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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ERISA Plan Can Disgorge Money From Attorney and Client According To 6th Circuit

The United States Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit has issued an important opinion in an ERISA case. In Longaberger Co. v. Kolt, No. 08-4432 Nov. 16, 2009. the court held an ERISA plan could enforce its reimbursement rights against an attorney who obtained a personal injury settlement on behalf of an insured.
The attorney negotiated a $135,000 settlement on behalf of a client who was involved in an automobile accident. Only $1,000 remained in his lawyer’s trust account after disbursing $86,000 to the
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Volvo Issues Recall For Seatbelt Defect

Our Atlanta automobile product defect attorneys have written many blogs critical of automobile manufacturers for delaying or resisting recalls of dangerous products. Now Volvo deserves credit for quickly and voluntarily issuing a recall due to a dangerous defect. Volvo is recalling 9,667 of its 2010 XC60s, most of them in the United States and Canada, because in a crash test the driver’s seat belt came undone.
The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety conducted a side-impact test on the XC60 in early October of this
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Acetaminophen (Tylenol Ingredient) Continues To Kill

We just read of another incident in which an Atlanta area young man died as a result of an “overdose” of acetaminophen, the aspirin-free pain reliever found in Tylenol. Many people believe acetaminophen is one of the safest painkillers on the market. If used properly it is safe, but, it is also the leading cause of acute liver failure in the United States.
Taking just slightly more than the maximum recommended dose for a few days can be toxic, even deadly.
We have previously blogged
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Atlanta Pedestrian Dangers

Atlanta pedestrians are subject to many dangers. Transportation For America, a consumer advocacy group has ranked the metro area as the 10th most-dangerous city for pedestrians in 2007-2008. The group said there are 5,000 preventable pedestrian deaths in the U.S. every year.
The group assessed 52 metropolitan areas on how dangerous they are for pedestrians. The 10 worst for pedestrians in 2007-2008 were: Orlando, Fla.; Tampa, Fla.; Miami; Jacksonville, Fla.; Memphis; Raleigh, N.C.; Louisville, Ky.; Houston; Birmingham, Ala.; and Atlanta.
According to the study, Atlanta
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Hormone Replacement Therapy and Breast Cancer:

The Women’s Health Initiative has issued warnings in the past that certain hormone replacement medications have the ability to harm many women. For example, Prempro is a drug that has been taken by as many as 6 million women in just one year. Statistically, it did not seem that the increased risk of developing breast cancer from using this hormone replacement therapy was all that great. Statisticians stated that there would be a .08% additional case of breast cancer for every 10,000 women that did take Prempro as opposed to those that did not.

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“98,000 Reasons” Why Medical Negligence and Medical Malpractice Remain a Public Health Danger

As Congress debates providing and paying for health care, another huge “cost” must not be forgotten: the cost of medical errors and medical negligence.
According to conservative estimates, 98,000 Americans annually die because of preventable medical negligence. Many more suffer life-changing injuries.
A terrific website, 98,000 Reasons, describes many of these stories of preventable injuries and deaths. Please visit it, as reducing medical errors saves innocent lives, and reduces costs of health care.

Makers Of Dangerous Foreign Made Products Have Protections Not Available To U.S. Companies

Our Georgia product liability lawyers have filed many lawsuits against foreign manufacturers for dangerous products introduced into commerce in the United States. In these actions it is sometimes very difficult to find and serve the manufacturer in a foreign country.
This problem has now come into the spotlight as the result of the Chinese wallboard epidemic facing many unsuspecting consumers across the United States. The problem is enormous. By some accounts as many as 100,000 homes across the United States, built between 2004 and
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Consumer Finance Bill Proceeds In Congress

Our Atlanta consumer lawyers often have to inform wronged consumers that they have no remedy under the law. We see this very often in the investment, credit, and banking areas. Legislation that, if enacted, will provide greater protection to investors was approved by a committee of the U.S. House of Representatives last week.
At the same time, the full House approved a bill to accelerate restrictions on abusive practices by credit card companies that had been signed into law last May. That law was scheduled
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Supreme Court Tackles Prosecutorial Immunity

The United States Supreme Court heard arguments Wednesday in a very interesting case. The question before the Court in Pottawattamie County, Iowa, v. McGhee and Harrington is : Do citizens who have been framed by unscrupulous prosecutors for crimes they did not commit have a right to sue the prosecutors when the fraud is finally exposed?
Most public officials have qualified immunity, which means that they can’t be sued personally for actions taken in the course of their public duties unless it can be shown
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Toyota Sudden Acceleration May Be More Than Mat Problem

Our Georgia product liability lawyers have been monitoring the Toyota recall due to uncontrolled rapid acceleration. Several weeks ago, Toyota announced the biggest recall in its history. The Japanese automaker issued a safety advisory urging Toyota owners of over 3.8 million cars and trucks to remove driver side mats from their vehicles.
It initially was announced that the floor mats were the sole cause of these sudden acceleration incidents. Now, ABC news is reporting that the cause may be something much more complicated than the
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