Finch McCranie, LLP

Reuse of Syringes Can Cause Dangerous Infections

Medical Malpractice takes many forms. In this article, we write about a unusual but dangerous medical error that can cause lifetime consequences for an innocent patient.
Though most everyone knows that sharing needles is unsafe in today’s world, sharing or reusing syringes can be equally dangerous. During any health related injection, a tiny amount of blood is often inadvertently drawn back into a syringe. Most of the time, that does not make a difference because it is common practice to use a new syringe and
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Motorcycle Accidents on the Rise

Our personal injury practice reflects pretty much what we see in national statistics concerning the rising rate of motorcycle injuries and accidents. We are seeing more and more clients seriously injured in motorcycle accidents. In large part, this is primarily due to increased numbers of motorcycle riders. Motorcycle registrations have more than doubled since 1997. In 2006, almost 6.5 million motorcycles were registered in this country. The good news is that the number of deaths and injuries resulting from these 6.5 million motorcycles is no
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AEDs Save Young Athletes

Portable defibrillators are becoming common equipment at youth athletic event. We have written in the past explaining how theses devices, also known as AEDs, help restart the heart in the event of an accident.
A recent news report relates that last month in Jacksonville, Fla. A high school lacrosse goalie was hit in the chest by a lacrosse ball causing his heart to stop beating. And, it happened again just last week at another lacrosse game in Raleigh, N.C.
Researchers say that over the last
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Lasik Problems To Be Studied

Lasik vision correction surgery has been performed in the United States for almost ten years. It has become a massive business with specialized centers opening in most markets and advertising freedom from glasses. However, not everyone’s a good candidate and some suffer life-changing side effects — lost vision, dry eye, night-vision problems.
Today, the Food and Drug Administration is beginning a major new effort to see if warnings about the risks are strong enough. The FDA estimates that approximately 5 percent of patients are dissatisfied,
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Plastic Bottle Dangers

Wal-Mart announced this week that it will soon stop selling baby bottles made with the chemical bisphenol A (BPA). The retailer said that it was immediately stopping sales of baby bottles, sippy cups, pacifiers, food containers and water bottles made with BPA in its Canadian stores. There has been speculation that Canada’s health department would soon declare the chemical unsafe.
On Monday the U.S. National Toxicology Program released a draft report that expressed concern that BPA, which is used to make plastic, could cause behavioral
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Medical Record Privacy In Peril

An article in the New England Journal of Medicine, warns that the entry of big companies like Microsoft and Google into the field of personal health records could drastically alter the practice of clinical research and raise new challenges to the privacy of patient records.
The authors are proponents of the benefits of electronic patient records to improve care and help individuals make smarter health decisions. But their concern is that the medical profession and policymakers have not begun to understand the implications of companies
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TRIBUTE TO A CLIENT

Our firm concluded a wrongful death case this year on behalf of the family of a 40-year old man who was killed when a bicycle he was riding became entangled in loose utility wires which completely obstructed a city sidewalk adjacent to Peachtree Road in Atlanta. The injuries this young man received in the accident cost him his life. Subsequent thereto, our firm filed a lawsuit against the City of Atlanta for negligent maintenance of the City’s sidewalk and against two utility companies for
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Insured Loses Katrina Claim

The Louisiana Supreme Court has ruled that a flood exclusion in an “all-risk” policy barred a claim by the owner of an apartment building damaged by flood waters during Hurricane Katrina.
The owner lived in the five-unit building when four feet of water entered the basement during the hurricane. He had a commercial “all-risk” policy and submitted a claim for the damage. An insurer’s inspector claimed most of the damage was due to poor maintenance and flooding.
The insurer paid only $230 on the claim
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Heparin Concerns Grow

This Tuesday federal regulators from the FDA urged makers of many kinds of medical devices that contain heparin to test their supplies. These concerns arise from previously discovered supplies of Chinese made heparin contaminated with a look-alike ingredient that mimicked heparin in standard tests of drug potency and purity.
The FDA announced last month that it had identified the contaminant as a modified form of a common nutritional supplement. That substance is cheaper to produce than heparin, leading to suspicions that it may have been
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Escalator Injuries Increasing

A new study reports that from 1991 to 2005, nearly 40,000 people older than 65 were injured while riding escalators, an average of 2,660 a year. The report, published in the March issue of the journal Accident Analysis and Prevention, is based on an analysis of data collected by the Consumer Product Safety Commission.
The rate of injury more than doubled in that period — to 11 per 100,000 population in 2005, the latest year for which figures are available, from 4.9 in 1991. There
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Assessing Damages In Serious Burn Injury Cases

Unfortunately, in the normal course of our law practice, we have encountered clients who have sustained serious burn injuries. These cases are always extremely painful for clients and oftentimes results in permanent disfigurement. Indeed, a burn injury is one of the most painful injuries anyone can sustain and unfortunately we have seen them arise in a variety of contexts, whether it be gasoline fires after automobile accidents, accidents within the home due to defective products and/or chemical burns sustained on the job.
One of
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Fatal Police Chase Results In Dismissal Of State Trooper

We read in this weekend’s news accounts that a Georgia State Patrol Trooper had been fired for failing to exercise “due regard” for the safety of the public while he was allegedly responding and on his way to aid another trooper involved in a high speed police chase on Interstate I-20. On New Years Eve, an innocent motorist was killed when this Georgia State Patrol Officer allegedly ran a red light and struck the vehicle occupied by the decedent.

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Another Police Chase Kills Another Innocent Person–the Wife of Atlanta Braves Trainer Jeff Porter

Too familiar is this week’s tragic story of how a police cruiser struck an innocent motorist and caused the death of Kathy Porter, wife of Atlanta Braves Head Athletic Trainer Jeff Porter.
Late Saturday afternoon, the Porters were among many fans driving to the Chick-fil-A bowl in downtown Atlanta–a short distance from the Braves’ home at Turner Field. A Georgia State Patrol cruiser–reportedly speeding on city streets to join a chase of a motorcyclist on I-20– crashed into the Porters’ Ford Expedition on the passenger
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The Importance of Uninsured/Underinsured Motorist Coverage

We have written prior entries in our blog about the importance of uninsured/ underinsured motorist coverage. The importance of such coverage was underscored this week when we were contacted by clients who had been hit by driver of a stolen vehicle. This is a classic case where the at fault driver will not have insurance coverage. In this particular case the innocent victim caught up in this collision did not have uninsured/underinsured motorist coverage. Obviously, the stolen vehicle had no insurance coverage which provided coverage
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How Do I know That I Have Received A Fair Settlement Offer In My Case

Defense attorneys and plaintiffs attorneys, alike, both have resources available to determine the fair value of a particular personal injury claim. Jury verdict research services exists which track jury verdicts throughout metropolitan Atlanta and indeed the entire state of Georgia. By tracking jury verdicts, one can determine what juries are giving for particular types of cases. Juries award so much for a broken leg, a broken back, a neck injury, a back sprain, a neck sprain, an amputation, etc. In short, there are a lot
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How Do I Choose a Personal Injury Attorney?

Many clients choose their personal injury attorneys by watching the television or looking at billboards. Unfortunately, this does not always result in a client choosing the right attorney for his or her case. The best way to choose an attorney for a personal injury case is to make sure that the attorney selected is competent, professional and experienced. It is also important that the client determine that the lawyer being chosen has the ability to present the case to a jury if the case cannot
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Quantifying Pain And Suffering In Personal Injury Cases

It is extremely difficult to quantify damages in a personal injury case. While medical bills can be totalled and lost wages calculated, trying to calculate damages for pain and suffering is a different matter. When one is out of work for months at a time suffering from back pain, as an example, the question is: how does one go about trying to determine what would constitute fair and reasonable compensation for the pain and suffering attendant to the injury? The longer one suffers, the
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Representing Crime Victims in Personal Injury Cases

Most of our clients are innocent victims of negligent acts. A person is sitting still at a stop sign and a driver negligently fails to stop in time rear-ending them and causing serious injuries. Another driver fails to yield right-of-way and crashes into the side of their vehicle. In both cases, a negligent act caused the injury to the innocent victim. In other cases, however, intentional torts are involved. A step-father molests a child. A man rapes a woman. A man kills someone else. In
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Atlanta Police Chase Ends In Crashes With Innocent Persons

This morning we were disturbed to hear of a police chase on Atlanta’s major street that ended in crashes with two innocent motorists.
In the Buckhead neighborhood this morning, a police pursuit of a reportedly stolen vehicle ended with a violent crash with two innocent drivers on Peachtree Road, near Peachtree Battle Ave. (near several elementary schools).
Witness accounts report that at least one innocent driver’s vehicle was propelled a long way after the impact, and we pray that the innocent motorists survived without serious
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Wrongful Death Cases Caused By Fire

Our office has been contacted on numerous occasions by individuals seeking restitution for the loss of a life of a loved one due to a house fire. In some cases the house fire may be caused by a malfunctioning device. In other cases the fire’s consequences may have been escaped had a smoke detector been functioning properly. In other cases, an electrical water heater may explode or there may be problems with a gas line or some other component of the house itself which causes
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