious concerns about this company's practices."
It is just incredible to me that Blue Cross of California felt that it would be appropriate for doctors to act as their private investigators to provide information detrimental to their own patients. Blue Cross of California seems to be waging war against it own policyholders. Last year, California fined Blue Cross $1 million for unfairly revoking health coverage. The Blue Cross name is a big one and with that comes market share. But at some point, their reputation is going to be such that policyholders are going to find other options.
Welcome to our blog covering injury law and policy throughout the United States.
