Energy giant PG&E has agreed to at $5 million settlement in the claim by the mother of a 20-year-old woman who was killed in a car accident involving one one of PG&E's drivers. The decedent was killed in a fatal car accident in 2006 when a diabetic PG&E driver blacked out a the wheel. The wrongful death was alleged to have been caused by the driver's failure to test his blood sugar.
The Drug Recall Lawyer Blog report on the continued trouble plaintiffs have had in the Seroquel lawsuits pending in the MDL and it a few state courts. Plaintiffs have a lot of good ingredients for success in these cases. But it what appears to be many individual cases, Plaintiffs have had a hard time finding qualified experts to render causation opinions.
A Jury Verdict Research study found that the median jury ward in ear injury cases is$50,000. I would suspect the average is a great deal higher.
A Philadelphia judge who used his secretary to run his real estate business will be suspended for four months without pay following a state Court of Judicial Discipline sanctions hearing yesterday.
I'm fine with the judge's sentence and I appreciate that people make mistakes. The notion that he didn't stop to think about the fact that his secretary was doing his personal business is ridiculous.
The incredible thing is I'm amazed anyone actually called him out on this.
There ought to be perks of power. But the question is a matter of degree. Certainly, it sounds like line was well crossed here.
Laura Dooley has posted an article titled National Juries for National Cases: Preserving Citizen Participation in Large Scale Litigation suggesting that we can save juries and deal with the problem of complex litigation at the same time by impaneling national juries.
Defendants would love national juries because it would help in jurisdiction with bad venues. But I'm sure folks in Kansas are going to love to come to Maryland to be part of a jury.
A Florida woman who contracted flesh-eating bacteria after giving birth in an Orlando maternity ward has settled her lawsuit against the hospital. According to the medical malpractice lawsuit, doctors tried to discharge Plaintiff despite evidence of a rash, fever, chills and other symptoms. Doctors later determined that Plaintiff had a Group A Streptococcal infection. Both of Plaintiff's arms and legs were amputated in order to control the infection. Just an awful case.
Interesting fact in this case that had to help drive settlement: the nurse caring for Plaintiff refused to answer questions in deposition as to whether she know Plaintiff had an infection and if she knew how to recognize symptoms of flesh-eating bacterial infection. How do you refuse to answer that question in a case like this?
Medical malpractice lawyers are beginning to pay more attention to staph infection cases. A jury in Dallas awarded $17 million last month in a methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) case. MRSA is a strain of staph that is resistant to the broad-spectrum antibiotics that are used to treat infections.
Injury lawyers on behalf of the family of a flight nurse killed in a helicopter crash in Decatur County, Indiana filed a lawsuit in Indianapolis last week. The lawsuit seeks damages against Rolls-Royce, the helicopter's engine maker and Decatur County REMC, the utility responsible for maintaining power lines in the area, among others.
I'm not sure exactly what the liability argument the family's injury lawyers are making. But, apparently, maintenance records indicated the helicopter was inspected 10 days before the helicopter accident, the same day a low rumble and vibration from the rear of the helicopter had been detected. The lawsuit also claims that that Decatur County (Indiana) REMC failed to properly mark the overhead power lines for air traffic. Plaintiff's injury lawyer speculates that contact with the power lines could have caused the rotor to break.
The lead paint verdicts continue to come in Baltimore City in a case almost 20 years old. A Baltimore jury awarded $2 million to a lead-poisoning victim and her mother after finding their former landlord negligently failed to remover remove flaking and peeling lead based paint from the home. The $1.5 million award will be reduced to $350,000 under the Maryland law capping non-economic damages in personal-injury cases. After the cap, the total award will be $850,000, according to the plaintiffs' injury attorneys.
Plaintiff was first tested for lead poisoning when she was 19 months old in September 1992. Her lead level was found to be 28 micrograms per deciliter, nearly three times the 10mcg/dl that the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention deems to be a level of concern for lead poisoning, according to the plaintiffs' injury lawyers.
Still, the verdict is impressive because even Plaintiff's experts will say you can get a lead level of 15 just by living in Baltimore City. Of course, the Plaintiff will only get one-third of what the what the jury wanted her to get.
