Mediation – 678 Partners Ask CFR on How Mediation Can Yield Lower Costs, Produce Win-Win Results And Leave Less Emotional Strain in Comparison Vimeo
January 13, 2012
678 Partners ask CFR on how mediation can yield lower costs, produce win-win results and leave less emotional strain in comparis from Amir Homayoun Rafizadeh on Vimeo.
Had an eye opener discussion with Erin Johnston CEO and Founder of CFR an IL based mediation business. Idea Chef and I have been talking to different groups in the prior weeks about the Gulf Oil Spill and its consequences to the BP brand. Today we also decided to invite Nima Taradji as well to get the perspective of a trial attorney. Very educational and interesting findings when comparing mediation, arbitration and also litigation. Big cost and time differences between the techniques, better outcomes when both parties agree to some aspect rather than having one looser and one winner. Something very few people know: Emotional toll on the case looser, something mediation avoids because both parties decide, and not one or the other. Grab a cup of coffee over a Saturday or Sunday and listen to this interview.
Product Liability – FDA Requires Increase Warning For Yaz Blood Clot Risks
January 12, 2012
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
A Food and Drug Administration (FDA) advisory panel voted 21-5 to require drospirenone-containing birth control pills – including Yaz, Yasmin, Ocella, Beyaz, Safyral, and Vestura – to warn about increased risk of blood clots.
via Yaz Side Effects: FDA Requires Increase Warning For Yaz Blood Clot Risks | InjuryBoard Kansas City.
msnbc video: Panel: Benefits of ‘Yaz’ outweigh risks.
The 10 Most Ridiculous Lawsuits of 2011
January 7, 2012
I am posting this against my better judgment… but then again, this made me smile.
The top ten Most Ridiculous Lawsuits of 2011 are:
- Convict sues couple he kidnapped for not helping him evade police
- Man illegally brings gun into bar, gets injured in a fight, then sues bar for not searching him for a weapon
- Young adults sue mother for sending cards without gifts and playing favorites
- Woman disagrees with store over 80-cent refund, sues for $5 million
- Mom files suit against exclusive preschool over child’s college prospects
- Man suing for age discrimination says judge in his case is too old
- Obese man sues burger joint over tight squeeze in booths
- Woman sues over movie trailer; says not enough driving in “Drive”
- Passenger’s lawsuit says cruise ship went too fast and swayed from side to side
- Mother sues Chuck E. Cheese – says games encourage gambling in children
via The 10 Most Ridiculous Lawsuits of 2011 – Yahoo! News.
Wrongful Death – Personal Injury – Frivolous lawsuits Are Not The Issue – Carelessness Is.
January 3, 2012
We have heard so many tales of woes about how medical malpractice lawsuits are ruining the medical health of this country by making healthcare expensive for all and by causing the exodus of doctors from the so-called “judicial hellholes” (of which Illinois is supposedly one) toward States where there are limits on justice that a victim of a doctor’s carelessness can hope to obtain.
The problem with that proposition is that it is simply not true. What causes medical malpractice lawsuits are not patients and/or juries and their verdicts or lack of caps on those verdicts, but medical malpractice. The best way to prevent a lawsuit based on medical malpractice is to not commit carelessness.
Note that here, we are not talking about things that may go wrong in the natural progression of a treatment: there are times when a treatment goes wrong through no fault of the medical provider and/or the attending physician. Things may go wrong because Medicine is an art. What we are talking about here are actual damages caused to individuals that are the direct result of carelessness–that is different from simply not getting the intended result. For example, damages that could cause for failure of a doctor to simply read objective tests that are performed and that are ready to be reviewed but the doctor simply decides not to avail himself f the useful information those tests provides him. That is when medical malpractice lawsuits may be expected.
NYT: Doctors at Harlem Hospital Didn’t See Most Reports
Nearly 4,000 tests for heart disease performed over the last three years at Harlem Hospital Center – more than half of all such tests performed – were never read by doctors charged with making a diagnosis, hospital officials acknowledged Tuesday.
The echocardiogram tests, a type of ultrasound used to evaluate heart muscle and valve functions, were ordered by doctors at the hospital. The tests were stored on a computer and basically forgotten, officials said. The lapse occurred because the cardiology service at the hospital had developed a system by which technicians were given the responsibility to scan all tests and flag any that looked abnormal, so that they would be given priority when doctors read them.It appears, officials said, that the tests that were not flagged were put aside and forgotten.
The city’s Health and Hospitals Corporation, which runs the public hospital system, including Harlem Hospital, and Columbia University, whose medical school supplies the cardiologists who work at Harlem Hospital Center, acknowledged the problem in a joint statement on Tuesday, after being asked about it by The New York Times.
“While the process the doctors followed may have alerted cardiologists to those echocardiograms that were most likely to be abnormal, the failure to read the echocardiograms in a timely manner is inexcusable and may have placed patients at risk,” Alan D. Aviles, hospitals corporation president, said in the statement. It was unclear who developed the screening system, hospital officials said.
Stop Blaming The Trial Lawyers… We Are On Your Side.
January 17, 2010
Call for tort reform obscures the real issue» Evansville Courier & Press
I am tired of scapegoating lawyers in general, and trial lawyers in particular, and it is one reason why I now call myself a Reagan conservative rather than a Republican.
Health care now absorbs almost 20 percent of our gross domestic product, which creates a hidden and growing tax on the American consumer. However, the best that the Republican Party and other conservative groups can do is to promote tort reform as its principal response to the health care dilemma.
On the one hand, conservative groups bemoan national solutions to state, economic or business problems, and yet do not comprehend that national legislation to control state courts is anathema to the Constitution. It violates the Constitutional principle that rights not granted to the federal government have been reserved to the states, and it undermines the concept of federalism.
So-called “tort reform” will usurp the legal rights of citizens when access to the courts provides the only means of redress against a large and malevolent federal government and powerful business interests.
Tort Reform And Its Questionable Success
January 16, 2010
Tort Reform: Questionable Success and Obvious Shortcomings
How are patients limited by tort reform?
The core of many tort reform bills is the limitation of non-economic damages. This includes compensation for pain and suffering. What happens when a malpractice victim faces no immediate economic damages? For example, what of elderly and young victims who are not employed? What of grieving families who face life without a loved one?
Charles and Shirley Ethier’s son was admitted to a San Francisco emergency room with a head laceration after being struck in the head with a surfboard. Despite the possibility of a serious head injury, the doctor who treated him failed to order a CT scan or even palpate the wound. Instead, the physician simply stitched him up and sent him home.
He wasn’t there for long. The Ethiers’ son had fractured his skull, and was suffering from extensive cerebral hemorrhaging. The sustained pressure on his brain eventually rendered him brain dead and he later died.
The jury quickly found for the Ethiers and awarded them $3 million in wrongful death damages — which the judge was forced to immediately reduce to $250,000, the amount allowed under MICRA for non-economic damages.
US Chamber of Commerce Is At It Again.
January 7, 2010
the US Chamber of Commerce has consistently engaged in disseminating false information to the masses. At some point they should stop doing that.
U.S. Chamber: More Lawsuit Malarkey
A spokesman for the Chamber, Mark Szymanski, told us the ad began airing “nationally” in late December and will continue to air until the end of January. But he would not disclose the amount of money the Chamber Institute for Legal Reform is spending on the ad.
Szymanski said the source for the ad’s claim is an October 2005 study, “Impact of Litigation on Small Businesses,” conducted for the Small Business Administration by Klemm Analysis Group Inc. of Washington, D.C. But that report says nothing of the sort. In fact, it found that less than 15 percent of federal lawsuits target any business entity at all, and that roughly half of those, or fewer, involved small businesses.
This is not the first time we’ve caught the Chamber making an inflated claim about the impact of lawsuits.
Believe What The Hospitals Do and Not What They Say
December 22, 2009
Local hospitals have billions of dollars in cash and have seen their revenues increase (some as much as 30% in the past year) all the while they are claiming to be in financial difficulties when come time to discuss health care.
Big hospitals flush with cash despite industry’s dire warnings
If you listen to hospital lobbyists in Washington, the industry teeters on the brink of financial ruin, depending on how health care reform plays out.
But the rhetoric does not match the balance sheets of some of Chicago’s largest hospital operators. Many are spending unprecedented amounts on new buildings and seeing some of their best improvements in cash since the dot-com boom of a decade ago.
Critics say large hospital operators that are amassing cash are doing so at the expense of patients, charging higher prices when that money could be used to lower costs or subsidize hospitals in a hole.
