Cherry Hill, New Jersey Personal Injury Lawyer - Miscellaneous

“Jobs, Not Lawsuits”: A False Dichotomy

Camryn Hansen — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 18:01:59 GMT

In response to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s annual “legal reform summit,” an event whose slogan fallaciously called for “jobs, not lawsuits” (as though lawsuits were somehow responsible for the country’s current economic crisis), the AAJ has released a report called “They Knew and Failed To.”

The AAJ report, found at www.justice.org/clips/TheyKnewAndFailedTo.pdf, demonstrates the country’s dire need for corporate accountability in the face of products that companies have known were dangerous, but have kept on the market due to their profitability.

Examples in the report of company-approved hazards include AstraZeneca burying evidence linking the anti-psychotic Seroquel to massive weight gain and diabetes; Johnson & Johnson doctoring study results to hide the increased risk of blood clots, strokes, and heart attacks associated with its birth control patch, OrthoEvra; Second Chance Body Armor deliberately manufacturing defective bullet proof vests (used by police officers, the military, and the president); and Firestone’s refusal to act after discovering its tires were falling apart on the road and killing hundreds of people.

All of these companies were ultimately held responsible for the harms they deliberately caused because of the civil protections generations of Americans have fought for. The Chamber of Commerce’s continued scapegoating of lawyers and lawsuits as the root of all American evils is irresponsible at best; democracy-killing at worst.

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Camryn Hansen

Chubby Babies – Lovable but Uninsurable

Camryn Hansen — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 21:35:57 GMT

After denying health coverage to a four-month-old infant because he was too fat, Colorado-based Rocky Mountain Health Plans received negative media coverage all around the country.

The company’s policy was to refuse coverage to anyone—even babies—whose weight was above the 95^th percentile, citing the pre-existing condition of obesity as the reason why.

Alex Lange, the 17-pound boy from Grand Junction, Colorado who was turned down for coverage for being in the 99^th weight percentile for his height, was 100% breast-fed, and was, apart from being heavier than his peers, exceptionally healthy.

The baby’s father, who works at a local NBC affiliate, was able to get the story of his son’s rejection picked up by the national news.

In light of the negative media coverage and the national outrage it received, Rocky Mountain Health Plans has now decided to “change its policy” toward chubby babies, and has agreed to offer coverage to little (big) Alex.

The insurer said Monday it would change its policy for babies who are healthy but fat. The company attributed the boy's rejection for health coverage to a "flaw in our underwriting system."

"We have changed our policy, corrected our underwriting guidelines and are working to notify the parents of the infant who we earlier denied," Rocky Mountain Health Plans said in a statement. -AP

What a powerful force for positive change a media spotlight can be, when its focus is universally clear, direct, well-intentioned, and reasonable. Is there any way we can convince the public-option haters that the 47 million uninsured are all just a bunch of helpless, chubby babies?

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Camryn Hansen

Toyota Recalls Vehicles for Floor Mats Causing Accelerators to Stick

Camryn Hansen — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 21:41:00 GMT

Toyota Motor Corporation has announced that it’s recalling 3.8 million US vehicles—the largest US recall in the company’s history—to deal with a problem of accelerators getting stuck on removable floor mats.

Until Toyota figures out how to fix the floor mat problem, Toyota vehicle owners should remove their driver’s side floor mats and not replace them with anything else.

NHTSA said it had received reports of 102 incidents in which the accelerator may have become stuck on the Toyota vehicles involved. It was unclear how many led to crashes but the inquiry was prompted by a highspeed crash in August in California of a Lexus barreling out of control. As the vehicle hit speeds exceeding 120 mph, family members made a frantic 911 call and said the accelerator was stuck and they couldn't stop the vehicle.

"This is an urgent matter," Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said in a statement. "For everyone's sake, we strongly urge owners of these vehicles to remove mats or other obstacles that could lead to unintended acceleration."

The recall will affect 2007-2010 model year Toyota Camry, 2005-2010 Toyota Avalon, 2004-2009 Toyota Prius, 2005-2010 Tacoma, 2007-2010 Toyota Tundra, 2007-2010 Lexus ES350 and 2006-2010 Lexus IS250 and IS350.

For more information, consumers can contact the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's hotline at (888) 327-4236, Toyota at (800) 331-4331 or Lexus at (800) 255-3987. -The Washington Post

The recall comes at an awkward time for Toyota, which was recently charged by its former in-house lawyer, Dimitrios Biller, with frequently withholding relevant documents in product-liability suits filed against the company. According to Biller, US Toyota units destroyed engineering and testing evidence that would have impacted over 300 suits over SUV rollover accidents.

If you or a loved one has been injured in an accelerator-related or rollover accident in a Toyota vehicle, contact attorney Mike Ferrara at The Ferrara Law Firm to find out more about your right to compensation.

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Camryn Hansen

Say No to Tort Reform; Yes to Reducing Medical Errors

Mike Ferrara — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 22:14:55 GMT

Almost everyone can agree that lower costs are among the most needed reforms in our health care system. Tort reform will not lead to lower costs. The facts show that malpractice suits and premiums combined add up to a tiny fraction of our health care bills.

A July study by the Americans for Insurance Reform shows that in recent years, doctor premiums and medical malpractice claims have overwhelmingly dropped, while the profits of the medical malpractice insurance industry have soared. Significantly, the study concludes that placing further limits on the liability of negligent doctors and unsafe hospitals would be unjustifiable, and would put almost no dent in our country’s health care costs.

“If Congress completely eliminated every single medical malpractice lawsuit,” it says, “including all legitimate cases, as part of health care reform, overall health care costs would hardly change, but the costs of medical error and hospital-induced injury would remain and someone else would have to pay.”

Even Texas tort reform supporters admit that lower health care costs were never a goal of tort reform in Texas. Look at their comments in the blogs; they all openly say so.

Rather than limiting patients’ rights, real health care reform must meaningfully address the growing number of preventable medical errors (now almost 100,000 a year) that cause serious injuries and even death every day in America.

The AAJ has outlined three tenets for true reform:

(1) Our country is in desperate need of health care reform, and we must pass a bill that lowers costs and covers the uninsured. It is clear our health care system is in crisis. We fully support the efforts underway to fix health care and bring health and economic security to millions of Americans. Trial attorneys are small businesses as well. We struggle every day to provide health insurance to our own employees. Reforming health care is in everyone’s best interest.

(2) The health care bill must reduce medical errors. According to the Institute of Medicine, 98,000 people die every year from preventable medical errors – and this number doesn’t include those seriously injured. This is the sixth leading cause of death in America, equivalent to two 737s crashing every day. Trial attorneys see first-hand the effects medical errors have on patients and their families. The best way to have fewer medical malpractice cases is to reduce the number of medical errors. If less people need to seek legal recourse, that means patients are getting safer. Patients that are safer also means lower costs to the health care system. Everyone can support this.

(3) The health care bill cannot limit the legal rights of injured patients. Patients’ rights cannot be used as bargaining chips or compromised. This is why decreasing medical errors is a critical pillar of our efforts, as it will not only decrease the amount of malpractice, but more importantly, keep patients safer. -AAJ

Take away medical liability and you take away the only meaningful check and balance a patient has on the impossible monstrosity of a system that American health care has become. Do not support tort reform as part of this country's health care reform efforts.

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Mike Ferrara

Wii Care a Lot! Trial Lawyers Donate to Help out Hospitals

Camryn Hansen — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 23:03:07 GMT

This month, InjuryBoard member firms will witness the healing powers of charity and volunteering first-hand, as they donate more than 60 Nintendo Wii gaming systems to hospitals, nursing homes, and rehab centers all over the country.

Why Wiis? As many may not yet know, physical therapy and rehab programs have started incorporating a promising new technique known as “Wiihab.” Named after the gaming system, Wiihab allows patients to take advantage of the Wii’s full-body, live motion games and exercise their way towards recovery with more fun and less pain.

InjuryBoard firms, who advocate for victims of serious accidents, know how difficult the rehabilitation process can be, and hope that their donations will be helpful to injured patients.

Earlier this week, the Ferrara Law Firm donated two Wii systems to the Children’s Regional Hospital of Cooper University. One of the Wiis will be used in the hospital’s physical therapy room, and the other will become part of the children’s playroom. The Ferrara Law Firm staff, thrilled to be able to deliver the gifts in person, was warmly welcomed by everyone at the hospital.

Managing partner Mike Ferrara was especially pleased to be part of the initiative. “Every day, children in our area rely on Cooper Hospital and all of its affiliates to help make them whole after sustaining life changing injuries. If we can help ease their recovery even slightly by making physical rehabilitation fun, we know we’re making a difference,” he said. “We know that times are tough even for large organizations such as Cooper. People aren’t able to donate in the ways they did before and new initiatives may otherwise go by the wayside. With any luck, our donation will inspire others in our community to continue to give what they can, and show that even a small donation can change the lives of many.”

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Camryn Hansen

Is “Sick and Tired” a Preexisting Condition?

Camryn Hansen — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 21:58:10 GMT

About a month ago, I attended a pro-health care reform rally in Portland, Maine. It was the largest health care rally Maine had ever seen, with over 600 people (it’s Maine) showing up to voice their support for drastic and immediate reform: a public insurance option, and before the Congressional August break. We cheered for speeches and performers advocating change; we marched en masse through the streets shouting “Health Care Now!” People grinningly stared at us and took pictures with their cell phones; cars honked their support. About 10 people dropped by holding anti-reform signs, but nobody paid them any attention.

That is, of course, except for the media. Almost every station covering the event that day described it as a health reform rally vs. a significant “counter-rally,” with “dozens” of people bringing demands equally as urgent as those with no access to health care. On one station’s coverage, the only person interviewed for the story was an anti-reformer.

At the time, the blatantly inaccurate representation of this one event seemed an irksome but relatively minor occurrence. But in the ensuing month, the media has turned what began as a desperate, overwhelmingly popular cry for health care reform into a shameless, Jerry Springer-style cat fight. I have a hard time believing that before FOX, CNN, and their overzealous news brethren started hand feeding the country the outlandish suggestions of a paranoid, delusional few, there was any such thing as an impassioned opponent of health care reform. Right now in the rural state of Maine, the price of an individual insurance plan with a $1500 deductible for a single non-smoker with no preexisting conditions is $900 a month. No rational person would passionately support this. And yet anti-reformers now dominate the airwaves shouting socialism, rationing and death camps; comparing Barack Obama to Hitler and Stalin for ardently trying to fix this terrible problem. And people are starting to believe.

This is not right. The media needs to stop giving an open floor to anti-reform extremists for the sake of cheap drama and ratings and when extremists on tv say crazy, irrational things, people need to stop taking them seriously.

Portland rally

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Camryn Hansen

What is this life if, full of care, we have no time to stand and stare.

Mike Ferrara — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 22:05:54 GMT

What is this life if, full of care,

We have no time to stand and stare.

-- from "Leisure," by W.H. Davies

The article was written in 2007, but I just saw it for the first time today, and was blown away. In January of that year, The Washington Post set up a little experiment in human nature in a DC Metro station. How many commuters would stop and listen to a world-class violinist posing as an inconspicuous street musician, playing the most beautiful and technically difficult pieces of music on earth on one of the world’s most valuable violins?

Joshua Bell, the former child prodigy who sells out concert halls all over the world for an average of $100 a ticket, stood against a far wall of L’Enfant Plaza during rush hour one winter morning and played a staggering repertoire of Bach, Schubert, Manuel Ponce and Jules Massenet on his $3.5 million violin for a full 45 minutes. Of the nearly 2000 people who walked by, only seven paused to listen for more than a minute. The vast majority walked by without as much as glance in the direction of the music. By the end of his concert, Joshua Bell had made only $32 and change.

It sounds unbelievable. Watching the videos of his playing in the Metro, it seems unreal—like a staged satire of American life too bitter and unforgiving to possibly be legitimate. I’d like to think that if I had walked by that morning, I would have stopped, drop-jawed and incredulous that no else was paying attention to such an obvious display of beauty and technical skill. But maybe I’d be taking a cell phone call.

I encourage you to read the fantastic article in the Post by Gene Weingarten. See what you think of the reasons given for why we Americans are too preoccupied and driven to appreciate beauty in an unexpected context. When is the last time you stopped to listen to a street musician, anyway?

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Mike Ferrara

When Defibrillators Fail

Mike Ferrara — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 22:33:27 GMT

No one using a heart defibrillator ever wants to experience what Michael Mulvihill of Bettendorf, Iowa did two years ago. All of a sudden, while he was driving on the interstate with his wife in the car, he began to see blue flashing lights in his eyes and his body began to shake. His defibrillator was malfunctioning, sending painful shocks through his body. The device malfunction nearly killed Mulvihill and his wife; the man barely managed to pull the car over in the middle of a construction zone.

A representative from Medtronic confirmed the device had shocked Mulvihill 22 times in 53 minutes. The wire that connects the defibrillator to the heart was recalled four months later after over a hundred reports of the lead malfunctioning had been reported to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). However, because of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling last year, Mulvihill does not have any recourse to hold the manufacturer accountable.-AAJ

After the malfunction, Mulvill was forced to take an early retirement; his job required too much interstate driving. His family will have to make it on less than they’d planned.

In February 2008, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Riegel v. Medtronic that because the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had approved a medical device through the pre-market approval process, patients injured by medical devices do not have any recourse to hold the manufacturers accountable. The Supreme Court ruled earlier this year in Wyeth v. Levine that patients harmed by prescription drugs can hold manufacturers accountable in state courts, creating a double standard between prescription drugs and medical devices. -AAJ

On August 4, Mulvihill testified about his life-threatening experience before the US Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, asking Congress to pass the Medical Device Safety Act (MDSA), restoring patients’ right to hold device manufacturers accountable for the harms they cause when their devices malfunction, regardless of FDA approval.

Tragically, Mulvihill’s story is similar to hundreds of other patients who have been harmed by medical devices but have no legal recourse, while the profits of the companies that produce these faulty devices increase every day. Wyeth v. Levine affirmed patients’ rights to seek compensation from drug companies; it’s time for device manufacturers to answer to patients too.

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Mike Ferrara

NJ Judge Says Blogs Not News; Blogger Open to Defamation Suit

Camryn Hansen — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 22:54:55 GMT

In the trial of Washington State blogger Shellee Hale, Superior Court Judge Louis Locascio of Monmouth County has ruled that Hale is not protected under New Jersey’s journalist shield law because she is a blogger rather than a mainstream media journalist.

Acknowledging that he was wading into largely uncharted legal waters, said Shellee Hale's message board postings last year about a Freehold-based computer software company were nothing more than the rants of "private person with unexplained motives for her postings" and cannot be given the same protections as information compiled though the process of news gathering.

"To extend the newsperson's privilege to such posters would mean anyone with an email address, with no connection to any legitimate news publication, would post anything on the internet and hide behind the shield law's protections," Locascio wrote.

"The rate at which the internet has grown and evolved into a universal source of news and information has left the legal community in its dust," Locascio wrote in his 19-page opinion. "The time has come for the law to begin establishing its place in this vast abyss." -MaryAnn Spoto, The Star-Ledger

The ruling also means that Hale can be sued for slander for the allegedly defamatory statements she posted on an Internet message board about a software company based in Freehold. Hale had asked to be protected from the lawsuit by the shield law, which states that journalists can’t be forced to reveal their information sources.

Hale, a licensed private investigator with four blogs, was sued last year by Too Much Media LLC, a company that supplies computer software to online porn sites, for claiming in her posts that the company had threatened her life and violated New Jersey consumer identity theft laws; and for refusing to reveal her sources when asked. Hale argued that she was protected under the New Jersey shield law because she was writing an article about a Too Much Media internet security breach. In a hearing last April, she testified that she had never published this article out of fear for her own safety.

Though calling New Jersey's shield law one of the nation's broadest, Locascio denied Hale's motion because she failed to make a prima facie case that she was connected with the news media. The law protects persons "engaged on, engaged in, connected with, or employed by news media for the purpose of gathering, procuring, transmitting, compiling, editing or disseminating news for the general public." -law.com

With the number of blogs and bloggers growing exponentially, it’s important to remember just how open bloggers are open to defamation suits. This case in particular highlights the nature of defamation with respect to Internet materials. Hale was a Washington resident but went to court in New Jersey because defamation occurs anywhere somebody downloads defamatory materials. This means that bloggers can be sued under the laws of any state in the country, even when they post the materials in their home state.

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Camryn Hansen

Act Now to Stop GM from Abandoning Consumers Injured by Defective GM Vehicles

Mike Ferrara — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 18:57:27 GMT

An urgent message from www.safetyresearch.net:

Urgent Action Alert -- Contact the White House THIS AFTERNOON to Protect Catastrophically Injured Victims of Defective GM Cars

Unless we act TODAY, the White House will allow General Motors to abandon over 300 consumers seriously hurt by defects in GM vehicles by extinguishing the company's responsibility for these victims. This is a cruel, immoral and un-American result because GM decided last Friday to take responsibility for injuries caused by vehicles in the future. But the company is washing their hands of consumers they have already hurt. PLEASE CALL OR FAX THE WHITE HOUSE TO STOP THIS TRAVESTY: PHONE: 202-456-1414. FAX: 202-456-2461.

What kind of company would abandon a catastrophically injured child, a woman paralyzed from the neck down, and hundreds of others who have been injured by defective GM cars? How can our government leave these consumers with no protection -- especially when these are the same consumers who bailed out GM in the first place? And who would want to buy a car from a company that treats consumers this way?

Time is running out. On Tuesday, General Motors will attempt to officially leave these injured families behind in the bankruptcy process. We must take action today to make sure that GM is responsible for the cars they have put on the road -- as well as cars they build in the future.

The Obama Administration's "Auto Task-Force," which is lead by the Treasury Department, is directly responsible for this decision. There are only a limited number of hours left in the bankruptcy process. Contact them THIS AFTERNOON to make sure that they know Americans will not stand for leaving hundreds of injured families behind in the GM bankruptcy process. Tell them we will not buy their cars until these families are protected. And we will not stop speaking up until GM takes full responsibility for injuries caused by all GM cars.

PLEASE CALL OR FAX THE WHITE HOUSE TO STOP THIS TRAVESTY: PHONE: 202-456-1414. FAX: 202-456-2461.

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Mike Ferrara