- Brooks Schuelke | December 29, 2007 9:22 AM |
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MiscellaneousEarlier this month, there was an interesting exchange between Des Moines personal injury lawyer Steve Lombardi and Carolyn Elfant, a well-respected lawyer blogger, on the value of listserves. Like many situations, listserves have become popular in the practice of law. The listserves range from formal nation-wide groups to informal groups of friends that e-mail one another to exchange ideas on...
- Brooks Schuelke | December 28, 2007 9:06 AM |
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Medical MalpracticeAs part of Texas' 2003 tort reform, the Texas Medical Board was given more resources and more powers to police doctors. Where "regulation" through medical malpractice cases decreased, the TMB was supposed to take up the slack to help keep Texans safe. And the TMB started going after doctors. So much so that physicians groups asked legislators to hold hearings on the new TMB enforcement. The...
- Brooks Schuelke | December 21, 2007 2:01 PM |
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MiscellaneousThis is not necessarily a personal injury story, but it is horrific nonetheless. In California, a 17 year old girl who was battling leukemia received a bone marrow transplant from her brother. After the transplant surgery, her liver failed. On December 11, the girl's doctors determined she needed a transplant and sent a letter to CIGNA insurance. Cigna refused to pay for the transplant. ...
- Brooks Schuelke | December 20, 2007 9:01 AM |
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MiscellaneousThe Tillinghast Insurance Consulting practice of Towers Perrin (a large consulting firm) has just released its 2007 Update on US Tort Costs, their 11th study on the subject. This study, which has traditionally been criticized for being pro-insurance, concluded that tort costs went down 5.5% in 2006. Compare that with an annual increase in the US Gross Domestic Product as growing at 6.1% in...
- Brooks Schuelke | December 19, 2007 4:48 PM |
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MiscellaneousA Philadelphia area lawyer was charged this week with allegedly having associates fake personal injury accidents and make claims based on those fake accidents. That this is wrong, illegal, and a blight on the profession goes without saying. But I'm just curious how this could happen in today's world. We keep track of how various insurance companies, and even adjusters, treat cases, and I...
- Brooks Schuelke | December 18, 2007 8:54 AM |
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Automobile AccidentsLast night, Capital Metro began testing the cars for our new passenger rail system. While the system has the potential to take drivers off the road, new systems always carry a concern that they may lead to many more car wrecks. Houston is a case in point. The most recent major Texas city to add light rail, Houston made national news with the number of auto accidents involving the system. ...
- Brooks Schuelke | December 13, 2007 2:03 PM |
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MiscellaneousLast August, the Texas Supreme Court handed down a ruling in a case involving an on-the-job accident. In the case, a property owner hired a company to perform maintenance and construction services on the plant located on the property. The owner also bought workers' compensation insurance to cover the company's employees. After one of the company's employees was injured in a worksite accident,...
- Brooks Schuelke | December 11, 2007 11:11 AM |
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Automobile AccidentsThe Dallas Morning News posted a story yesterday describing Texas's new efforts to reduce the number of uninsured drivers. Under the plan, the state has created and will maintain a database of drivers and their insurance status. Whenever a person is pulled over, is involved in a wreck, gets a car inspection or registers for new license tags, the appropriate authority will check the database to...
- Brooks Schuelke | December 07, 2007 12:22 PM |
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Medical MalpracticeMedical malpractice cases are hard, and for the last several years big insurance companies and big businesses have spent millions of dollars to convince the American jurors that a medical malpractice crises exists. As a result, it has been harder for plaintiffs to win medical malpractice cases, and when plaintiffs do win, the damages have been lower. But I have some hope that is changing...
- Brooks Schuelke | December 04, 2007 9:03 AM |
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FDA & Prescription DrugsIn a year of massive drug recalls, the FiercePharma blog has a report on the top 10 drug recalls of 2007. The list includes:1. Antidepressants - Various companies 2. Epogen/Aranesp - Amgen 3. Zyprexa - Lilly 4. Avandia - Glaxo5. Actos - Takeda 6. Provigil - Cephalon 7. Zelnorm - Novartis 8. Byetta - Amylin 9. Xolair - Genentech 10. Fentora - Cephalon Apparently, the list is based on 2006 world...
- Brooks Schuelke | December 03, 2007 3:46 PM |
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Medical MalpracticeA recent study finds that nearly half of US Doctors fail to report medical malpractice or unethical behavior, even though most agree that such conduct should be reported. From the article:Up to 96 percent of those surveyed said they should report all instances of significant incompetence or medical errors to the hospital clinic or to authorities. The exception was among cardiologists and...
- Brooks Schuelke | December 01, 2007 8:47 AM |
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Medical MalpracticeYesterday, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services released, for the first time, a list of the worst nursing homes in America. According to CMS:Release of the list was prompted by the number of facilities that were consistently providing poor quality of care, yet were periodically instituting enough improvement that they would pass one survey only to fail the next (for many of the same...