No Charges Filed Against Trooper's Stepson After Fatal Crash

From NBC10.com:

The police report said witnesses saw the driver weaving on the road, but he walked away from a fatal car crash without a traffic ticket. The driver is a state trooper's stepson. When you hear the rest of the story, you may be asking the same questions as 15-year-old Macaulay Glynn.

"It wasn't fair that I was 12 and I had to go to sleep at night thinking where's the man who killed my mother," 15-year-old Macaulay Glynn said.  Her mother was a college English professor and a single parent of three.  "She was charismatic, outgoing," daughter Kerry Glynn said. "Definitely her kids came first in her life, always."

Diane Glynn was traveling on a highway outside of Scranton, Pa., on her way to work when a truck slammed into her car head-on, the NBC 10 Investigators reported.

"Probably the worst feeling in the world (is) to tell two little kids they are not going to see their mother again," Kerry Glynn said.

The driver of the other vehicle was 22-year-old Dean O'Halloran. His stepfather is a corporal for the state police, O'Halloran said in a sworn statement.

State police investigated the fatal accident. Police reports showed O'Halloran was seen weaving before the accident but police didn't administer a blood-alcohol test.  Wayne County District Attorney Michael Lehutsky said the officer didn't smell alcohol on O'Halloran's breath.

"The fact that there's an accident or that you have one indicator such as weaving is not enough probable cause for a police officer to submit to a blood analysis," Lehutsky said.

Though police didn't do a test, the hospital did. The report showed several hours after the accident that O'Halloran's blood-alcohol level of 0.149 percent was almost twice the legal limit, the NBC 10 Investigators reported.

If you watched the local news that day, you would have never seen pictures of the crash. That's because state police did not put out a standard press release.  "It just makes this look more suspicious and it does need to be looked into," Lehutsky said.  "Either Dean O'Halloran got some preferential treatment that day," said Mark Tanner, a Philadelphia attorney who represents Diane Glynn's children. "Or it was one of the most inept investigations that one could imagine."

Tanner recently settled an $11 million civil suit against O'Halloran and the company he worked for.

NBC 10 went to O'Halloran's home, but was not able to reach him or his attorney for comment. 

"Nothing will ever be enough. My mom will never be back. I will never see my mother again. There's no monetary value you can put on the life of a mother," Macaulay Glynn said.  The money will allow Kerry, now a school teacher, to afford to raise her younger sister she's adopted.

It will help secure the future for their younger brother now living with a relative, but they said it won't give them justice.  "Prosecute him. Something has to be done. I don't sleep at night because of it. I don't think he should either," Kerry Glynn said.

The Wayne County District Attorney said he will look at the new evidence the Glynns' attorney has uncovered. State police said after three years, the accident investigation is continuing. Internal affairs is looking at it as well.

PaAJ Gets Pro-Consumer Action on Insurance Coverage

PA launches hospital quality web site

Beginning today, patients and their families in Pennsylvania can go to a single Web site to learn about the quality of local hospitals.

See the story here.

Find the website to compare hospitals here.

Editorial on the importance of the Presidential race and protecting the Civil Justice system

Pennsylvania Association For Justice Executive Director Anthony Green has written an op-ed published in the March 11 issue on the importance of this presidential election in choosing a leader sensitive to civil justice, the 7th Amendment and consumers’ rights.

The article cites recent examples of the federal government’s recent blunders in protecting consumers from harmful products and the trend toward preempting state government and state civil justice systems. “The next president must be someone who nominates agency heads who will understand the mission of their regulatory agency with respect to consumer rights. Most importantly, the next president must nominate the justices and judges who respect the constitutional rights of consumers and the role of civil courts as a last resort in protecting our safety and security."

Read the whole editorial here.

Pain lasts long after traumatic injury: U.S. study

I put this news article in the "News" section of the website and you can find it here.  But I'm also blogging about it because, I believe, it's a very significant study.  In my practice of helping injured people, I've noticed that there is this sense in the medical field that if you are feeling pain from an injury longer than 3 to 6 months then it must be in your head.  Or else you're manufacturing the symptoms.  But this study tells a different story.

A surprising number of people -- more than 60 percent -- still suffer significant pain a year after a traumatic injury in a car crash or other cause, showing the need for better pain treatment, researchers said.

In a study published on Monday in the journal Archives of Surgery, researchers tracked 3,047 patients ages 18 to 84 from 14 U.S. states who survived an acute traumatic injury.

A year after the injury, 63 percent reported that they still experienced pain related to the injury, with most having pain in more than one region of the body.

On average, the patients assessed their pain at 5.5 on a 10-point scale -- a level at which they would be expected to have moderate to severe interference with daily activities.

"I was surprised that the pain was as common and as severe as they reported it to be," said Dr. Frederick Rivara of the University of Washington in Seattle, who led the study.

"The implications are that we need to do a much better job of identifying pain in these patients, treating it adequately and treating it early," Rivara added in a telephone interview.

New Case on Witnesses Estimating Speed in an Car Crash

Phila. Judge Rules Paxil Labeling Suit

Your Food Industry At It's Best

$28 Million Dollar Award Against State Troopers Who Shot 12 Year Old

A federal jury in Pittsburgh yesterday awarded the father of Michael Ellerbe more than $28 million after finding that two Pennsylvania state police troopers intentionally shot and killed the 12-year-old boy in Uniontown on Christmas Eve of 2002. The bulk of the award, $24 million, came in punitive damages intended to punish the two troopers for excessive use of force in shooting the boy in the back and the state police for allegedly trying to cover it up. PaAJ officer Tim Conboy is quoted in the story that it was one of the biggest such awards in Western Pennsylvania history.

See the story here.

Editorial on the recent federal preemption US Supreme Court case

See the Letter to the Editor here.

New Products Liability case in the Pa. Supreme Court might redefine the law

Malingerer Test

A controversial test designed to spot litigants who may be feigning their injuries is gaining acceptance, but some psychologists and plaintiffs' lawyers protest that the test identifies too many real victims as possible fakers.

See the story from The Wall Street Journal here.

"In two Florida court cases last year, state judges, before allowing the test to be cited, held special hearings on whether it was valid enough to be used as courtroom evidence. Both judges ended up barring it.  "Virtually everyone is a malingerer according to this scale," says a leading critic, James Butcher, a retired University of Minnesota psychologist who has published research faulting the Fake Bad Scale. "This is great for insurance companies, but not great for people."

Humane Society sues USDA over beef recall

From MSNBC.com:

Loophole in law allowed ‘downer cows’ to enter food supply, agency says.

The lawsuit claims the U.S. Department of Agriculture created the loophole with a rule change in July. The society says the USDA lets cows that fell down after an initial veterinarian inspection be slaughtered if they appeared otherwise healthy.

The USDA issued the largest beef recall in history this month after the Humane Society released undercover video showing workers at a California slaughterhouse shoving sick or crippled cows with forklifts to get them to stand.

F.D.A. and Disk Maker Questioned

From The New York Times:

"A ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee has asked the Food and Drug Administration and the maker of an artificial spinal disk about potential financial conflicts of many of the doctors involved in the clinical research that led to F.D.A. approval of the device.  The financial relationships were the subject of a front-page New York Times article in late January. Doctors at about half the research centers involved in the study of the artificial disk, the Prodisc, had a direct financial interest in the device’s success."

And then, take a look at a recent blog post I did regarding:  The Supreme Court on Wednesday made it harder for consumers to sue manufacturers of federally approved medical devices.

So, the system of approving medical devices by the FDA is basically rigged.  But average people can't sue the manufacturers of the defective devices if the rigged FDA approves of it.

Are you seeing how this works, folks?

Why did God create Trial Lawyers?

Health Insurers Concerned Over Nixed Policy Lawsuits

The health-insurance industry is racing to defuse a growing furor over retroactive policy cancellations that have saddled some patients with big medical bills and sparked lawsuits.

So, of course, industry groups are suggesting a binding internal appeal process for consumers whose policies are concelled.  Once again, taking people's right to a trial away from them.

See the story here from the Wall Street Journal.

Insurer fined $9M for dropping cancer patient

A woman who had her medical coverage canceled as she was undergoing treatment for breast cancer has been awarded more than $9 million in a case against one of California's largest health insurers.

See the story here from USAToday.com.

Trial lawyers aren't all bad

In his new book, The Appeal, John Grisham is trying to rehabilitate the social standing of trial lawyers.  Good luck with that.

"Big business and its allies in the Republican Party have spent decades successfully vilifying "trial lawyers" as legal vultures and social parasites.  That nearly every dollar in a trial lawyer's wallet came from obtaining injured individuals the justice they otherwise would have been denied by our system is somehow lost.  Not on Grisham, part of whose purpose here is to remind us that the trial lawyer's contingency fee is the poor man's key to the courthouse"

Sears settles suit over allegedly dangerous stoves

From CNN.com:

Consumer advocates Wednesday hailed the settlement of a class-action lawsuit over Sears stoves in which the retailer agreed to install safety brackets for free to prevent the appliances from tipping over or provide other reimbursements.

According to the court-approved agreement, Sears will notify nearly 4 million customers who may have bought stoves between July 2000 and September 2007 that they either can get anti-tip safety brackets installed for free or receive gift cards or reimbursements of up to $100 to qualifying customers.

The brackets keep the appliances bolted to the floor or wall to prevent them from tipping over. Such accidents have caused more than 100 deaths or injuries, mostly from scalding and burns, according to the nonprofit consumer group Public Citizen.

Justices Limit Suits Over Medical Devices

From The New York Times:

The Supreme Court on Wednesday made it harder for consumers to sue manufacturers of federally approved medical devices.  In an 8-1 decision, the court ruled against the estate of a patient who suffered serious injuries when a catheter burst during a medical procedure. The case has significant implications for the $75 billion-a-year health care technology industry, whose products range from heart valves to toothbrushes.  At issue before the Supreme Court was whether the estate of Charles Riegel could sue a company under state law over a device previously cleared for sale by federal regulators.  State lawsuits are barred to the extent they would impose requirements that are different from federal requirements, said the ruling by Justice Antonin Scalia.

Here's a statement from the American Association For Justice in response to the decision:

Today, the Supreme Court issued its decision in Riegel v. Medtronic, Inc. In this case, Charles Riegel received a balloon catheter made by Medtronic which subsequently ruptured due to overinflation. Riegel developed a heart block and underwent emergency surgery. The Riegels later brought claims against Medtronic in the United States District Court for the Northern District of New York. The court found that the Riegels claims were preempted under the Medical Device Act, and the Second Circuit Court affirmed the decision. In this opinion, the Supreme Court affirms.

• The Supreme Court holds that state law claims regarding medical devices are preempted under the Medical Device Amendments (MDA) where the device manufacturer complied with federal requirements.

• In her dissent, Justice Ginsburg’s first footnote states that the "Court’s holding does not reach an important issue outside the bounds of this case: the preemptive effect of §360k(a) where evidence of a medical device’s defect comes to light only after the device receives premarket approval."

Horrific school bus crash leaves 4 students dead

From CNN.com:

Many of these buses, even the new models, don't have seat belts for the children.  I think it's a shame.  For some reason, people feel safer due to the size of the bus.  But if any bus is in even a minor collision, if you're not strapped down, you're going to be flying around.  I believe there is a statute that supporters were trying to get enacted to mandate seat belts in school buses.  Not sure of the status of that.

Sayre affected by meat recall Most other local school districts untouched

From the Towanda Daily Review:

"In what is being called the largest beef recall in history, many schools nationwide, including Sayre Area School District, have been affected by the Westland/Hallmark Meat Company recall, as the company provides its products to the National School Lunch Program."

Fentanyl patches recalled twice in a week

Patches containing the prescription painkiller fentanyl in the U.S. were recalled for the second time in a week Monday, because of a flaw that could cause patients or caregivers to overdose on the potent drug inside.

See more on the story here.

A Rip-Off by Health Insurers?

Have health insurers been systematically cheating patients and doctors of fair reimbursement for medical services? That is the disturbing possibility raised by an investigation of the industry’s arcane procedures for calculating “reasonable and customary” rates.

See the story from The New York Times here.

"This system is an invitation for abuse. UnitedHealth owns the company whose database will affect its costs and profitability, so both have a strong financial interest in keeping reimbursement rates low."