Saturday, December 12, 2009

By Katherine Sayre, www.al.com

 A Mobile County jury awarded $20 million this week to the family of a woman who plaintiffs’ lawyers said died after receiving improper anesthesia care.

The jury returned the wrongful death verdict against medical group Coastal Anesthesia, Dr. Randall Boudreaux and Don Ortego, a certified registered nurse anesthetist, court records show.

Paulett Pettaway Hall, a 32-year-old wife and mother of two, died Jan. 16, 2006, after receiving anesthesia prior to exploratory surgery, according to Cunningham Bounds, the law firm that represented Hall’s estate.

Hall, who had been suffering from severe abdominal pain, breathed bile from her stomach into her lungs, the lawyers stated in a news release. She died at Springhill Medical Center.

Coastal Anesthesia, Boudreaux and Ortego denied the claims in the lawsuit, according to court records.

Defense lawyer Wesley Pipes, speaking on behalf of his clients, said, “We were disappointed in the jury’s verdict, and we’re disappointed that they did not seem to understand the evidence we tried to present.”

Pipes declined further comment.

Plaintiffs’ lawyers argued that Boudreaux and Ortego did not examine Hall’s abdomen or look at her medical records prior to the exploratory surgery, which would have identified her risk factors for breathing fluid into her lungs, according to the Cunningham Bounds news release.

Posted December 28, 2009

By: Chris Wagner, KHASTV.com

A Nebraska teenager is dead after being hit by a snow removing machine in a school parking lot early this morning.

According to police, 19–year–old Christopher Johnson was struck by the pay–loader after he went to talk to the vehicle’s driver and slipped on the ice. Johnson then fell under the snow remover.

He was pronounced dead at Columbus Community Hospital.

Johnson was working with the company clearing the snow for the school at the time.

Posted December 23, 2009

By Larry Hartstein, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

A 32-year-old Lawrenceville woman has been charged with felony hit and run and DUI in an Interstate 85 crash that injured 13 developmentally disabled adults and their bus driver Wednesday.

Joy Christine Wilson was being held without bond at the Gwinnett County Jail. Additional charges are expected.

Witnesses told police Wilson was driving erratically, changing lanes frequently to bypass cars, before causing the 11:45 a.m. wreck in the northbound lanes just north of Pleasant Hill Road. Her black 1999 Honda Accord hit the back of a small bus operated by Norcross-based Just People Inc., and the bus lost control, police said. The bus skidded across several lanes and flipped on its side before colliding with the guardrail and righting itself.

The wreck shut down I-85 northbound for about three hours and left three people in critical condition with life-threatening injuries, nine others with serious injuries and two with minor injuries.

Five passengers were ejected. One was airlifted to Atlanta Medical Center. Most of the injured were taken to Gwinnett Medical Center.

Wilson pulled over briefly following the accident, but left before police arrived, Gwinnett police spokesman Officer Brian Kelly said. An hour later she was apprehended as she attempted to return to the scene.

A family member, said Kelly, convinced her to turn herself in. At the same time, police found her car in an unincorporated area of Lawrenceville.

“Wilson was taken into custody at Satellite and Steve Reynolds Boulevard,” said Kelly.

According to its Web site, Just People “provides a wide variety of support services to adults with developmental disabilities.”

The bus was taking “special-needs individuals to an art class in Hoschton,” said Kelly.

The person answering the phone at the Just People office Wednesday afternoon said the agency had no comment on the wreck.

Posted December 21, 2009

By Mike McIntire, the New York Times

By the time Bryan Lee headed to work along Highway 51 in Texas on Sept. 15, 2005, the road-building industry and its government overseers were painfully aware of a deadly, though easily corrected, construction hazard: pavement-edge drop-offs.

Accidents involving dangerous drop-offs kill about 160 people and injure 11,000 each year. Numerous studies have shown that the steeper the drop-off, the greater the danger.

In Texas in 2002, seven people were killed when a car slipped off a sharp edge of roadway and onto the shoulder, causing the driver to overcorrect into the path of a minivan. Four years before, six people died in a succession of accidents in another Texas work zone, where contractors had failed to smooth out the edge of a newly paved lane.

Yet when the contractors repaving Highway 51 west of Fort Worth discovered that they lacked sufficient equipment, they decided to pave only part of the roadway and finish the rest days later, leaving a sharp drop-off that ran for miles within the travel lane. A state inspector warned that it was dangerous, but no one — not his superiors, not the contractor — listened.

Two days after that warning, Mr. Lee, a 26-year-old oil field worker with a wife and two young sons, rounded a curve in the early-morning darkness, and the wheels of his Suzuki motorcycle slid off the asphalt edge. He tumbled from the bike and was run over by a pickup truck.

The deadly accident was one of thousands in highway work zones across the country that have killed at least 4,700 people — more than two a day — and injured 200,000 in the last five years alone. Ubiquitous annoyances of on-the-go American life, work zones are sometimes death traps, too.

Behind this human toll is a litany of mundane hazards: concrete barriers in the wrong position, obsolete lane markings left in place, warning signs never deployed.

Yet there are virtually no laws or regulations mandating safety measures in work zones. There are standards, but they are loosely enforced and differ from state to state. As a result, there are few penalties levied against contractors when, because of ignorance, carelessness or a desire to save money, guidelines are violated. Problem contractors often just keep on getting hired, and dangerous practices remain uncorrected, sometimes for years.

Ultimately, the hazards persist through a kind of collective indifference, a presumption that, given the crush of traffic and the vagaries of driver behavior, accidents happen.

But interviews and internal government documents, along with a review of more than 100 legal cases involving work zone crashes around the country, illuminate a more complex calculus of blame — one that often encompasses the actions of the construction industry and its regulators as well.

“A lot of work-zone crashes are entirely preventable,” said David Holstein, Ohio’s chief traffic engineer. “It’s not explainable by just driver error or inattention. We can intervene to keep them from happening.”

After transportation officials in Ohio created a system to monitor work-zone crashes in real time, they were startled to discover that the presence of construction caused accident rates to jump as much as 70 percent, Mr. Holstein said.

“We were seeing that crashes were happening day after day after day, and nothing was being done about it,” he said. “Sometimes there were hundreds of crashes over the life of a project.”

Now the stakes are increasing, as $27 billion from President Obama’s economic stimulus package is prompting a nationwide boom in highway construction. Federal transportation officials are concerned that work-zone fatalities, after declining in recent years along with traffic deaths in general, could rise again.

“The number of people killed as a result of crashes in work zones remains significant,” the Federal Highway Administration says on its Web site. “Safety and mobility impacts from work zones will likely be magnified with the infusion of a large number of new projects.”

Transportation officials are responding pretty much as they always have: by focusing primarily on drivers. States have raised fines for speeding in work zones, cracked down on drunken or distracted drivers and stiffened penalties for killing or injuring highway workers, even though roughly 85 percent of those killed in work zones are motorists.

Posted December 21, 2009

By UPI.com

Posted December 19, 2009

By: www.thedenverchannel.com

EVERGREEN, Colo. — A 3-year-old boy was in critical condition after being struck and dragged by a car on Saturday afternoon in Evergreen.

Evergreen Fire Rescue Chief Garry Dejong said firefighters were called to the parking lot of a Wal-Mart store at 952 Swede Gulch Road in Evergreen at around 1:40 p.m. on a report of a person being struck by a car.

A witness told 7News that a woman was pulling into a parking spot in the lot when she struck the boy, who was apparently kneeling and trying to pick something up.

The woman kept driving a short distance, dragging the boy under the car. The witness said bystanders rushed to the scene and lifted the car off of the boy. Dejong said the boy was with his grandmother and other siblings when the accident happened.

Dejong said the boy was airlifted out to The Children’s Hospital in Denver. He was listed in critical condition.

The Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office is investigating the accident.

Posted December 18, 2009

By: channel3000.com

MERRIMAC, Wis. — Fourteen people were hurt after a ski lift accident at the Devil’s Head resort near the Town of Merrimac on Thursday night.

The Sauk County Sheriff’s Department said that the state Department of Commerce has taken over an investigation into a malfunctioning chair lift at resort. A full chair lift allegedly stopped and began going backward at a high rate of speed on Thursday night at about 7 p.m., sending some riders jumping off their seats.

Officials with local hospitals said they treated a total of 14 people for injuries in connection with the incident, and two were kept overnight for observation, including one with an ankle fracture. They said that most of the victims were listed in fair condition upon their arrival to both St. Clare Hospital in Baraboo and Sauk Prairie Memorial Hospital in Sauk City.

On Thursday night, Devil’s Head general manager Joe Vittengl said an investigation into what went wrong would begin Friday at daybreak.

“With light, we’ll be able to get into that chair lift and see anything that malfunctioned or see if there was ice or anything that caused a problem. And right now in the darkness, it’s more difficult to determine what would have occurred,” he said.

Meister at least three of the victims were seriously injured in the accident, but weren’t critically hurt. He said that seven apparently had minor injuries. He didn’t have details on the ages of the victims or the nature of their injuries.

Authorities said that they didn’t know exactly how many people were aboard when it started going backward.

Witnesses described the chaos and said some people on the chair lift jumped off.

“We were like 20 feet away from getting off the lift and the lift started going backward pretty fast,” said Amir Shadlu, a Madison resident who jumped off the lift. “We saw a lot of people jump from farther and they didn’t even take their boards off, so I don’t know how they made it, but we made it out okay.”

Lyndon resident Jason Lucht also said he jumped off the lift about 25 feet to the ground below.

“Everyone is yelling jump and I’m like, ‘Oh, we got to get off.’ So, we just jumped off and it was pretty scary, but we got off just fine,” said Lucht.

The popular resort was having a deal on lift tickets Thursday night when the lift failed.

“The opposite side of where you get on the lift was pretty much destroyed because when the chairs hang down, they would have been accelerated and being swung out like this and the whole roof on that side was gone,” said Matt Dederich, a skier from Madison who was stuck on the lift.

“We didn’t even get on the hill, we didn’t go down once,” said Nicole Bendell, of Madison.

There were 12 people still on the lift as of 8:45 p.m., nearly two hours after the initial incident, waiting to be evacuated. Meister said emergency responders finished evacuating the lift just after 9 p.m.

T.J. Versace, 28, of Madison, said he was about 12 feet away and heading toward the ski lift and preparing to get on when the accident happened.

“Something happened and it looked like it was going backwards. It was like a fire spark everywhere and all the seats are off the track and it’s going backwards and people are jumping, and everyone is like, ‘Just jump, jump, jump,’ and people are jumping off the chair,” Versace said.

Four EMS agencies responded to the scene.

“The whole parking lot is all lights everywhere (with) police and fire people. Parents are showing up and they want to see their kids,” Versace said. “When I was getting into my car there were parents pulling up and yelling at the staff, ‘Where is my kid? I want to see my kid.’”

Merrimac is about 20 miles northwest of Madison. 

Posted December 17, 2009

The Associated Press

WASHINGTON — A Los Angeles toy importer is recalling about 22,000 toy dart gun sets after an 8-year-old child’s death.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission says children can choke on the soft plastic darts included in the Action Team toy dart gun imported by OKK Trading Inc.

The agency reports that an 8-year-old boy in Port Arthur, Texas, died in November 2007 when one of the darts became lodged in his throat.

In addition to the dart gun and darts, the Chinese-made sets included a toy watch, a baton, a walkie-talkie, a whistle and a badge. They were sold at discount stores around the country between December 2006 and March 2008.

Contact OKK Trading at 877-655-8697 for information on returning the toy.

Medical malpractice is any action or omission by a medical professional that injuriously deviates from accepted standards and practices or causes accelerated injury or death. As such, malpractice can be considered those actions or inactions that cause damage that would have otherwise been avoided.

From that definition, we are able to dive into the complex world of medical malpractice. Often legal suits entail unfortunate complications with loved ones and emotions run very high. From a family perspective, perceived errors by a doctor can prompt individuals to pursue legal action. From a doctor perspective, prevalency of medical lawsuits can actually lead to lack of treatment or hesitancy to make critical decisions.

With both sides trying to do what’s best for their interests, it can be difficult to know when pursuing a malpractice suit is advisable. That being the case, let’s examine some of the most common situations where legal action is appropriate:

Kinds of Medical Malpractice

* Medication Errors. This can involve medicines given on site in the hospital or prescribed for extended use.

* Medical Misdiagnosis. If a medical problem is misdiagnosed the treatment (or lack of treatment) can have drastically injurious effects on a patient.

* Failure to Diagnose. Similar dangers to misdiagnosis, only mostly focused on a lack of treatment.

* Anesthesia Mistakes. Anesthesiologists have a rigorous amount of credentials to accrue in order to begin practicing. The reason why is because anesthesia is a hotbed of potential complications.

* Birth Injuries. The birthing process is complex and requires many on-the-spot decisions, leading to potential error.

* Surgical Errors. When in surgery, it is a surgeons responsibility to follow proper protocols and avoid preventable complications.

There are more of course, and medical malpractice can span out to a great variety of issues.

Malpractice Verdict and Award Examples

To better understand how the process of suing for malpractice takes place, here are three examples of the legal system in action.

*VICTIM’S FAMILY AWARDED $19.8 MILLION IN MALPRACTICE SUIT*

In what is believed to be one of Massachusetts’ biggest medical malpractice awards, a Plymouth County jury ordered a Brockton doctor to pay $19.8 million to the family of a Wareham woman who died after her undiagnosed cervical cancer spread. Cervical Cancer is among the most curable forms of the disease if found early, but Higgins argued that McCormack’s lapses allowed the cancer to spread. Wood died June 17, 1993.

Higgins said the size of the award demonstrates “that people don’t want to be treated by a doctor from across the room.” “People want doctors to take their signs and symptoms and complaints seriously,” he said.

*TENNESSEE MAN SUFFERS STROKE WHILE UNDERGOING CHIROPRACTIC TREATMENT*

DreamLegalTeam.com was contacted for a referral by a young woman from a small town in Tennessee whose husband suffered a brain stem stroke while undergoing manipulation at his chiropractor’s office. The chiropractor practiced in Mississippi. After this stroke, the 36 year old man sustained injuries that left him blind, unable to speak clearly or walk/drive/function normally.

The woman was looking for the best medical malpractice attorney in her area to answer her questions with regard to current and future medical care, rehabilitation, lost wages and compensation for the pain and suffering her husband was experiencing. DreamLegalTeam.com referred the woman to a specialist lawyer in Memphis. The lawyer secured prolonged medical care and attention for the effects of the accident and also a large financial settlement.

*27 YEAR OLD MISSOURI WOMAN DIES DUE TO MALPRACTICE*

DreamLegalTeam.com received a request for a free online consultation from a gentleman from Little Rock, Arkansas.  A few months earlier, his 27 year old wife was taken to a hospital in St. Louis, Missouri because she was short of breath and dizzy.  The doctors sent her home and said nothing was wrong with her.  Two days later, she died with blood clots in her lungs.
 
This young man contacted my office as to how he could find the best medical malpractice attorney in the St. Louis area.  We referred this client to a person uniquely qualified to evaluate this potential claim, a nationally acclaimed attorney who is also a medical doctor.  The attorney evaluated and accepted this case.
 
Although nothing can truly compensate this heart-broken young widower, he did receive a large financial award.

Securing Proper Legal Representation

As you can tell from the examples, the key to success in a malpractice case is securing representation in your area that understands the intricacies of medical law. The lawyer needs to be nearby and accessible in order to properly asses the history of the medical practitioners in question, understand the variable laws of your state, and gather the proper details from you regarding your case.

Many families have to deal with the tough decision of putting parents and grandparents in nursing homes. They know that the homes can provide more complete care, but at the same time you are putting your loved one in the trust of complete strangers.

Under most normal circumstances, nursing home treatment is adequate and the elderly individual finds some contentment. Unfortunately, there are times when our worst fears are realized and it becomes apparent that abuse is taking place.

Types of Elder Abuse

There are multiple kinds of elder abuse, each with their own way of harming the quality of life of the person involved. The most common types include physical, emotional, medical, and financial.

Physical abuse is the most obvious and pertains to hitting, throwing, harmful restraining, and other acts that cause bodily harm. Many times physical abuse takes place out of either frustration on the part of nurses or attendees or out of a desire to feel empowered over the patients.

Emotional abuse is more subtle and involves a large variety of effects. Emotional abuse can include verbal taunting, coersion, threats, scare tactics, etc. Emotional abuse is more difficult to detect because elderly individuals may be coersed into not saying anything about the abuse. It’s more likely that they will quietly internalize it, not wanting to be a further burden on the family.

Medical abuse involves either neglect of treatment or incompetent handling of the patient’s medical needs. This can include bad diagnosis of problems, inappropriate medications of dosages, and lack of attention during times of need.

Financial abuse is perhaps the most prevalent type and occurs when individuals try to either directly or indirectly siphon money away from the patient under care. Direct siphoning occurs when individuals try to either intimidate patient’s out of money, trick them through scams, or get them to sign over rights through ’sweet heart’ scamming. Indirect can come from external sources such as family members jockeying to lay claim to the patient’s belongings and finances.

Reporting Abuse

There are two types of abuse reporting, non-mandated and mandated. Non-mandated comes from any individual who is not directly involved with the care of the elderly patient, but who suspects abuse may be occurring. Mandated comes from nurses, workers, or direct caretakers that wish to pursue a claim.

To file a complaint, the first option is to consult the governing bodies at the head of whatever nursing home or institution that is caring for the patient. This could be a way of trickling down responsibility to lower members of the staff who may be causing trouble.

Another method is to file directly to law enforcement officials. They can then proceed to investigate the matter or make other agencies aware that complaints have been filed.

The third option is to secure legal counsel who has experience in dealing with elder law. These lawyers will know how to confront both the individuals who are perpetrating the abuse and the agencies that may try to protect them. It is important to move as quickly as possible on a case of potential abuse.