In Friday’s opinion, the panel for the Fifth District Court of Appeal wrote that Moyer — which concerned a medical malpractice wrongful death suit — may have found that testimony of internal policies could be admissible, but that such evidence “does not conclusively establish” a standard of care.

Read more at: https://www.law360.com/personal-injury-medical-malpractice/articles/1740726?nl_pk=029cff45-637f-44e3-babf-75563f8e0bfd&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=personal-injury-medical-malpractice&utm_content=2023-11-06&read_main=1&nlsidx=0&nlaidx=13?copied=1

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At issue on appeal is a jury instruction stating that jurors were to find in favor of the hospital if they determined that Lane’s then-boyfriend, Ben Andrews, had abused Hollis.

Read more at: https://www.law360.com/personal-injury-medical-malpractice/articles/1688549?nl_pk=029cff45-637f-44e3-babf-75563f8e0bfd&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=personal-injury-medical-malpractice&utm_content=2023-06-14&nlsidx=0&nlaidx=4?copied=1

The post Missouri Hospital Keeps Trial Win In Shaken Baby Case appeared first on The Thompson Law Firm.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday refused to upend decades of precedent and allowed a nursing home resident’s family to sue an Indiana care home under the Federal Nursing Home Reform Act for allegedly negligent care, saying the law confers a private right of action for alleged civil rights violations.

Here is the link to my website page summarizing my experience handling nursing home negligence cases, including some law I made on appeal in the 11th Circuit in Gilmore v. Lifecare.

My Nursing Home Negligence Experience

Read more at: https://www.law360.com/personal-injury-medical-malpractice/articles/1558894?nl_pk=029cff45-637f-44e3-babf-75563f8e0bfd&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=personal-injury-medical-malpractice&utm_content=2023-06-09&nlsidx=0&nlaidx=0?copied=1

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A Florida man’s attorneys announced Thursday that a Broward County jury has awarded their client $7.8 million in what they said is one of the largest slip-and-fall verdicts in the state’s history after finding a Burger King restaurant responsible for injuries he suffered during a fall in the restaurant’s bathroom.

The attorneys said Tulecki has suffered lower back injuries that required surgery and were complicated by a postoperative perforated colon. They said a “crucial factor” in the case was their ability to show a connection between Tulecki’s fall and the colon issues he has experienced through medical records and expert witnesses.

Read more at: https://www.law360.com/personal-injury-medical-malpractice/articles/1679193?nl_pk=029cff45-637f-44e3-babf-75563f8e0bfd&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=personal-injury-medical-malpractice&utm_content=2023-05-19&nlsidx=0&nlaidx=7?copied=1

The post Juries Can Figure Out Complex Issues. appeared first on The Thompson Law Firm.

In oral argument before a three-judge panel in Miami, Discount Rock & Sand’s attorney Andrea Cox told the appeals court that the district court judge erred in allowing jurors to view what she called a “horror show of an animation that was patently misleading” that shows the Discount Rock & Sand truck slamming into the Nissan Rogue carrying the four women on vacation in the Florida Keys.

But the Trial Judge said this was not the original objection to the animation and might have been waived as a result.

But U.S. Circuit Judge Robert J. Luck said he had not found any instance in the record where Discount Rock & Sand had made an objection at trial to showing the video because of its potentially prejudicial value. “The objections seem to me they were mostly about timeliness,” Judge Luck said. “I think you did preserve that, but I don’t know if embedded in there is ‘judge, this thing is prejudicial.'”

Read more at: https://www.law360.com/personal-injury-medical-malpractice/articles/1605678?nl_pk=029cff45-637f-44e3-babf-75563f8e0bfd&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=personal-injury-medical-malpractice&utm_content=2023-05-17&nlsidx=0&nlaidx=16?copied=1

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Celebrity Cruises Says Storing Body In Cooler Not Misconduct

Celebrity Cruises urged a Florida federal judge on Friday to toss a suit by the family of a man who died aboard one of its ships and whose body decomposed after being stored in the vessel’s ill-equipped cooler, arguing the crew did the best under the circumstances, and that it was not “willful or wanton misconduct.”

The cruise line argued in a motion to dismiss that the single claim for tortuous interference with a dead body brought by the family of Robert Jones should be dismissed for failure to state a claim because the family must suggest they either suffered a physical injury or that the cruise line acted with willful or wanton misconduct, but none of those things occurred.

“To find willful or wanton misconduct, Celebrity must have acted so outrageously and so extremely as to go beyond all bounds of decency,” the cruise line said. “Here, Celebrity’s alleged actions were, at worst, simple negligence. After realizing the morgue was broken, Celebrity moved Mr. Jones’s body to a functioning cold place on the vessel that was large enough to house him.”

“If Celebrity made a mistake in keeping him in too warm of conditions, then it was simple negligence, and negligence is insufficient to impose liability here,” the cruise line continued.

The April lawsuit filed by the widow, children and grandchildren of Jones say Celebrity improperly kept Jones’ body stored in a cooler, leaving his body in an advanced stage of decomposition by the time they pulled in to port six days later in Florida.

The plaintiffs said the crew in charge of storing his body “acted recklessly, willfully and wantonly, and without care for the Jones family’s loved one.”

Jones and his wife, Marilyn Jones, were on the Celebrity Equinox on Aug. 15, when Jones died due to a cardiac event, according to the suit.

Celebrity’s crew told Marilyn Jones that she could either have her husband’s body removed from the ship in San Juan, Puerto Rico, or keep it stored in the ship’s morgue until it reached port in Fort Lauderdale six days later, according to the suit. The widow says she was told that if she chose to have his body taken ashore in San Juan, she would have to stay with the body and make arrangements for transport for herself and her husband’s body back to Florida.

The Jones’ daughter Teresa West says she was told by Celebrity employees that if her father’s body was taken ashore in San Juan there was a good chance that the coroner’s office there would take possession of the body and there was no guarantee as to when his body would be released.

Because of this, Marilyn Jones opted to keep her husband’s body in the ship’s morgue, the lawsuit said.

But she said that when the ship docked in Fort Lauderdale on Aug. 21, an employee of a local funeral home found Robert Jones’ body in a cooler on a different floor than the ship’s morgue and in an advanced stage of decomposition. His body had expanded with gas and his skin had turned green, according to the complaint, which added that the funeral had to be closed casket as a result.

The family said Celebrity has had dozens of people die on its ships over the last two decades and is required to have a working morgue on its ships. Its workers should have known about the temperatures required to preserve dead bodies, according to the suit.

The plaintiffs said had they known there was no working morgue on the ship, they would have opted to take Jones’ body off the ship in Puerto Rico.

Jones’ family is asking for compensatory damages of $1 million, plus costs.

Celebrity Cruises argued in the motion to dismiss that although the claim was brought under maritime law, Florida law can supplement the claim because general maritime law is silent on tortuous interference with a dead body in the Eleventh Circuit. The only time it was considered in the Eleventh Circuit, in 2020’s Sexton v. Carnival Corp . in the Southern District of Florida, Florida law was applied, Celebrity Cruises said.

Florida law should apply in the instant case because the ship left and returned to port from Florida, six of the seven parties are domiciled in the state and the lawsuit was filed in Florida federal court, Celebrity Cruises said.

Under Florida law, the plaintiffs must allege a physical injury, but only argued mental injuries, or must allege willful or wanton misconduct, the cruise line said.

“There is no actionable claim for tortuous interference with a dead body when the defendant had a good-faith reason to interfere with the body without the family’s consent,” Celebrity Cruises argued.

Simple negligent mistakes are not enough for the plaintiffs’ claim, Celebrity Cruises said, and cited a number of cases involving similar claims, with some involving more “severe” allegations where the suit was dismissed.

One case was the Supreme Court of Florida’s 1995 ruling in Gonzalez v. Metro. Dade Cnty. Pub. Health Trust where the morgue sent the wrong infant’s body to a funeral home, which resulted in the parents holding a funeral and burying the wrong body. The parents brought claims for negligent mishandling of a corpse against the morgue, but the morgue won on summary judgment because there was no willful misconduct or physical injury to the plaintiffs, Celebrity Cruises said.

Moving the body to the walk-in cooler after the morgue cooler failed was done in good faith, Celebrity Cruises said.

“Mistakenly stating that the morgue cooler would be fully functional for six days is, at worst, a negligent misrepresentation,” the cruise line said. “It is not intentional misconduct, which means there can be no liability for tortuous interference with a body.”

Counsel for the parties did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The plaintiffs are represented by Jacob J. Munch and Catherine M. Saylor of Munch and Munch PA and Thomas W. Carey of Carey Leisure & Neal.

Celebrity Cruises is represented by Curtis Jay Mase and Thomas Dennis Alan Briggs of Mase Seitz Briggs.

The case is Jones et al. v. Celebrity Cruises Inc., case number 1:23-cv-21481, in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida.

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Patients need to understand the risks and potential problems associated with telehealth visits to avoid additional injuries. Medical malpractice can become more of a danger than ever.

UNDERSTANDING TELEHEALTH AND THE RISKS OF MEDICAL MALPRACTICE

I had a case involving teleradiology services provided to an internal medicine practice from hundreds of miles away. The level of communication between the offices was almost non-existent. Informed consumers and educated clients are our goal here.

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Physicians with a single paid claim are 4x as likely to have a future claim than physicians with zero paid claims.  We find a similar pattern in both high-risk and lower-risk specialties.  We also find no evidence that public disclosure of paid claims has any impact on these patterns — meaning there is no “blood in the water” effect.

Here is the link:

Georgetown Study Finds Medical Malpractice Is Not Random

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Due to the growing rate of medical errors and malpractice, scientists at Johns Hopkins in 2016 proposed it should rank as the third leading cause of death in the U.S., a position only behind heart disease and cancer, respectively.

Read more: https://www.digitaljournal.com/life/is-medical-malpractice-becoming-a-trend/article#ixzz7svSKm14Z

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Your mind will answer most questions if you learn to relax and wait for the answers.

William Burroughs

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