Personal Injury News: Pick Of Last Month: Sep-2022
Woman Sues A West Side Hospital Over Medical Malpractice
A woman has sued a West Side hospital for medical malpractice after she claims that last year, doctors sterilized her without her permission.
The Cook County Circuit Court received the complaint in June against Mount Sinai Hospital in North Lawndale. According to the lawsuit, doctors performed the sterilizing operation immediately after the woman gave birth by emergency cesarean section in the spring of 2021. According to the lawsuit, neither did the woman verbally consent to the treatment nor sign any informed consent forms.
According to the lawsuit, doctors had already performed a tubal ligation on one of her fallopian tubes when they realized they were not permitted to operate on her. According to the lawsuit, doctors didn't check to see if she wanted the sterilization until one of her tubes had already been tied.
The procedure, according to the plaintiff's attorney, violated the fundamental principles of surgery. The plaintiff wants to expand her family but now worries that she won't be able to get pregnant, according to the plaintiff's attorney.
The lawyer continued by saying that the doctor simply carried out the procedure without planning or attempting to obtain consent, which is ridiculous from a professional standpoint. It's unexpected, which is especially upsetting for someone who just gave birth.
As soon as the plaintiff awoke following the procedure, doctors at Sinai notified her about the mishap. However, the hospital's insurance provider has so far refused to take the woman's case into account. A representative for Sinai declined to comment, citing ongoing legal proceedings.
The plaintiff has been unsuccessful in her endeavors to become pregnant and expand her family since the unnecessary procedure in May 2021. A tubal ligation can occasionally be undone, however, the process is risky and not always effective.
Family Of 19-Year-Old Who Died In Police Custody Gets $5M
The family of a 19-year-old African American man who passed away in police custody in Caroline County, Maryland, in 2018 has reached a partial settlement in their federal case against seven Eastern Shore communities.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland announced in a news release that the settlement, which also mandates that three communities make systemic reforms within their police agencies aimed at preventing such deaths, will pay the family $5 million.
A part of the complaint, which claims that the state's office of the Chief Medical Examiner and its contentious former chief medical examiner conspired to conceal the circumstances of the death, will continue to be litigated by attorneys for the family and the Coalition for Justice.
The plaintiff's mother mourned her son's death at the hands of the police in a statement released by the ACLU and expressed her hope that the improvements detailed in the settlement will stop other similar tragedies.
The mother claimed that she was forced to witness the murder of her son by those police officers while he cried out for help and reached out to her. She further remarked that she lacks the vocabulary to adequately express the profound hurt she would always feel when recalling that tragic day. She hopes that the changes made to police departments will save lives and save any other families the suffering she goes through every day.
Immediately following a confrontation with a Greensboro Police Department officer and two other police from different agencies, the guy passed away on September 16, 2018, at Easton Memorial Hospital.
After a woman contacted 911 after observing the man struggle with a younger relative, the police confronted the man. The police pursued him as he fled through Greensboro and ended up at his family's trailer park house. He was shocked by a taser, pinned down on a ramp leading to his house, handcuffed, and the officers remained on top of him for about six minutes.
His mother was at home, and officers could hear her asking them if her son was breathing on the body-camera footage. He was found dead of a sudden cardiac arrest during an autopsy, and the medical examiner's report stated that stress from his conflict with law authorities was a factor.
While the family was angry that it took lawmakers years to pass legislation bearing his name, the man's killing sparked calls for widespread change in Maryland, and in 2021, the historic "Maryland Police Accountability Act" was passed into law. The law promised to include provisions that would increase the openness of police disciplinary records.
Nearly 30 use-of-force reports from one of the policemen involved in the death, who is no longer employed with the Greensboro Police Department, were concealed from the public during his time as a Dover, Delaware, police officer. 2019 saw the cancellation of Webster's license to practice law in Maryland.
Requests for a response from the lawyers representing the police officer, Greensboro, and its former police chief, went unanswered. The state medical examiner's office is being represented by the Maryland Office of the Attorney General, which declined to comment.
Jury Awards $45.2M To Parents Of Sandy Hook Victim
A Texas jury ruled on Friday that a U.S. conspiracy theorist must pay the parents of a 6-year-old boy killed in the Sandy Hook massacre in 2012 $45.2 million in punitive damages in addition to the $4.1 million in compensatory damages already given for falsely claiming the killing was a fabrication.
Separated parents of the 6-year-old boy who was shot and killed testified that followers of the conspiracy theorist had harassed them and sent them death threats for years under the false impression that they were lying about their son's death in the shooting that took place on December 14, 2012, at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, killing 20 children and six staff members.
The defamation case was heard in state court in Austin, the capital of Texas, where the theorist's radio show and the far-right webcast Infowars are based. The 12 jurors reached their verdict on the punitive damages one day after reaching their verdict on the compensatory damages.
The lawsuit's defendant is a well-known figure in American right-wing circles and a fan of the former president. He claimed that the Sandy Hook massacre was a hoax perpetrated by the US government using crisis actors as a justification for taking away Americans' right to bear arms.
Both punitive and compensatory damages totaling $145.9 million were claimed by the parents. A plaintiff receives compensatory damages to make up for their losses and suffering. Punitive damages are given as compensation for the defendant's wrongdoing.
Based on the number of hours Infowars spent covering Sandy Hook, a defense lawyer has asked the jury to award $270,000 in punitive damages. Although the verdict was hefty, the lawyer outside the courthouse explained that punitive damages in Texas are limited to $750,000 per plaintiff. Knowing that there is a cap on punitive damages, he even works to reduce compensatory damages during the trial.
Punitive damages were calculated as $20.5 million for each parent for mental agony and $4.2 million for the defendant's defamation of the deceased boy's father by doubting that he held his dead kid after the killing.
During his evidence in the trial, the defendant made an effort to disassociate himself from the conspiracies by expressing regret to the parents and stating that Sandy Hook was "100% true.
The massacre at Sandy Hook was carried out with a Remington Bushmaster rifle, and it was terminated by the shooter's suicide as oncoming police sirens could be heard.
Fla. Hospital Faces Several Medical Malpractice Lawsuits
Numerous lawsuits have been filed against a hospital in Jacksonville on the grounds that a surgeon who allegedly had palsy caused serious injuries and corrective surgeries between 2016 and 2020.
More than $6 million has already been paid out in claims related to issues allegedly created by the orthopedist physician who retired in 2020. As of right now, at least 348 lawsuits have been filed against the surgeon, and many more are anticipated. The surgeon's clinic and Ascension St. Vincent's Riverside Hospital in Jacksonville have also been included in the lawsuits.
According to the lawsuits, patients reported noticing the surgeon's trembling hands, slurred speech, shaky gait, involuntary body movements, mood swings, and poor judgment as early as 2016. These symptoms as well as other abnormalities can be brought on by the neurological condition palsy.
According to the claims, patients experienced tendon ruptures, broken femurs, dislocated bones, lost prosthetic knees, and even passed away. In 2018, a 70-year-old woman passed away from a hip replacement that lasted longer than usual because the doctor may have broken her femur while performing the procedure.
The lawsuit claims that the hospital disregarded warning signs from staff and patients that the surgeon was showing signs of the condition worsening.
One lawsuit claims that multiple doctors, nurses, and patients repeatedly expressed their worries to St. Vincent's Medical Center about the surgeon's illness and his handicap, thus the hospital not only had a duty to know but actually did know about it. SVMC retained him to schedule, plan, and carry out a large volume of surgeries and revision surgeries at SVMC despite the overwhelming evidence and knowledge of his problem, the risk he posed to his patients, and the harm being caused to his patients.
In order to put an end to a Florida Department of Health investigation, the doctor retired in 2020 and consented to give up his medical license the following year. Requests for comment regarding the incident were not met with any responses from the defendant, his attorneys, or the hospital's lawyers.
Las Cruces Agreed To Pay $2.75M In Wrongful Death Lawsuit
In a wrongful death action, the City of Las Cruces agreed to pay $2.75 million to the family of a deceased lady.
The woman was murdered on April 16, and the settlement is the first of two settlements. An officer from the Las Cruces Police Department shot the 75-year-old woman twice. The officer was sent to the woman's home in the 800 block of Fir Avenue after her daughter called 911.
According to the lawsuit, the woman made death threats against her daughter while going through a mental health crisis. The body camera of the policeman captures him approaching the home and having a brief conversation with two of the lady's family members as they quietly leave. The policeman then notices a woman clutching two kitchen knives. Before shooting her twice, the cop yelled at her for almost 40 seconds to put down the knives. The city has yet to confirm that the police officer killed the woman, but an investigation report confirms that he is involved in the shooting.
Public documents show that on June 30, the city and the woman's family reached a settlement in their legal dispute. On July 28, a judge in Las Cruces approved the settlement and dismissed the case. The lawyer claimed that the maximum settlement sum that could be reached was $2.75 million. He also reached a settlement with the City of Las Cruces following a 2020 incident in which an LCPD officer assaulted a plaintiff using a controversial grapple technique. As a result, the City reached a $6.5 million settlement with the plaintiff's family. The lawyer claimed that in that instance, the City consented to settle both a federal action and a state complaint concurrently.
In response to this report, the City of Las Cruces declined to comment. A city representative stated in an email that owing to ongoing litigation, the city would not make a statement. The wrongful death claim in state court has been resolved, but the litigation in federal court has just begun. In that instance, the woman's family charges the officer and the City with killing the woman without following the proper procedures and using excessive force on her. There is no cap on the size of the damages, in contrast to the state case. The lawyer expressed his eagerness to bring the full case to a federal jury in order to prove constitutional infractions.