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"Baxter to Proceed with Recall of Remaining Heparin Sodium Vial Products"
– FDA
Yamaha Rhino ATV Rollover Accidents
and Injuries
"UBS Hit by
Another Lawsuit"
– Ben Levinsohn, BusinessWeek
"Hedge Funds
Frozen Shut"
– Matthew Goldstein, BusinessWeek
"MRI Contrast Can Cause Disease – Gadolinium Blamed
For Problems"
– Dayle Cedars
7News, Denver, CO
$690,000,000
Global settlement with Eli Lilly and Company regarding its product Zyprexa negotiated by a plaintiffs' attorney group including members of Burg Simpson.
$5,800,000
Hines, et al, vs. Cody Gas Company, et al: verdict for injuries, damages, losses from gas explosion.
40 Inverness Drive East
Denver, CO 80112
Phone: 303.792.5595
Fax: 303.708.0527
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Phone: 307.527.7891
Fax: 307.527.7897
OHIO OFFICE
Phone: 513.852.5600
Fax: 513.852.5611
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Phone: 972.934.1313
Fax: 972.231.3983
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Phone: 602.508.6040
WASHINGTON D.C. OFFICE
Phone: 202.544.7600
Having just completed a five-year project to examine and map Colorado's flood risks on a county-by-county basis, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has identified seven Front-Range counties, including Denver and four other metro Denver counties, as being high-risk flood zones.
Continue reading "FEMA Identifies High Flood Risk in Denver and Front Range Counties" »
New information released is pointing at a link between prior food poisoning and health problems later experienced months or years later. The CDC says foodborne illnesses cause 325,000 hospitalizations and 5,000 deaths a year. E. coli and other food borne illnesses are being linked to such health problems as high blood pressure, kidney damage or even kidney failure experienced by people 10 to 20 years later who survived severe E. coli infections as children. Others are experiencing arthritis after suffering from salmonella and shigella. Some are suffering from a mysterious paralysis that attacks people who just had mild symptoms of campylobacter. Donna Rosenbaum of the consumer advocacy group STOP (Safe Tables Our Priority) hears every week complaints from patients with health problems that they suspect or have been told are related to food poisoning years earlier. One woman survived an E. coli poisoning at 8 and had to have her colon removed in her 20s. Others have developed diabetes because of an inflamed pancreas caused by foodborne illness. Some parents wonder if their child’s learning difficulties are linked to it. STOP this month is beginning the first national registry of food-poisoning survivors with long-term health problems to assist scientists with research into the issue.
Continue reading "Food poisoning linked to future health problems" »
Dr. Dorry Segey of Johns Hopkins University, a transplant surgeon, recently completed a study showing people who are obese wait longer for a transplant than average weight people. The research was based on an analysis of records from 132,353 patients on the national kidney transplant waiting list between 1995 and 2006. The findings were published in the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology. The reason assigned to the discrimination is that the very obese have a greater risk for complications. The study showed that morbidly obese patients who average about 100 pounds over their ideal weight were 44 percent less likely to get a transplant than normal weight patients. Those just slightly less obese were 28 percent less likely to get a transplant. Dr. Segev argues that once someone has been accepted for a waiting list, the patient should progress to the top normally. He also believes the doctors and transplant staff do not consciously choose slimmer candidates over their obese patients. “I don't think any of this is conscious,” Segev said. “It would be hard to imagine any of us in our field would deliberately act against the welfare of our patients. That's not what we do, but there are all sorts of subconscious forces that are happening and there's clearly an unintended bias in practice.” He explains there may be two factors creating the bias. First the main insurer for kidney transplants, Medicare, pays a fixed rate regardless of the difficulty of each case, meaning the transplant hospital eats the added costs for complications. Second, transplant centers with lower survival rates risk losing Medicare funding. With American society increasingly gaining weight and entering the ranks of the medically obese, the implications of the study are worrisome.
BlueCross BlueShield of South Carolina recently launched a subsidiary, Companion Global Healthcare, to help U.S. patients plan trips to Thailand for lower-cost medical procedures, the Charleston Post and Courier reports. BCBS will cover patients' procedures organized through Companion Global if their BCBS plan allows the travel, according to spokesperson Elizabeth Hammond. Additionally she said the insurer also will cover two follow-up visits with physicians at Doctors Care centers in the state. The company is "one of the first efforts of its kind" in the nation and "reflects several trends," such as an increase in medical tourism, increasing health care costs and rising health standards in Asian countries, according to the Post and Courier.
Nearly 400 Louisiana physicians at a hospital outside of New Orleans on Monday sued the state for $100 million, saying they were never reimbursed for care they provided at no cost to low-income and uninsured patients after Hurricane Katrina. The lawsuit filed by 381 physicians, claims that Louisiana failed to reimburse them for treating indigent patients since the state-funded Charity Hospital in New Orleans closed on Aug. 29, 2005, following Hurricane Katrina. According to the suit, the state has "inappropriately shifted its responsibilities" onto private physicians while "depriving" doctors of compensation. The hospital is not a party in the lawsuit.
Common Good, the national nonpartisan legal reform coalition Alan Simpson is a member of, has been awarded a two-year grant of nearly $1 million from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) to promote the creation of special health courts to handle medical injury disputes in six states. Common Good (http://www.cgood.org) is a nonpartisan legal reform coalition dedicated to restoring common sense to America. Its advisory board is composed of leaders in a wide range of fields including former government officials. The new project builds on a previous RWJF-funded project by Common Good and the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) to design a prototype for special health courts. Common Good encourages health courts to restore reliability to medical justice. While many thousands of patients suffer preventable medical injuries each year, only a small fraction of them are compensated for their losses. Administrative costs in today's system are extremely high, and patients in similar circumstances often receive vastly different judicial outcomes. Health care experts often cite the current legal system as a major impediment to improving quality of care, since it effectively discourages physicians and hospitals from being candid about errors in treatment.
Gil Dwayne Smith, the father of a 2-year-old boy who drowned during a summer boating accident at Carter Lake, was sentenced Tuesday to 60 days in jail and five years probation. Smith, 44, of Longmont, pleaded guilty to a charge of child abuse resulting in death in December. As part of his plea agreement with the district attorney's office, the maximum sentence Smith could have received was 90 days.
Continue reading "Father Jailed in Toddler's Drowning" »
State Farm Fire & Casualty Co. agreed Tuesday to settle hundreds of lawsuits by policyholders and reopen and pay thousands of other disputed claims. The landmark deal is potentially worth hundreds of millions of dollars for Mississippi homeowners devastated by Hurricane Katrina. The settlement calls for State Farm to pay about $80 million to more than 600 policyholders who sued the company for refusing to cover damage from the Aug. 29, 2005,
storm. State Farm also agreed to pay at least $50 million if not hundreds of millions more because there isn't a cap on the amount, to thousands of Mississippi policyholders whose claims were denied but didn't sue the company.
Continue reading "State Farm to Settle Katrina Lawsuits" »
In the minutes before the crash of a commuter jet that took off from the wrong runway, the pilots discussed their families, their dogs and job opportunities, violating at times a rule against extraneous cockpit conversation, the airline said Wednesday. The National Transportation Safety Board released a transcript Wednesday of the cockpit recording aboard Comair Flight 5191. The transcript also showed that one of the pilots noted something was amiss when he glanced down the Lexington, Ky., airstrip and said it looked "weird" because it had no lights. The transcript was the first public disclosure of the pilots' conversations during the ill-fated flight, which struggled to get airborne after trying to take off from a runway that was too short for passenger jets. The plane went down in flames, killing 49 people in the deadliest American aviation disaster in five years.
Continue reading "Comair Pilots Violated Cockpit rules" »
As we celebrate the 4th of July and our constitutional form of government built on checks and balances, it is trendy to complain that the legal system is broken by pointing to selected "facts" about it. Upon closer examination, those "facts" are often demonstrably inaccurate or taken out of context.
The fact of the matter is that our liberties and our prosperity are protected by the legal system we enjoy. Our legal system, while imperfect, protects the individual from the tyranny of the powerful. Trials must be open. Accusers must be faced. Citizens, not paid professionals, make the decisions [the jury].
Continue reading "Legal System" »
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