Personal Injury

January 1, 2010

N.J. Appeals Court Reverses $260K Wrongful Death Judgment

Fairleigh Dickinson University is not liable for the death of a junior who fell from a fourth-floor dorm window in 2005 after a night of heavy drinking, and won’t have to pay his parents a prior jury award of $260,000, a state appeals court has ruled.

An appellate decision reversed a Morris County jury verdict last year that found the college and student, Keith Orzech, 21, were equally responsible for his death in 2005. Instead, a three-judge panel ruled the university in Madison-Florham Park has immunity from liability under state law.

December 31, 2009

WI Supreme Court Rules Against Dog Sitter

by Dr. Shezad Malik

The Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled against a homeowner who was allowing an acquaintance with two dogs to move in.

One of the dogs bit a passerby and the court said the homeowner can be held legally responsible for the injuries, even though she was not the dog’s owner. The decision upholds a ruling by the District 2 Court of Appeals.

December 30, 2009

Dallas Texas Yasmin Yaz MDL Litigation Gaining Momentum

by Dr. Shezad Malik

Federal judge Herndon, who is presiding over the consolidated MDL litigation over Yaz and Yasmin birth control product liability cases, indicated that both sides in the case are working to move the litigation at a fast pace, which is keeping with the Court’s desire for the cases to “move along efficiently and effectively.”
In September, the U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation ordered that all federal court Yaz litigation and Yasmin litigation, involving claims that the popular birth control pills increase the risk of blood clots and other injuries, be consolidated and coordinated for pretrial litigation in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Illinois as part of an MDL, or multidistrict litigation.

Read all of the orders and progress of the MDL cases here.

December 29, 2009

Toyota did not Disclose Potential Safety Problems

by Dr. Shezad Malik

A Times investigation shows the world’s largest automaker has delayed recalls and attempted to blame human error in cases where owners claimed vehicle defects.

During a routine test on its Sienna minivan in April 2003, Toyota Motor Corp. engineers discovered that a plastic panel could come loose and cause the gas pedal to stick, potentially making the vehicle accelerate out of control.

The automaker redesigned the part and by that June every 2004 model year Sienna off the assembly line came with the new panel. Toyota did not notify tens of thousands of people who had already bought vans with the old panel.

Read the full story here.

December 28, 2009

Rite Aid Sued for Medical Malpractice Prescription Drug Error

by Dr. Shezad Malik

The family of a Troy MI man has sued Rite Aid, alleging an error at a Troy pharmacy led to his premature and wrongful death, according to their attorney.

The suit, filed in Wayne County Circuit Court, alleges that Rite Aid pharmacists were negligent when they issued a lethal dose of a chemotherapy drug to John Sheridan, who developed malignant melanoma that had spread to his brain in 2007.

December 27, 2009

FDA Says ‘Unlikely’ That Vytorin, Zetia Increase Cancer Risk

by Dr. Shezad Malik

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said it’s “unlikely” Merck & Co.’s cholesterol drugs Vytorin and Zetia increase the risk of cancer or cancer-related death.

Still, the FDA said it can’t “definitively” rule out that the drugs may be associated with increased cancer risk.

“Based on the currently available information, FDA believes it is unlikely that Vytorin or Zetia increase the risk of cancer or cancer-related death, but at this time an association cannot be definitively ruled out,” the agency said in a posting on its Web site.

December 26, 2009

Pfizer Jury Said to Set Prempro Punitive Damages at $8 M

by Dr. Shezad Malik

Jurors said in 2007 that a Pfizer Inc. unit should pay more than $8 million in punitive damages to a woman who blamed the company’s menopause drugs for her breast cancer.

A Philadelphia jury in January 2007 awarded Mary Daniel compensatory damages of $1.5 million in her lawsuit against Pfizer’s Wyeth subsidiary over its Prempro menopause treatment. The panel recommended she get more than $8 million in punitive damages if an appeals court found she was entitled to such an award because of bad conduct by the company.

Read the full Bloomberg report here.

December 24, 2009

Texas Fails in Efforts to Improve Car Accidents at Work Zones

by Dr. Shezad Malik

By the time Bryan Lee headed to work along Highway 51 in Texas on Sept. 15, 2005, the road-building industry and its government overseers were painfully aware of a deadly, though easily corrected, construction hazard: pavement-edge drop-offs.

Accidents involving dangerous drop-offs kill about 160 people and injure 11,000 each year. Numerous studies have shown that the steeper the drop-off, the greater the danger.

In Texas in 2002, seven people were killed when a car slipped off a sharp edge of roadway and onto the shoulder, causing the driver to overcorrect into the path of a minivan. Four years before, six people died in a succession of accidents in another Texas work zone, where contractors had failed to smooth out the edge of a newly paved lane.

Read full New York Times story here.

December 23, 2009

Columbia MO University Hospital Settles Medical Malpractice Lawsuit

by Dr. Shezad Malik

University Hospital doctors have settled a medical malpractice lawsuit filed by a Lake of the Ozarks couple for $2.5 million.

Susan Martin, now 49, was treated at University Hospital in early 2005 for dehydration, which was the result of a gastrointestinal-related condition, her attorney, Morry Cole, said.

The lawsuit claims doctors infused her with nutritional supplements through an IV in her subclavian artery, just below the collarbone, instead of the subclavian vein, where it was supposed to go. According to the lawsuit, that erroneous placement caused fatty blockages to travel to her brain for five consecutive days, “causing severe and debilitating strokes and neurological and cognitive devastation.”

December 21, 2009

Medical Malpractice Law Suit says Surgeons Left Gauze Behind

by Dr. Shezad Malik

A piece of gauze left behind in a patient after surgery required a follow-up procedure to remove it — and led to a lawsuit against Staten Island University Hospital and two doctors.

Adding insult to injury, Rossville resident Margaret Palombo contends she only learned through medical records obtained earlier this year — more than eight years after the initial operation was performed — that the material had been left in her abdomen.