Patients who undergo shoulder, knee and ankle surgery often experience significant pain; particularly immediately post surgery. To try and manage that pain, physicians have often employed the use of pain pumps. These pumps inject pain killer into the body in a regulated fashion to minimize pain, while controlling the tendency toward addiction.

The pain pump is attached to a catheter, which was routinely inserted into the soft tissue near the affected joint. This use of the pump worked fine until the manufacturers of these devices started recommending that physicians could insert the catheter directly into the affected joint space and provide a much higher degree of pain relief. This was, of course, welcome news for physicians who always want to attempt to relieve or minimize the suffering of their patients. So all was good, then?

What pain pump manufacturers failed to tell physicians is that the Food & Drug Administration had never reviewed, let alone approved, the use of the pumps directly into the joint space. What the manufacturers should have known is that at least one of the manufacturer’s, McKinley Medical, asked the FDA to permit insertion of the devices into the joint space and the FDA asked for proof of efficacy. As far as we know, no data or evidence was presented to the FDA. Soon after this, Stryker Corporation purchased the exclusive rights to the pain pump from McKinley. (more…)

What is Big Tobacco doing in the Florida tobacco litigation now? They are sending out teams of lawyers and investigators to track down and interview each smoker’s sons, daughters, grandchildren, Aunt Mary, Uncle Bob, the third cousin twice removed, the neighbors, the neighbors neighbors—you get the idea. (more…)

One of the issues that all Americans, and particularly lawyers, should consider in making their presidential pick is which candidate will best serve the interest of “justice for all.”   Recently, while the talking heads continued to focus on the meaning of the word “bitter,” or the sound bites from a retired minister, a little-covered story gave us some real insight into how the three remaining Presidential candidates view our civil justice system.

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Do Big Corporations rail against the production of defective products? Do they form groups to monitor unsafe manufacturing methods? Does Corporate America want to put the American consumer first? The answer is a resounding—NO! So, do these things, by themselves, make Big Corporations bad? Again, a resounding-NO!

Corporate America is in the business of maximizing profits. This strengthens our economy and helps to keep people employed. I am in favor of Corporate America making a profit and in their growth. What I am not in favor of is Big Corporations who invest millions of dollars in efforts that try to twist constitutional rights of our citizens in an effort to maximize Big Corporation profits. I am not in favor of Big Corporations who purchase legislators who sneak through legislation designed to protect Big Corporations to the detriment of citizens.

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According to the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle, Bausch & Lomb is involved in a lawsuit against its insurance companies arising out of the ReNu with MoistureLoc lawsuits. The Democrat reports that attorneys for the insurers maintain that Bausch knew about the problems with its ReNu with MoistureLoc causing infections to injured victims for “several months before the recall” and that any injuries were not accidents.

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I am a former Buckeye and I guess things have not changed alot since I left in the mid-eighties. Then, as now, the Supreme Court prtected Big Business, while sacrificing the rights of individual citizens and, well, here they go again!

The Columbus Dispatch reports that in a 5 to 2 ruling the “justices” upheld caps on non-economic damages. The law limits the amounts injured victims can collect for “human damages” to a maximum of $350,000.

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You go to your local pharmacy to have your prescription filled, just like you have a number of times before. You give the handwritten prescription to the young person behind the desk and they return with your prescription, complete with a label on the front and the pre-printed instructions in the bag. You take the prescription as directed on the label and soon you develop a severe headache. Without any warning you unknowingly have developed significant bleeding inside your brain and before very long you have suffered brain injury so severe that you cannot communicate or move most of your body. You find yourself severely brain injured and are incapable of caring for the three children you held so dearly.

This is what happened to one of my clients. It seems like such a small mistake; just an extra key typed. You probably think that a pharmacist fills your prescription when you bring it into your pharmacy. That’s not the case. The actual person filling your prescription is the pharmacy technician. Pharmacy technicians are essentially assistants or helpers to the pharmacists. Pharmacy technicians are not required to have any education at all. They simply must be 16 years of age in Florida to qualify to fill prescriptions in a pharmacy.

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Is the phrase, a government “of the people, by the people, for the people” in the constitution? Popular belief is yes, but it is not actually in the constitution. Rather, this phrase comes from President Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg address. It is probably a concept that should have been incorporated into the constitution and certainly Lincoln included it to remind citizens that it is their country. I think politicians, and even some of us, forget that it is OUR government and the politicians are OUR employees; they are supposed to be working in OUR best interests.

Business interests are fond of complaining about the jury system and regularly claim that it is “broken”, it needs to be “fixed”. Perhaps the best word is, in fact, “fixed”; they would like to fix the civil justice system so that it can be better influenced in their direction. Should we hold it against them because they work to achieve an unfair playing field? We should not hate Big Corporations for this, but should we allow them to achieve it? Absolutely not!

I think the jury system our founding fathers borrowed from English common law works just fine in protecting the rights of individual citizens. Frankly, I want six of my fellow citizens sitting and listening to evidence in my case. I want six regular people considering what makes sense and what does not make sense. I do not want a special panel appointed to hear my case, as has been promoted by many business “political parrots”. I do not want the government inserting itself into the civil justice system anymore than they already do. I trust an impartial panel of my fellow citizens to fairly weigh the evidence and reach a decision that makes sense.

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Proponents of tort reform continue to distort the facts of the McDonald’s hot coffee verdict in their ongoing nationwide attack on the civil justice system. Public opinion has been unfairly influenced by these distortions. The full story of this $2.9 million verdict needs to be told.

In the McDonald’s case, eighty-one year-old Stella Liebeck spilled a small cup of coffee while sitting in a car. She suffered third degree burns over 6% of her body. Her inner thighs, buttocks, genital area and groin were burned. She was hospitalized for eight days and required painful skin grafts and debridement. At the time of the spill, Mrs. Liebeck was trying to remove the cup’s lid to add cream and sugar. She was neither driving the vehicle nor was the vehicle moving.

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First it was the Engle case. You may remember that this is the case in which the Florida Supreme Court vacated a punitive damage verdict against Big Tobacco in the amount of $145 billion. The Supreme Court, however, also ruled that thousands of Florida smoking victims could file individual lawsuits against Big Tobacco and made some significantly damaging findings. The Florida Supreme Court found as a matter of fact and probably as a matter of law that smoking cigarettes causes:

• Lung cancer
• Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD)
• Coronary artery disease
• Bladder cancer
• 12 other known disease

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