Vermont & New Hampshire Injury Blog

How does the United States Supreme Court affect personal injury claims in Vermont?

Every year the United States Supreme Court rules on a wide variety of legal issues.  In 2009 the Supreme Court is expected to issue an opinion in the case of Wyeth v. Levine.  In this case the drug company, Wyeth is seeking to overturn a Vermont state court’s ruling in favor of Diana Levine, a musician who lost part of her arm after an infection caused by a painkiller manufactured by Wyeth.  The legal issue before the court is whether federal law preempts conflicting Vermont state law and whether Diana Levine can bring a personal injury claim against a drug manufacturer for injuries caused by FDA-approved drugs. If the Supreme Court rules that Diana Levine’s is barred from bringing a suit, drug companies could be immune from personal injury claims as long as the drug was approved by the FDA. The Supreme Court will release its rulings in the spring and it will be interesting to see how the case is decided. 

This is a frustrating example of how insurance companies often attempt to escape liability based on a technicality.  As discussed in Personal Injury Law, Insurance and the movie “Sicko,” if you have a serious personal injury claim don’t think that the insurance company will treat you fairly.  The only time an insurance company pays a fair settlement is when the injured individual is represented by an experienced personal injury attorney.  At Van Dorn & Curtiss we know about a thing called insurance companies rules.  Click here For a comical explanation of insurance companies rules.

HOSPITAL MISTAKES CAN BE DEADLY

Does The Medical System Really Make Life Threatening Mistakes?

When people employed in the medical industry learn that I represent victims of medical malpractice against hospitals, doctors and other medical providers I  often get a cold reception. With the medical professionals willing to talk with me about (yes I do have friends and colleagues in the medical profession and they do talk to me) they candidly admit that mistakes are made in hospitals, clinics and doctor's offices that often cause serious injury and sometimes death. For the most part they also agree that the  victims of these mistakes should have  legal recourse and should receive reasonable compensation for their losses.

Sometimes the mistakes are on an individual level and sometimes they are big and very dangerous mistakes that threaten the safety and wellbeing of large numbers of people. One of the big mistakes was made recently in one of the nation's biggest medical laboratories, Quest Diagnostics in the testing of vitamin levels in blood samples. To read about it see the January 7, 2008 NY Times article.  Mistakes like these have the potential of causing serious problems. False results may lead to patient's changing or eliminating important supplements they are required to take to maintain good health. False results could even lead to toxic overdoses.

Does the medical industry make mistakes? You bet it does. Our legal system of medical malpractice law is  necessary and vital to redress those mistakes asking only that the persons or corporations responsible for making them should be made to pay the costs of the mistakes. Otherwise the entire burden of medical mistakes would be thrust on the victim. This is unwise and unfair and contrary to our tried and true system of American justice. To learn more about medical malpractice and our law firm's experience in this area of the law visit the Medical Malpractice Section of This Website.

Medical Errors Caused by Doctor Behavior

In today's NY Times there is an article concerning doctor's behavior and medical errors that can lead to medical malpractice. There are some astonishing stories in the article, but unfortunately they are all too familiar to attorneys who regularly represent victims of medical negligence. The headline of the article refers to physician behavior that can be both arrogant and abusive. Physician behavior is blamed for low morale and high turnover among hospital staff. Most importantly poor behavior and attitudes of doctors often lead to medical mistakes causing serious harm and sometimes even death to patients.

The most troubling aspect of all of this is that outside of bringing a medical malpractice suit there is little that can be done. Unlike attorneys, doctors and physicians do not have ethical boards that can receive complaints of improper behavior of doctors. Some states have medical boards but they are often understaffed and underfunded and can do little about the underlying problem. Unfortunately medical malpractice law suits are often too expensive to pursue even though the wrong doing of the doctor is obvious but the harm caused does not rise to the level of bringing a law suit that may cost hundreds of thousands of dollars in expenses before a jury ever sees the case.

We are grateful to the NY Times for running this article and are hopeful that more public scrutiny may cause the medical profession to improve its ability to police itself and get rid of those doctors who should not be practicing medicine.