The Federal government has agreed to pay a Utah family nearly $1 million to settle a medical malpractice case. The man was being treated for leukemia at the Veterans Affairs hospital in Salt Lake City in 2004 when he developed a severe infection and died. His survivors sued, claiming the…
A Vermont woman was awarded more than $6 million when a jury ordered Wyeth, a pharmaceutical company, to pay her for failing to warn her about the risks of one of its drugs. But this case was appealed all the way to the US Supreme Court and the Court is…
There was a Dallas North Tollway collision early last Saturday, when a man drove the wrong away. His car collided with two others, killing a female passenger in one of them. A Dallas police officer noticed a Honda Accord driving north in the southbound lanes of the tollway about 1…
A new study claims that the most common global strain of HIV began spreading in humans around 1900 in sub-Saharan Africa. This study, which is published in Nature, found that HIV began spreading between 1884 and 1924, around the same time urban centers in west central Africa were established. Previous…
United States District Judge Rodney W. Sipple issued an order Wednesday designating lawyers in the recently formed NuvaRing birth control MDL to serve in leadership positions and to act on behalf of all plaintiffs during discovery and pretrial proceedings. On August 22, 2008, the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation centralized…
California – A bus driver with a history of motor vehicle offenses and substance abuse was arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence earlier in the week, hours after his casino-bound charter bus ran into a ditch. Eight people were killed and 30 people were injured. Officials said the…
Texas Supreme Court earlier in September, declined to hear a case on whether or not medical malpractice damage caps violate state constitutional rights. Attorneys for the hospital industry and the Texas Medical Association (TMA) had appealed the issue directly to the Supreme Court, bypassing the court of appeals. The attorneys…
Nurses count sponges and surgical instruments when a procedure begins and ends, so that they are not left inside a patient. Cases of retained foreign objects are rare — occurring once in every 5,000 surgeries — discrepancies in counts happen in 13% of surgeries, according to a recent surgical study.…
Medical peer review is an essential component of quality patient care. The Federal Health Care Quality Improvement Act (HCQIA) of 1986 was promulgated by Congress to grant confidentiality and immunity from liability to those who conduct reviews in good faith. All States, recognize a privilege that generally protects information generated…
New questions are being raised about the death of a Dallas man, who died after waiting 19 hours in Parkland Hospital’s emergency room. See earlier story. The questions come from another emergency room patient who sat with the dying man for ten hours. The woman says what she saw that…