Accident and Injury Lawyer Blog

One frustrating issue personal injury lawyers must deal with is assignments and authorizations which often require clients to sign away substantial rights to get the medical treatment they need.

This is a sample assignment and authorization from Florida that really cuts off substantive rights to the client. But the problem is that the client who signs an assignment and authorization placing a lien on their recovery typically does not have health insurance to get the needed medical treatment. So what choice does the client really have?

I am not, by the way, suggesting that doctors should not have a right to get placed in line ahead of personal injury plaintiffs in exchange for medical treatment (or to delay filing a lawsuit for payment). I just object to the one-sided unbalanced nature of most assignments and authorizations that my clients are required to sign.

Strong allegations from Florida: a class action nursing home lawsuit claims a Lake Worth nursing home that a engaged in scheme to defraud Medicare and Medicaid and "prey on vulnerable adults."

The lead plaintiff seeks a class action after injuries frequently the subject of nursing home lawsuits: disfiguring ulcers on her heels. The nursing home denies liability but has asked a law firm to investigate the allegations. The ole "I didn't do it but let me investigate whether I did it" plan of attack.

Lake Worth Manor has been a troubled nursing home. It has the lowest possible rating from Florida's Agency for Health Care Administration and has spent 31 days on Florida's watch list. The nursing home's co-medical director, who just stepped down from his position, has a history that, well, let's say it makes you think he should not be running a nursing home.

The lesson, as always: we have to many inadequate nursing home in Florida and throughout the country.

The first MRI contrast lawsuit for for patients claiming nephrogenic systemic fibrosis as the result of diagnostic drugs containing gadolinium will go to trial in San Francisco in January.

Our law firm is handling MRI contrast lawsuits. I believe these are huge cases. Just how big these cases are remains to be seen but this case will offer the first clue. I think Bayer and the other defendants are going to want to reach a settlement in these cases after a few of these cases are tried.

If you believe you or someone you love has or had NSF or NSD as the result of exposure to gadolinium, call one of our MRI contrast lawyers at 800-553-8082 or get a free MRI contrast consultation. On some of these cases, there may be statute of limitations questions so potential claimants who are interested in a settlement or a lawsuit should contact our lawyers or another lawyer immediately.

A Florida jury has ordered two Coral Springs doctors to pay $4.3 million to the family of a girl who was misdiagnosed at birth in 1994. The jury determined that two doctors failed to perform tests required by the standard of care and failed to act on symptoms that showed the child had enterovirus, a usually mild illness that can cause death or serious injury in infants. This misdiagnosis left the girl with severe vision problems and permanent liver cirrhosis.

A Broward County, Florida jury on Tuesday awarded $14.6 million to a truck driver paralyzed in a 2007 accident that occurred in Palm Beach County. According to a truck accident lawyer for the plaintiff, the lawsuit was an uninsured motorist claim to National Casualty. The truck accident occurred when the driver swerved to avoid another driver who ran a stop sign. The injuries are extremely serious: the Plaintiff lost use of his arms and legs as a result of the accident and requires ongoing rehabilitation.

The average personal injury verdict in Florida is $1,819,751, according to Jury Verdict Research, a company that tracks jury verdicts. Personal injury plaintiff win at trial in Florida personal injury cases approximately 61 percent of cases that go to trial.

Florida’s threshold requiring a more serious injury in auto accident case is one reason why the average jury verdict in Florida much higher than the national average. These Florida jury statistic verdicts also underscore that large case inflate average jury verdicts and settlements. The median – as opposed to the average – money damages in Florida personal injury trials in Florida is $122,674.

If you have been injured in a serious car accident (our lawyers only handle serious car accident claims), call our auto accident lawyers at 800-553-8082 or click here for free no obligation consultation.

• Average Personal Injury Verdicts in New York (2009 study)
• How the Value of Personal Injury Claims Is Calculated? (how lawyers, insurance companies and, ultimately, juries determine value)
• Is There a Formula to Computer Value of Personal Injury Claims?
• How to Maximize the Value of Your Case (thoughts on value)

Dated but still interesting data on Florida workers compensation cases: the average back injury settlement in 1990 was $ 38,000 with medical care continuing (called "keeping your case open"). In 2002, the average back injury settlement is $ 9,800 with no continuing opportunity for further medical care.

Related Posts

A Seroquel lawsuit that was set to go to trial before the next Seroquel MDL trial was dismissed yesterday by a Delaware state court judge. The move was not unexpected. The judge had previously excluded medical expert testimony linking diabetes and Seroquel. Without an expert, a product liability lawyer cannot pursue a Seroquel verdict.The irony of it all is that no one seriously questions that Seroquel can cause diabetes. But I believe the problem here is the same as the problem in the Florida Seroquel MDL case that was set for trial: the expert - in this case an endocrinologist - could not sufficiently rule out alternative causes for the diabetes. It did not help that AstraZeneca's lawyers were able to state in their motion for summary judgment that "until recently, her diet consisted of slurpies and donuts, fish and fries from McDonald's, Burger King and '(a) lot of Chinese food.'" Not exactly the best "Seroquel caused my diabetes" case.

The Plaintiff in this case had the type of lawsuit Seroquel lawyers prefer: diabetes from off-label use of Seroquel for insomnia.

"The plaintiffs want to try these cases in the press," said Mike Kelly, a Wilmington attorney with the law firm McCarter & English who represents AstraZeneca in the Delaware cases. "But what is happening in the courts tells it all ... So far, the plaintiffs can't get a case to trial."

Continue reading "Seroquel Lawsuit: Another Loss, This Time in Delaware" »

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 reported this month on Florida personal injury lawsuit verdicts. The median - not be confused with average which is much higher - money recover in Florida personal injury lawsuits that go to trial is $185,000. Florida personal injury lawyers can expect to receive a verdict for their clients in 60 percent of lawsuits that go to trial.

Putting these number in context, the national median personal injury verdict is $35,000, and personal injury victims recover about half of the time. In other words, you can drive a truck through the difference between Florida and the rest of the nation. Florida voters may go for caps at the ballot box but when faced with live human beings, they have a very different approach.

If you have been injury by a defective product or medical malpractice or in a car or truck accident in Florida in Miami, Jacksonville, Tampa, St. Petersburg, Orlando, Fort Lauderdale, Tallahessee or anywhere in Florida, call our lawyers at 800-553-8082 or click here for a free consultation.

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.

Florida legislators have the nerve to consider adding common sense to Florida's wrongful death act. Really, the nerve. The inertia to change the law began with the family of a Florida teenager who disappeared more than 30 years ago whose wrongful death lawsuit against the killer is barred by Florida's wrongful death statute of limitations of two years even though the body was found just last year. Florida Senator Jeremy Ring has called Florida's wrongful death law "antiquated and ineffective."

It is awful injustices like these that make legislatures look at the bigger picture.

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.

Tough blow today for victims who have filed lawsuits pending in the Seroquel MDL in Orlando. Defendant AstraZeneca won a huge victory with a dismissal of two Seroquel lawsuits claiming its antipsychotic drug Seroquel causes diabetes and other health consequences.

This "bellwether" MDL trial was set to start February 2, 2009 in Orlando, Florida where the vast majority of the current Seroquel lawsuits are parked. Judge Anne Conway threw out the cases saying at a hearing that they "just didn't meet the standards" to go to trial. Specifically, and I think bizarrely considering the medical evidence of the link between diabetes and Seroquel, the court found the plaintiffs could not prove that the former Seroquel users diabetes was linked to Seroquel.

Update: I might have gone off a little to quickly on this story. It seems like the finding was a lack of specific causation between the plaintiffs' diabetes in this case and Seroquel. You can look at the Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog post that has a Seroquel update here.

A Broward County jury awarded more than $8 million to the wife and three daughters of a North Miami Beach police officer in a wrongful death lawsuit stemming from a 2004 car accident. Jurors found that the family of the other driver and the Florida Department of Transportation were 70 percent negligent in the crash. The decedent Officer Orestes Lorenzo was found to be 30 percent responsible for the accident that caused his death. Accordingly, the jury reduced their award under Florida comparative negligence law from $11.5 million.

The Broward County jury hearing the case took their job seriously: the verdict was rendered at midnight on Saturday.

In a 2-1 decision, the 1st District Court of Appeal denied a medical malpractice lawyer’s request in a Jacksonville malpractice case to exhume the decedent, a Jacksonville philanthropist, who was buried four years ago. Central to the Florida court’s opinion is that plastic surgeon defendant has conceded medical malpractice caused the victim’s death.

Given the stipulation that medical malpractice caused the patient's death, I think this is a good decision. I think we should be relucant to exhume bodies unless it is absolutely necessary.

In Christenson v. Mentor Corp, the plaintiff filed a lawsuit in the seventeenth Judicial Circuit, in Broward County, Florida. The core of the action is a strict liability for injuries the Plaintiff suffered from the surgical implant of a device called ObTape, a prescription-only medical device sold by defendant Mentor Corporation. ObTape is a synthetic suburethral sling that was designed to help woman with stress urinary incontinence ("SUI"). Approximately 35,000 women in the United States used the Mentor ObTape between 2003 and 2006 for stress urinary incontinence.

The essence of the ObTape product liability case is that Mentor ObTape did not have a mesh design, which would have allowed the OBTape sling to breathe and get nutrients to the body’s tissue. Accordingly, the ObTape sling failed to allow the tissue where the sling is attached to heal, unlike other vaginal slings on the market. These ObTape problems became clear in a study in the fall of 2006 in the Journal of Urology which found that of the 67 women who had been implanted with the Mentor ObTape Vaginal Sling, more than 13% developed vaginal extrusions. Others patients had chronic vaginal discharge, and one patient developed an abscess that led to complications. It was telling that in the control group of 56 women who used another type of vaginal sling, none experienced the complications seen with the Mentor ObTape Vaginal Sling.

In Christenson v. Mentor Corp, the Plaintiff’s ObTape lawyer also brought a claim against the Cleveland Clinic (its West Palm Beach facility) alleging that it is in the chain for Plaintiff’s strict liability claim. Mentor sought to remove, relying on Porter v. Rosenberg, 650 So.2d 79 (Fla. Dist. Ct. App. 1995) – another case involving Mentor - for the proposition that strict product liability does not apply to health care providers when (1) the medical services provided could not have been rendered without utilizing the product at issue, and (2) the “predominant purpose of the transaction” was the provision of medical services.

The U.S. District Court Judge for Southern Florida William J. Zloch ruled there is no evidence that the Cleveland Clinic is the hospital where Plaintiff's surgery took place and that the medical services could not have been rendered without utilizing the ObTape. Accordingly, although the Mentor is correct on the law, it assumes facts not in evidence because there is “no evidence offered that the Plaintiff's surgery was performed at the Cleveland Clinic and that it did not sell the ObTape directly to Plaintiff, but rather used it as part of the procedure performed there.”

This outcome is a victory for the Plaintiff; her ObTape lawyers obviously believe that she is best served in Florida state court. Accordingly, this is a good outcome but not one that should be expected to be frequently replicated in most products liability cases, because most products cases will not have facts that get plaintiffs past the test for whether a health care provider is in the chain of distribution for purpose of a products liability lawsuit.

If you or someone you care about has been injured by this sling and would like to learn more about the Mentor ObTape Sling lawsuits that are pending around the country, call 800-553-8082 or click here for a free confidential case evaluation by a Mentor ObTape Sling lawyer.

A Broward County, Florida jury has awarded $3.5 million to the family of a man who died 17 days after being implanted with a pacemaker. According to the family's wrongful death lawyer, the jury found that doctors committed medical malpractice by not delaying the procedure because the man developed lung problems prior to the surgery.

You can find the story here.

Two units of Johnson & Johnson were orded to pay $16.6 million to the family of a Chicago-area woman who died after using a Duragesic pain-patch. This is the 4th consecutive pain pump verdict against for Johnson & Johnson in the pain pump litigation. Last month, a Florida jury awarded $13 million to the family of a woman who died after using a similar patch.

If you have a Duragesic pain patch case, call our attorneys at 800-553-8082 or click here for a free initial consultation.

A Florida jury awared more than $13 million to the family of a woman who died of a drug overdose caused by a painkilling patch. Jurors found that the manufacturing defects that in the Duragesic patch caused the death.