Trying to order medications for a heart attack victim using electronic medical records, White Coat is frustrated to run into screen after screen preventing him from completing the order without addressing unlikely allergy issues (and thus protecting the hospital from liability):
For those of you who don’t know what alarm fatigue is, think of a car alarm. The first time you hear it going off, you run to your window to see who’s breaking into a car. Maybe you run to the window the second time and the third time, too. By the tenth time the alarm goes off, you’re thinking that the alarm is broken and someone needs to get that fixed. After about thirty false alarms, you’re feeling like going out there and busting up the car yourself – especially if the car alarm wakes you when you’re asleep.
It’s a concept with many applications beyond the emergency room setting, too, product warnings being just the start.
P.S. Dr. Westby Fisher has some related thoughts about the limits of trying to engineer physician responsibility through electronic records design.
Tagged as:
allergies,
emergency medicine,
overwarning,
pharmaceuticals
Spotted by @thomasabowden:
Under the headline “Warning: Open Window + Gravity = Bad”, Kevin at Lowering the Bar comments: “I assume one of these is required on every window nowadays, or at least those that open.”
P.S. Reader Kim Schratweiser writes:
“We had new windows installed yesterday and I love this warning label:
“I was also pleased to note that this was on a removable sticker on the glass and I don’t have to look at warning labels when the window is open. The old windows had a warning label on the bottom of the upper sash, so when the window was open the label was clearly visible and quite ugly.”
Tagged as:
overwarning
- Oh, ABC: “America’s Wrongest Reporter” Brian Ross achieves another feat of wrongness [Hans Bader] “Don’t turn Aurora killer into celebrity” [David Kopel, USA Today] For the media: five tips on how not to misreport the gun angle [Robert VerBruggen, NRO]
- Ed Brayton of Dispatches from the Culture Wars challenges me on the War For Roberts’ Vote, and I respond;
- The “contains peanuts” warning on a peanut jar [Point of Law]
- “California Stats Show Elected Judges Disciplined More Often than Appointed Judges” [ABA Journal] New Federalist Society guide on state judicial selection procedures;
- “Science Quotas for Women–A White House Goal” [Charlotte Allen, Minding the Campus; Hans Bader] More: Heritage. “Title IX swings wildly at invisible enemy” [Neal McCluskey]
- So that’s what his business card meant when it said he practiced at Loeb and Wachs [AP: "Hawaii attorney convicted in ear licking case"]
- Rare occasion in which defendant is allowed to strike back: California appeals court says software executive can pursue malicious prosecution case against class action lawyers [NLJ]
Tagged as:
California,
don't,
guns,
John Roberts,
judicial elections,
loser pays,
overwarning,
science and scientists,
Title IX
It probably isn’t accomplishing much: “Lawyers and experts on internet policy say no court case has ever turned on the presence or absence of such an automatic e-mail footer in America, the most litigious of rich countries.” [The Economist; & note comments that take issue with the above assertion, and also point out the uses of such footers in pre-trial discovery]
Tagged as:
overwarning,
technology
Wear appropriate protective clothing, “do not let this chemical enter the environment”, and if you come in contact with it, “immediately flush skin with plenty of water for at least 15 minutes while removing contaminated clothing and shoes”. It’s ocean sand! MSDSs (Material Safety Data Sheets) are by and for lawyers: “Very few chemists, in my experience, spend much time with these forms at all, preferring to get their information from almost any other source.” [Derek Lowe via Virginia Postrel]
More: Interesting comments, including one on ionized water (if exposed, “flush the contaminated area with water”) and this from reader John: “Good news: if the sand is intended for use by children under 12, as of August 14 the sand itself will have to be permanently labeled with a batch number so it can be easily recalled.”
Tagged as:
CPSIA,
environment,
overwarning
The warning on a bottle from Asda, a large U.K. grocery chain, is “indicative of a policy by supermarkets and food manufacturers to liberally stamp warnings on products to avoid legal complications.” [Daily Mail]
Tagged as:
food safety,
overwarning,
United Kingdom
Gary Charbonneau had a gambling history, including substantial wins, which devolved into compulsive gambling in 2002. He blames this on his Parkinson’s disease medication, Mirapex, which he started taking in 1997. Mirapex changed its warning label to include reports of a correlation while Charbonneau was taking the drug; Charbonneau’s doctor kept prescribing the drug. Nevertheless, Charbonneau was able to persuade a jury that the failure to warn was what was responsible for his $200,000 gambling losses (much of which came from gambling illegally) and resulting marital troubles. The jury verdict even awarded $8 million in punitive damages, giving a whole new meaning to jackpot justice (though one would expect the trial court to reduce this substantially). The only press coverage of this lawsuit, aside from a handful of blogs (Pharmalot; TortsProf; InjuryBoard), is in an op-ed I wrote for today’s Examiner about the case and about how a Supreme Court case and Congressional legislation could affect it. (Theodore H. Frank, “Jackpot justice gets new meaning,” DC Examiner, Aug. 19).
Tagged as:
compulsive gambling,
failure to warn,
jackpot justice,
Mirapex,
overwarning,
pharmaceuticals,
preemption,
product liability,
punitive damages,
Supreme Court,
Ted Frank
- New FASB regulation may provide fodder for trial lawyers: publicly disclose your internal analysis of liability (thus giving away crucial settlement information and attracting more lawsuits), and/or face lawsuits when your disclosure turns out to be incorrect. [CFO.com; CFO.com; NLJ/law.com ($); FASB RFC]
- NBC settles a “You-made-me-commit-suicide-by-exposing-my-pedophilia” lawsuit. [LA Times; WSJ Law Blog; Conradt v. NBC Universal]
- A victim of overwarning? 17-year-old loses hat on Six Flags Batman roller-coaster ride, ignores multiple warning signs to jump multiple fences into unauthorized area, retrieves hat, loses head. [FoxNews/AP; Atlanta Journal-Constitution; TortsProf]
- Lots of Ninth Circuit reversals this term, as per usual. [The Recorder/law.com]
- A no-Twinkie defense doesn’t fly in a maid-beating case. [CNN/AP via ATL]
- The Chinese government demonstrates that it can enforce laws against IP piracy when it wants to [Marginal Revolution]
- “Justice Scalia said he thought that the United States was ‘over-lawed,’ leading to too many lawyers in the country. ‘I don’t think our legal system should be that complex. I think that any system that requires that many of the country’s best minds, and they are the best minds, is too complex. If you look at the figures, where does the top of the class in college go to? It goes into law. They don’t go into teaching. Now I love the law, there is nothing I would rather do but it doesn’t produce anything.’” [Telegraph]
- Above the Law commenters decidedly unimpressed by my looks. Looking forward to feminists rushing to my defense against “silencing insults.” [Above the Law]
Tagged as:
accounting,
defense lawyers,
media,
Ninth Circuit,
overwarning,
sued if you do,
suicide,
Supreme Court,
trademarks
- Monday’s polar bear panel at AEI is a panel about the law of polar bears and the effect of the FWS decision to list them as threatened, rather than a panel featuring polar bears. So no fish will be served. Volokh’s Jonathan Adler will be there, though. [Volokh; AEI]
- Limiting lawsuit abuses lowers costs from litigation, creates jobs in long run. [Engler & McQuillan @ Detroit News]
- HBO to small businesses: prepositions are okay, but conjunctions will lead to injunctions. [Baltimore Sun]
- A one-sided love letter to Cozen O’Connor in the Philadelphia Inquirer over its September 11 litigation is a bit too revealing about its deep-pocket searches: “Cozen lawyers also had to be sure that such a defendant made financial sense, for the firm and its clients.” Culpability, of course, isn’t in the equation; and the newspaper story fails to account for the public-policy implications of having trial lawyers stepping on foreign policy. [Philadelphia Inquirer]
- Life imitates “The Office”: law firm offers “love contracts” for dating workers. [ABA Journal]
- More evidence of FDA overwarning, even when the science and law does not justify it. [Kyle Sampson @ Product Liability Law 360]
- Business tries to bully small website with litigation; small website successfully fights back. [CL&P Blog]
- “[Ron] Paul accomplished the one thing he’s always been good at: using political appeals to get people to send money. I don’t feel freer.” [Henley via Kirkendall]
- “It’s infuriating how all three presidential candidates prattle on about the need to fight global warming while also complaining about the high price of gasoline.” [Postrel]
- Story on Vioxx settlement and Merck winning reversals heavily quotes me. [Product Liability Law 360 ($)]
Tagged as:
bullying businesses,
deep pocket,
environment,
global warming,
harassment law,
media bias,
overwarning,
Ron Paul,
September 11,
tort reform,
trademarks,
Vioxx
I’m proud to be part of the amicus brief in Wyeth v. Levine filed by leading economists John E. Calfee, Ernst R. Berndt, Robert Hahn, Tomas Philipson, Paul H. Rubin, and W. Kip Viscusi. It provides an excellent explanation why FDA preemption is good for consumer safety and health policy, and why failure-to-warn litigation by trial lawyers hurts consumer safety. (You may notice that none of the public-policy arguments against preemption you see in the blogosphere fairly address these economic arguments.)
For everything you could possibly want to know about the Wyeth v. Levine case, do see Beck & Herrmann’s roundup of their excellent posts on the subject, and keep an eye out for their discussion of the top-side briefs undoubtedly coming soon.
Tagged as:
failure to warn,
overwarning,
preemption,
safety,
Supreme Court
