Agency’s Role in Death to Be Probed

December 22, 2008

D.C. Fire Chief Dennis L. Rubin has asked the city’s inspector general to investigate his agency’s handling of an emergency call in which a Northeast Washington man complaining of chest pains and trouble breathing died hours after paramedics told him he had acid reflux and did not take him to a hospital.

 

Edward L. Givens was not breathing when a relative found him lying in a hallway in the early morning of Dec. 3. Paramedics who responded to a 911 call at the family home about six hours earlier instructed Givens to take an over-the-counter antacid for what they assessed as acid reflux and left, family members said.

 

Givens’s mother, Lolitha Givens, said she wanted her son taken to the hospital but that paramedics said he did not need to go. “It was the department’s view that, because of the public scrutiny in this case, it required us to seek an outside, independent review,” said Alan Etter, a spokesman for the D.C. Fire and Emergency Medical Services Department.

 

Read Article: Washington Post

 

Posted By: Phoenix DUI Attorney

Medical Publisher to Review Claim About Article’s Writer

Elsevier, a medical publisher, said Friday that it would investigate a senator’s recent allegation that one of its journals published an article on hormone replacement therapy that was improperly ghostwritten by a drug company promoting the product.

 

Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, had raised questions about the May 2003 “Editors’ Choice” article in Elsevier’s American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology. The article, signed by Dr. John Eden, an Australia academic, was among articles Mr. Grassley has cited that were favorable to drugs made by the pharmaceutical company Wyeth.

 

Mr. Grassley, a member of the Senate Finance Committee who is investigating drug company influence on doctors, contends that Wyeth commissioned the articles and had them ghostwritten by a medical writing firm. Only after the articles were conceived and under way did the firm line up doctors to put their names on them, Mr. Grassley contends.

 

Read Article: New York Times

 

Posted By: Phoenix DUI Attorney

FEMA asks to delay hearings on Hurricane Dolly claims lawsuit

Federal Emergency Management Agency officials planning to go home for the holidays want a federal judge to delay hearings on a lawsuit filed by 14 families still waiting for home repair assistance since July’s Hurricane Dolly, family attorneys said.

 

Texas Rio Grande Legal Aid says FEMA wants the case delayed until early January even though families have been living in dangerous and substandard conditions for nearly five months.

 

The case was filed Nov. 20 and TRLA had asked for a hearing as “early as possible because these families are still living in damaged homes, or living in other people’s homes,” TRLA spokeswoman Cynthia Martinez said.

 

FEMA spokeswoman Debra Young in Washington said the agency does not comment on pending litigation.

 

Read Article: The Monitor

 

Posted By: Phoenix DUI Attorney

Their day in court

Every Wednesday at noon, debt collection lawyers take their seats behind a thick wooden table in a downtown Baltimore courtroom for a ritual they call the “rocket docket.”

It’s one way officials at the city District Court try to unclog a backlog of consumer debt lawsuits, including thousands filed by hospitals over unpaid bills.

Lawyers call up debtors one at a time to work out payment plans in rapid, on-the-spot settlements. Other days, lawyers haggle with debtors in the courthouse hallways. When cases go to judges, hospitals typically win after hearings that last a few minutes or less.

Nearly one-third of the 132,000 lawsuits that Maryland hospitals have filed against patients in the past five years over unpaid bills have been filed in the city District Court, which serves an area where many debtors are “living on the margins,” as University of Maryland law professor and former Legal Aid lawyer Michael Millemann puts it.

 

Read Article: Baltimore Sun

 

Posted By: Phoenix DUI Attorney

No deluge of lawsuits - yet - in Madoff case

There has been no rush to the courthouse yet by Bernard Madoff’s angry investors, but a wave of legal action could be on the way as their lawyers spearhead private investigations into the suspected fraud.

 

A little more than a week after authorities say the veteran money manager confessed to a $50 billion swindle, only a handful of lawsuits had been filed in U.S. courthouses by investors seeking to recoup losses.

 

Lawyers are working overtime, though, to investigate the case and say they are sure that the scandal will ultimately spur plenty of court action — perhaps for years to come. When the big cases are filed, they are likely to seek huge damages, and many of the lawsuits will likely be consolidated.

 

For now though, lawyers say many stunned Madoff clients are not yet mentally ready to explore court remedies as they grapple with the reality that their life savings may be gone.

 

Read Article: Reuters

 

Posted By: Phoenix DUI Attorney

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