InjuryBoard Northern Virginia Archives

• Disability Insurance Provisions to Avoid

  Ben Glass | June 27, 2006 6:22 AM | 0 Comments
  Category: Miscellaneous

  Some disability insurance policies provided by employers aren't worth the paper they are printed on. People are often shocked to find that even though their doctors fully support their disability and, in some cases, they have been awarded disability benefits by the Social Security Administration, their employer's plans are so bad that the insurance company does not have to pay benefits. The...

• Why Do Employers Buy Bad Disability Insurance?

  Ben Glass | June 24, 2006 8:06 AM | 0 Comments
  Category: Miscellaneous

  Several months ago we were sitting in the huge conference room of the very well heeled law firm hired by a major disability insurance company. We sat around a large ornate conference room table. My client, unable to work because of a number of illnesses that had befallen him, had wondered what this mediation would be like. Eighteen months earlier his doctors had told him that he would have to...

• Low Ranking for Virginia Hospitals

  Ben Glass | June 23, 2006 7:37 AM | 0 Comments
  Category: Medical Malpractice

  My friend, Roanoke medical malpractice attorney Jeff Krasnow, has astutely pointed out a new report that shows that Virginia's hospitals rank low on a national scale. Jeff says in his blog, Roanoke Personal Injury Lawyer:One very troubling aspect of the new Health Grade studies which reports 250,000 Medicare patients killed by preventable medical mistakes during the three years, is the...

• ERISA is Turned on Its Head

  Ben Glass | June 22, 2006 6:32 AM | 0 Comments
  Category: Miscellaneous

  ERISA (Employee Retirement Income Security Act) was passed in 1974 to protect the cash in your pension fund. Today it protects the insurance companies from lawsuits for disability benefits. In fact, your employer's disability insurance policy may be providing only illusory benefits.Ninety-nine percent of all disability insurance plans offered to employees are governed by ERISA. Under ERISA,...

• Large Massachusets Verdict for Breast Surgery

  Ben Glass | June 19, 2006 3:20 PM | 0 Comments
  Category: Medical Malpractice

  According to wire reports from the Boston Globe a jury has just awarded a woman $3.5 million for a failed breast reduction surgery. Apparently the woman lost both breasts to a failed blood supply after the surgeon failed to check to see how a prior breast reduction therapy had been performed many years ago. ``I think the jury recognized the effect of the trauma and the emotional injury," said...

• Is Sexual Assault Medical Malpractice?

  Ben Glass | June 19, 2006 7:11 AM | 0 Comments
  Category: Medical Malpractice

  In a watershed decision for Virginia, the Supreme Court has ruled that when a patient claims that she was sexually assaulted at a nursing home, the nursing home may not hide behind Virginia's medical malpractice laws and it's artificial limits and restrictive rules.Woodbine Nursing home in Alexandria, Virginia was sued by the estate of a resident. The resident, now deceased, was sexually...

• What Experts Must Say

  Ben Glass | June 19, 2006 5:06 AM | 1 Comments
  Category: Medical Malpractice

  From time to time you see a debate about what "magic words" medical experts must use when testifying. The Supreme Court of Virginia just ruled on this issue in a plastic surgery medical malpractice case involving a botched "tummy tuck." While noting that the expert had not used the right "magic words," the Court also noted that the defendant plastic surgeon's lawyers had not made a timely...

• Doctor Can't Wait For Expert To Leave to Make Objection

  Ben Glass | June 11, 2006 7:57 AM | 0 Comments
  Category: Medical Malpractice

  Settling a long-running debate about the proper form of a question put to an expert, the Supreme Court of Virginia has ruled that medical malpractice experts must state opinions "within a reasonable degree of medical probability." However, a lawyer's failure to make a timely objection to an improperly phrased question means that objection is waived. The doctor loses his appeal. Cosmetic plastic...