Orac has plenty of interesting reporting and coverage here, here, and here (earlier). Update: Not guilty.
Posts tagged as:
medical
By way of more chances for plaintiffs to identify arguable red flags in the form of information that a physician “should have known”. [Robert Mintz, HCPLive]
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Commentary’s Jennifer Rubin notices:
A friend points out a little nugget of absurdity and political mendacity in the Pelosi health-care bill. Remember Obama’s effort to try a “test” for tort reform? (We don’t actually need a test, since it has worked to lower medical malpractice coverage and help increase access to doctors in states that have tried it.) Well, Pelosi’s bill has an anti-tort-reform measure. On pages 1431-1433 of the 1990-page spellbinder, there is a financial incentive for states to try “alternative medical liability laws.” But look — you don’t get the incentive if you have a law that would “limit attorneys’ fees or impose caps on damages.”
In other words, Congress is providing a financial incentive to uncap damages. Marvelous.
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Excitable bloggers like us ought to calm down, because it’s not as if official crackdowns on the dispensing of freebies ever generate absurd results: 
Docblogger White Coat just snapped that picture at the scientific assembly of the American College of Emergency Physicians. (The campaign against drug company freebies for doctors, of course, began with publicity over inducements that were a whole lot more sizable and focused than convention-hall refreshments, but appears to have quickly extended to de minimis courtesies as well).
Meanwhile, FTC officials are getting all huffy about supposed misunderstandings and misconceptions about their new guidelines. Per PRNewser, some blogs have mistakenly reported the applicable fines as ranging up to $11,000, which is an obsolete number and should in fact be $16,000. Besides which, the commission does not have the authority to impose such fines on its own authority — it has to take its target to court. (Feeling reassured yet?) And FTC assistant director Richard Cleland says the agency does not intend to go after bloggers for nondisclosure standing alone (as opposed, apparently, to nondisclosure in combination with claimed misrepresentation of the qualities of the books, movies, conferences or whatever is being promoted). The main targets of regulation, he stresses, are the publishers or others who dispense the freebies — who of course will have new incentives to protect themselves by controls on distribution, as did Schering-Plough in the sign above.
Something to look forward to, no doubt, in the exhibit hall at future conventions: “If you are a blogger or other Social Media user, please refrain from taking any of the free magazines, calendars or sun visors in this display…” (& welcome Glenn Reynolds/Instapundit readers)
P.S. Coyote:
Anyone who has been involved in NCAA recruiting can tell you the absurd results that flow from defining even tiny freebies as violations. For example, when I interview high school students for Princeton, I have to be careful not to buy them lunch or coffee on the off-chance they turn out to be athletes where such a purchase could trigger a recruiting violation.
And Patrick at Popehat identifies another sort of “endorsement” that might arguably be covered by the language of the guidelines: linking to other blogs, especially when done insincerely.
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Two sisters were repeatedly raped and sexually abused by their older half-brother. This is, a federal jury decided, the fault of their pediatrician, Dr. Patricia Monroe, who failed to report the abuse–though there was no evidence she was aware of the scope of it. Monroe’s attorney “says that’s because the girl refused to speak to Monroe and because the incident wasn’t reportable to Child Protective Services.” The decision will be appealed. (Chris Knight, “Monroe to appeal $11M verdict”, Adirondack Daily Enterprise, Sep. 3).
A message has been sent: make defensive reports to Child Protective Services, and parents will all be worse off when CPS overreacts.
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“Prosecutors say a group of top lawyers and doctors conspired to collect millions in inflated damages by pushing accident victims into dubious surgery.” Riveting, detail-filled account of the alleged involvement of numerous Nevada lawyers and as many as 20 doctors in what prosecutors say was boldly and systematically organized misconduct, with even some sectors of the judiciary in the state at best cowed by the scheme’s managers. An elegant touch: physicians who played ball are said to have been assured protection from malpractice suits from many feared attorneys, while those not in on the scheme appear in some cases to have been at extra peril. This looks to be one of the year’s most important ventures into investigative journalism on the underside of litigation — don’t even think of missing it [Katherine Eban, Fortune, Aug. 19] More: discussed by Darleen Click and commenters, Protein Wisdom.
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- Liability protection for doctors, premised on “best-practices” medicine: a proposal to address the federalism difficulties [Bernstein/MacCourt, MI Center for Medical Progress, PoL]
- Fraud in immigration law victimizes both U.S. and aspiring immigrants [NYT]
- Paralyzed while tackling opponent, high school footballer now suing Barre, Vt. school system [Barre-Montpelier Times Argus]
- Memo to Sen. Edwards: voters forgave Grover Cleveland the paternity, but they do mind lies [Mickey Kaus]
- Issue in New Orleans case: defamatory to call tour guides “thugs”? [Times-Picayune]
- No more Lux et Veritas: Yale press
wimps out on Mohammed cartoons [NYT, Moynihan/Reason "Hit and Run", Steyn/NRO "Corner", Hitchens] - More on NYC woman’s “wasted-tuition” suit against college [Mark Gimein, NY Mag via Genova, earlier]
- Do we really want to let CPSIA’s drafters within a mile of redesigning our health care system? [Inoculated]
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She’ll be opening the AAJ annual convention tonight in San Francisco. Charles Krauthammer thinks the coziness between Big Law and certain parts of the political establishment may explain a lot about the faltering status of health care reform.
More: “Media Barred from Speaker Pelosi’s Speech to Trial Lawyers“. And John Steele Gordon at Commentary “Contentions” offers some ideas for health care reform that were probably not included in Pelosi’s speech.
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- Pennsylvania Department of Labor launches probe on whether reality-TV show “Jon & Kate Plus 8″ violates child labor laws [Pennsylvania Labor & Employment Blog, Hirsch/Workplace Law Prof via Ohio Employer's Law]
- Dispute over termination of Navy aircraft contract called “Jarndyce v. Jarndyce of U.S. legal system” [WSJ Law Blog]
- Medical tourism, cont’d: “It appears that ‘we’re easier to sue’ is the uniquely American defense to medicine outsourcing.” [KevinMD]
- New Oklahoma law protects farmers from neighbors’ suits complaining of nuisance from farm activity [Enid, Okla., News]
- For unusually bad advice on how to save GM and Detroit, Michael Moore as usual comes through [Popehat]
- Lawyer reprimanded for telling party she should be cut up, shipped overseas [NJLJ, ABA Journal]
- Call for reform of UK laws banning press interviews of jurors after verdict [Times Online first, second articles and commentary]
- Coming soon: campaign against depiction of smoking in Raymond Chandler books, Edward Hopper paintings [CEI "Open Market"]
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Some in Britain are not happy about the combination of no-fee, no win lawyering (relatively recently legalized over there) and a taxpayer compensation scheme for medical negligence. [Times Online]. More: GruntDoc headlines his post, “In case you thought Nationalized Health would take the lawyers out of it…”.
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And it’s a big one, buried in a state budget package: the lifting of two-decade-old restrictions on what they can charge clients. More: Point of Law.
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- Driver on narcotic painkillers crashes car, lawyer says pharmacists liable [Las Vegas Review-Journal]
- Who’s that cyber-chasing the Buffalo Continental Air crash? Could it be noted San Francisco-based plaintiff’s firm Lieff Cabraser? [Turkewitz]
- Axl Rose no fan of former Guns N’ Roses bandmate or his royalty-seeking attorneys [Reuters]
- Cheese shop owner speaks out against punitive tariff on Roquefort, now due to take effect April 23 [video at Reason "Hit and Run", earlier]
- Too many cops and too many lawsuits in city schools, says Errol Louis [NY Daily News]
- Law professor and prominent blogger Ann Althouse is getting married — to one of her commenters. Congratulations! [her blog, Greenfield] Kalim Kassam wonders when we can look forward to the Meg Ryan film “You’ve Got Blog Comments”.
- “Louisiana panel recommends paying fees of wrongfully accused Dr. Anna Pou” (charged in deaths of patients during Hurricane Katrina) [NMissCommentor]
- U.K.: “Privacy Group Wants To Shut Down Google Street View” [Mashable]
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As we reported a while back, a New Jersey rheumatologist has been required to pay $400,000 to a deaf patient for refusing to provide (at his expense) a sign language interpreter for her. (Instead, he exchanged written notes with help from her family members; there is no allegation that she suffered any physical harm.) Now Stephen Dubner of Freakonomics covers the case and notes that it could have an unintended and unpleasant consequence: doctors are now given a financial incentive to find excuses to turn away deaf patients from their practice.
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But it is personal (cross-posted from Point of Law).
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I got an email asking me what happened to the case in the following post:
While his wife, Jeanette Passalaqua, was giving birth, Steven fainted in the delivery room, fracturing his skull and dying two days later. This is, says the family, the fault of Kaiser Foundation Hospitals and Southern California Permanente Medical Group Inc. “‘This avoidable tragedy was a direct result of Kaiser’s ordinary negligence in failing to exercise reasonable care to prevent foreseeable injuries to Steven,’ according to the suit, which was filed last week in San Bernardino County Superior Court.” So if your maternity ward is rubber-padded next time you go there, you know why.
So I looked it up in the San Bernardino County Superior Court docket database: the case settled almost immediately. The docket does not report the amount of the settlement, which could conceivably have been for a token amount, but one can infer that there was some substantial money involved, because the settlement required proof of the purchase of annuities for the two plaintiff minors, which normally wouldn’t be worth the transactions costs if the sums were tiny. But that inference may be incorrect. If ever I find myself in San Bernardino, maybe I’ll check the paper record to see if there’s more public detail.
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