- Steve Klearman | November 30, 2007 12:20 PM |
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Medical MalpracticeIn Staccato v. Valley Hospital, 123 Nev. Adv. Op. No. 49 (November 8, 2007), the Nevada Supreme Court resolved the issue of whether a physician is qualified to testify as to the proper standard of care in a malpractice action against a nurse when the allegedly negligent act implicates the physician's realm of expertise. The Court concluded "that a physician or other medical care provider is...
- Steve Klearman | November 30, 2007 8:07 AM |
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Workplace InjuriesYes, more wierdness in a case that's had it's share. First, Mack stabs his wife to death and shoots a judge (always the best way to endear oneself to the legal community about to determine your fate).Darren Mack flees, he's talked into coming back by the D.A. (of all people).Darren Mack pleads guilty (before putting on a defense); now he's changed his mind, fired attorney Scott Freeman (Mack...
- Steve Klearman | November 30, 2007 7:55 AM |
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Wrongful DeathAccording to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for 2001 to 2005 (the latest years available), the number of new cases of HIV infection diagnosed among 15-to-19-year-olds in the United States rose from 1,010 in 2001, held steady for the next three years, then jumped 20 percent in 2005, to 1,213 cases.For young people aged 20 to 24, cases of new infection have climbed...
- Steve Klearman | November 29, 2007 12:15 PM |
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MiscellaneousThe Nevada Supreme Court examined Nevada's so-called "prompt-pay" statute, NRS 690B.012, in a decision dated November 21, 2007. See, Allstate Ins. Co. v. Thorpe, 123 Nev. Adv. Op. No. 52. That statute "requires casualty insurers to approve and pay, or deny, casualty claims, including claims for medical payment benefits, within a limited time frame. Under the statute, an insurer must pay...
- Steve Klearman | November 28, 2007 12:11 PM |
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Medical MalpracticeLas Vegas' University Medical Center would shed some controversy, save $290,000 a year and gain prestige in a new deal with the Nevada Cancer Institute. The hospital would pay the research center $60,000 annually to direct its oncology-hematology department under a three-year contract that's expected to be approved today by Clark County commissioners. Marshall Allen, at the Las Vegas Sun...
- Steve Klearman | November 27, 2007 12:07 PM |
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Medical MalpracticeTwo managers at Clark County's financially struggling public hospital face criminal charges on accusations of bilking taxpayers out of thousands of dollars by stealing materials and enlisting hospital employees for their personal use, according to court documents. Tony Cook, writing for the Las Vegas Sun yesterday, writes that Christopher Roth, an associate administrator of support services who...
- Steve Klearman | November 27, 2007 6:16 AM |
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Medical MalpracticePregnant women are receiving more high-tech imaging exams, exposing their babies to higher doses of radiation than a decade ago, a study said on Tuesday. Reuters reports that while the levels of radiation exposure are low, they carry a slight risk of harm to the developing fetus, said study author Elizabeth Lazarus, a professor of diagnostic imaging at the Warren Alpert School of Medicine at...
- Steve Klearman | November 26, 2007 6:44 AM |
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Wrongful DeathIn Fallon, Nevada (about an hour and a half away from Reno) residents have been experiencing high numbers of cancer diagnoses. Although the town has a population of roughly 8,500 people, 12 children were diagnosed with leukemia over a course of approximately three years. According to the American Cancer Society approximately 1.27 percent of the population (1 in 79) will come down with the...
- Steve Klearman | November 25, 2007 3:43 PM |
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Medical MalpracticeIt's always nice to see Courts take sane approaches to the insurance industry's ongoing efforts to eliminate medical malpractice as a legal claim in America.In a November 14, 2007 article, the Chicago Tribune notes that the "controversy over limits on medical malpractice awards was ignited again after a Cook County judge on Tuesday struck down a 2-year-old state law that capped compensation to...
- Steve Klearman | November 24, 2007 3:38 PM |
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MiscellaneousWhy is it little surprise that a health insurer would work to exclude sick people?According to the American Association of Justice, quoting Lisa Girion, writing for the Los Angeles Times, "one of the state's largest health insurers set goals and paid bonuses based in part on how many individual policyholders were dropped and how much money was saved. Woodland Hills-based Health Net Inc. avoided...
- Steve Klearman | November 23, 2007 3:36 PM |
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Defective & Dangerous ProductsThe insurance industry's $11 million bellyflop against Referendum 67 was an election bright spot for ruling Democrats, who otherwise took their lumps from a frugal electorate that sent establishment ideas packing. According to Curt Woodward, writing for the AP, the referendum, which allows triple damages in lawsuits alleging bad faith by insurance companies, spawned a lively campaign pitting the...
- Steve Klearman | November 22, 2007 3:28 PM |
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Automobile AccidentsReno and Sparks police have indicated that they will step up enforcement of seat belt use, at least through the end of November.The Reno Gazette reports that of 30,521 passenger vehicle occupant fatalities nationwide last year, 15,523 were not restrained.Further, of those who were not restrained, 75 percent were killed.Buckle up.For more information on this subject, please refer to the section...
- Steve Klearman | November 21, 2007 3:21 PM |
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MiscellaneousIt's relatively amazing that Judge Chuck Weller continues to be criticized. One would think that a judge who is shot by a crazed ex-husband might garner more sympathy than critique. But that hasn't really been the case for Judge Weller. In fact, it seems that those who support him are attorneys, many of whom may remain dependent on him to render decisions in their cases.Martha Bellisle,...
- Steve Klearman | November 20, 2007 3:17 PM |
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MiscellaneousThe rate of patients admitted to American hospitals with depression as a secondary diagnosis nearly tripled from 1995 to 2005, a new report found.Jason Hildalgo, writing for The Reno Gazette Journal on November 19, 2007, writes that the number of patients admitted to hospitals for other conditions but are also found to suffer from depression jumped from 93 per 10,000 people to 247 per 10,000...
- Steve Klearman | November 19, 2007 2:54 PM |
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Defective & Dangerous ProductsA 30-year-old woman was one of four patients infected with HIV and hepatitis after an organ transplant.According to a Yahoo! News Article dated November 16, 2007, the woman was not informed that the donor engaged in high-risk activities and, after the transplant, she was not immediately tested for HIV. These two circumstances put the University of Chicago, where the procedure was done, and the...
- Steve Klearman | November 16, 2007 10:42 AM |
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Automobile AccidentsAccording to an article by the Better Business Bureau dated October 19, 2007, the number of drivers across the United States, but especially in Nevada, without insurance is higher than would be expected.In a recent study by the Insurance Research Council, one out of seven at-fault drivers is uninsured. In Nevada this number rises even more with seventeen percent of drivers uninsured. This can be...
- Steve Klearman | November 15, 2007 7:53 AM |
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Medical MalpracticeA Reno pediatrician has told state lawmakers that a federal program designed to bring physicians to underserved areas of Nevada has resulted in "indentured servitude" for some of the foreign doctors.Frank Mullen, reporting for the Reno Gazette Journal on Tuesday, writes that:From 2001 until August 2006, Dr. Shaji Mathew was part of the J-1 program, in which Nevada doctors sponsor physicians from...
- Steve Klearman | November 14, 2007 12:26 PM |
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Defective & Dangerous ProductsEver wonder if a Red Bull could mess with your physiology? A better question for anyone who's ever had one might be: ever wonder how it couldn't?A new study suggests a potential correlation between energy drinks and heart and blood pressure issues. Yahoo cites a new story from Will Dunham at Reuters: The increasingly popular high-caffeine beverages called energy drinks may do more than give...
- Steve Klearman | November 14, 2007 7:43 AM |
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Medical MalpracticeScientists in the U.S. announced today in the journal Nature that they had created the first cloned monkey utilizing the same cloning techniques that brought us Dolly the Sheep (is Dolly still kickin'?) and other engineered animals including mice, pigs, cats, cows and dogs. The monkey is a rhesus macaque and was created (as I understand) from the cloned embryos of numerous rhesus macaque...
- Steve Klearman | November 13, 2007 6:45 PM |
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Defective & Dangerous ProductsApparently, it's the year of the product recall.Now it's Nike, with their recall of 235,000 football helmet chin straps after receiving reports of head and facial injuries that resulted after the strap broke.Not surprisingly, the chin strap was made in China. The strap was sold between 2006 and 2007.You can see pictures of the strap here. For more information on this subject, please refer to...
- Steve Klearman | November 13, 2007 8:00 AM |
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Medical MalpracticeAccording to a Las Vegas Review Journal article, a physician and alternative medicine doctor in Carson City, Frank Shallenberger, entered a guilty plea admitting to malpractice for failure to diagnosis colon cancer in one of his patients. This misdiagnosis ultimately lead to the patient's death. The doctor never performed any tests or examinations after the patient complained of symptoms of...
- Steve Klearman | November 12, 2007 1:28 PM |
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MiscellaneousI often borrow from D. Garth Sullivan, Esq. at Indox Consulting (www.indoxconsulting.com).Here's an interesting study about Myspace and the disclosure of teen health risks:Social networking sites, such as MySpace and Facebook, have become popular Internet venues for adolescent social interaction. Approximately 25% of the estimated 150-160 million users of MySpace, the largest site, are under age...
- Steve Klearman | November 09, 2007 1:18 PM |
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Defective & Dangerous ProductsAs many Northern Nevadans are aware, a Reno jury recently handed down a major verdict against drug giant, Wyeth.This comes from David Parker writing for the Reno Gazette Journal:Wyeth plaintiffs Arlene Rowart, from left, of Incline Village, Jeraldine Scofield of Fallon and Pamela Forrester of Yerington listen shortly after the jury ruled in their favor in the trial against the pharmaceutical...
- Steve Klearman | November 09, 2007 1:13 PM |
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Defective & Dangerous ProductsMerck agreed to pay more than $4 billion to settle the majority of the claims that have arisen from their popular drug Vioxx. Victims and their families claim that Vioxx causes heart attacks and strokes.Merck has won most of the Vioxx cases that have gone to trial and many observers actually believed that this was a favorable settlement for Merck.Approximately 38,000 or the 60,000 Vioxx...
- Steve Klearman | November 08, 2007 1:13 PM |
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Medical MalpracticeRural Texas is still waiting for the doctors tort reform was supposed to deliver. This comes from the American Association of Justice quoting Suzanne Batchelor writing for the Texas Observer:The flood of beguiling baby photographs began cascading into mailboxes across Texas as the 2003 fall election drew near. Gracing the cover of a slick brochure, the infant smiled as a stethoscope--held by an...
- Steve Klearman | November 07, 2007 1:08 PM |
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Defective & Dangerous ProductsThe following comes from the American Associaiton of Justice quoting Sheri Qualters at the National Law Journal:American businesses are filing and fighting fewer lawsuits, according to Fulbright & Jaworski's fourth annual Litigation Trends Survey. Seventeen percent of respondents have not defended a lawsuit in the past year, compared with 11% in the prior year. The rate of corporations bringing...
- Steve Klearman | November 06, 2007 12:56 PM |
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Defective & Dangerous ProductsYesterday I blogged on some of the negative aspects of binding arbitration. Here's more information on why this often misunderstood form of alternative dispute resolution can be problematic.Buried in the fine print of most consumer contracts - such as credit cards, insurance plans and car deals - is a clause, which waives the buyer's constitutional right to trial by jury. These contracts...
- Steve Klearman | November 05, 2007 12:52 PM |
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Defective & Dangerous ProductsThere have been recent efforts by federal legislators to impose binding arbitration in a variety of contexts.You may have never heard of Binding Mandatory Arbitration, but that would not prevent this unfair practice, visited on unsuspecting consumers, from destroying your life. Buried in the fine print of many consumer contracts for credit cards, new homes and cars are clauses that stack the...
- Steve Klearman | November 02, 2007 1:06 PM |
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Medical MalpracticeCARSON CITY, Nev. (AP) -- While state regulators have approved UnitedHealth Group's $2.6 billion purchase of Sierra Health Services Inc., Nevada's largest health insurer, the American Medical Association continued its fight against the deal during a congressional hearing Thursday.The AMA's immediate past president, Dr. William Plested, asked the House Committee on Small Business to urge the...
- Steve Klearman | November 01, 2007 1:00 PM |
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Medical MalpracticeFrom D. Garth Sullivan at Indox Consulting:Rapid assessment and treatment of a first transient ischemic attack (TIA) or minor ischemic stroke dramatically reduces risk for subsequent major stroke.Two separate studies - one in the Lancet and the other in Lancet Neurology - show that such an approach reduces recurrent stroke risk by about 80%.Initially presented in June 2007 at the 16th European...