Medical Malpractice

• Drug Error Triple Tragedy in Indiana

  Ben Glass | September 20, 2006 1:04 PM | 0 CommentsNorthern Virginia, VA

  A report out of Indiana today reveals that three premature infants have died at Methodist Hospital after being given an adult size dose of a blood thinner.What is not being reported is how the legal system will compound this tragedy.MSNBC has the story on the Indiana medical malpractice horror. According to the published reports several babies became ill, and three have died, after a pharmacy...

• Needle Tip Left in Body, Patient Loses

  Ben Glass | August 28, 2006 6:44 AM | 0 CommentsNorthern Virginia, VA

  A patient sued his orthopedic surgeon after the tip of a needle broke off during surgery and remained in the patient's body. The patient claimed that he did not need a medical expert to certify the merits of his case or to testify at trial because this was a "foreign object" case. An Alexandria federal judge helped dismiss the case saying:In sharp contrast to the typical res ipsa loquitur case...

• State Loses Injured Infant Fund Appeal

  Ben Glass | August 23, 2006 2:01 PM | 0 CommentsNorthern Virginia, VA

  Congratulations to Fairfax attorney Anne Jones, for her terrific victory in the Virginia Court of Appeals. As many readers know, Virginia has some of the worst laws anywhere for infants injured at birth. Not only can many of these children, and their families, not file a lawsuit, but the damages are limited.What was advertised as a non-adversarial procedure (and sold to doctors as such) has...

• Interpreters in the Emergency Room?

  Ben Glass | August 22, 2006 1:00 PM | 0 CommentsNorthern Virginia, VA

  There is a new article out from the New England Journal of Medicine that asks the question of whether the health care industry should be required to provide (and, presumably, pay for) interpreters in order to reduce communication errors between doctors and non-English speaking patients. The implications for medical malpractice claims are enormous.The article describes several very unfortunate...

• Website to Discouarage Caring for MedMal Victims

  Ben Glass | July 25, 2006 4:28 PM | 0 CommentsNorthern Virginia, VA

  What will they think of next? Here is a website that will publish, in Florida (for now) the names of patients who will have filed, but "not prevailed" in a medical malpractice lawsuit. Under the guise of "this is news" this site is apparently designed to discourage doctors from accepting these patients for care.But wait... there's more....You can have your name listed there even if you sued the...

• Medication Errors Lead to Death and Injury

  Ben Glass | July 21, 2006 5:57 AM | 0 CommentsNorthern Virginia, VA

  One of the most frequent calls we get at our office involves medication errors, usually in a hospital setting. Fortunately, most errors are caught before any permanent harm is done. A new report from the Institute of Medicine suggests that the problem may be even more widespread than previously imagined.The report said that at least 1.5 million people are sickened, injured or killed each year...

• Low Ranking for Virginia Hospitals

  Ben Glass | June 23, 2006 7:37 AM | 0 CommentsNorthern Virginia, VA

  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...

• Large Massachusets Verdict for Breast Surgery

  Ben Glass | June 19, 2006 3:20 PM | 0 CommentsNorthern Virginia, VA

  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 CommentsNorthern Virginia, VA

  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...

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

  Ben Glass | June 11, 2006 7:57 AM | 0 CommentsNorthern Virginia, VA

  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...