New York City Personal Injury Lawyer articles in category: Medical Malpractice

With approximately 9 million Americans living with morbid obesity today, gastric bypass surgery has become more and more popular. I recently read where a reported 150,000 people have opted to undergo the surgery in 2004 alone. Many individuals have benefited from this surgery but one has to wonder how many surgeons are actually experienced in this surgery. I think this may be the biggest risk...

What would you say to someone who told you that having a blood test could cause a major and debilitating injury? Most people don't realize that the smallest invasion of the body, such as a needle stick for a blood draw, can have a whole panoply of dangers associated. Nerve and other injuries from negligent blood draws are sufficiently prevalent that a new area of specialty practice in arm...

More details have emerged about allegations that WellPoint subsidiary Blue Cross of California has routinely canceled the policies of members with health problems. The Los Angeles Times talks with attorney William Shernoff, who began gathering evidence for a class action suit last year after learning of the existence of a unit within the company responsible for looking for cases of possible...

A California Blue Cross employee testified in secret last year that the state's largest health-plan company routinely canceled policies of sick members after looking for inconsistencies - not fraud - in their applications. Experts say, however, that state law allows only deliberate omissions or misstatements as grounds for canceling health coverage.The testimony, given in a lawsuit against Blue...

Have you ever heard the phrase that no one likes a lawyer until they need one? I think this is most true regarding personal injury lawyers as they litigate medical malpractice cases. Doctors and insurance companies have done a great job getting their "story" out there. However, the truth does not lie with companies making billions of dollars of profits or with doctors with million dollar...

With legislation in several states kicking into full gear around this time of year; we are beginning to hear the outcry lawsuit reform under various and auspicious names. Whether it be called lawsuit reform, tort reform, or in one state Common Sense in the Courtroom Act, I think its time to discuss a little about a rarely heard subject, medical reform. In most states the medical profession...

The following is an interesting article about midwives being prosecuted for several reasons. Thought I would share it.

A relaxed standard for determining whether expert testimony should be allowed to establish causation in a medical malpractice case has been adopted by New York's Appellate Division, 2nd Department. The judges cautioned against an overly demanding approach to expert testimony which could result in prematurely choking off valid claims. The appellate court ruled that the trial court had "too...

Nancy and Shelby Medlin took their healthy 3-year old son, Max, to the hospital for a routine outpatient dental procedure. Due to his young age, Max was anesthetized. Soon after Max awoke, Nancy knew something was terribly wrong with her baby. The staff tried to tell her that she was just an overly paranoid mother, but she know better and persisted in trying to get quality care for her son. Four...

A large-scale scheme in which body parts were removed from corpses and sold to hospitals is likely to touch off numerous lawsuits. Patients that received skin grafts and other surgeries are worried about contracting infectious diseases from the illegal practice. Funeral homes in the NY area are facing criminal investigations. At least one woman claims to have contracted syphilis from a bone...

The Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations issued a report that urges hospitals to highlight medications on patient charts in order to avoid medication reconciliation errors. The group estimates that mistakes involving drug mix-ups result in at least 7,000 deaths a year and that about 63 percent are due to communication errors. An alert sent by the organization advocating...

A study published by the conservative American Enterprise Institute ("AEI") in August 2005 shows that capping contigent fees isn't help accomplish tort reform. In fact they found just the opposite. The AEI study found that contingent fees: 1. Give wares and incentive to screen cases and weed out the "frivolous" ones2. Motivate lawyers to win3. Improve access to the Courts for low-income...

Do you know what the term iatrogenic means? is defined as "induced in a patient by a physician's activity, manner, or therapy. Used especially to pertain to a complication of treatment." In the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), a Dr. Starfield has documented an estimation of how many iatrogenic caused deaths occur each year. His report shows that 106,000 deaths are the...

With a new wave of tort reform initiatives sweeping the country this year, I keep hearing about "Texas size" reforms. Of course, Texas is suppose to be the model for tort reform, however, it has done nothing more than abrogate the rights of injured persons. Here is an article I found that further illustrates that neither claims nor jury verdicts account for spike in malpractice insurance. The...

The most recent edition of the textbook Child Neurology has just been published. Child Neurology is arguably the most authoritative textbook of pediatric neurology. The just published 7th edition debunks the myth, asserted repeatedly in the obstetrical literature, that most brachial plexus injuries occur in utero.The textbook states that "whatever scant evidence exists for a classical brachial...