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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GM Announces Massive Recall

Many Georgia drivers can expect to receive recall notices for vehicles manufactured by General Motors Corp., due to a dangerous defect which can cause the vehicle to catch on fire. In one of the largest recalls of the year, General Motors announced Tuesday that it was recalling almost 1.5 million vehicles because it cannot fix a defect in the system that squirts heated cleaning fluid on the windshield.
The recall covers many vehicles manufactured during the 2006 to 2009 model year. Since GM is
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Infections At Surgery Centers

Atlanta, and other metropolitan areas in the state of Georgia have seen a rapid expansion in the numbers of same-day surgery centers. Yesterday, the Journal of the American Medical Association published an article suggesting that lack of infection practices are common in the nations more than 5000 outpatient surgery centers.
The study was prompted by a hepatitis C outbreak in Las Vegas. This outbreak was caused by unsafe injection practices at two outpatient surgery centers.
Failure to wash hands, wear gloves and clean blood glucose
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The Federal Tort Claims Act: How To Sue The United States

When it comes to torts committed by the government and/or its employees, the beginning and ending place for any analysis is the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA). See 28 U.S.C. § 1346. The Federal Tort Claims Act provides a limited waiver of sovereign immunity and allows for money damages against the government for damages, loss of property, personal injury or death. In order to recover under the FTCA, one must show that the damages claimed resulted from a wrongful or negligent act of a
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Perfecting Claims Against Sheriffs And Their Deputies In Georgia

Under Georgia law, a sheriff and only a sheriff is vicariously liable for the negligent acts of his or her deputies. A county sheriff employs the deputy and the deputy reports to the sheriff. Thus, if a deputy sheriff is negligent, the sheriff is liable not the County. Notwithstanding this legal liability, however, there is a confusing element of Georgia law when it comes to perfecting claims against sheriffs and their deputies.
While the law is somewhat ambiguous in this regard and in many ways
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Using a Functional Capacity Evaluation In A Serious Injury Case

In a case involving serious injuries which threaten to impair or impede altogether one’s ability to be gainfully employed, a Functional Capacity Evaluation can be critical in helping to establish the extent of the disability. Functional Capacity Evaluations are performed according to objective criteria which have been proven to be reliable in determining the extent of job related restrictions and limitations. If a client submits to a Functional Capacity Evaluation and is proven by such objective criteria to have limited abilities, such evidence can
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Asthma Medications And Potential Safety Risks

There are several popular medications used by those who suffer from asthma which have an increased market share presence. These include Serevent, Advair and Foradel. All these medications use inhalation powders containing long acting beta agonists, commonly known as “LABA.” Beginning as early as November of 2005, the Food and Drug Administration issued a public health advisory concerning these three drugs informing doctors and patients that the use of these products could increase one’s risk of developing severe asthma and/or possibly having a fatal reaction.
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Vicarious Liability In Serious Injury Cases

A very common issue is a serious injury case is whether there exists any vicarious liability of a third party. If a truck driver runs into a motorist stopped at a stop sign and seriously injures them the question is whether the truck driver alone can be sued and/or their employer. Under longstanding legal principles, an employer is vicariously liable for the acts of the employee. As long as the employee was acting within the scope of his employment at the time of the
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Evaluating Pain and Suffering: A Difficult Task

In a personal injury lawsuit, it is always difficult for the trial lawyer representing the injured victim to talk about money in the context of pain and suffering. How does one fairly compensate an individual who is suffering as a result of the acts of a third party? Someone who is sitting still at a stop sign and who is rear-ended by a commercial truck, for example, and who sustains a broken neck or back is going to be faced with a lifetime of
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Deadly Police Chases Still In The News

As our firm handles police chases for innocent victims tragically caught up in these dangerous pursuits through no fault of their own, and as we have witnessed many different tragedies in this context, we obviously pay close attention to other similar cases throughout the country. Just this past week we read three different articles about three different pursuits in three different states in which innocent bystanders were killed during these dangerous pursuits. In none of the pursuits that we read about were any
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Military Members Have No Recourse For Medical Malpractice

Our military service members stand ready to put their lives on the line to protect the freedoms upon which our country is based. Yet, they are not provided the basic remedies available to other citizens who are victims of medical malpractice.
Under a 60-year-old Supreme Court ruling known as the Feres doctrine, service members are banned from suing the federal government for even the most egregious medical errors.
Pending before Congress is a bill that would remove that inequity. Rep. Maurice Hinchey, D-N.Y., is the
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