NY Malpractice Lawyers Blog

It might surprise us all to learn that the highest profile story for the past 48 hour news cycle was no real story at all.  Sure, it involved a big, mean, and sometimes corrupt bank.  Sure it involved a big, mean and sometime corrupt banker.  Sure it harkened back to the 2008 crash and ensuing recession.  Sure it conjures up images of mass income inequality in the USA.  Sure it’s a linchpin issue in the upcoming presidential election.  Sure it could have led to countless financial malpractice cases against the mighty financial fortress.  But, dear readers of this blog who have been following the most recent travails of J.P. Morgan Chase, and it’s padrone Jamie Dimon (prounced Dime-un) this story turns out to be nothing more than a blip on a actuarial radar screen.  A rounding error for the too-big-to-fail financial behemoth.  It was a story that for we common folk would amount to the equivalent of losing the cash we carry around in our pockets each day to buy lunch and subway fare.  Yes, Chase squandered and lost $2 billion. ……………………sorry, I was yawning.  The Chase top boss on Meet the Press yesterday blamed some stuff on various VPs and the like, not himself, of course, but on some people who exercised bad judgement.  Bad judgment that led to the loss of $2billion.  And, in the same breath he said, in so many words, it’s no big fucking deal, we’ll make more money than god anyway this quarter.  What he should have added is:  ”Look, chumps, we’ll cut some limo service here.  Maybe a bonus or two. We’ll stop serving Dom in the executive dining room.  We’ll stop paying for private planes and fancy foreign cars and, as John Stewart would say: BOOM, the loss starts looking like a walk in the park for the 1%ers we’ve so grown to love and respect.

I’m sure the top story in The New York Daily News today brought tears to more eyes than just mine.  But I wonder if the service provider in the Catskill area can be held responsible for this elderly couple’s death?  Maybe it’s going to take something tragic like this to force cell service provider in the USA to match the same quality of service people get in other developed countries.

The paper said an elderly Manhattan couple who got into a minor car accident at the end of their country house driveway were doomed to horrible deaths because they couldn’t get a cell phone signal.

Stuck in a ditch just 60 feet from their Catskills vacation home, Arthur and Madeleine Morris, devoted to each other for nearly 50 years, desperately dialed for help nine times.

Nine times, the call would not go through — so the panicked seniors tried to escape themselves, with disastrous results.

According to a recent study by the New York Civil Liberties Union, more young black men were stopped and frisked by police last year than actually live in the city.

The report, published today in The New York Daily News,  cites that about 168,000 black men between the ages of 14 and 24 were stopped under the controversial NYPD program in 2011 — compared to the 158,406 who live in the five boroughs.

The startling statistic is part of a harsh critique of the NYPD’s stop, question and frisk program based on 685,724 encounters between cops and citizens in 2011.

The analysis of the hot button issue was based in part on information the NYCLU obtained from the NYPD, which says the stops have been instrumental in recovering guns and driving crime down to record levels.

NYCLU also revealed that although blacks and Hispanics comprised just 14 % of the population in six precincts, they still accounted for more than 70 % of the stops there.

Are there no top New York civil justice lawyers willing to take on this issue and make the city to pay, and pay dearly, for this sickening perversion of justice?

In the higher rent districts of Greenwich Village and Soho, 77 % of the stops involved blacks and Latinos – even though they comprise just 8 % of the population.

The number is almost as high – 71 % – in the 19th Precinct that covers the Upper East Side, where blacks and Latinos are just 9 % of the population.

The NYPD has consistently denied racial profiling and has said that it targets those who commit crimes.

The NYCLU also found that while stops soared by more than 524,000 between 2004 and last year, the number of guns recovered increased by only 176. Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly has in the past said the controversial tactic has forced criminals to think twice about leaving home with weapons.

“We don’t buy that notion and it’s unacceptable,” said Donna Lieberman, the NYCLU’s executive director. “The bottom line is the police department is required to judge people based on what they’re doing. If what they’re doing is perfectly legal and not suspicious of criminal activity then why on earth is the Police Department subjecting them to be thrown up against the wall.”

It’s a sad story.  But how this report ended up on the pages of today’s The New York Daily News — with so much other stuff of real importance going on in the world, and in the City — calls into question the news value judgment of the people who put this rag together every day.  Medical malpractice is rampant in the U.S., ask any top New York medical malpractice lawyer.  So why did the paper single out this one incident to write about, or reprint as it appears was the case here?

The New York Daily News reported today that a Portland, Ore. couple was awarded $2.9 million on Friday for the care of their Down syndrome baby, who they argue would not have been born if doctors had not been “negligent” in their pre-natal care.

Ariel and Deborah Levy won their “wrongful birth” suit against Legacy Health System, arguing they chose to continue their pregnancy based on what doctors told them, and would have terminated it if they had not been assured their baby did not have the genetic condition.

I’m a dog lover.  When I saw this story today it made me wonder if dog owners in cities where cops shoot first, ask questions later, are entitled to sue for what happened to this innocent Austin, TX resident’s pet.

According to The New York Daily News this morning, a Texas police chief called in to a radio show to apologize to a man whose dog was shot and killed by a cop responding to the wrong house.

Michael Paxton, of East Austin, was on KLBJ’s “Dudley and Bob Morning Show” on Tuesday talking about how his Blue Heeler, Cisco, was gunned down over the weekend by Austin cop Thomas Griffin.

Griffin was responding to a domestic abuse call in the neighborhood on Saturday afternoon, but showed up at the wrong address.

Paxton, 40, wrote on Facebook he and Cisco were in his yard when Griffin arrived and pulled his gun.

Paxton claimed Cisco was barking at Griffin and, despite his assurances that the dog would not bite, Griffin fired and “killed my dog right in front of me.”

There has been a veritable maelstrom of media stories about the health hazards of playing professional football.  Especially the damaging consequences of injuries to the head.  Efforts have been made to make the sport safer.  But some practitioners continue to put winning above player safety.  And, one head coach, in particular, was caught telling his players to aim for the head.

According to The New York Daily News, any chance Saints coach Sean Payton had of having his year-long suspension in BountyGate reduced may have taken a severe jolt with the release of an audio tape of defensive coordinator the night before last season’s playoff game in San Francisco imploring his players to hurt several 49ers.

Payton and Saints general manager Mickey Loomis, who was suspended for the first eight games, were due in the NFL offices Thursday to get their last chance to plead for leniency. But the tape of Williams, who left the Saints after the 2011 season to take the defensive coordinator’s job in St. Louis, will be hard for them to overcome. Williams was suspended indefinitely by the NFL.

The question now is whether either of these coaches should be brought up on civil or criminal charges for their behavior?

The New York Times ran an alarming story today that anyone taking the generic form of a medication should read.

According to the Times report, across the country dozens of lawsuits against generic pharmaceutical companies are being dismissed because of a Supreme Court decision last year that said the companies did not have control over what their labels and therefore could not be sued for failing to alert patients about the risks of taking their drugs.

Two women highlighted in the article had catastrophic reactions to one drug that resulted in the amputation of their hand.  One woman sued the original manufacturer of the branded drug and won a $1.6 million settlement.  The woman was given the generic form of the drug and had her case dismissed.  She received a small settlement.

If you ask me, the Supreme Court ruling stinks.  I take Lipitor and recently was given the generic by my pharmacist.  It’s much cheaper so I’ve been taking it.  This article makes me seriously consider switching back.

This time they screwed with the wrong person.

The New York Daily News reported today that a Park Slope nursing home where a Brooklyn judge died never had a license to operate as an assisted living facility – but kept the judge as a virtual prisoner, his family charged in a lawsuit.

Relatives of Judge” John Phillips, who died in 2008, is suing Prospect Park Residence for wrongful death.

The owners of the Park Slope building acknowledge in court papers that their relationship to Phillips was merely that of a landlord – yet the family charges they falsely claimed to be an assisted living facility and confined the elderly judge to the building, only allowing him to leave for a handful of doctor’s appointments over the eight months he lived there.

This tragic situation is all too common today in hospitals all across the United States.  Yet efforts by big insurance to undermine people’s rights by denying, or significantly limiting the amount of recovery severely injured victims can collect from negligent doctors and hospitals goes on unabated and is supported by the industry’s Republican mouthpieces in Washington.

The New York Daily News reported today that a Portland, Ore. couple was awarded $2.9 million on Friday for the care of their Down syndrome baby, who they argue would not have been born if doctors had not been “negligent” in their pre-natal care.

The parents of the child won their wrongful birth suit against Legacy Health System, arguing they chose to continue their pregnancy based on what doctors at the hospital told them, and would have terminated it if they had not been assured their baby did not have the genetic condition.

Jurors found five instances of Legacy Health’s negligence, including a doctor’s finding that the baby had a normal chromosomal profile based on a test that was performed and analyzed incorrectly.

A week after the baby was born, the parents discovered their baby did in fact have Down syndrome. The doctor had taken a sample of the wrong kind of tissue, according to the lawsuit – a mistake that was never caught.

They also argued the doctors were “negligent in their performance, analysis and reporting” of their daughter’s test results after she was born.

The child is now four years old.

The family originally sued for $7 million to cover the costs of care for their daughter over her lifetime.

While the parents chose not to comment after the verdict, the health care company hit back at the decision in a statement.