Articles Posted in Personal Injury

Elderly Lexington Couple Mauled to Death in Dog Attack

Mystery still surrounds the death of a retired professor and his wife, apparently from a vicious dog attack.

On Saturday, the mutilated bodies of retired UGA professor 77-year-old Luther Karl Schweder, and his wife 65-year-old Sherry were found near their home in Lexington. Preliminary autopsies showed that Sherry had died from dog bite injuries. Her husband’s autopsy results are not yet available. But it’s very likely that Luther Schweder also died from injuries in the dog attack.

A new report by non-profit organization Public Citizen has placed Georgia on the list of ten worst states based on doctor discipline records. The report takes into consideration the numbers of disciplinary actions taken by the state’s boards of medical examiners against negligent physicians. In Georgia, the rate of actions against such doctors is a dismal 2.40 actions for every 1,000 physicians. The state is tenth on the list following Minnesota with a paltry .95 actions per 1,000 doctors, South Carolina, Wisconsin, Mississippi, Connecticut, New Hampshire Maryland, Florida and California.

Not only that, Georgia is also specially marked for criticism as one of the states with the largest decrease in rank for disciplinary action rates. Between 2001 and 20003, the state was at number 15 on the list, while it has dropped to number 42 in this year’s report.

Georgia should take a page out of the book of fellow southern states like Kentucky and Louisiana, each of which features in the ten best states for serious disciplinary actions against doctors. That list also includes Alaska where 6.54 serious disciplinary actions were taken for every 1,000 doctors, Kentucky with 5.87 disciplinary actions, Louisiana with 4.74 actions besides Ohio, Arizona, Okalahoma, North Dakota, Iowa, Colorado and Maine.

A 4-year-old Rockland County boy, who was severely mauled in a dog bite attack, is looking at skin graft surgery to fix the injuries, as well as surgery to fox his ear. Nathaniel Stafford was attacked by a Labrador-pit bull mix that his family had been looking after for its owner. His mother found the boy with his head gripped in the dog’s mouth. The pit bull mix was shaking him violently.  The boy’s mother pulled him away, and suffered a bite on her arm in the process.

By the time the terrifying ordeal had ended, much of Nathaniel’s scalp had been ripped apart and his ear had been torn off. His stepfather picked up the ear, and put it in a bag to reattach in the hospital. The doctors have not been able to confirm whether they will be reattaching his ear, or if he will need to have a prosthetic ear attached.

Nathaniel is bound to be traumatized after the dog bite attack. Beside the serious head injuries and the mutilated ear, the boy also suffered throat lacerations. He is an animal lover, although how he will react to any dog from here on, is debatable. The dog’s owner meanwhile has agreed to have the dog which is currently being held in quarantine at an animal shelter, put down.

The Department of Veteran Affairs has confirmed that three patients who were tested at three of its facilities have tested positive for the HIV virus, including one patient from Augusta, Georgia. The two other patients are reportedly from Murfreesboro in Tennessee and Miami.

These patients got tested for HIV after the Veteran Affairs Department asked more than 10,000 people to get tested for HIV, and Hepatitis B and C because of the risk of contamination from tainted endoscopic equipment. The equipment was used in colonoscopies in Murfreesboro and Miami, and also at an ENT clinic in Augusta. Besides, the department has also confirmed that six people have tested positive for hepatitis B, and nineteen have tested positive for Hepatitis C at these three sites. The VA however does not have evidence that these exposures occurred because of botched medical procedures at the VA facilities.

The problem apparently lay in faulty sterilization of equipment, and dates back more than 5 years, at least at the Miami and Murfressboro hospitals. The agency undertook a nationwide safety training campaign which ended on March 14^th. By April 3^rd, the VA had already confirmed that one person had tested positive for HIV. According to the VA, the number of people who may be at “a very small risk of harm” at the ENT facility in Augusta, is 1,069. The agency has made arrangements for veterans who have tested positive for the disease to receive counseling. There is no information forthcoming on how serious the problem is. Meanwhile, anxious veterans who have used Augusta facilities are waiting their test results.

Georgia’s school children are sharing their buses with more than just their school mates, this report reveals. The presence of several types of toxins that can not only trigger asthma and other respiratory disorders, but also cause cancer is enough reason for parents to worry. .

According to the report, newer school buses come with special particulate filters that block these toxins from entering the passenger cabins. However, an overwhelming majority of school buses in operation in the state are older and come with an antiquated exhaust system that does little to prevent particulates from entering the cabin.In the cabins, these often carcinogenic substances wear away at young, developing lungs that are more at risk for the detrimental health effects caused by these minute particles.

Some schools seem to have done a better job of protecting children from the risk of illnesses caused by these toxins than others. Atlanta Public Schools for instance, has retrofitted 373 of its school buses with newer diesel particulate filters. The school district used funds allotted to it in 2005 to carry out the retrofitting. In sharp contrast, Gwinnett County Public Schools has not made any attempts at retrofitting its buses, and has not even applied for funds to carry out the retrofitting programs. Gwinnett County is Georgia’s largest public school district, and the failure to equip existing vehicles with the new filter systems means that 120,000 students are traveling in these school buses everyday, inhaling toxic flumes that are dangerous to their health.

There could be not a medical malpractice awardthatcould compensate this boy and his family for the unimaginable horror they have been made to suffer.While a Fulton County Jury has awarded them damages of $2.3 million for a circumcision procedure that went wrong, the boy and his family will need counseling for a very long time.

The award relates to the injury caused to the young boy during what should have been a fairly routine circumcision procedure performed soon after he was born. The procedure however ended with the doctor removing a small portion of the tip of the penis. There was bungling on the part of more than one doctor at the hospital, Tenet South Fulton Medical Center where the procedure was performed in 2004. The pediatrician who was informed by a nurse after the boy began to bleed heavily, failed to respond to the call. Due to the negligence and failures of both the doctors, the boy suffered a permanent injury.

In 2006, his mother filed a medical malpractice lawsuit against the doctor who performed the circumcision, as well as the pediatrician who failed to respond to an emergency. The jury was convinced that the doctor Haiba Sonyika snipped off a portion of the organ and that the pediatrician Cheryl J. Kendall could have reattached the cut off portion if she had responded to the emergency immediately.The boy has been awarded $1.8 million in damages, while his mother has been awarded an additional award of $500,000. The hospital where the procedure was performed was not found negligent.

More numbers of trauma care hospitals in Georgia could mean up to 700 lives saved every year in automobile accidents. However, the state has a severe shortage of trauma centers – just 15 centers in all, many of which are located in urban centers.Now, a new bill that would levy an additional $200 fine on speeding drivers on Georgia’s highways is being introduced as a means of funding expansion of the state’s trauma care system.

As Georgia personal injury attorneys, we regularly see the impact of delayed emergency trauma care on the injured. Motorists in rural areas of Georgia, where over a million people are more than 75 miles from the nearest trauma care center, have a higher rate of succumbing to serious injuries sustained in a car crash, a bullet injury or a serious fall, because of their lack of access to trauma care. The discrepancy in urban-rural "golden hour" care access – the life saving care that can save a person’s life, if received within the first hour of being injured – is clear to see in the numbers.Motorists involved in an accident in urban cities like Atlanta, have a death rate that’s one in every 339 accidents.In rural centers, the fatality rate is a whopping one in every 74 accidents.In most of these cases, lives can be saved if the patient has timely access to emergency trauma care, but precious time is lost transporting injured victims to the nearest trauma center.

The state’s chronically under-equipped trauma care system has been a source of concern for a while now, and the legislature has made attempts to correct the situation.These have been inadequate, however. Funding has been the primary source of concern and with no end in sight to Georgia’s fiscal crisis, generating funds for trauma care center expansion has become a problem.

Earlier this month, justices of the Supreme Court ruled that patients injured through use of a drug can sue the drug maker even when the drug has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration. It’s a landmark judgment, and it promises to offer patients who suffer when a pharmaceutical company is negligent, the right to seek civil justice. .

The ruling upheld the $7 million awarded to musician Diane Levine who lost her arm to gangrene after being injected with Wyeth’s Phenargan medicine.Levine had been prescribed the drug for nausea, and was administered the drug through a method called "IV push."Phenargan is not meant to be administered though this method. Levine filed a product liability lawsuit alleging that the warnings against the IV push method specified on the box, weren’t strong enough. At the time, the drug’s warning label did not include specific warnings against using the IV push method. Levine was awarded damages of $6.7 million, but Wyeth argued that FDA approval should give the company immunity against product liability lawsuits.The SC decision had been eagerly waited by Georgia product liability attorneys and patients who have filed or are in the process of filing personal injury lawsuits against pharmaceutical companies for injuries caused by their drugs. The court in a 6-3 ruling has now ruled in favor of Levine, and the larger patient community.

The decision is one product liability lawyers had hoped for.In the past, the SC has shown a slant towards big business interests, and recent attempts in Georgia to grant immunity to pharmaceutical companies in case of injuries caused by drugs approved by the FDA, had many of us very worried. As expected, pharmaceutical companies aren’t too pleased with the Supreme Court decision, and we don’t blame them.After all, this means that these companies will not be able to use FDA approval for their drugs as a screen to shield them form lawsuits. For thousands of patients around the country who have been waiting for the Wyeth vs. Levine decision to proceed with their lawsuits against pharmaceutical companies, much uncertainty has been lifted with the Supreme Court ruling.

Medical malpractice lawyers in Georgia will be looking with interest at the outcome of a civil case that’s due to begin hearings this week.The judgment in the case that involves four doctors who were cleared of negligence by a jury, has lasting repercussions for medical malpractice lawsuits in the state.

In 2003, 13-year-old Justin Smith was sickened with a rare tick-borne condition called Rocky Mountain spotted fever.The disease is spread by tick bites, and as symptoms worsen, can quickly lead to flat, pink rashes, severe abdominal pain, diarrhea and joint pain. It can be a potentially life threatening illness. Justin was first taken to pediatric doctors, and then transferred to Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta at Egleston, where he finally recovered from his illness. By then however, he had already suffered some amount of brain damage.His parents, in their medical malpractice lawsuit against the four doctors, alleged that the doctors had been negligent in falling to diagnose the illness.The doctors claimed that the condition itself is so rare that it’s difficult to diagnose. In 2006, the four doctors were cleared of any wrongdoing by the jury.

Now, the Georgia Supreme Court will consider whether instructions given by the judge to the jurors regarding hindsight could have been inaccurate or confusing.Plaintiff’s attorneys claim that the hindsight instruction should only be given in case of a claim of negligence where the defendants had no knowledge of certain information.Here, the doctors were aware of the tick bite.The defendant’s attorney argue that Justin’s rashes, which are a symptom of the fever, only became evident when the child was taken to the Egleston facility, and therefore, the doctors were not aware of the symptomatic rashes.

Dog in DeKalb County Attack Quarantined

The dog that attacked and bit an adult male and two children in a house in Lithonia, DeKalb County continues to be quarantined, while the victims have threatened legal action unless the pit bull is put to sleep.

Maurice Jones has had to undergo treatment at the hospital for wounds sustained in the attack that occurred when the pit bull came chasing after two children, and into the yard of the house he was in.The dog apparently belonged to a neighbor, and although there has been no confirmation yet, it seems to have escaped through a broken down fence that separated the two houses.The two children who were also attacked, including a three-year-old child, sustained serious injuries, including head injuries.