Marietta Injury Lawyer Blog

Hot Coffee The Movie; A Documentary About The Enemies of Civil Justice

June 29, 2011 | Benjamin S. Persons, IV

Winston Churchill once said “A lie gets half way around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.” Unfortunately this is the case with the civil justice system. If you are an HBO subscriber, the new documentary “Hot Coffee” is definitely worth taking the time to watch. The documentary, made by Susan Saladoff, takes a look at tort reform in America, and provides a look into the other side of the argument of so called “frivolous,” lawsuits. “Hot Coffee” tells the story of four families who have been left emotionally and financially devastated by caps on punitive damages and mandatory arbitration. It also seeks to dispel the myth that American courts are currently flooded with “frivolous” lawsuits.

One of the main stories of the documentary is the lawsuit of Stella Liebeck, better known as the woman who sued McDonald’s over burns she received from a cup of coffee purchased from the restaurant chain. This is the lawsuit that everyone seems to use when they use the term “frivolous” lawsuit. What the documentary points out is that McDonalds and other corporations used this case by twisting the facts to promote tort reform, claiming that this was a ridiculous lawsuit, and turning Ms. Liebeck into the punch line of jokes all over the country. In reality Ms. Liebeck was a 79-year-old woman who was burned so severely while attempting to put cream and sugar in her cup of coffee that she required skin grafts. When Ms. Liebeck brought the suit she was only attempting to cover the difference in her medical cost and what Medicare was paying. On top of that, McDonalds had already received over 700 complaints of coffee burns that they were keeping at between 180 and 190 degrees Fahrenheit, but these are the details that McDonalds managed to keep out of the media all these years to promote their own interest.

Ms. Saladoff says she made the documentary because she wants people to be empowered to take our justice system back. She believes that the American civil justice system has been hijacked by groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce who are only concerned with the economics of big business interest, and have no concern for the public at large. Saladoff has also created a Hot Coffee “Take Action” page, for people feel strongly about her film, where she shows many things you can do to fight against corporate interest trying to take away American’s rights in the civil justice system.

Product Liability Update; Many Stunned by U.S. Supreme Court’s Ruling On Generic Drugs

June 27, 2011 | Benjamin S. Persons, IV

In a 5-4 decision on Thursday, the United States Supreme Court ruled that manufacturers of generic pharmaceutical drugs could not be sued under state law over allegations that they failed to provide adequate label warnings about potential side effects. This ruling should be of a great concern to anyone who uses generic pharmaceuticals.

In the original lawsuit, Gladys Mensing, alleged that taking a generic form of metoclopramide, a common drug used to treat heartburn, gave her a severe neurological movement disorder. None of the generic manufacturers and distributors of metoclopramide made any effort to include warnings on the label for metoclopramide. Manufacturers of the generic metoclopramide, Teva Pharmaceutical Industries, UDL Labratories, and Actavis Inc. argued that federal law barred such a suit becausethe drug is approved by the FDA, (federal law requires generic drugs only to have the same labels as their brand name equivalents). They argued that because government regulations only require them to have the same label on metoclopramide as is on its brand name equivalent, Reglan, that they had no duty to include additional warnings for their generic form of metoclopramide.

The majority of the court, including Justice Clarence Thomas, who wrote the opinion, sided with the pharmaceutical companies. Thomas stated in his opinion that the federal drug regulations applicable to generic drug manufacturers directly conflict with and thus pre-empt state lawsuits. The net effect of this opinion is that it gives generic drug manufacturers zero liability for medication injuries that could have been avoided by an updated warning label.

John Stossel; In Favor of The Civil Justice System Before He Was Against It

June 16, 2011 | Benjamin S. Persons, IV

Mark Twain once wrote “nothing so needs reforming as other people’s habits.” John Stossel recently presented a program on Fox News vilifying the American Civil Justice System and Trial Lawyers and promoting “tort reform”. The Tort Reform movement, led by people like Mr. Stossel, believes we should restrict the constitutional right to trial by jury to honest Americans because of a few isolated incidents of frivolous lawsuits. However, when Mr. Stossel needs to use the civil justice system it’s okay.

Based on what happened in the video below, Mr. Stossel sued wrestler David Schultz and the World Wrestling Federation and settled his case for a healthy sum.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tbl92RqHVmk

Dangerous and Defective Product Update; Safety Advocates Demand Recall of ’93-’04 Jeep Grand Cherokee

June 15, 2011 | Benjamin S. Persons, IV

If you are the owner of one of the 3 million Jeep Grand Cherokees made between 1993 and 2004 there may be cause for concern. The consumer watchdog group, The Center For Auto Safety, is pushing the U.S. Government for a recall of a poorly protected fuel tank that is causing fire in some rear-end crashes in the Jeep Grand Cherokee. The National Highway Traffic Administration (NHTSA) acknowledges that there have been 44 Grand Cherokee Crashes and 55 deaths since 1992 where fire was listed as the most harmful factor.

The problem stems from the placement of the fuel tank in the 1993 – 2004 Jeep Grand Cherokee. The tank, which is made of plastic, is positioned below the rear bumper and behind the rear axle, which provides very little protection to the tank in the case of a rear end collision. Paul Sheridan, a former safety manager at Chrysler, says that the “design of the tank if a fundamental safety defect. No Question about it.” Sheridan explains that when one of these Jeep’s is hit from behind that another vehicle could easily slide under the rear bumper of the Jeep and tear the tank open. This creates a situation where gas covers the interior of the Jeep creating a potential disaster if there is any sort of spark.

New Dog Bite Laws for the City of College Park

June 7, 2011 | Benjamin S. Persons, IV

As dog bites have become more and more of a problem throughout metro Atlanta, one community has decided to try and combat the problem. City officials in College Park are now requiring dog owners of breeds deemed “potentially dangerous” to register with the city and pay an yearly fee of $25.00. The dogs must be registered whether they have bitten someone or not. The breeds include:

-German Shepard
-Rottweiler
-Doberman
-Staffordshire Bull Terrier
-American Staffordshire Terrier
-Pit Bull
-American Pit Bull Terrier
Dogs not included in this list that have bitten someone in the past without provocation must also be registered with the city. If owners do not abide by the new rules they will face fines.

Homeowners Foreclose on Bank of America – Video

June 5, 2011 | Benjamin S. Persons, IV

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ky6ko0bbLs0

In recent litigation, a Bank of America official, Renee Hertzler, admitted that she signed an average of 8,000 foreclosure documents every month and typically would never read them. We are currently seeing a troubling pattern of banks wrongfully evicting homeowners without proper documentation supporting the foreclosure.The average homeowner doesn’t understand the process, doesn’t know what proof the bank should produce, and can easily get rolled over by a powerful company like Bank of America. The video above is a wrongful foreclosure with an ironic happy ending.

Five months ago Bank of America filed for foreclosure on a Florida couple that owned their home outright. Although this couple had purchased the home from Bank of America in cash, the bank still mistakenly sought to evict the couple through the foreclosure process. As often happens to plaintiffs that file completely frivolous cases, the Judge ordered Bank of America to pay the couples’ legal fees after the case was dismissed.

Wrong Site Surgery is a Very Real Medical Malpractice Problem

June 2, 2011 | Benjamin S. Persons, IV

With the incredible amount of medical technology available in the United States it is hard to believe that doctors are performing procedures on the wrong patient or body part with regularity. Wrong site surgery is a very real problem in Georgia and the rest of the country. As a medical malpractice lawyer, I’ve discussed this problem with numerous doctors and they have all agreed that wrong site surgeries should never happen and are easy to avoid. Amazingly, according to a 2006 study looking at the frequency of surgical errors in the United States, the findings suggest that there could be as many as 2700 mistakes each year where a surgery is performed on the wrong body part or patient. This is about seven per day.
Recently Jesse Matlock, a 4-year-old Oregon boy was a victim of this sort of surgical error when he went in for a procedure to operate on a lazy right eye. Though the doctor performed several safety steps, including writing her initials above the boy’s right eye, and performing a final safety “time-out,” making sure that the correct patient is about to undergo the correct procedure, the doctor still managed to operate on the boy’s healthy right eye. In explaining her mistake the doctor said, “Frankly, I was at the head of him, and I lost my sense of direction and the mark got covered up. By the time I realized it was the left eye, it was all said and done.”
One question for anyone about to go into an operation is obviously what causes this type of error to occur? A 2010 study done for the Archives of Surgery found that among operations on the wrong part of the body, 85% were due to errors in judgment, with 72% of those doctors not performing a “time-out” as required by protocol. The study found the groups most frequently involved in operations on the wrong patient were doctors of internal medicine, who were responsible for 24% of these types of mistakes; orthopedic surgeons were responsible for 22.4%, general surgeons for 16.8%, and anesthesiologists for 12.1%.

How to Give a Deposition in a Civil Case; Don’t Act Like This Guy.

March 17, 2011 | Benjamin S. Persons, IV

As a Georgia Civil Lawyer I’ve taken hundreds of depositions, but it has been a long time since I’ve read a transcript as entertaining as what I recently read in the Cleveland Plain-Dealer. The deposition was taken in a case filed by title companies against Cuyahoga County in Northern Ohio. At issue in the case is whether deeds and other documents at the county recorder’s office should be made readily available at a reasonable cost.

Below is an excerpt from the deposition transcript of the head of information technology for a county office. The plaintiff’s lawyer wanted to know whether the county recorder’s office had a photocopier. According to the Plain-Dealer it took nearly 10 pages of court transcript to figure that out. I imagine the Plaintiff’s lawyer needed several aspirin after this line of questioning was completed.

—
Plaintiff’s lawyer: During your tenure in the computer department at the Recorder’s office, has the Recorder’s office had photocopying machines?

Defense lawyer: Objection.

PL: Any photocopying machine?

Witness: When you say “photocopying machine,” what do you mean?

PL: Let me be — let me make sure I understand your question. You don’t have an understanding of what a photocopying machine is?

Witness: No. I want to make sure that I answer your question correctly.

DL: Dave, I’ll object to the tone of the question. You make it sound like it’s unbelievable to you that he wouldn’t know what the definition of a photocopy machine is.

PL: I didn’t ask him to define it. I asked him if he had any.

Witness: When you say “photocopying machine,” what do you mean?

PL: Let me be clear. The term “photocopying machine” is so ambiguous that you can’t picture in your mind what a photocopying machine is in an office setting?

Witness: I just want to make sure I answer your question correctly.

PL: Well, we’ll find out. If you can say yes or no, I can do follow-ups, but it seems — if you really don’t know in an office setting what a photocopying machine is, I’d like the Ohio Supreme Court to hear you say so.

Witness: I just want to make sure I answer your question correctly.

DePuy ASR Hip Implant Recalls Lead to Litigation in Georgia and Nationwide

March 11, 2011 | Benjamin S. Persons, IV

At the end of August, 2010, DePuy Orthopedics, a division of Johnson & Johnson, announced a DePuy Hip Replacement Recall expected to affect an estimated 93,000 patients. The DePuy ASR hip replacement system has been failing at unusually high rates in patients all over the country including Georgia. Implant loosening, fractures, dislocations, and potentially toxic metals entering the bloodstream have led to frequent repeat surgeries in patients that received DePuy ASR hip implants.

Particularly troubling is the fact that DePuy was able to bypass Food and Drug Administration testing by exploiting the implant loophole. A product such as a hip implant can be sold to the public without testing if it is a device that is similar to a product that has already been approved by the FDA for use on patients.

The DePuy implant is not the only hip implant system causing extensive post surgical complications, but it’s the implant currently causing the most problems. A large number of people have been affected by the DePuy ASR implant, because Johnson & Johnson waited over two years after it first became clear there was a serious issue with the product to announce the recall and pull the product from the market.

Fatal Cobb County Tractor Trailer Crash Kills Infant

February 15, 2011 | Benjamin S. Persons, IV

Interstate 75 was the scene of another fatal tractor-trailer crash this past Saturday night. WSBTV reported traffic was stopped on I-75 because of construction, when a tractor-trailer driven by Henry Lipps crashed into multiple cars. At least four adults were seriously injured and a 6 month old baby was killed. Mr. Lipps was charged with second degree vehicular homicide (a misdemeanor) and following too closely.

According to Cobb County Police, the 18-wheeler never hit his brakes before impact. At this point it is obviously too early to tell why Mr. Lipps did not brake. Even professional drivers can get distracted and make mistakes. However, often in collisions like this, driver fatigue is a factor. Experienced Georgia trucking lawyers will tell you the unfortunate truth is some trucking companies pressure their drivers into violating The Federal Motor Carriers Requirements limiting hours of service. Law enforcement in Cobb County takes all trucking fatalities very seriously and there will certainly be a thorough investigation. If it is determined that Federal Regulations were being violated by the driver and/or the trucking company, for the sake of the impacted families, I hope the driver and trucking company will be held accountable.