March 10, 2010

By Russell Carter, Womack Publishing Service

A Gretna woman filed a $15 million lawsuit Thursday in Pittsylvania County Circuit Court on behalf of her 12-year-son who drowned in 2008 at Smith Mountain Lake State Park.

Dora Mae Henley is suing Sycamore Baptist Church and the Commonwealth of Virginia, along with lifeguards, chaperones and a park ranger.

Henley’s son, Marvin Strickland Jr., was at Smith Mountain Lake State Park with a youth group from Sycamore Baptist Church when he drowned Aug. 7, 2008.

Strickland was found in 6-7 feet of water around 20 feet from the shore.

The Virginia Conservation and Recreation Department, which investigated the drowning, estimated Strickland had been missing about 15 minutes before lifeguards began searching for the youth.

After Strickland was reported missing, lifeguards removed everyone from the water and began diving in the area the boy was last seen.

He was found 20-30 minutes later.

In addition to Sycamore Baptist Church, the lawsuit names Kathy Mohilan, director of youth programs for the church, as well as adult chaperones Lonnie Rowland, Cindy Rowland and Annie Rowland Jones.

Others named in the lawsuit include Anna Woodford, the head lifeguard at the park; lifeguards Joey Nance and Austin Wood; and park ranger Meredith Bennett.

According to the lawsuit, Strickland was among six children from Sycamore Baptist Church who went swimming at the state park.

“When taking the youth group, including Master Strickland, on the trip to the state park, the adult chaperones, and each of them individually, expressly or impliedly assumed duties to supervise and care for Master Strickland for the duration of the trip,” the lawsuit states.

The lawsuit claims the chaperones were responsible for Strickland’s care on the trip, lifeguards were responsible for watching the boy while he was in the park and the park ranger was responsible for making sure lifeguards were properly trained.

Henley, who is represented by the Roanoke law firm of Crandall & Katt, is seeking $15 million for sorrow and grief, loss of her son’s income and his funeral expenses.

The plaintiff also asked for $350,000 in punitive damages.

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 1, 2009

By: Los Angeles Times

Reporting from Washington – The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday let stand a record $83-million judgment in favor of a San Diego County woman who was paralyzed when her Ford Explorer rolled over and its roof partially collapsed.

The justices rejected an appeal from lawyers for Ford Motor Co., who argued that the punitive damages were unfair and unconstitutional because the design of the sport utility vehicle met all the government and industry safety standards.

The jury had been told, however, that Ford could have strengthened the roof and possibly avoided such a catastrophic accident had it spent an extra $20 per vehicle.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other business groups had joined Ford in appealing the case. They urged the justices to take a more skeptical look at the notion of juries imposing punishment on manufacturers. But without comment, the court refused to hear the appeal.

In January 2002, Benetta Buell-Wilson, a 46-year-old mother of two, was driving on Interstate 8 east of San Diego when she swerved to avoid a metal object that fell from a vehicle in front of her. Her Ford Explorer rolled four times. She sustained spinal damage.

She and her husband sued Ford, and her lawyers argued that the Explorer was dangerously prone to rollovers and its roof was defectively weak.

In 2004, a jury in San Diego handed down a verdict of $369 million in her favor, one of the largest to date against a manufacturer. About one-third of the award was to compensate her for her losses, and two-thirds was to punish Ford for its “conscious disregard” of the safety of its customers.

Both the trial judge and a California appellate court reduced the verdict. In 2006, the state appeals court set the verdict as $27.6 million in compensatory damages and $55 million in punitive damages.

In its appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, Ford’s lawyers challenged only the punitive damages.

By The Associated Press

Posted November 23, 2009

A Philadelphia jury has ordered Wyeth Pharmaceuticals to pay a woman $75 million in punitive damages after finding a link between her breast cancer and a hormone-replacement drug.

 The punitive damages in the case of Connie Barton were unsealed yesterday, the same day of a verdict in the case of Donna Kendall, who was awarded $6.3 million in compensatory damages and $28 million in punitive damages, said Esther Berezofsky, an attorney for Barton.

Last month, the jury awarded Barton $3.75 million in compensatory damages and found Wyeth willfully hid evidence of a cancer link.

 The punitive award for Barton, of Peoria, Ill., had been sealed until yesterday because Kendall’s case was being heard in the same courthouse. A handful of Prempro lawsuits have gone to trial out of several thousand filed across the country.

Wyeth, based in Madison, was acquired by New York drugmaker Pfizer Inc. for $68 billion last month. A spokesman for Pfizer said the company will challenge both verdicts.

“We are disappointed with the verdicts in these cases,” Pfizer spokesman Chris Loder said in a statement.

“The company believes that neither the awards of punitive damages nor the liability verdicts were supported by the evidence or the law.”

Barton, 64, a retired hospital records clerk from Peoria, took Prempro for five years before her 2002 cancer diagnosis.

Wyeth, in court arguments, told jurors that women are now fully informed of the risks and benefits of Prempro, a combination estrogen-progestin pill.

Kendall, 66, of Decatur, Ill., took combination estrogen-progestin therapy from 1991 to 2002, including the last four years on Prempro, and was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2002, said her attorney, Tobi Millrood.

In her case, Wyeth was ordered to pay $16 million of the punitive damages and Upjohn Co., which is now a division of Pfizer, was ordered to pay $12 million, Millrood said.

“Today’s verdict is a resounding victory not only for Donna Kendall but for women around the country,” Millrood said.

Sales of Prempro have plummeted since 2002 when a large federal health study, the Women’s Health Initiative, was stopped when researchers saw more breast cancers in those on Prempro.

A study this year shows that lung cancer seems more likely to prove fatal in women who are taking the combination drug.

By Duff Wilson, NY Times

Published: November 20, 2009

Legal experts predict that thousands of tobacco lawsuits could gain momentum in Florida after a Fort Lauderdale jury ordered Philip Morris USA to pay $300 million to a former smoker who says she needs a lung transplant.

 If it survives an appeal, the verdict late Thursday would be the nation’s largest award of damages to an individual suing a tobacco company and could encourage thousands of plaintiffs who have filed similar cases in Florida, according to Clifford E. Douglas of the University of Michigan Tobacco Research Network.

A state supreme court ruling in Florida a few years ago made it easier to pursue tobacco lawsuits there than in other states. But the tobacco industry, which plans to appeal, appeared unfazed. Tobacco companies have considered product liability suits as little more than a cost of doing business since the seven biggest companies agreed to pay $206 billion in a master settlement agreement with 46 states in 1998.

Florida, despite being one of those states, had a major legal ruling in 2006 that lowered a plaintiff’s burden of proof against a tobacco company.

The Florida Supreme Court rejected a class-action verdict and a $145 billion award to plaintiffs, saying smokers would have to sue individually. But the court said plaintiffs would not have to prove some key elements that had been upheld in the first stage of the class action: that nicotine is addictive, that smoking causes diseases, and that cigarette companies fraudulently hid those facts.

“That makes these cases in Florida unique,” Mr. Douglas said. Smokers in other states are still suing cigarette makers, he said, but they have higher legal hurdles.

A spokesman for the Altria Group, the Virginia-based parent company of Philip Morris USA, indicated it would appeal the verdict and said the Florida rules were “fundamentally unfair and unconstitutional.”

Shares of Altria, which had been up more than 27 percent this year, dropped 1.2 percent Friday, to $18.98.

Lucinda Naugle, the 61-year-old sister of a former Fort Lauderdale mayor, was awarded $56 million in compensatory damages and $244 million in punitive damages Thursday after a three-week trial and three hours of jury deliberation in Broward County Circuit Court.

Ms. Naugle, an office manager, had started smoking when she was 20 and quit when she was 45 years old, her lawyer, Robert W. Kelley of Fort Lauderdale, said in a telephone interview Friday. She now has severe emphysema and needs a lung transplant she cannot afford, he said.

The jury assigned her 10 percent of the liability for her smoking and disease, and Philip Morris 90 percent.

“She’ll get paid, I would hope, within a year or two,” Mr. Kelley said. “The question is will she live long enough.”

Mr. Kelley said about 25 more cases were lined up for trial in Florida next year. In all, more than 9,000 people from the former class action filed individual suits in various courts in Florida against tobacco makers by January 2008, the deadline set by the state Supreme Court.

About 4,000 of those cases were filed in federal court and have been stayed, pending a review scheduled in January by the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, in Atlanta.

Brendan J. McCormick, a spokesman for Altria, said Friday that the company expected the federal appellate court to reject the standards of proof set by the state Supreme Court. “What you have is a defined number of cases in Florida with unique issues that will ultimately be resolved on appeal,” he said.

David J. Adelman, a tobacco analyst for Morgan Stanley, said the Florida case and, separately, forthcoming class-action lawsuits over light cigarette claims pose an “undeniable” increase in the industry’s legal risk “which had previously declined to an unprecedented low point.”

In an interview, Mr. Adelman noted that there were no jury trials in cigarette cases all of last year, and that other states had decertified class-action suits in ways more favorable to the tobacco industry. Further, Mr. Adelman said, the major legal threats to the industry were removed by the 1998 settlement with states. And since then, the industry has fended off calls in court and Congress for a huge disgorgement of its profits.

Even in light of the Florida verdict, Mr. Adelman said the tobacco industry could afford several hundred million dollars a year in legal losses if it had to. “That is a financially manageable issue,” he said.

Of more concern, he said in the interview and a note to investors, is a coming round of cases claiming fraud and damages from past marketing of so-called light cigarettes.

Those products have been shown to be no less harmful than regular cigarettes because smokers inhale them more deeply. Congress, in landmark tobacco legislation earlier this year, prohibited the use of the terms “light,” “low” or “mild” in all cigarette labeling and marketing, effective June 22, 2010.

The first of the “light cigarette” class-action cases is scheduled in Minnesota next October, followed by Missouri in January 2011.

By Samantha Anderson, KRDO.com

Posted November 5, 2009

COLORADO SPRINGS – A Colorado Springs man is suing Parkmoor Village Healthcare Center on allegation of elderly abuse.

Paul Johnson has been taking care of his friend Bill Starkey for the past year. A few months ago, Johnson noticed negative changes at Parkmoor Village. “I would walk into his room, he would smell like urine, couldn’t find his call light, it was on the floor and he would be without his oxygen,” claims Johnson.

According to Johnson, when he confronted management he was told they were short handed and just getting new staff. “I don’t care short-handed or not, personal care must be maintained,” Johnson said.  He admitted he had an attitude with staff members, but said he was fed up with the poor treatment. “There’s no excuse for this.”

Things got worse in September when Starkey’s health declined. “He pulled out a catheter on the 14th, never notified anybody, he could have died because of this,” said Johnson. Starkey went to the hospital, where it took a blood transfusion to save his life.

Johnson has removed Starkey from Parkmoor Village and placed him in a new nursing home. He has filed a lawsuit against the nursing home, claiming everything from elderly abuse to insurance fraud. “They do not need to be in business if they’re running a business like this.”

Posted November 13, 2009

By Jessie-Lynne Kerr, jacksonville.com

A Circuit Court jury in Flagler County Thursday returned a $5.1 million verdict in a wrongful death case stemming from a 2006 fatal collision between a fully loaded tractor-trailer and a Honda minivan.

Ingrid Falkenstein, 67, who had just retired to Palm Coast with her husband, David Falkenstein, was killed instantly in the wreck. Her husband suffered a pelvic fracture among other injuries.

Falkenstein’s attorney, Steve Pajcic of Jacksonville, presented evidence that showed trucker Christopher Angland of Palatka, driving for McMaster Sod LLC of Bunnell, ran a stop sign at Cody’s Corner. The accident occurred about 6:30 p.m. May 18 at the well-known but isolated intersection in the southwest part of the county.

The defendants argued that the county was at fault because of poor signage at the intersection and a failure to replace worn rumble strips approaching the stop sign.

But the jury placed 60 percent of the blame on the driver, 40 percent on McMaster and none on the county. Pajcic said some of his most compelling evidence was a Valentine’s card that Falkenstein gave his wife in the first year of their 33-year marriage that pledged, “Our happiness is our wealth.”

Pajcic urged the jury to place the same value on their long marriage as the couple had themselves. He argued that reckless driving by a tired trucker had robbed the couple of their golden years of retirement.

Posted November 12, 2009

The Clarion Post

A Warren County jury has awarded $7.6 million to a former sandblaster who developed severe silicosis.

The verdict is the first silicosis case to go to a jury in Mississippi.

Robert Eastman sandblasted for about 25 years at Marathon Letourneau in Vicksburg and used Mississippi Valley Silica Co. Inc.’s sand from 1963 until 1978, according to his lawsuit.

“Mr. Eastman suffers from progressive pulmonary massive fibrosis as a result of severe silicosis,” said Tim Porter, one of Eastman’s attorneys. “There was substantial proof put before the jury that Mississippi Valley Silica Co. Inc. knew that using sand while while abrasive blasting caused the incurable, deadly progressive disease silicosis.”

Mississippi Valley Silica is expected to appeal.

Silicosis is an incurable, sometimes fatal lung disease caused by inhalation of silica, the primary ingredient in sand and most rocks.

Posted on October 22, 2009

By Greg Tuttle, Billings Gazette

The family of a Billings nurse killed by a drunken teenager who was fleeing from police has filed a wrongful death and negligence lawsuit, claiming city officers and county deputies violated their own pursuit policies.

The lawsuit also claims that after the crash that killed 27-year-old Lillian Stahl, city and county law enforcement agencies lied to the public by stating that the sheriff’s deputy leading the pursuit called off the chase several blocks before the fatal collision.

Arnie Stahl, a brother of Lillian Stahl, filed the lawsuit Wednesday in Yellowstone County District Court as the personal representative of the Stahl family. The suit, filed on behalf of the family by the Billings law firm of Edwards, Frickle & Culver, seeks unspecified damages from Yellowstone County and the city of Billings.

“We recognize the Billings Police Department and Yellowstone County Sheriff’s Office have a difficult job,” said Chris Edwards, a lawyer representing the Stahls. “That is precisely why they have policies and procedures in place that are designed to protect the public while they carry out that job. Unfortunately, on the day that Lilly Stahl was killed, those policies and procedures were violated numerous times, resulting in a completely preventable loss of life.”

Allegations against the law enforcement agencies in the lawsuit include: the first city officer involved in the incident was driving an unmarked police car; the chase was unwarranted because the driver was suspected of committing only misdemeanor offenses and had been partially identified; that numerous patrol cars from both agencies converged on the area and joined in the chase; and that a city officer’s written report and patrol car video “don’t match up.”

Sheriff Jay Bell and Police Chief Rich St. John declined to comment on the lawsuit Thursday. Bell referred questions to Deputy County Attorney Kevin Gillen, who also declined to comment. City Administrator Tina Volek and City Attorney Brent Brooks did not return messages.

Stahl died shortly before 7 a.m. on April 18, 2008, when her car was hit broadside by a GMC Jimmy driven by 17-year-old Brian Houston. The collision happened when the Jimmy went through a stop sign on Sixth Street West and hit Stahl’s car headed east on Grand Avenue.

Stahl was on her way to work as an operating-room nurse at Billings Clinic. Houston was fleeing from city and county officers after a night of drinking. Stahl died at the scene from internal injuries. Houston and another teenager in the Jimmy survived the crash with minor injuries.

Houston was charged as an adult with negligent vehicular homicide and other felonies. He eventually pleaded guilty to the charges, and in October 2008 Judge Susan Watters sentenced him to 20 years in prison.

The lawsuit filed this week alleges that the chase that ended Stahl’s life and sent Houston to prison should never have taken place. It also alleges that the two law enforcement agencies recognized the policy violations and provided a “blatantly false” account of the events to the public.

A different picture of the chase surfaced through a review of patrol car audio and video recordings and interviews and statements by the officers involved in the fatal incident, according to the lawsuit.

“Based on the Yellowstone County Sheriff’s Office and Billings Police Department’s repeated attempts to change the facts of this horrific event, it is clear they knew the chase should have never occurred,” the lawsuit states.

The 27-page complaint details several alleged violations of both the Sheriff’s Office and Police Department policies on pursuits. The first officer to encounter Houston, and the first officer to violate department policy, was police Sgt. Mark Kirkpatrick, according to the lawsuit.

Kirkpatrick was in an unmarked patrol car when he saw what he believed to be an accident caused when an SUV hit a pickup truck or a garbage can, which then hit the pickup truck. Kirkpatrick pulled up to the scene of the accident and saw the SUV driving away down an alley. Kirkpatrick followed the SUV.

The Police Department’s policy prohibits unmarked cars from “engaging in pursuits because of the high possibility that people will flee when an unknown vehicle is chasing them,” the lawsuit states. The policy also states that an unmarked patrol car is not authorized to chase a suspect “except in extreme circumstances when there is immediate danger to life.”

Kirkpatrick also violated department policy by “failing to consider risks created by initiating a pursuit” and that a pursuit should not “needlessly endanger other persons.”

The fleeing vehicle was involved in only misdemeanor offenses, the lawsuit continues. Later, when the SUV stopped, Kirkpatrick radioed in the vehicle license number and a description of the driver, which could have been used to locate him later without a chase, according to the lawsuit.

Instead, Kirkpatrick “pursued a suspected misdemeanor traffic offender, which he had already identified, in an unmarked car, when there was no immediate danger to life,” the lawsuit states.

Sheriff’s Capt. Bill Michaelis was in the first marked patrol car to join the pursuit. He overheard Kirkpatrick’s radio reports, and joined the chase as the SUV was passing Central High on Broadwater Avenue, the lawsuit states.

As the chase evolved, officers and deputies began to “swarm” to the area, some from several miles away and traveling at high speeds through morning traffic. Pursuit policies state that only two patrol cars will be involved in a chase at any time. When the crash happened, seven city and county patrol cars had converged in the area, the lawsuit states.

The lawsuit contends that after the crash, the Police Department issued a press release that “materially misrepresented the facts and circumstances leading up to the death of Lilly Stahl.” Specifically, the press release “was particularly misleading in regard to when the deputies and officers called off the chase.”

Houston was fleeing north on Sixth Street West until his SUV entered Grand Avenue and hit Stahl’s car. Michaelis said he reported to a dispatcher that he stopped the pursuit several blocks before the crash. The lawsuit contends that he told the dispatcher that he was “backing off” the pursuit at about the same time Houston’s SUV slammed into Stahl’s car.

The press release from the Police Department stated that “it became evident that the suspect was not going to stop and the deputies called off the pursuit, shut off their emergency equipment, and pulled over at Sixth and Clark.”

The lawsuit alleges the press release was “blatantly false” because the deputies and officers continued to chase Houston’s SUV into the intersection of Sixth Street West and Grand Avenue.

“As a result, they chased (the fleeing SUV) into its deadly intersect with Lilly Stahl,” according to the lawsuit.

The lawsuit also seeks unspecified damages for negligent infliction of emotional distress on Stahl’s surviving family members, who have suffered “shame, humiliation, degradation, embarrassment, anger, disappointment and worry,” the lawsuit states.

District Judge Ingrid Gustafson has been assigned to preside over the civil lawsuit.

For two decades, Lively Neely went to work at the DuPont plant in Old Hickory. And for two decades, he brought home deadly asbestos dust to his wife, Ruby.

Now their son, Roger Neely, has filed a lawsuit against the company and 20 others that subcontracted at the plant over the years, alleging that the company’s failure to warn its employees of the danger of wearing work clothes out of the plant is responsible for the death of Ruby Neely.

“DuPont failed to provide any type of warnings or instructions about the safe use of asbestos,” said H. Douglas Nichol, the family’s attorney.

 ”With regard to Mrs. Neely, they were allowing workers to go home with asbestos on their clothing, and didn’t provide change of clothing or showers to prevent that from happening.”

 Ruby Neely died this year of mesothelioma, a cancer caused by asbestos exposure that typically takes many years to manifest.

 According to the lawsuit, information about the dangers of asbestos had been available to the company as early as the 1930s, but they still weren’t informing insulators on the line of the hazards until the 1970s, when many workers had already died of asbestos-related illnesses.

 Dan Turner with DuPont public affairs said the company had not seen the lawsuit and couldn’t comment on the specifics.

 ”All DuPont sites adhere to strict applicable federal and state health and safety standards regarding asbestos,” Turner said. “The safety and health of our employees, our neighbors and our community has, and continues to be, DuPont’s highest priority.”

According to the suit, Lively Neely would cut, mold and fit asbestos containing insulation and cement onto the various lines at DuPont. He also died of asbestos-related disease, Nichol said, and had settled a lawsuit with the company in the 1980s.

 The Tennessee Supreme Court decided on a similar case last year in which Amanda Satterfield sued Alcoa claiming she was terminally ill from the asbestos dust her father carried home from work. Though the case was initially dismissed, Tennessee’s highest court disagreed and sent the case back for trial.

 That case was settled for a confidential amount, said Nichol.