Personal Injury & Wrongful Death

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 client, and then taking $45,000 as an attorney fee and paying other lawyers involved in the case.

The client was an insured of the plaintiff, an employee welfare benefit plan. The plaintiff sued the attorney under ERISA, seeking reimbursement for $114,000 in medical bills paid on behalf of the client.

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 year as part of routine testing to select its Top Safety Pick awards. The test involves a barrier striking the driver’s side at 31 miles an hour. The barrier is supposed to represent the front end of an S.U.V. or pickup truck.

During that test, the driver’s seat belt in the XC60 detached from the point to the left of the driver’s hip at which the belt is anchored to the vehicle.

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 on these dangers, but feel the warnings are worth repeating.

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 had a 1.37 annual pedestrian deaths per 100,000 residents and 1.3 percent of the city’s workers walked to work in 2007-2008.

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. Another .07% of women that take Prempro would have a heart attack. 0.8% additional women taking Prempro would have a stroke. Apparently, these numbers were based on a research into the number of additional cases reported and extrapolations therefrom.
Statistics do not sound all that harmful when taken in the abstract. .08% does not sound like a great risk. However, if 6 million women took Prempro in any one calendar year, that .08% would mean an additional 4,800 additional breast cancer cases. 4,200 more heart attacks and 4,800 more strokes. Moreover, there are many other side effects which are related to the use of hormone replacement therapy.
Despite the life threatening and significant health risks associated with hormone replacement therapy such as Prempro, countless women continue to use hormone replacement therapy. After all, it has been around for many years and has almost become accepted, some calling it a rite of menopause passage. Some women look to drugs now to deal with menopause as opposed to more healthy means of reducing the menopause symptoms without deadly side effects of some of the hormone replacement medications. While synthetic hormone replacement therapy such as Prempro may provide some relief from menopausal symptoms, based on research done to date, it does not appear that some of the synthetic replacement therapy is not worth the risk, particularly when safe alternatives exist for use by women.
We have noted recently in following the litigation associated with Prempro that some of these cases are now going to trial. Recently there was a huge verdict up in Philadelphia where a jury found that the manufacturer had failed to disclose its knowledge of the increased risks associated with the use of Prempro returning a large punitive damage award. While some medications might be more harmful than others, obviously, all women deserve the right to know the truth and particularly deserve the right to know what risks are

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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.

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 2008, may contain defective and potentially dangerous Chinese drywall.

The wallboard has been determined to contain excessively high levels of sulfur. Homeowners have reported that the fumes from the wallboard cause illness and corrode the copper in home wiring, fixtures and appliances.

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 to take effect in February, but many banks and credit card companies are taking advantage of the delay by raising rates and fees before the practices are unlawful. The House voted to make the new law effective next month, but Senate approval is not certain.

The bill is part of an effort to overhaul the financial regulatory system in response to the crisis in the financial markets. It would provide new powers and increased resources to the Securities and Exchange Commission. Importantly, it would give the SEC authority to end mandatory arbitration agreements that investors must sign with their brokers and financial advisers. It would establish a whistle-blower program for Wall Street employees designed to ferret out corruption in the financial sector. Similar provisions have been very successful in other areas such as health care and government contracting fraud.

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 that they willfully violated clearly established statutory or constitutional rights. In almost all cases qualified immunity is enough to prevent suits against public officials.

The position taken by the federal government and being joined in by many state’s attorney generals is not that prosecutors should only be held accountable for wrongful convictions if it can be proven that they proactively and intentionally created false evidence or violated the clear legal and ethical requirements of their position.

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 floor mat design. According to ABC there have been several reports of sudden uncontrolled acceleration in Toyota vehicles in which the driver’s side floor mats had been removed. This has caused investigators to question whether there is a design defect in the electronics controlling acceleration. Toyota has denied that any such defect exists.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, issued a statement yesterday