Accident and Injury Lawyer Blog

Dogs are people too. Pretty much. For many of us.

So we report here on Proctor & Gamble Company has retrieved a single production lot of dry dog food as aflatoxin levels, above the acceptable limit, have been detected. This product has already been retrieved from store shelves.

Aflatoxin is a naturally occurring by-product from the growth of Aspergillus flavus and can be harmful to pets if consumed in significant quantities. Pets who have consumed this product and exhibit symptoms of illness including sluggishness or lethargy combined with a reluctance to eat, vomiting, yellowish tint to the eyes or gums, or diarrhea should be seen by a veterinarian.

The affected dog food is as follows:

• Product Name: Iams ProActive Health Smart Puppy dry dog food with Use By/Expiration Dates of February 5 or February 6, 2013
• Version: 7.0 lb bag; Code Date: 12784177I6; UPC Code: 1901402305
• Version: 8.0 lb bag; Code Date: 12794177D2 and 12794177D3; UPC Code: 1901410208
• Version: 17.5 lb bag; Code Date: 12794177K1 and 12794177K2; UPC Code: 1901401848

The affected product lot was distributed to a limited number of retailers located in the eastern United States: Alabama, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Maryland, Maine, Mississippi, North Carolina, North Carolina, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, and Virginia. These retailers have already removed this product from store shelves.

While no health effects related to this product have been reported, P&G retrieved this product from the shelves as a precautionary measure. Consumers who purchased the affected dog food should stop using it, discard it, and contact Iams a replacement voucher.

No other dry dog food, dry cat food, dog or cat canned food, biscuits/treats or supplements are affected by this announcement.

Dogs matter. I'm glad Proctor is doing the right thing by making sure our animals are safe.

Mars Food has recalled two date codes of Uncles Ben's Whole Grain White Rice Garden Vegetable, due to an undeclared milk allergen. People who have an allergy or severe sensitivity to milk run the risk of serious or life-threatening allergic reaction if they consume these products.

The recall, affecting ONLY the Whole Grain White Rice Garden Vegetable, affects the 4.7 oz. (133 g) boxes with the following:

• UPC code of 54800 40778
• Best before: 08/12
• Code dates: 133BA4RP06 and 133BB4RP06

An ingredient supplier improperly included an undeclared milk ingredient in the seasoning mix used for this product. As such, consumers with milk allergies are advised not to eat the product, and consumers should return the product to the store where it was purchased for a full refund.

This product was distributed through retail stores in Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, California, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Mississippi, North Carolina, New Hampshire, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Vermont and Wisconsin.

Mars Food US has not received any reports of illness or other consumer complaints related to this matter. No other flavors of Uncle Ben's Whole Grain White Rice or any other Uncle Ben's products are affected.

The J.M. Smucker Company has announced a limited recall on 16 oz. Smucker’s Natural Peanut Butter Chunky, as it has been determined that it may be contaminated with Salmonella. Salmonella is an organism that can cause serious and sometimes fatal infections in young children, frail or elderly people, and others with weakened immune systems.

The affected Peanut Butter is packaged in 16oz jars, and is marked as follows:

• UPC: 5150001701 (located on the side of the jar's label below the bar code)
• Production Codes: 1307004 and 1308004
• Best-If-Used-By dates: August 3, 2012 and August 4, 2012
• Chunky product only (not creamy)
• Impacted product would have been purchased between November 8 - 17, 2011

This product was distributed in: Arkansas, Colorado, Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Texas, Virginia, Wisconsin, and the District of Columbia.

No other products of The J.M. Smucker Company are affected by this recall.

United Natural Foods (UNFI) is recalling selected types of FoodMatch, Inc. Divina Stuffed Olives, as they have the potential to be contaminated with Clostridium botulinum, a bacterium which can cause life-threatening illness or death. These items have been recalled due to a lack of temperature control during the distribution process. UNFI inadvertently subjected the recall items to temperature ranges above those directed by the manufacturer.

The following products have been recalled:

• DIVINA 4 OZ OLIVES,FETA CHEESE STUFFED (blue and yellow label) UPC 63172352780
• DIVINA 4 OZ OLIVES,BLUE CHEESE STUFFED (blue label) UPC 63172352790

Divina Olives Stuffed with Feta Cheese were distributed to the Safeway stores identified below:

• #0583 1606 N Ave, Spearfish, South Dakota
• #1577 6520 S Academy Road, Colorado Springs, Colorado
• # 1615 3325 28th Street, Boulder, Colorado
• # 1644 7655 Mclaughlin Rd, Falcon, Colorado
• # 2761 1165 Main St, Lander, Wyoming
• # 2792 27152 Main St, Conifer, Colorado
• # 2910 1632 Hover Road, Longmont, Colorado
• # 0853 7625 Old Georgetown Road, Bethesda, Maryland
• # 0942 12 West Washington St, Middleburg, Virginia
• # 1283 8646 Richmond Highway, Alexandria, Virginia
• # 1606 9596 Old Keene Mill Rd, Burke, Virginia
• # 1668 5510 Norbeck Road, Rockville, Maryland
• # 1956 14939 Shady Grove Road, Rockville, Maryland
• # 2650 43150 Broadlands Plaza, Ashburn, Virginia
• # 4002 5727 Burke Center, Burke, Virginia
• # 4205 415 14th Street SE, Washington, D.C.

Date codes Best Used By: 11 JAN 2012 and Best Used By: 1 FEB 2012 sold at other retail outlets have not been affected because the products were not exposed to a lack of refrigeration controls.

Divina Olives Stuffed with Blue Cheese were distributed to the following states: Alaska, Washington, Oregon, California, Arizona, Nevada, South Dakota, Colorado, Wyoming, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Washington DC through the following retail stores:

• Genuardis
• Carrs
• Safeway
• Pavilion
• Vons

Best Used By: 11 JAN 2012, Best Used By: 15 DEC 2011, Best Used By: 30 DEC 2011, Best Used By: 1 FEB 2012

These date codes sold at other retail outlets have not been affected because the products were not exposed to a lack of refrigeration controls.

No illnesses have been reported to date.

• Recall on Stuffed Bio Gaudiano Brand Organic Olives

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is warning consumers not to eat Turkish pine nuts, distributed by Sunrise Commodities, after tests have confirmed the presence of Salmonella.

The FDA is collaborating with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to investigate a multistate outbreak of Salmonella Enteritidis infections. To date, there are reports of at least 42 illnesses associated with the outbreak in Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania and Virginia.

As part of FDA’s investigation, samples of Turkish pine nuts from a warehouse used by Sunrise Commodities were collected.

Sunrise Commodities has already recalled four lots of the product implicated in this matter, totaling more than 21,000 pounds of pine nuts.

The affected nuts were packed in 22-pound boxes and included the markings:

• Warehouse Lot 27963 with the identifying code “PO#: 50165”
• Warehouse Lot 29628 with the identifying code “PO#: 50558”
• Warehouse Lot 27713 with the identifying code “PO#: 49595”
• Warehouse Lot 27427 with the identifying code “PO#: 50032”

Sunrise Commodities distributed the Turkish pine nuts in bulk to various food vendors in Florida, New Jersey, New York and Canada. A recall notification was issued by Sunrise to its customers on November 3, 2011, alerting them of the test results and of the epidemiologic investigation.

Wegmans Food Markets, recalled the product from their stores on October 26, 2011. As the investigation continues, additional recalls may take place.

Wegmans Food Markets has announced a recall of bulk Turkish Pine Nuts due to possible Salmonella contamination. The recalled Turkish pine nuts were imported from Turkey by Sunrise Commodities.

Wegmans is recalling approximately 5,000 lbs. of Turkish Pine Nuts, sold in the Bulk Foods department of most Wegmans stores in New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Virginia, and Maryland, due to possibility of being contaminated with Salmonella. The time frame for the sale of these nuts would have been between July 1 and October 18, 2011.

The bulk Turkish Pine Nuts have been linked to an outbreak of illness from Salmonella Enteritidis, an organism which can cause serious and sometimes fatal infections in young children, frail or elderly people, and others with weakened immune systems. Illness onset is typically 12 to 72 hours after consumption.

This recall only applies to Turkish Pine Nuts sold in bulk. Other pine nuts sold at Wegmans are not affected by this recall.

• Wegmans Recalls Chocolate Chip Bars
• Walnut Recall for Salmonella Concerns

Last week the lettuce recall was due to Listeria, this week we have moved on to Salmonella concerns.

Taylor Farms Retail Inc. has issued a precautionary recall of 3,265 cases of various salad blends, as a random test of packaged spinach showed the potential to be contaminated with Salmonella.

The bagged salad products subject to the recall include:

• Fresh Selections Hearts of Romaine 10 oz. bag 0-11110-91044-8 TFRS277B07OOKR5L Best By 10-18-11
• Fresh Selections Leafy Romaine 10 oz. bag 0-11110-91046-2 TFRS277B07OOKR5H Best By 10-18-11
• Fresh Selections Field of Greens 10 oz. bag 0-11110-91042-4 TFRS277B07OOKR5F Best By 10-18-11
• Fresh Selections Romaine Blend 10 oz. bag 0-11110-91038-7 TFRS277B07OOKR5N Best By 10-18-11
• HEB Spring Mix 5 oz. bag 0-41220-19752-1 TFRS277B07 Best By 10-20-11
• Marketside Fresh Spinach 10oz bag 6-81131-32946-0 TFRS277A07 Guaranteed Delicious By 10-21-11
• Marketside Caesar Salad Kit 14.6 oz. bag 6-81131-38744-6 TFRS277B07 Guaranteed Delicious By 10-19-11
• Marketside Asian Salad Kit 15 oz. bag 6-81131-53211-2 TFRS277B07 Guaranteed Delicious By 10-19-11
• Marketside Southwest Salad Kit 15oz bag 6-81131-38747-7 TFRS277B07 Guaranteed Delicious By 10-19-11
• Marketside Premium Romaine 9 oz. bag 6-81131-38753-8 TFRS277B07 Guaranteed Delicious By 10-19-11
• Marketside Premium Romaine Family 18 oz. bag 6-81131-38807-8TFRS277B07 Guaranteed Delicious By 10-19-11
• Taylor Farms Field Greens 8 oz. bag 0-30223-04036-1 TFRS277B07 Best If Used By 10-20-11

The products were distributed in Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Kentucky, Missouri, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, South Carolina, Texas, Virginia, Washington and Puerto Rico and sold in various retail supermarkets.

No other products or code dates are affected by this recall, and there have been no reported illnesses attributed to the recalled items.

• Lettuce Recall: Listeria Concerns

A man was awarded $25 million by a Portsmouth, Virginia jury for his claim that he had been raped by three police officers in South Korea.

It is hard to imagine how awful that would be. Who would take $25 million in exchange for that?

I know who. Norfolk lawyer Daniel R. Warman. A person who can still work and “who can see and has all their arms and legs … that gets $25 million is perfectly ridiculous,” Warman told the Virginian-Pilot.

Interestingly, Warman had a partner in 1994 who does personal injury plaintiffs' work in medical malpractice and products liability cases. And, according to this old article, although

[H]e mostly does defense work, Warman is not enthusiastic either way about most kinds of "tort reform." He thinks the main problem with the tort system is the availability of damages for creative new torts and such intangibles as non-physical pain and suffering, which leads to incomprehensibly huge random-number verdicts. In his experience, though, he says juries have been wrong only two or three times, one of which was a case the defendant should have lost.

I would love to hear more about this. I am assuming this guy - a retired Navy Reserve captain which gets some props from me - is a good lawyer and a smart guy. But assuming there is liability - a big if in this case if you read the article - what would be the appropriate damage award for being gang raped by three men? Personally, I'm inclined to defer to the jury that heard the evidence.

I wrote a blog post last month about how GEICO wanted me to indemnify them for a settlement (here is the document).

As I wrote, this is silly on a variety of levels. If this Virginia Ethics Opinion is published, it will also be an ethical violation in Virginia as it is in many other states.

The Washington Post reports that medical malpractice lawyers and doctors have agreed to support legislation that would raise the cap in medical malpractice lawsuits $50,000 each year. Virginia has a hard cap in medical malpractice cases of $2 million.

More states are adding hurdles for medical malpractice lawyers to put malpractice complaints into suit. This irritates a lot of plaintiffs' lawyers but if the goal is to reduce the number of frivolous malpractice lawsuits, this rule does do the trick. These rules make malpractice lawyers verify that they have plausible theory on the case before filing suit. It is a hassle but some level of certificate of merit type requirement probably makes sense.

The Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog has a post about one of the nuances of these rules: what is a related specialty that would allow a doctor in a different specialty to offer opinions about the standard of care. The post discusses the approach one U.S. District Court judge took on this issue, which relies heavily on similar statutory language as the one interpreted in Virginia.

A Virginia woman's family has filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the surgeon who caused the woman to abruptly suffer "massive blood loss" as a result of having her intestine and a blood vessel cut during gallbladder surgery. Reportedly, the doctor admitted to the family that he cut the woman's intestine and blood vessel during the lap chole surgery.

Two of our malpractice attorneys, Laura Zois and Rod Gaston, tried a lap chole (gallbladder surgery) case earlier this summer and won a $1.1 million verdict for our client. Our case involved injury to the common bile duct as opposed to the blood vessel and intestine in this case, but it is the same idea. Look where you are cutting before you cut. One potential complication in this case: the woman was on heavy anti-coagulant therapy, making her more vulnerable to bleeds.

• Article on the case
• Lap chole cases generally
• >News article on our recent lap chole verdict
• Malpractice cases generally
• Medical Malpractice Attorney Blog

A Virginia judge has rejected a defendant doctor's motion for a new trial after a $1.95 million medical malpractice verdict for the plaintiff who died following plastic surgery.

This is another of a long list of beyond tragic medical malpractice cases. The woman was a 36 year-old mother of four who was sent home after receiving a breast lift and augmentation, liposuction and a tummy tuck in spite of the fact that she was having trouble breathing.

A Frederick County (Virginia, not Maryland) jury awarded a woman $3 million against a doctor who performed a hysterectomy. After a reduction for the cap, the woman's recovery will be $1,925,000.

Plainitff's malpractice case was that the doctor used tissue from the rectal wall to repair the woman's vaginal cuff during the hysterctomy rather than peritoneal material. Post trial motions for remittur were rejected.

Settlement for $1.8 million was reached in a medical malpractice lawsuit where the jury this June awarded $4 million against an emergency room doctor. While that sounds like a major compromise, there is a cap on medical malpractice awards in Virginia, so the actual verdict after the cap was $1.8 million.

Plaintiff's Virginia medical malpractice lawyers alleged that a doctor misdiagnosed their 25-year-old client's heart condition. Plaintiff's condition was eventually diagnosed by doctors at St. Agnes Hospital in Baltimore.

This case had complications in discovery because of a problem I have discussed before: one lawyer representing all of the doctors (you can find the details in this article on the case). Defense medical malpractice lawyers love when doctors lock hands and sing "all for one, one for all." The problem is that this invariably leads to conflicts when the doctors could very easily point at each other.

Metro Verdicts Monthly provides the following data to give the median (not average) settlement and verdicts for ankle fracture injuries:

District of Columbia: $66,000

Virginia: $21,700

Maryland: $88,000

My comment? People rarely have minor ankle injuries in car accidents in my experience. So I think a lot of slip and fall ankle injuries are included in here which lowers the value from pure auto accident ankle injury claims (or malpractice claims which are more rare for ankle injuries). I don't think we have ever had an ankle injury case settled for less than $150,000 and I can think of one that settled for over a $1,000,000 (although that case had other complicated injuries so it is hard to sort out where the value was in the case).

For more analysis of this data and more data on ankle injuries verdicts nationally, check out this Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog post.

Related Posts

Valuing Injury Cases in Maryland (value of accidents in Maryland)

Valuing Cases in Virginia (general info on Virginia injury case results)

Valuing Cases in Washington D.C. (general infomation on Washington D.C. personal injury case results)

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.

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.

Virginia Lawyers Weekly reports in a $5 million settlement in a motorcycle accident case involving car that crossed the double yellow lines and struck a motorcycle head-on, causing catastrophic injuries, including an above-the-knee amputation. The injured motorcycle victim received $4.5 million; his wife received an additional $500,000.

The motorcycle accident victim required $116,265.14 in medical bills and is expected to incur over $700,000 in future medical bills.

The Baltimore Injury Lawyer Blog has a post on a Maryland Daily Record article looking at how President-Elect Barack Obama might change the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals which includes Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina.

I've spend far more time thinking about how President Obama will change the country than his impact on lawyers or even my own clients. But President Obama is going to nominate judges that I am going to stand before and argue. While I do think President Bush has nominated a lot of good judges, this fact makes me a little happier to be a lawyer today. I'm not saying every plaintiffs' lawyer is going to have a better shot at success in front of judges nominated by Obama. I just think they are likely to be fair and reasonable judges.