Cook County agrees to settle medical death suit for $9.8 million

December 4, 2008

The family of a 27-year-old mother of nine who died in Stroger Hospital three years ago after bleeding during a pregnancy will get $9.8 million to settle a lawsuit. The Cook County Board on Wednesday authorized the medical malpractice settlement in the case of Farrah Dickerson.

According to the suit, medical personnel at the county hospital failed to give Dickerson blood-clotting products in a timely fashion after she began bleeding and collapsed in August 2005. She was 31 weeks’ pregnant. Her baby survived.

The payment of insurance claims has become an issue for the county in recent months. Board President Todd Stroger wants to borrow $260 million to pay for court costs and insurance claims, but opponents have balked, saying those should be covered with regular county revenue.

 

Read Article: Chicago Tribune

 

Posted By: Phoenix DUI Attorney

County faulted in death at King-Harbor

An official Los Angeles County assessment has acknowledged for the first time that a woman who died shortly after writhing in pain for nearly an hour on the waiting room floor of Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Medical Center could have been saved if she had been properly treated.

Edith Rodriguez was captured on security videotape as a janitor mopped around her and a triage nurse dismissed her complaints in the early morning of May 9, 2007. Her death helped to precipitate the closure of the hospital’s emergency room and inpatient care after federal regulators determined that staffers had failed to deliver a minimum standard of care.

 

The 43-year-old woman’s boyfriend, who had accompanied her to the emergency room and called 911 from a nearby pay phone after no one would help, recently was offered a $250,000 settlement by county supervisors. A separate lawsuit against the county filed by her adult children could potentially prove far more costly and is considered more likely to go to trial.

Read Article: Los Angeles Times

 

Posted By: Phoenix DUI Attorney

Supreme Court to Consider Pensions and Pregnancy Leave

In the 30th anniversary year of the federal Pregnancy Discrimination Act, the “second generation of pregnancy discrimination” has arrived at the U.S. Supreme Court, say some civil rights and women’s rights lawyers, in a case that could affect thousands of female workers, retired or about to retire, as well as company pension plans.

 

The Pregnancy Discrimination Act treats discrimination on the basis of pregnancy, childbirth or related medical conditions as unlawful sex discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the nation’s major job bias law.

 

The act has helped “to change the nation’s mindset about childbearing and working moms, and it continues to provide significant civil rights protections for women,” said Linda D. Hallman, executive director of the American Association of University Women, adding it also has helped “to pave the way for a generation of working women and strengthened the American work force in the process.”

 

Read Article: Law.com

 

Posted By: Phoenix DUI Attorney

Fla. justices hear lawsuit in blood bank death

The Florida Supreme Court will decide whether a blood bank should be held responsible for the death of a 7-year-old boy who died from West Nile virus contracted from a transfusion.

 

An appeals court overturned a jury’s negligence verdict. The appellate judges ruled the lawsuit should have been filed as a medical malpractice claim instead and that special procedures required for that kind of case were not followed.

 

The argument Thursday focused on whether the malpractice procedures apply even though Chase Fitchner received only blood, not medical care, from a LifeSouth Community Blood Center in Alachua County.

 

Read Article: Miami Herald

 

Posted By: Phoenix DUI Attorney

Justices Look Anew at Case in Which Oregon Court Has Twice Rebuffed Them

The United States Supreme Court takes its name seriously, and it expects lower courts to follow its instructions. But the Oregon Supreme Court has twice refused to reduce a $79.5 million punitive damages award in the face of increasingly blunt directions from the nation’s highest court.

 

When the United States Supreme Court agreed to hear the Oregon case for a third time in June, many legal experts assumed it did so to teach the lower court a lesson about which court has the last word. “The Oregon Supreme Court really has continued to be defiant in this case,” Benjamin C. Zipursky, a Fordham law professor, said.

 

Philip Morris USA, which is fighting the award, filed unusually aggressive briefs in recent months, comparing the Oregon Supreme Court’s conduct to that of recalcitrant Southern courts in the civil rights era. And the company’s lawyer, Stephen M. Shapiro, sounded confident that he would be speaking to a sympathetic audience when he faced the justices on Wednesday.

 

Read Article: New York Times

 

Posted By: Phoenix DUI Attorney

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