Under the law, punitive damages cannot be levied against a defendant if they’d already been hit with punitive damages for the same conduct, provided the court determines they have already been punished enough, according to the opinion. Sommers had argued the court was wrong not to make this determination, the panel said.

Read more at: https://www.law360.com/personal-injury-medical-malpractice/articles/1810847?nl_pk=029cff45-637f-44e3-babf-75563f8e0bfd&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=personal-injury-medical-malpractice&utm_content=2024-03-07&read_main=1&nlsidx=0&nlaidx=4?copied=1

You can read about my experience litigating punitive damages here.

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Jibrael S. Hindi, representing the three Florida plaintiffs, told Law360 that he is representing victims of the data breach who went to the HCA facilities in Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties. Hindi estimated there are at least 100 people, including children, in those three counties whose data was breached. He is avoiding a class action and plans on filing individual cases in state court, where he believes his clients will receive more justice.

Read more at: https://www.law360.com/personal-injury-medical-malpractice/articles/1720304?nl_pk=029cff45-637f-44e3-babf-75563f8e0bfd&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=personal-injury-medical-malpractice&utm_content=2023-09-12&read_main=1&nlsidx=0&nlaidx=18?copied=1

The post He’s Not Wrong appeared first on The Thompson Law Firm.

Executives and board members of the Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn have been accused of conspiring to divert hospital resources into their own pockets at the expense of patient care and community health in a proposed $500 million class action filed Monday.

Four plaintiffs said the hospital’s shortcomings are not the fault of its staff, but rather CEO Kenneth Gibbs and the members of the hospital’s board of trustees, who are all named as defendants in the suit, which was filed in New York state court in Brooklyn.

,,,

According to the suit, Maimonides lost $179 million in 2021, and recently ranked last out of the 31 numerically ranked facilities on a U.S. News & World Report list of the best hospitals in the New York City area. The New York State Department of Health ranked Maimonides 146th on “hospital-acquired infections” and 147th on room cleanliness out of 148 ranked hospitals, and another review said the hospital scored “first in blood clots caused by neglect,” the suit said. The nonprofit Leapfrog Group has given the hospital D and F ratings for safety since 2019, according to the suit.

Read more at: https://www.law360.com/personal-injury-medical-malpractice/articles/1684247?nl_pk=029cff45-637f-44e3-babf-75563f8e0bfd&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=personal-injury-medical-malpractice&utm_content=2023-06-06&nlsidx=0&nlaidx=4?copied=1

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Report: Whistleblower accuses CVS of “calculated and widespread” drug pricing scheme targeting elderly patients

The post “CVS Health intentionally prevented certain Medicare beneficiaries from accessing less expensive, generic prescriptions…” appeared first on The Thompson Law Firm.

The claims are based largely on the findings of a scathing Inspector General’s report released last July, disclosing in part that senior officials in the FBI Indianapolis field office failed to respond to the Nassar allegations, made numerous and fundamental errors when they did respond and violated multiple FBI policies when undertaking their investigative activity.

Here is the link to the story in CNN:

Larry Nassar victims seek $130M in claims, accuse FBI of turning ‘blind eye’ to abuse allegations

The post 13 Women Sue FBI for Bungling the Nasser Investigation appeared first on The Thompson Law Firm.

While firearms manufacturers and dealers are shielded in part under the 2005 Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, which limits liability when their products are used in crimes, New York state passed a law last year designed to allow civil suits to be brought against the gun manufacturers.

Unlike politicians, trial lawyers find ways to act even when conditions are difficult.

Here is the link.

Victim of New York Subway Shooting Sues Gunmaker Glock and Parent Company

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In a Ford rollover case, I remember my Dad traveling to Michigan after he asked Ford to produce seat belt information for the pickup model at issue. In a building outside Detroit used by Ford to house all their litigation discovery responses, he was allowed to search floor after floor. He took a week. You can read more about that amazing case and its crazy ending here.

By the time I was doing automobile product litigation against the major manufacturers on my own, we were in the early days of electronic discovery.

In a product liability case against Big Pharma, I sat in a steamy document production room in Kenner, Louisiana, with other lawyers from across the country categorizing millions of documents for class action litigation.

In the age of electronic record keeping, the software to keep track of discovery gets more and more advanced. But the principle remains the same – the defense will try to overwhelm your lawyer with paper to hide the material information that he needs to win your case. Your lawyer needs experience and technical know-how to cut through the nonsense. The more experience he or she has, the less likely he or she will be to delegate the task or cut corners. Which is what you want.

The post More On Discovery appeared first on The Thompson Law Firm.

“While our intent was not to fuel the epidemic, we failed to recognize the broader context of what was going on in society around us,” said Bob Sternfels, who assumed his role as global managing partner leading the 38,000-employee firm in July 2021. “That’s why we have new protocols and policies in place to prevent this happening again.”

The link to the story is here:

McKinsey Chief Says Firm Failed to Identify Opioid Epidemic

The post The Companies Making Billions Off The Opioid Epidemic Want You To Know They Are (Really) Sorrry (Really) appeared first on The Thompson Law Firm.

Judge Denies Sarasota Hospital and Lee Health Motion Intervene in Opioid Settlement

I’ve discussed on this blog Lee Memorial’s charter and how Lee Memorial built a government health care monopoly in Lee County, Florida. A link to one of those posts is found below.

Lee Health’s Government Monopoly & Quality Fraud

Accountability is good. It is right and proper that opioid manufacturers pay the full cost of their misconduct. At the same time, however, it is a little galling to see two public hospitals profiting at both ends of this crisis when those same hospitals claim sovereign immunity damage caps for damages caused by their own negligence.

The post Lee Health Loves Damage Caps, But Only for Itself. Everyone Else Is Expected to Pay Full Freight. appeared first on The Thompson Law Firm.

Mr. Williams said a State Farm claims adjuster told him that she did not believe his version of events. “We have a lot of fraud in your area,” he said the adjuster had told him. Like the majority of people in his neighborhood, Mr. Williams, 58, is Black.State Farm eventually paid Mr. Williams a small fraction of his claim. By then, his expenses had snowballed. He sold his buildings to pay his bills. Insurers have a strong incentive to pay as little as possible in customer claims, since their business consists mainly of inflows of money from policy premiums and outflows from claims payouts, which they call “losses.”

Here is the full NYT story (pay wall).

NYT: Is State Farm discriminating in black neighborhoods?

If you don’t subscribe , this is also from the NYT story,

Last year, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission agreed with Ms. Campbell-Jackson, saying that State Farm discriminated against her. She has also sued State Farm, accusing it of discrimination and retaliation. After she came across Mr. Williams’s lawsuit, she agreed to testify on his behalf. Mr. Williams is hoping that Ms. Campbell-Jackson’s testimony will strengthen his request for class certification by offering a view from inside State Farm of the treatment of Black customers.

Insurance isn’t the only place where we find ethnic disparities in quality. I’ve written before about racial disparity in the quality of health care delivery.

The original IOM report was followed up with another report that was equally alarming. IOM found and reported that racial and ethnic disparity exists in the delivery of health care regardless of income or insurance coverage.

“Disparities in the health care delivered to racial and ethnic minorities are real and are associated with worse outcomes in many cases, which is unacceptable,” said Dr. Alan Nelson, chairman of the Committee on Understanding and Eliminating Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Health Care.

According to one review of the report, blacks or African-Americans often get second class care resulting in higher death rates from HIV/AIDS, cancer and heart disease.^[3]

The IOM report cited time pressures on physicians, provider bias against minorities, language barriers and geographic proximity as explanations for these unreported deaths from medical error.

Review the article “Making it possible for Hospitals to be honest about medical errors “… because they are not

Honesty and transparency enforced according guidelines recommended by the CDC would spur a new ‘patient-centric’ movement to improve safety, mortality and outcomes.

My original post on medical errors and the ethnic disparity in health care quality is here: Disparities in medical care.

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