I’m a trial lawyer for injured people and businesses at The Beasley Firm. Founded in 1958, we have recovered over $2 billion for our clients through hundreds of verdicts and settlements in excess of $1 million. We’re listed in Super Lawyers, Best Lawyers in America, U.S. News’s Top Lawyers, [...]
Massive Emergency Room Malpractice Award For Noncompliant Patient
I’ve written several times before about where multi-million dollar jury verdicts come from, like in A Look Behind The Scenes Of A Multi-Million Dollar Personal Injury Verdict and Strange Birth Injury Award: $21M Medical Expenses, $0 Pain and Suffering. There’s no secret recipe. Facts win cases; outrage at the defendant’s reckless conduct makes the damage awards larger. Another example was published yesterday in The Legal Intelligencer: A Philadelphia jury awarded $21.4 million on Friday to a diabetic man with brain damage over the care he received in the emergency room of Temple University Hospital. … The defense argued in ... Continue Reading
Nursing Home Abuse Lawsuit Propaganda Masquerading As Research
A Brief History of Nursing Home Litigation Civil tort litigation tends to follow larger social trends. The post-World War II through 1970s construction boom involved more than a fair amount of asbestos and was followed a generation later by the mesothelioma lawsuit industry. The rapid growth in available health care treatments (and union-negotiated health insurance plans to pay for) in the 1960s and 1970s was followed by an explosion in medical malpractice litigation in the 1980s and 1990s. The Golden age of tobacco advertising in that same time was followed by the historic class actions filed by states against the industry. ... Continue Reading
Strange Birth Injury Award: $21M Medical Expenses, $0 Pain and Suffering
It's conventional wisdom among trial lawyers and insurance lawyers that few plaintiffs are as sympathetic as a brain-damaged baby. The baby plainly did nothing to contribute to their harm, but has nonetheless been deprived of many of the basic joys of their infancy, childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. It's thus presumed that, if a jury finds liability in a birth injury lawsuit — like a negligent hospital or obstetrician that failed to observe fetal distress, leading to hypoxia, or failed to treat jaundice, leading to kernicterus — they'll inevitably award a substantial amount of non-economic damages for pain and suffering. Indeed, that was the ... Continue Reading
Pennsylvania Legislature Puts Insurers Over Injury Victims
[Update: Unfortunately, the "Fair Share Act" passed. Stuart Carpey has some details.] It’s that time of year again. As The Legal Intelligencer and other sources report, Pennsylvania’s joint and several liability laws — which ensure that the economic damage caused by negligent companies falls on insurers and other defendants proven to have been at fault rather than on injured plaintiffs — are on the chopping block again at the Pennsylvania General Assembly: At press time, the state House of Representatives was on its third consideration of House Bill 1, called the "Fair Share Act." The act would change Pennsylvania's doctrine of ... Continue Reading
Failure To Warn Quiz: Do You Know Children’s Motrin Side Effects?
They say you learn something new every day. Here’s what you’re going to learn today: Over-the-counter Motrin can burn the skin off your face. Commonly prescribed drugs like the yeast-infection treatment Nystatin and the antibiotic Azithromycin can do the same. All of them, and over a dozen other drugs, can also cause ulcers and lesions to develop on the membranes in your mouth and on your lips, making it impossible to eat. Take a step back and think of how many of those you took in the last year. Who didn’t take Motrin or some other ibuprofen in the past ... Continue Reading
Proving Bacterial Infection Injuries Through Circumstantial Evidence
A tragic story: SIOUX CITY -- A Sioux City bank has filed a personal-injury lawsuit on behalf of a Sioux City girl against the maker of a powdered infant formula, claiming the girl got seriously ill from drinking the reconstituted formula days after she was born in 2008. According to court documents, Security National Bank alleges the girl, Jeanine Kunkel, now nearly 3 years old, contracted neonatal Enterobacter sakazakii meningitis from the Similac formula made by Abbott Laboratories and suffered permanent brain damage. The bank, as the child's conservator, seeks monetary damages for her care, suffering and fear of future ... Continue Reading
Good Lawyers (And Doctors) Aren’t Cheap Because They Can’t Do Piecemeal Work
Fred Wilson, the always inspiring venture capitalist, posted yesterday A Challenge To Startup Lawyers: We closed an investment recently. It was a seed round. Our firm priced the round and we were joined by a number of small VCs and a few well known angels. We agreed to close on a standard set of "light preferred" documents without negotiation. There was no investor counsel on the transaction. We just signed the standard documents which were tweaked to reflect the round size, share price, and board provision in the term sheet. The legal fees for this transaction were $17,000. I talked ... Continue Reading
Medical Malpractice Filings in Pennsylvania Are Dwindling, Taking Civil Justice And Patient Safety With Them
Today's Legal Intelligencer tells us what we already know: in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, patients' right to compensation for injuries caused by medical malpractice is dying. Not a quick death, mind you, like the death of patients' rights in Texas (a punishment insurance companies and medical associations are trying to inflict upon New York), but a slow death. I use the word "death" because that's what it often what it takes to qualify for a medical malpractice lawsuit these days. If a patient wasn't killed or permanently injured by the malpractice, then often it doesn't matter how outrageously negligent or reckless the ... Continue Reading
17P & Makena: Exploiting Premature Birth For Billions In Profit
See updates below relating to the fallout from this debacle, including March of Dimes' scrambling to explain themselves and several medical organizations coming out against the pricing structure. If you have a strong opinion on this subject, write to your representatives in Congress, to President Obama (or the FDA), to the March of Dimes, and to KV Pharmaceuticals. If you'd like to share this page, use the "Share" button to the right or cut and paste this link: http://bit.ly/h1zPbu Important even later update: In addition to all the updates described below, on March 30 the FDA announced: In order to support access ... Continue Reading
It’s Legal Malpractice Not To Sue Hospital Residents For Medical Malpractice
It may sound strange coming from me, but I don't like suing people, particularly not in personal injury or professional liability actions where the real target of the suit is not even the company that employed the negligent person, but really the employer’s insurance company. But I often end up suing everyone I can, including employees, for one reason: I don’t have a choice. If, years down the road, some hospital or law firm or bank or construction company wants to claim that the negligent employee was an "independent contractor" or "outside this course and scope of their employment," or ... Continue Reading
