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Legal News

Sturdier Cars Slow Rescuers

School Bus Overturns in Georgia - Many Students Hurt

J&J, Novartis Recall Fentanyl Pain Patches Over Possible Leak

Cell Phone Use in Car Leads to $5.2 Million Payout by Employer

Government Lists Worst Nursing Homes

Consumer Awarded Damages from Credit Reporting Agency

Ohio Supreme Court Ruling Eliminates Jury Discretion

Arbitration a growing trend in health care

$38.5 million to Compensate Boy Born Stricken by Cerebral Palsy

Lawsuit: tumorous lungs put in lung recipient patient

News

Sturdier Cars Slow Rescuers
School Bus Overturns in Georgia - Many Students Hurt
J&J, Novartis Recall Fentanyl Pain Patches Over Possible Leak
Cell Phone Use in Car Leads to $5.2 Million Payout by Employer
Government Lists Worst Nursing Homes
Consumer Awarded Damages from Credit Reporting Agency
Ohio Supreme Court Ruling Eliminates Jury Discretion
Arbitration a growing trend in health care
Doctors say it will hold down medical costs, but patients say they fear giving up the right to sue.
$38.5 million to Compensate Boy Born Stricken by Cerebral Palsy
Lawsuit: tumorous lungs put in lung recipient patient
Norfolk to Pay $7.5 Million for Brain Injured Boy
Ford Explorer Rollover Verdict
Evenflo Recalls 1 Million Infant Car Seats
Florida Accuses Allstate of Ongoing Crime
Allstate's Profit Scheme under Fire
Louisiana Attorney General's Office Files Suit Against Insurance Companies
Frivolous Lawsuit Myths
Incredible Lawsuit Tales
Ground Beef Products Are Subject of Recall After 2 Reports of Illness
Former Allstate Employee Critical of Company Practices
E. Coli and Ground Beef Recall
Alleged Defective Cribs - Simplicity sold by Target
Class-action lawsuit was filed against Simplicity as well as Target Corp., the company from whom Spitzer bought the Aspen 4 in 1 crib for her daughter in April 2006. Also named as a defendant was Graco Children's Products Inc., the company that licensed its name to Simplicity for some of the cribs that were recalled
Texan suing over Transplanted Tissue
Transplanted Tissue
Boy hit by falling TV gets $19 million
A Cook County jury awarded $19 million Monday to a 13-year-old boy who suffered severe brain injuries in 2003 when a television fell on him at a private school on Chicago's Northwest Side
Crocs & Escalators Don't Mix
According to reports appearing across the United States and as far away as Singapore and Japan, entrapments occur because of two of the biggest selling points of shoes like Crocs: their flexibility and grip. Some report the shoes get caught in the "teeth" at the bottom or top of the escalator, or in the crack between the steps and the side of the escalator.
Profit Before Safety & Tort Reform
Dangerous goods are slipping past the safety standards set up by government agencies and Tort Reform is Making the Civil Justice System Toothless
Why Lead Paint in Toys? It's Cheaper.
Overweight Trucks
Thousands of overweight trucks are on highways, with states' permission. Some fear practice is putting dangerous wear and tear on roads, bridges
Ruling Provides Access to Information on Doctors
Pattern of Greed
How Insurance Companies Put Profits over PolicyHolders

Capt. Clint Roberts makes his living cutting accident victims out of hideously mangled vehicles, but even he could hardly believe it when two people in a 2007 midsize car survived a head-on crash with a full- sized pickup last year.

The Ford Fusion's reinforced steel construction probably saved the lives of the 18-year-old driver and his 16-year-old passenger. But Roberts said it gave his Hillsborough County Fire Rescue crew fits as they tried to free them last November.

Because hydraulic cutters couldn't shear the roof posts, rescue workers had to turn to heavy-duty electric saws, replacing blade after blade as they dulled on the rugged material.

"It was just beating the snot out of the tools," adding minutes and delaying medical treatment, Roberts said.

School Bus Overturns in Georgia - Many Students Hurt

Authorities say 11 students were taken to metro Atlanta hospitals with injuries after a school bus carrying 27 students overturned in Cherokee County.

Bus Number 427 was on its way to Sequoya High School and Dean Rusk Middle School in Canton, about 40 miles north of Atlanta, when it went off Georgia 140 near Canton and overturned just after 8 am. A 911 center supervisor earlier said 30 students were on the bus.

One student was taken to Atlanta Medical Center by helicopter because the student had lost consciousness after the accident.

Authorities had earlier said the student was in critical condition. But Cherokee County Fire Department spokesman Tim Cavender says officials later upgraded the student's injuries to non life threatening.

Cavender says 10 students were taken to North Fulton Regional Hospital for neck and back injuries. He says the bus driver and 15 students were taken to Northside Cherokee Hospital to be evaluated before being released to their parents. One student did not go to a hospital.

The cause of the accident is still under investigation. But sheriff's department spokesman Sergeant Jay Baker says a preliminary analysis indicates the bus went off the road after the driver tried to overcorrect when the right side of the bus went off the pavement.

The bus driver apparently lost control of the bus, which rested on its side on the side of the road. No students were ejected from the bus during the accident.

J&J, Novartis Recall Fentanyl Pain Patches Over Possible Leak

Johnson & Johnson and Novartis AG's Sandoz unit recalled some patches containing the painkiller fentanyl, saying manufacturing defects may cause leaks that can lead to fatal overdoses.

The Duragesic patches, made by Johnson & Johnson's Alza Corp., may have a cut along the drug reservoir, exposing users directly to the fentanyl gel inside, the New Brunswick, New Jersey-based company said in a statement. It's the fifth recall of some version of the patches since 1994.

``Perhaps the time has come for the FDA to order Johnson & Johnson to pull all versions of this product off the shelves,' said Alex MacDonald, a lawyer who represents the families of former patch users. Juries have found defective patches caused the deaths of two users since lawsuits over the products began going to trial in 2006.

Today's recall covers patches in the U.S. and Canada that release 25 micrograms of fentanyl in an hour, Johnson & Johnson said. The expiration dates are on or before December 2009. Duragesic patches generated $1.16 billion in global sales last year, making them Johnson & Johnson's eighth-biggest selling product, spokesman Greg Panico said.

Sandoz distributes the patches. Mylan Inc., based in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania, began selling a lower-cost copy of the Duragesic patch in 2005, and was joined by other companies including Watson Pharmaceuticals Inc.

Safety Warning

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued a safety warning in December over the patches, saying improper use can cause breathing difficulties and death. That followed a July 2005 alert put out by the FDA after 120 patients taking the drug died. Johnson & Johnson said in November that it faced 72 lawsuits over the patches.

``The FDA continues to engage with the company in its voluntary recall and is investigating the situation,' FDA spokeswoman Susan Cruzan said in an e-mail.

Johnson & Johnson rose $1.09, or 1.8 percent, to $62.97 in New York Stock Exchange composite trading today. The shares have fallen 5.6 percent this year.

The recall ``is small enough that I doubt this will impact the bottom line,' said Jon Fisher, a portfolio manager at Fifth Third Asset Management in Minneapolis. The fund held 3.1 million shares of Johnson & Johnson as of September, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Fentanyl is mostly used to treat cancer pain, according to the FDA, and doctors say it's a stronger painkiller than morphine. Duragesic patches contain fentanyl in a pouch between two membranes. In January, Johnson & Johnson received returned patches that had cut edges, prompting the company to notify the FDA, Panico said.

Cell Phone Use in Car Leads to $5.2 Million Payout by Employer

Talk isn't always cheap, as International Paper Co. learned recently when it agreed to pay $5.2 million to settle a personal injury suit related, at least in part, to one of its employees' use of a cell phone while driving.

According to the complaint, filed in Fulton County, Ga., Superior Court in 2006, International Paper employee Vanessa C. McGrogan was using her company-supplied cell phone as she drove west on Interstate 16 near Dublin, Ga., when she rear-ended a vehicle driven by Debra Ford. The collision pushed Ford's vehicle into the ditch on the right side of the road, overturning it so that the driver's side hit and then slid along the roadway -- with Ford's arm trapped between the door and the asphalt.

Medical complications eventually forced Ford, a widowed mother of four, to have her arm amputated almost up to the shoulder.

"We have a cell phone statute in Georgia that says the driver is not to do things that are distracting," said Ford's attorney, Katherine L. McArthur of The Law Firm of Kathy McArthur in Macon, Ga. McArthur explained that this essentially means reasonable cell phone use is acceptable within the purview of the statute. The International Paper employee's cell phone use was not reasonable, McArthur continued, because the employee had set her cruise control at 77 miles per hour -- in a 70 mph speed zone.

The combination of those two factors, said McArthur, allowed her to raise the issue of intentional negligence on the part of the employee and International Paper and to seek punitive damages.

International Paper raised some affirmative defenses, McArthur said, alleging, among other things, that the loss of her client's arm was caused at least in part by the fact that she was a smoker, and that smoking had damaged her vascular system, thus impairing the healing process. Both Ford's doctor and another medical expert refuted that claim, saying Ford lost her arm because it was crushed in the accident, McArthur said.

Outside counsel for International Paper, C. Michael Evert Jr. and Christopher G. Conley of Evert Weathersby Houff, referred comment to Amy Sawyer, a spokeswoman for International Paper in Memphis, Tenn.

Sawyer, in an e-mail message, said only, "This was an unfortunate accident, which touched off a series of bizarre events that caused Ms. Ford's injuries. Given these circumstances, it was a very unique case."

After a series of negotiations with a variety of outside counsel for International Paper -- the company changed law firms three times, McArthur said -- and an attempt at mediation, the parties agreed to settle for $5.2 million in mid-December. The case had been set for trial March 17.

Although International Paper filed a motion for partial summary judgment on the issue of punitive damages, the case settled before Judge Michael D. Johnson had ruled on that issue. "They didn't want to make bad law," McArthur said of International Paper.

According to McArthur, the company made an early settlement offer of $750,000, and a mediator indicated International Paper would go as high as $2.5 million. McArthur, however, rejected the early settlement offer.

Government Lists Worst Nursing Homes

After initially resisting their disclosure, the Bush administration on Tuesday published the names of 131 nursing homes with poor inspection records and said some were already showing signs of improvement.

The list released by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services represents troubled facilities cited as a "special focus facility," a designation used to identify those that merit more oversight. For these homes, states conduct inspections at six-month intervals rather than annually.

Last November, the government released a partial list of 54 nursing homes that ranked among the worst in their states, balking at releasing the full list of homes with the "special focus" designation. After a group of Democratic lawmakers began pushing for full disclosure, CMS said Tuesday it was publishing the names after cross-checking information to ensure the release of the most accurate data.

CMS will update its list of troubled nursing homes on a quarterly basis, with its next release scheduled for April.

Consumer Awarded Damages from Credit Reporting Agency

Suzanne Sloane (“Suzanne”) and her husband John T. Sloane filed suit against Equifax Information Services, LLC, Trans Union, LLC, Experian Information Solutions, Inc. and CitiFinancial, Inc. after she was the victim of identity theft and the credit reporting agencies failed to correct errors in her credit report. Suzanne settled with all defendants except Equifax. Following a trial, a jury returned a verdict against Equifax and awarded Suzanne $106,000 for economic loss and $245,000 for mental anguish, humiliation and emotional distress. The trial court also awarded her $181,083 for attorney’s fees. Equifax appealed.

When Suzanne discovered that she was the victim of identity theft, she notified the credit reporting agencies. For 21 months, Suzanne tried to get Equifax to correct the errors in her credit report, which it failed to do. During that time, Suzanne was repeatedly turned down for credit, or offered extremely poor terms because of her low credit score. She also testified that she suffered emotional distress, physical distress, and a breakdown of her marriage because of the credit problems.

The jury found that Suzanne proved by a preponderance of the evidence that Equifax violated the Fair Credit Reporting Act, 15 U.S.C.A. §1681 et seq., by negligently failing to follow reasonable procedures designed to assure maximum accuracy on her consumer credit report, by negligently failing to conduct a reasonable investigation, by negligently failing to remove false information from her credit report, and by negligently reinserting false information into her credit report.

Ohio Supreme Court Ruling Eliminates Jury Discretion

WHETHER you're a CEO of a company or a guy who sweeps floors for a living, the Ohio Supreme Court has put its stamp of approval on a law that could have devastating consequences for you if you're seriously injured in an accident.

In a major opinion issued last month, the court showed contempt for its past decisions, disrespect for the Ohio Constitution, and disdain for the men and women who serve on juries.

The court, in a case called Arbino vs. Johnson & Johnson, said for the first time in Ohio history that it's constitutional to disregard the findings of a jury if the jury decides to award more than $250,000 to someone injured in an accident to compensate for the person's pain - even if that pain may last a lifetime.

The court reached this landmark decision despite clear precedent that such a law is unconstitutional. Essentially what the court says this time around is that the Ohio General Assembly really, really, really, really wants to limit damages for insurance companies, so who are we to stand in their way?

Look at what the Ohio Constitution says, then you decide whether what the court has done makes any sense. The relevant part of Article I, Section 5 states, "The right of trial by jury shall be inviolate …"

In Ohio, the constitutional right to trial by jury has always been interpreted to mean that judges and the government won't be able to invade the jury's fact-finding function.

That's why jurors are there, right? To hear the facts of each individual case and decide what they think is fair. Now, though, jurors can spend days or weeks hearing the facts of a case, reach a difficult decision that the injured person should be awarded a sum to compensate for the pain an accident has caused, only to have that decision gutted by a judge if the sum exceeds $250,000.

How does the right to a trial by jury remain inviolate if a law requires judges to violate the decisions a jury reaches? We should probably now read the constitution to say: The right to a jury shall be inviolate, provided it doesn't cost an insurance company too much money.

Arbitration a growing trend in health care

Within the space of two weeks late last year, Michael and Hedy Cohen, who happen to be experts on medical errors, each encountered what they saw as a disturbing development in the modern doctor-patient relationship.

They were asked by two groups of suburban doctors to sign away their right to a jury trial in the interest of reducing malpractice costs.

Legal experts say such attempts to channel potentially unhappy patients away from the court system and into arbitration are becoming increasingly common in health care. Agreements to settle future disputes with binding arbitration, in which an appointed individual or small panel decides the case instead of a judge or jury, are now pervasive in contracts involving many other things we buy, including credit cards, cell phones and cars.

Proponents say arbitration is faster, cheaper and fairer than trials, but critics say the secretive system can be weighted against consumers and makes it harder to track complaints or build legal precedents.

Eugene Rosov, who runs two malpractice-insurance companies that advise doctors to use arbitration agreements, said he thought they ultimately would reduce the cost of insurance and defensive medicine - tests ordered primarily to protect against lawsuits. "This agreement is better for doctors and for patients," said Rosov, whose companies have 35 subscribers in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. "The only person it's bad for is the plaintiffs attorneys."

But Temple University law professor Bill Woodward thinks the growth of a private judicial system "is a pretty nasty legal development, I think, and it's just crying out for correction from Congress."

A bill introduced last year by Sen. Russ Feingold (D., Wis.) aims to do that. It would prohibit pre-dispute arbitration clauses involving employment, consumer, franchise and civil rights disputes.

Michael Cohen was handed an arbitration agreement when he visited his longtime primary-care doctor in Bucks County. Cohen said he was not the suing kind, but the thought of being asked to give up his right to sue "stopped me in my tracks."

He said no, and his doctor saw him anyway.

Then Hedy Cohen, who has had a kidney transplant, was mailed a similar form by a group of kidney specialists she planned to see for the first time. The form from Hypertension-Nephrology Associates in Willow Grove insisted on binding arbitration and said she would have to pay the doctors' legal fees if she filed a complaint and lost.

Hedy Cohen said no and was told to find another nephrologist.

That was fine with Cohen, a nurse with a master's degree in health-care administration. "I couldn't have a relationship with this person because they had already set the tone," she said. "We're adversaries before we even know each other."

Jerry Dolchin, the nephrologists' attorney, said the doctors began using the forms at the height of Pennsylvania's malpractice crisis in 2003, when doctors, he said, were being "hit pretty hard by overzealous plaintiffs' lawyers." Since then, he said, "hundreds and hundreds and hundreds" of patients have signed the form.

Ruth Schulze, a North Jersey gynecologist, started asking patients to sign an arbitration agreement last year after she bought malpractice protection from Obstetricians & Gynecologists Risk Retention Group of America Inc., one of Rosov's companies. She gave up obstetrics two years ago after she was told she would have to pay more than $120,000 for insurance.

Schulze said she won each of the three times she was sued, but left the trials disenchanted. "It is not really a trial of your peers," she said. "It's theater."

Her patients have largely embraced the new approach, she said. She will not do surgery on anyone who refuses to sign the form, which limits pain and suffering payments.

For her, the arbitration agreement sets the groundwork for a more trusting doctor-patient relationship. Patients need to understand that bad things happen in spite of doctors' best efforts. "Medicine is not guaranteed perfection," she said.

Steven Barrer, a Montgomery County neurosurgeon, says he thinks he was the first in his area to start using an arbitration agreement around 2003. Barrer wanted to "somehow create malpractice reform for myself since it wasn't coming from the courts and it wasn't coming from the legislature."

He got the idea for an arbitration agreement from his cell phone contract. "I figured if they can do it, why can't I?" he said.

Out of thousands of new patients, only about 10 have refused to sign the form. He does not ask patients with emergencies.

No one knows how many doctors here use such agreements, but the practice does not appear widespread. It is common on the West Coast, and legal experts say it is spreading nationally. Many nursing homes ask residents to sign arbitration agreements, experts said. Golden Living, a national chain that operates 40 nursing homes in Pennsylvania, says about half of its residents agree to arbitration.

$38.5 million to Compensate Boy Born Stricken by Cerebral Palsy

A Superior Court jury in Stamford has ordered a city obstetrician to pay $38.5 million to the family of a boy born with cerebral palsy in 2003.

The verdict is believed to be among the largest medical malpractice awards in the state, surpassing a $36.5 million award in 2005 against Hartford Hospital and an obstetrician.

The Stamford jury ruled Friday that Dr. Corinne De Cholnoky should have performed a Caesarean section more quickly during the 2003 delivery of Spencer Oram, whose umbilical cord was impeding blood flow to his brain.

The boy now has cerebral palsy, although his twin sister was born 27 minutes earlier is healthy, said Richard Silver, an attorney for the Oram family. The case was filed almost three years ago.

The family is "incredibly emotionally drained," Silver said.

Lawsuit: tumorous lungs put in lung recipient patient

Two years ago, Tony Grier received a pair of diseased lungs during a lung transplant at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. Now, HUP must respond to questions raised in a lawsuit filed by Grier's estate.

Grier, 43, had pulmonary sarcoidosis - a rare disease that in its chronic form thickens lung tissue to the point at which it can no longer transmit oxygen into the bloodstream - and believed he was exchanging his own lungs for those of a healthy 18-year-old.

Instead, Grier received the cancerous lungs of a 31-year-old smoker. He died six months after the operation.

Last October, his mother, Emma Grier, filed a lawsuit against HUP, four of its physicians and Gift of Life - the organ-donor program through which the lungs were allocated to Tony Grier. She is suing each defendant for $750,000 on seven counts, including medical malpractice, wrongful death and common law fraud.

No date has yet been set for a hearing, and all lawyers involved declined to speak about the case or were unavailable for comment.

According to the complaint filed by Emma Grier in December, HUP doctors misrepresented the identity of his lung donor "with the knowledge that the misrepresentations were false when made."

One month after the surgery, Tony Grier began to complain about pain and coughing. His doctors at HUP examined the lungs and found a spot, but did not recognize it as a cancerous tumor.

They treated the spot with antibiotics which, the complaint alleges, "served as a fertilizer for the cancer-filled tumor to grow and spread throughout Mr. Grier's body." By the time the tumor was recognized, the cancer was untreatable, and Tony Grier "continued under great pain and suffering fully aware that he was going to die."

Saul Langsam, an attorney with the Philadelphia medical malpractice firm Silvers, Langsam and Weitzman who is not affiliated with the Grier case, said he has never come across a case like it.

On the basis of the facts presented in Emma Grier's complaint, he said the episode seemed "outrageous." But, Langsam said, "you never see the full picture until the defense files its answer."

Norfolk to Pay $7.5 Million for Brain Injured Boy

The city has agreed to pay $7.5 million to settle a lawsuit brought by a woman whose son was hit by a truck driven by a city employee.

The City Council was briefed on the issue during a closed-door meeting Tuesday night. City Attorney Bernard Pishko said the matter has not been resolved and declined further comment. However, two city officials who asked not to be identified said the council agreed to the settlement.

The circuit judge hearing the case must approve any settlement. The case is scheduled to go to trial next week. Council approval isn't necessary because Pishko has the right to settle lawsuits, but he sought approval anyway.

The payout could make the task of balancing the budget more difficult for City Manager Regina V.K. Williams. The city is self-insured and thus pays for settlements from its own funds.

The lawsuit was filed in Norfolk Circuit Court in January 2007 by Renee D. Wilson on behalf of her son, Travis Dalton.

Wilson's lawyer, Jack Drescher, said Dalton was standing in the median on Brambleton Avenue near Posey Lane in December 2006 when he was struck by a city truck driven by city employee Theodore Goodman. Dalton suffered serious brain injuries.

The lawsuit first named Goodman as a defendant. Wilson later added the city.

Dalton, who is 19, now functions at the level of an 11-year-old, Drescher said. He had been on his way to a job interview when he was hit. Now he will never work, according to documents filed by Drescher and his partner, Jeffrey Breit.

Dalton spent three months in the hospital following the wreck and returned frequently for follow-up visits. Doctors had removed a portion of his skull to relieve pressure from swelling in his brain. His medical expenses have exceeded $329,000, Drescher said.

Dalton lives with his mother in Norfolk.

The city had argued that it was not liable because Goodman was traveling between two of its recreational facilities. Governments have some protection from lawsuits because of sovereign immunity.

Ford Explorer Rollover Verdict

Ford Motor Co., the second-largest U.S. automaker, must pay $6.5 million to a 41-year-old man left brain-damaged in a 2004 rollover accident involving an Explorer sport-utility vehicle, a Texas jury said.

Ruben Zamora lost control of the 1993 Explorer when a tire lost its tread and was ejected from the vehicle as it rolled over.

His mother, suing on his behalf, said the tread separation set off vibrations in the rear of the vehicle that made it skate sideways because of a defect in the SUV's suspension.

"The tires get to bouncing severely and the back end swings around," causing the driver to lose control of the vehicle, Zamora's attorney, Bill Neumann, said Monday in a phone interview.

"They've known about the problem for years and failed to fix it."

A state court jury in Cotulla, Texas, found the Explorer defective and awarded $10 million on Feb. 1.

The jury found that Zamora was 35 percent responsible for the accident, leaving a verdict of $6.5 million against Ford, Neumann said.

Ford will appeal, a Ford spokeswoman, Marcey Evans, said Monday in a phone interview.

"It is unfair to blame Ford for this tragic accident or for Mr. Zamora's injuries, which were caused by not being belted properly while losing control of his vehicle," Evans said.

"We think the verdict isn't supported by the evidence," Evans said.

The verdict will be further reduced "substantially" because of a prior settlement with a co-defendant, Evans said.

Lifetime care needed for victim

Zamora, a disabled oil field worker before the accident, was injured in August 2004 while driving in south Texas, near San Antonio. Zamora, who sustained severe brain damage, "will need someone to take care of him for the rest of his life," Neumann said.

Evenflo Recalls 1 Million Infant Car Seats

Evenflo Co. issued a voluntary safety recall Friday of 1 million Discovery infant car seats after tests showed that the seat could potentially become separated from its base in high-impact side collisions.

The recall affects Discovery Infant Car Seat Models 390, 391, 534 and 552, made between April 2005 and Jan. 29, 2008. Evenflo is providing owners of the seat models a free supplemental dual-hook fastener to ensure that the seat remains attached.

Testing by Evenflo and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration showed a potential safety risk to children, said NHTSA Administrator Nicole Nason. Rob Matteucci, Evenflo's chief executive officer, said there have been no reports of any serious injuries or deaths.

The privately held company, based in suburban Dayton, said it is not necessary for owners of the car seats to stop using them or return them. To order the fastener, seat owners should call Evenflo at 1-800-356-2229 between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. EST or visit www.evenflo.com/Discovery.

Florida Accuses Allstate of Ongoing Crime

Allstate Insurance Co. and its affiliates are committing "an ongoing crime" by failing to submit all documents the state demanded as part of an investigation of homeowner insurance prices, according to a legal response state officials filed to an appeals court Wednesday.

"There can be no more clearer threat to the safety and welfare of the public than a continuing willful violation of the law," Office of Insurance Regulation officials wrote to the First District Court of Appeal to justify barring 10 Allstate companies from selling new insurance policies in Florida.

Allstate's failure to turn over all the documents led Florida Insurance Commissioner Kevin McCarty to cancel a hearing last week investigating the insurer and to suspend 10 Allstate companies' licenses to do business statewide. He said this action — the first of its kind for his office and the state's boldest move in a long-simmering feud with property insurers — was the only way he could effectively pressure Allstate into providing the records.

The appeals court is expected to decide in the next few days whether the ban should apply temporarily until a judge makes a final decision. To sway the court on the temporary ban, state officials must sufficiently prove that allowing Allstate to sell insurance presents an "immediate threat" to the well-being of Florida residents.

Last week, Allstate appealed to the court with strong language of its own: The Office of Insurance Regulation "has abused its power" by using the ban as a "punitive stick," according to court documents. Allstate claims that regulators failed to give the companies prior notice or a hearing. It says in the appeal that it may try to force the state to pay attorneys' fees.

State officials countered in their court response that Allstate had a chance to provide subpoenaed documents and knowledgeable witnesses at the hearing last week.

"Instead, it became abundantly clear that Allstate's corporate representatives were unaware of what documents, if any, had been produced to the Office, had no reasonable explanation for their failure to make the requested documents freely available, and were otherwise unprepared to answer questions" at the hearing, according to the state's response.

Gov. Charlie Crist said Tuesday that elected officials need to continue holding insurers accountable.

The Allstate companies "snubbed their noses at the people of the state of Florida by gouging them, in my opinion. They snubbed their noses at the administration trying to enforce the new law," Crist told reporters in Tallahassee. "We have to fight for the people against this industry taking advantage of them. … Some in the industry have been good. But in Allstate's case, they're not good hands, they're bad hands."

Allstate's Profit Scheme under Fire

Allstate is facing contempt charges in Missouri -- with a $25,000-a-day fine -- and now it can't sell new auto policies in Florida, in part, because it wants to protect a report written by a corporate consultant.

Allstate has said those documents -- along with others that Florida regulators are seeking in their investigation into how the company sets insurance rates and pays claims -- are trade secrets. What's so important that Allstate would risk so much?

According to an attorney who has seen the report from consultant McKinsey & Co., it advises Allstate on how to improve profitability: pay less on claims and take a longer time to pay those claims.

'The documents describe, in graphic terms, a scheme devised by Allstate and McKinsey & Co. to essentially turn the business of insurance into a zero-sum game,' said David Bernardinelli, a Santa Fe, N.M., plaintiff attorney involved in a case against Allstate. He says he is the only person outside Allstate to have seen the report.

An Allstate spokesman didn't return a call seeking comment late Wednesday.

In the early 1990s, the corporate consultant advised Allstate to get tough with policyholders. Consumers who didn't accept a settlement offer from Allstate would have to fight in court to get their claims paid.

'This is the new insurance world that was created by McKinsey for a lot of insurers,' Bernardinelli said.

Indeed, McKinsey did work for other companies, including State Farm. This insurer said it hasn't used McKinsey's services for more than a decade, according to a State Farm spokesman.

Louisiana Attorney General's Office Files Suit Against Insurance Companies

By newsdesk - Posted on January 9th, 2008

Tagged: Allstate • Business • Insurance • Louisiana • Monopolies • Price fixing • State Farm

November 8, 2007: (Baton Rouge, LA) — Louisiana Attorney General Charles C. Foti, Jr. announced today that his office has filed suit against Allstate Insurance Company, Lafayette Insurance Company, Xactware, Inc., Marshall & Swift/Boeckh, LLC, Insurance Services Office, Inc., State Farm Fire and Casualty Company, USAA Casualty Insurance Company, Farmers Insurance Exchange, Standard Fire Insurance Company and McKinsey & Company for alleged violations of the Louisiana Monopolies Act.

The petition, filed in New Orleans Civil District Court, alleges the above companies have participated in an on-going scheme to rig the value of property damage claims paid by insurance companies to their insureds. They allegedly used damage-estimating software programs to engage in horizontal price-fixing as well. The combination allegedly artificially held down property damage claim payouts with the intended goal of increasing the profits of each company involved. When Hurricanes Katrina and Rita struck Louisiana in 2005, virtually all of the property damage insurers were setting premiums and adjusting claims under this alleged scheme.

“This alleged scheme gave insurers an unjust advantage over policy holders, which they used before, during and after one of the greatest disasters this country has ever suffered, by reaping huge profits from the misfortunes of persons whom they pledged to protect from the risk of loss. I believe this unjust advantage resulted in the unjust enrichment of themselves to the detriment of the state, policy holders, and commerce in Louisiana,” stated Attorney General Foti. “But to be clear, these abuses were not new to the recent hurricanes.” General Foti added.

Source: Louisiana Attorney General

Frivolous Lawsuit Myths

Recently one of my oldest and dearest friends, a man whose Harvard Ph.D. doesn't begin to measure his intellect and wisdom, sent out one of those mass e-mails meant to amuse and appall.

"OMG! It's even worse than we thought," his message began. It was followed by something called the annual Stella Awards, a list of the year's seven "most outlandish lawsuits and verdicts in the U.S."

In last place was the tale of Kathleen Robertson of Austin. A jury decided a furniture store owed her $80,000 for a broken ankle she suffered tripping over a toddler running wild in the store.

"The store owners were understandably surprised by the verdict, considering the running toddler was her own son," the e-mail said.

Numbers six through two are more ridiculous. Then comes numero uno.

Ground Beef Products Are Subject of Recall After 2 Reports of Illness

GREEN BAY, Wis., Nov. 25 (AP) — A company voluntarily recalled nearly 96,000 pounds of ground beef products after two people were sickened, possibly by E. coli bacteria, the Food Safety and Inspection Service of the Department of Agriculture said Saturday.

The beef products by the company, American Foods Group of Green Bay, were distributed to retailers and distributors in Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Ohio, Tennessee, Virginia and Wisconsin. The problem surfaced after an investigation by the Illinois Department of Health, which was looking into two reports of illnesses.

The bacteria type is E. coli O157:H7, which is harbored in the intestines of cattle. Improper butchering and processing can cause the bacteria to get onto meat. Thorough cooking, to at least 160 degrees internal temperature, can destroy it.

E. coli O157:H7 is a potentially deadly bacterium that can cause bloody diarrhea and dehydration. The very young, the elderly and people with compromised immune systems are the most susceptible.

Former Allstate Employee Critical of Company Practices

Allstate's claims practices sent injury victims to biased doctors and subjected them to intimidating interviews and invasive medical record requests in an effort to bully them into accepting low-ball offers for their pain and suffering, a former Lexington casualty manager testified Thursday.

Allstate Insurance Co. overhauled the way it handles claims in 1995. The overhaul created a dehumanizing process that boosted profits but denied soft-tissue injury victims in minor wrecks the compensation they are entitled to, former regional casualty manager Debbie Niemer said.

E. Coli and Ground Beef Recall

By TOM HESTER Jr. Associated Press Writer
TRENTON, N.J. Sep 30, 2007 (AP)

The Topps Meat Co. on Saturday expanded its recall of frozen hamburger patties to include 21.7 million pounds of ground beef that may be contaminated with E. coli bacteria that sickened more than a dozen people in eight states.

The recall of products distributed to retail grocery stores and food service institutions in the United States was a drastic increase from the 332,000 pounds recalled Tuesday.

The recall represents all Topps products with either a "sell by date" or a "best if used by date" between Sept. 25 this year and Sept. 25, 2008. The Elizabeth-based company said this information is found on a package's back panel.

All recalled products also have a USDA establishment number of EST 9748, which is located on the back panel of the package and-or in the USDA legend, the company said.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture said Friday it had suspended the grinding of raw products at the Topps plant after inspectors found inadequate safety measures at the Topps plant. The USDA declined to detail the inadequate safety measures.

"Because the health and safety of our consumers is our top priority, we are taking these expansive measures," said Geoffrey Livermore, Topps' operations vice president.

He said Topps has augmented its procedures with microbiologists and food safety experts.

"We sincerely regret any inconvenience and concerns this may cause our consumers," Livermore said.

The USDA said three people are confirmed as getting E. Coli from Topps products, with 22 other cases under investigation. Cases were found in Connecticut, Florida, Indiana, Maine, New Jersey, New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

E. coli causes intestinal illness that generally clears up within a week for adults but can be deadly for the very young, the elderly and people with compromised immune systems. Symptoms can include severe stomach cramps, bloody diarrhea and, in extreme cases, kidney failure.

A full list of the recalled products is available at http://www.toppsmeat.com/.

Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Alleged Defective Cribs - Simplicity sold by Target

Lawsuit filed against crib manufacturers

By Maurice Possley | Tribune staff reporter
September 25, 2007

A Hanover Park woman who purchased a crib from Simplicity Inc. that is part of the largest recall of full-sized cribs ever in the U.S. went to court Monday seeking damages for owners of the cribs.

Amber Spitzer, whose 1-year-old daughter, Briana, had been sleeping in a Simplicity crib, said: "My daughter is my life, and I would do anything to protect her and I know that there are millions of parents out there that feel the same way. So if the government won't protect our children, then I will."

The class-action lawsuit was filed in Minneapolis against Simplicity as well as Target Corp., the company from whom Spitzer bought the Aspen 4 in 1 crib for her daughter in April 2006. Also named as a defendant was Graco Children's Products Inc., the company that licensed its name to Simplicity for some of the cribs that were recalled.

*

Hidden hazards: Deadly cribs
Despite 55 complaints and three deaths, it took years for the government to warn parents about flawed cribs.

What parents should know

MODELS RECALLED
-Simplicity : Aspen 3 in 1, Aspen 4 in 1, Nursery-in-a-Box, Crib N Changer Combo, Chelsea and Pooh 4 in 1
-Simplicity cribs using the Graco logo: Aspen 3 in 1, Ultra 3 in 1, Ultra 4 in 1, Ultra 5 in 1, Whitney and Trio
-Read the government recall notice.

WHAT TO LOOK FOR
-Check whether the drop rail is installed right side up and is securely attached to the tracks in all four corners.
-Check the crib for the recalled hardware, which has a flexible tab at the bottom of the lower tracks and open tops on the lower tracks.
-Do not use the crib before new hardware is installed. Until then, experts urge caregivers not to take children to bed with them; use a portable crib instead.

TO REQUEST A FIX
Simplicity at 888-593-9274 or www.simplicityforchildren.com

Representatives for Simplicity and Graco declined to comment because the lawsuit was just filed. Efforts to reach representatives of Target were unsuccessful.

On Friday, the federal Consumer Product Safety Commission, prompted by a Tribune investigation, issued a recall of 1 million Simplicity cribs, including the Aspen 4 in 1, that were sold from 1998 until May of this year. Three children died, seven were trapped and there were 55 other incidents—all related to a design flaw and hardware failure involving the separation of the cribs' drop rail from their frame. The recall advises consumers to contact Simplicity for a repair kit.

The lawsuit was filed by Charles Kelly, a San Francisco product liability attorney who had represented the family of Liam Johns, a 9-month-old boy who died in April 2005 in Citrus Heights, Calif., in a Simplicity crib.

"The recall is grossly inadequate and irresponsible," Kelly said Monday. "Simplicity should be required to tell consumers to dismantle their crib, and return it for a full refund.

"A retrofit kit only invites disaster," he said. "Only one retrofit kit needs to be used incorrectly and we could have another death. It was improper assembly ... that caused the three deaths in the first instance."

The lawsuit alleges that Simplicity should have warned consumers about the dangers of the cribs or stopped the selling them.

"We contend they should have done something after learning of the injuries and particularly after learning of Liam's death," Kelly said. "They did neither."

Kelly also said he sent letters to members of Congress asking for hearings into why more than two years elapsed after the first death in one of these cribs before the Consumer Product Safety Commission recall was announced Friday.

mpossley@tribune.com

Copyright © 2007, Chicago Tribune

Texan suing over Transplanted Tissue

North Texan files suit over transplanted tissue
By JAN JARVIS
Star-Telegram Staff Writer
A stolen bone fragment was implanted in Jim Livingston's neck during a surgery to relieve the pain of a ruptured disk.
X-RAY COURTESY OF JIM LIVINGSTON
A stolen bone fragment was implanted in Jim Livingston's neck during a surgery to relieve the pain of a ruptured disk.
JIM LIVINGSTON

Jim Livingston never gave much thought to the bone transplanted in his neck until that Sunday afternoon when his doctor called to tell him about the recall.

"Do they want it back?" he asked, half-jokingly.

Quickly it became clear that this was no laughing matter.

Bone allegedly stolen from a corpse had been used in Livingston's neck to relieve the pain of a ruptured disk.

With that bit of news, the 44-year-old Weatherford father joined hundreds of others nationwide who are living with the knowledge that they carry bones and tissue taken illegally from cadavers in what has become a bizarre tale of selling body parts for profit.

The experience has left Livingston, an insurance inspector, yearning for answers. Fed up with wondering what will happen to his wife and three children if he became seriously ill, he filed a lawsuit last month in New York claiming fraud and negligence against the parties involved in the scandal. He is not seeking a specific amount.

"How can you sell parts out of a body, just like parts from a stolen car?" he said.

New York authorities investigating the case believe Biomedical Tissue Services owner Michael Mastromarino started by striking deals with funeral directors to remove body parts from corpses without notifying their families or screening for disease. Then, in a secret room in a Brooklyn funeral home, he removed bones, tendons and heart valves, according to a spokesman for the Kings County district attorney's office in New York. The charges include a Class B felony punishable by up to 25 years in prison.

Mastromarino is accused of doctoring death certificates and forging consent forms, according to the Kings County district attorney's office. Then, investigators believe, he replaced the bones with PVC pipe and sewed the incision so it would not be noticed at the funeral.

From there, the body parts were shipped to processing firms across the country. Once sterilized, they were implanted in patients from early 2004 to September 2005.

Fear of disease

Just how many patients received stolen tissue or bone, no one seems to know.

Tissue from a single human body can be used for more than 100 tissue transplants. A body can bring more than $250,000 for harvesting, according to a spokesman for the Kings County district attorney's office. Although it is illegal to sell body parts, the law allows tissue banks to recover transportation and processing costs.

Livingston's lawyer, John David Hart of Fort Worth, said he knows of no other related lawsuits in Dallas-Fort Worth, though there have been others around the country.

After New York investigators started to unravel the case involving Mastromarino, five tissue processors that received human parts from Biomedical Tissue Services in Brooklyn issued voluntarily recalls. Medtronic, a Minneapolis distributor that received the parts, also issued a voluntary recall.

When Baylor All Saints Medical Center at Fort Worth -- the hospital where Livingston had surgery -- learned of the recall, it immediately pulled the tissue from its stock. Physicians who had implanted the suspect material contacted their patients, said Wendy Walker, a spokeswoman for Baylor Health Care System. Five Baylor patients were notified, she said.

When Livingston found out that the bone used in his Sept. 1, 2005, surgery was from Biomedical Tissue Services, he panicked. Then he got a blood test.

Although there is no evidence of disease, Livingston worries that future tests will bring bad news. It's that fear and the lack of proof that he's not a risk that gnaws at him most.

"Nobody can medically tell you that you don't have anything to worry about," he said. "For all I know, this guy died of bone cancer and I've got his bones."

Medtronic, which is named in Livingston's lawsuit, has said he has nothing to worry about. The company has voluntarily recalled about 16,000 bones nationwide, said Medtronic spokesman Bert Kelly.

"As of this date we have tested 12,000 to 13,000 people, and none have shown up with an infectious disease that is traceable to the recalled tissue," Kelly said. "A few patients have shown up with infectious diseases of some sort, but none have been linked to the tissue in their surgery."

Once someone tests negative for an infectious disease "they should be cleared from here to eternity," Kelly said. An infectious disease cannot survive the sterilization process, he said.

But Livingston, a one-time professional roper on the rodeo circuit who now works for State Farm's Premiere Service Program, said there's no guarantee that he won't get sick years from now.

"It's a situation where I put it on the back burner, but it has just kept eating away at me," he said. "I want to believe that I got nothing to worry about, but it is the kind of thing you think about in the middle of the night and wonder, 'What if?'"

More meaningful oversight of tissue harvesting is needed to protect people such as Livingston, Hart said.

"There has to be some sort of process in place so these companies that obtain donor tissue and bone make sure that the product is safe," he said. "Patient safety is being compromised by an industry's greed and the failure of the government to provide adequate oversight."

Sterilized parts

About 1.5 million pieces of tissue are used in transplants each year, according to the American Association of Tissue Banks. The transplants are used to replace tissue or bones damaged by trauma, tumors and other conditions.

Regulations require consent of the donor's family before the tissue can be removed.

After the tissue is removed, it is disinfected using anti-microbial chemicals, irradiation or both. The process eliminates HIV, hepatitis, bacteria, mold, fungi and spores and removes 99.9 percent of blood, lipids and marrow, according to Regeneration Technologies, a Florida-based processing company that is also named in the lawsuit.

By the time the tissue fragments reach a distributor such as Medtronic, they are hardly recognizable. Bone is crafted into different shapes, some as small as dice. Over time, the transplant fuses with natural bone to form a solid piece.

Knowing that the bone he received went through a sterilization process is of little comfort to Livingston. He tried to trace the donor but was blocked by privacy laws.

Now he worries about getting HIV, hepatitis, even mad cow disease.

"My biggest concern is, nobody really knows," he said. "And there's a part of me that really does want to give that bone back."

Medtronic

After recalling the bone used in orthopedic procedures, the company set up a hot line to respond to patients' concerns.

Call the toll-free hot line at 866-825-6158

A nurse is available to answer questions from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Mondays through Thursdays.

For more information go to www.medtronicspinal.com

Timeline

1993 -- FDA begins regulating human tissue for transplantation.

2000 -- Former oral surgeon Michael Mastromarino and embalmer Joseph Nicelli enter into an agreement to open Biomedical Tissue Services.

Early 2004 to September 2005 -- Questionable tissue implanted in thousands of patients nationwide.

October 2005 -- The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the FDA recommend that recipients of tissue recovered by Biomedical Tissue Services be tested for HIV, hepatitis B, hepatitis C and syphilis. Five processors issue a voluntary recall, including the Austin-based Blood and Tissue Center of Central Texas.

January 2006 -- FDA orders Biomedical Tissue Services to cease manufacturing and retain existing inventory of human cells, tissue and products.

February 2006 -- Mastromarino, Nicelli and two others are charged in a 122-count criminal indictment. They are accused of orchestrating a large-scale enterprise in which tissue was harvested from dead people and sold for use in surgery. Charges including corruption, a Class B felony punishable by up to 25 years in prison. Mastromarino is free on $150,000 bail.

October 2006 -- Indictment is expanded to include criminal operations in Rochester, the Bronx and Manhattan. It charges that three additional funeral homes provided corpses. Seven licensed funeral home directors have pleaded guilty and have agreed to cooperate in the ongoing investigation.

Source: Kings County district attorney's office

Safe tissue transplants

There have been more than 10 million tissue transplants in the past two decades.

The last reported case of disease transmission in a tissue recipient was in 2002.

There have been no transmissions of Chagas' disease, rabies or West Nile virus from tissue transplants.

The only reported cases of tuberculosis and hepatitis B in tissue recipients occurred more than 50 years ago.

The only reported transmission of HIV occurred 20 years ago, before more sensitive testing was required.

A few hepatitis C cases were transmitted in the early 1990s.

Source: American Association of Tissue Banks

Alistair Cooke

Alistair Cooke, the dignified British broadcaster who hosted the PBS series Masterpiece Theater for 22 seasons, wanted to be cremated.

Most of him was.

Cooke's body -- along with hundreds of others taken from funeral homes -- was cut up and his bones illegally harvested. The stolen tissue and bones were then sold to processors for a profit and eventually ended up in patients throughout the country, according to the district attorney's office in Kings County, New York.

Cooke's face is perhaps the most famous in this body-snatching story, but many families have learned that their loved ones' body parts were sold. Others have been on the other side of this story and learned that they received those illegally harvested parts.

Susan Cooke Kittredge -- who wrote about the loss in a New York Times editorial -- learned what happened to her father's bones 10 days before Christmas in 2005. His family had never agreed to donate his bones.

Cooke died from lung cancer that had spread to his bones; he was frail and 95 years old. Using cancerous bone for transplantation is a Food and Drug Administration violation, as is using bone from the elderly. But New York investigators told Kittredge that the people who stole her father's bones changed his age to 85 and the cause of death to a heart attack in their paperwork.

Source: The Associated Press

Boy hit by falling TV gets $19 million

Boy hit by falling TV gets $19 million
Archdiocese liable in 4th grader's case

By Michael Higgins | Tribune staff reporter
September 25, 2007

A Cook County jury awarded $19 million Monday to a 13-year-old boy who suffered severe brain injuries in 2003 when a television fell on him at a private school on Chicago's Northwest Side.

Mariano Hernandez was a 9-year-old student at St. Genevieve School, which is run by the Archdiocese of Chicago, when the incident occurred.

Mariano's class was preparing to watch a videotape on Oct. 30, 2003, when he tried to help move a 27-inch television bolted high up in a stand on wheels, said the family's lawyer, Stephen Passen of Chicago.

"The whole thing came right down on him," Passen said Monday. "It was unstable. ... It should never have been in an environment with kids."

Archdiocese officials admitted liability in the case, and there was a two-week trial before a jury and Cook County Circuit Judge Thomas Flanagan to determine damages.

"This was an accident," archdiocese spokeswoman Susan Burritt said Monday. "Certainly, the archdiocese has been primarily concerned for the future of this young person."

The award included $7.1 million for future expenses, $5 million for "loss of a normal life," $2.4 million for lost earnings, $2 million for disfigurement, $2 million for pain and suffering, and $518,000 for medical expenses.

Archdiocese officials had not decided whether to appeal the damage award, Burritt said.

Mariano's parents -- Carlos Hernandez and Sandra Yanez -- filed the lawsuit on his behalf in 2003. The money cannot be spent without court approval, Passen said.

Mariano was in 4th grade and working at that grade level before he was hurt, Passen said. He said the boy now is in the 8th grade, takes special education classes and works at a 3rd-grade level.

Mariano also walks with a limp and has problems using his left arm and hand, Passen said.

The suit faulted the school's equipment, not the performance of any teacher, Passen said.

----------

Crocs & Escalators Don't Mix

Got Crocs? Be Careful on the Escalator
By SARAH KARUSH
Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON — At rail stations and shopping malls around the world, reports are popping up of people, particularly young children, getting their toes caught in escalators. The one common theme seems to be the clunky soft-soled clogs known by the name of the most popular brand, Crocs.

One of the nation's largest subway systems — the Washington Metro — has even posted ads warning riders about wearing such shoes on its moving stairways. The ads feature a photo of a crocodile, though they don't mention Crocs by name.

At her home in Vienna, Va., on Friday, Sept. 7, 2007, Jodi McDermott demonstrates how her son's Croc shoe twisted after being caught in an escalator on August 30, 2007. Crocs and other soft-soled shoes, such as flip-flops, can be prone to escalator entrapment.

Four-year-old Rory McDermott got a Croc-clad foot caught in an escalator last month at a mall in northern Virginia. His mother managed to yank him free, but the nail on his big toe was almost completely ripped off, causing heavy bleeding.

At first, Rory's mother had no idea what caused the boy's foot to get caught. It was only later, when someone at the hospital remarked on Rory's shoes, that she began to suspect the Crocs and did an Internet search.

"I came home and typed in 'Croc' and 'escalator,' and all these stories came up," said Jodi McDermott, of Vienna, Va. "If I had known, those would never have been worn."

According to reports appearing across the United States and as far away as Singapore and Japan, entrapments occur because of two of the biggest selling points of shoes like Crocs: their flexibility and grip. Some report the shoes get caught in the "teeth" at the bottom or top of the escalator, or in the crack between the steps and the side of the escalator.

The reports of serious injuries have all involved young children. Crocs are commonly worn by children as young as 2. The company introduced shoes in its smallest size, 4/5, this past spring.

"Thankfully, escalator accidents like the one in Virginia are rare," the company said in a statement.

In Japan, the government warned consumers last week that it has received 39 reports of sandals — mostly Crocs or similar products — getting stuck in escalators from late August through early September. Most of the reports appear to have involved small children, some as young as two years old.

Kazuo Motoya of Japan's National Institute of Technology and Evaluation said children may have more escalator accidents in part because they "bounce around when they stand on escalators, instead of watching where they place their feet."

In Singapore, a 2-year-old girl wearing rubber clogs — it's unclear what brand — had her big toe completely ripped off in an escalator accident last year, according to local media reports.

And at the Atlanta airport, a 3-year-old boy wearing Crocs suffered a deep gash across the top of his toes in June. That was one of seven shoe entrapments at the airport since May 1, and all but two of them involved Crocs, said Roy Springer, operations manager for the company that runs the airport terminal.

One U.S. retailer that caters to children, Mattel subsidiary American Girl, has posted signs in three locations directing customers wearing Crocs or flip-flop sandals to use elevators instead of escalators.

During the past two years, so-called "shoe entrapments" in the Washington subway have gone from being relatively rare to happening four or five times a week in the summer, though none has caused serious injuries, said Dave Lacosse, who oversees the subway's 588 escalators, the most of any U.S. transit system.

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission said escalator accidents caused more than 10,000 injuries last year, but the agency has few records of specific shoe problems. Only two shoe entrapments have been reported by consumers since the beginning of 2006. One reported in May involved "rubber footwear."

Agency spokesman Ed Kang urged people who have had problems to report them on the commission's Web site.

Crocs officials said they were working with the Elevator Escalator Safety Foundation on public education initiatives. But the group's executive director, Barbara Allen, said that's not true.

Allen said a Crocs official called her in September 2006 about possible cooperation, even suggesting the company might put a tag in its shoes with the foundation's Web address. But since that first contact, Crocs has not called, and nobody from the company will return Allen's calls, she said.

Washington Metro's Lacosse and other escalator experts say the best way to prevent shoe entrapments is to face the direction the stairs are moving, keep feet away from the sides and step over the teeth at the end.

Lacosse, of the Washington subway system, said he is personally skittish of Crocs and other soft-soled shoes.

"Would I wear them? No," he said. "And I tell my children not to wear them either."

___

Associated Press Writer Carl Freire in Tokyo contributed to this report.

Profit Before Safety & Tort Reform

Corporations put profit before safety
Clearly, dangerous goods are slipping past the safety standards set up by government agencies.

By JAY COOK
Published on: 09/18/07

First it was Vioxx. Then it was poisonous pet food. Now it's toxic toys and chemically enhanced popcorn. Last year alone, unsafe products killed more than 8,000 Americans and sent millions more to emergency rooms. But let's not lay the blame on the crippled regulatory agencies or the Chinese.

For once, let's lay the blame where it really belongs: on the doorstep of those megacorporations that cut corners and break rules to gain unfair advantage over American businesses, big and small, that don't.

Recently, The Wall Street Journal reported that Mattel, which has recalled more than 20 million dangerous toys this summer alone, has delayed reporting product defects because it finds the reporting rules "unreasonable." According to The New York Times, the Consumer Product Safety Commission has fined Mattel twice for such delays since 2001.

The commission collects millions of dollars in penalties every year from U.S. companies that import or sell products that violate mandatory safety standards, fail to report potential hazards and fail to report lawsuits and settlements for product-related injuries.

And those are just the ones that get caught.

Clearly, dangerous goods are slipping past the safety standards set by the many regulatory government agencies that are supposed to be protecting us, including the Food and Drug Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency.

Last year, Dr. David Graham, the senior FDA drug safety researcher who blew the whistle on dangers of the pain-killer Vioxx, told the Senate Finance Committee that "the FDA is incapable of protecting America from unsafe drugs or from another Vioxx."

Now we're learning that the EPA has been suppressing a report on the possible dangers of a chemical used in microwave popcorn. Copies of the report were provided to popcorn producers last July, but kept secret from the public.

But even with potent regulatory enforcement, Americans injured by defective products have only one place to turn for a remedy: our court system. But that, too, is being neutered by the same forces that are muzzling our watchdogs. A multimillion-dollar propaganda machine has convinced many of us (and our elected officials) that tethering our tort system will improve the economy.

It may be just the opposite. A briefing paper published last year by the Economic Policy Institute concluded: "The costs of the tort system have been grossly exaggerated, and its supposed impact on job creation, research and development, productivity, and profits has been exaggerated or simply invented. With respect to job creation in particular, significant tort law change would be more likely to slow employment growth than to promote it."

But the so-called "tort reform" movement marches on in perfect step with government deregulation. We've watched state after state weaken the ability of citizens to seek redress in the courts.

Access to justice for "the little guy" is the real target of these "reforms"— not the "problems" they've trumped up to trick us into giving them what they really want: damage controls that take the teeth out of our juries and the bite out of compensating the victims of their corner-cutting.

Tort law is a small but important facet of our civil justice system. We call it a tort when somebody acts unreasonably and harms another person's body, property, legal rights or reputation. You can't call the police when somebody commits a tort, but you can file a suit in the civil courts to seek an appropriate legal remedy.

The rules of our tort system are roughly the same common-sense principles we all learned as kids: Everybody should play fair. The one who broke the rules of fair play should pay for the damage they caused.

Our Founding Fathers understood that we needed these systems in place to make us safe and regulate the practices of fair play.

Let's cut to the chase: There's nothing wrong with making an honest buck. America was built on hard work and free enterprise. There's nothing wrong with wanting higher profits. The American Dream still lives or dies in the profit margin.

But there is something wrong when profit-making turns into corner-cutting that puts public safety in peril. And there is definitely something wrong when some conscienceless megacorporations engage in "remedy rigging": gaming the system so that even when they cheat and get caught, they get no more than a gentle slap on the hand.

Why Lead Paint in Toys? It's Cheaper.

SHANGHAI, Sept. 7 — When Mattel, the world’s largest toy maker, announced its third recall in six weeks this month, the company asked consumers to return toys because they contained dangerously high levels of lead paint.

Toxic paint also turned up in several other products Mattel recalled in recent weeks, and in about 16 other recalls this year, including the popular Thomas & Friends train sets, according to the United States Consumer Product Safety Commission.

All the products were made in China.

Why is lead paint — or lead, for that matter — turning up in so many recalls involving Chinese-made goods?

The simplest answer, experts and toy companies in China say, is price. Paint with higher levels of lead often sells for a third of the cost of paint with low levels. So Chinese factory owners, trying to eke out profits in an intensely competitive and poorly regulated market, sometimes cut corners and use the cheaper leaded paint.

On the books, China’s paint standards are stricter than those in the United States, requiring that paint intended for household or consumer-product use contain no more than 90 parts of lead per million. By comparison, American regulations allow up to 600 parts per million.

The regulations are supposed to safeguard health, particularly in cases involving children, where ingesting excessive amounts of lead has been linked to disorders including mental retardation and behavioral problems.

But enforcement of the regulations in China is lax.

“The standard doesn’t matter,” said Scott Clark, a professor of environmental health at the University of Cincinnati. “Remember, in the Soviet Union during the cold war, they had very high standards on the books, but they never enforced them. It was just for show.”

Dr. Clark and a team of investigators sampled paint supplies in Shanghai and other parts of China in recent years, and in some 26 percent of the cases, they said, the paint met neither American nor Chinese standards.

Even goods at high-end shopping malls in Shanghai contained unacceptable levels of lead.

But Mr. Clark said that China was not alone in producing such tainted goods. “We also looked at India, Malaysia and Singapore,” he said, “and only Singapore met the requirements.”

The General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine in China — which has some oversight authority over paint regulation — did not respond to questions about the prevalence of lead paint and about the inspection regimen.

But some Chinese toy makers were more forthcoming. They acknowledged that they use paint with high levels of lead; others said they knew of other companies that did — sometimes because lead paint is cheaper, sometimes because it is easier to apply to hard surfaces and to produce richer color.

Ms. Zhang, a sales manager at Big Tree Toys, a company in Shantou in southern China, who did not want her first name used, said leaded paint was about 30 percent cheaper than paint without lead. She noted that some countries, in the Middle East, for instance, did not restrict lead content.

But Ms. Zhang insisted that if her company used leaded paint, it disclosed that.

“It depends on the client’s requirement,” she said. “If the prices they offer make it impossible to use lead-free paint, we’ll tell them that we might have to use leaded paint. If they agree, we’ll use leaded paint. It totally depends on what the clients want.”

Chen Tao, sales manager at the Chenghai Guangxin Plastic Toys Factory, also in Shantou, said his plant did not use lead paint at all. But he added that Chinese regulators were essentially absent.

“There is a national standard on the lead level in toys,” he said. “But no one really enforces it. Factories can pick whatever paint they want.”

Another problem is the abundant supply of industrial paint in China, used on buildings, bridges and cars as well as sidewalks and other outdoor surfaces.

Several paint companies said the government had no formal standard on lead in industrial paint.

As a result, a lot of cheap industrial paint may be finding its way into toy factories and even households.

While the United States still allows paint with higher levels of lead to be used outdoors and in many industrial settings, paint with high lead content is slowly being phased out of even industrial use, experts say, partly because it can pose dangers to work crews who apply or remove it.

Lead paint is not the only problem in China. Lead is increasingly turning up in children’s jewelry, for instance.

Overweight Trucks

By April Castro
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Tuesday, September 11, 2007

More than a half-million overweight trucks are allowed onto the nation's roads and bridges, an increasingly routine practice that some officials say is putting dangerous wear and tear on an already groaning infrastructure.

Some experts warned that the practice of issuing state permits that allow trucks to exceed the usual weight limits can weaken steel and concrete, something that investigators say might have contributed to the Minneapolis bridge collapse Aug. 1 that killed 13 people.

"We talk about this all the time, and the fear that we have is that we're going to have the same sort of disaster here that happened in Minnesota," said Don Lee, executive director of the Texas Conference of Urban Counties.

The weight limit for nearly all interstate highways is 40 tons. According to a government study, one 40-ton truck does as much damage to the road as 9,600 cars.

But permits frequently allow vehicles to exceed that amount by 2 tons in Texas and sometimes by as much as 85 tons in Nevada. Some states grant one-time permits that allow trucks to be considerably heavier.

Around the country, many transportation officials dismiss such fears as overblown and say roads and bridges are safe, though some express concern that not enough money is being spent to repair the damage done by the extra-heavy trucks.

As for why they issue overweight-load permits, many state officials said they have no choice because they are simply carrying out the laws passed by their legislatures.

Critics of those laws say they are often written to benefit powerful local industries, such as logging in the West or oil and gas in Texas.

In the vast majority of cases, a single truck can safely pass over a sound bridge, even if the rig is way over the posted weight limit. But the cumulative effect of stress on the steel and concrete can eventually prove deadly.

In 2000, Milwaukee's Hoan Bridge collapsed when steel girders cracked. Several factors were blamed for the collapse, including a significant number of heavy trucks, some over the normal weight limit, that routinely traveled over the bridge.

Many states charge fees ranging from $12 to $1,000 for overweight-load permits, depending on the weight of the load. Those fees are supposed to offset the damage done to the highways.

Texas granted nearly 39,000 such permits in the past year, generating $7.5 million, most of which was divided among the state's 254 counties for road maintenance.

"That in no way even comes close to covering the wear and tear on our roads and bridges in this state," said Chris Lippincott, a spokesman for the Texas Department of Transportation.

Darrin Roth, director of highway operations at the American Trucking Association, said it is not fair to put all the blame on trucks because permit loads are a tiny proportion of total traffic.

Ruling Provides Access to Information on Doctors

Ruling may unlock key data on doctors
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An order to release Medicare files might help patients choose physicians. Medical experts say the records don't tell the whole story.
By Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
August 30, 2007
WASHINGTON -- Whether it's a hernia repair or heart bypass, doctors with a lot of experience performing a given operation tend to have better results. The problem for patients in choosing a physician has been finding out which ones have the know-how.

Now a court ruling appears to open the way for consumer access to such information for the first time, potentially transforming the relationship between doctors and patients, as well as the business of healthcare.

In a little-noticed decision last week, a federal judge in Washington, D.C., ruled in favor of a consumer group that sued the Health and Human Services Department to allow disclosure of specific data about doctors from the Medicare claims database.

U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan concluded that releasing the data would be "a significant public benefit," and ordered the department to turn it over by Sept. 21.

With information on more than 40 million patients and 700,000 doctors, the Medicare database is far richer than any private insurer's. Though it does not have information on some doctors, such as pediatricians, who don't treat Medicare patients, it is considered the mother lode for data on those who treat adults, because Medicare recipients are a mainstay of most practices.

The database's usefulness has been limited by a decades-old government policy that protects the privacy of doctors, who fear the information could be used to micromanage the practice of medicine. But as the cost of medical care has skyrocketed, employers, insurers and consumer groups have pressured the government to open up Medicare's files on individual doctors.

Those files could reveal far more than how many times a year a surgeon performs a hip replacement operation. The data could also be analyzed to determine how a doctor makes crucial decisions on tests and procedures that determine both quality and costs. They would show which doctors fail to order prudent preventive tests. And they could indicate which ones order duplicative tests or unnecessary hospitalizations.

"These data will make it possible to develop measures that will be very helpful to consumers," said Robert Krughoff, president of Consumers' Checkbook, the nonprofit group that sued for the information.

"Someone who is thinking they need a knee replacement -- or a prostatectomy -- will be able to go on our website and see how many of these procedures their physician has done for Medicare patients," he added.

His organization -- which compiles ratings of a wide range of service providers -- sells its information to individual subscribers. But Krughoff said it intended to make the Medicare data available free of charge.

The lawsuit did not seek any identifying information on patients.

Some business groups said the ruling could be a turning point in the quest for the elusive balance between costs and quality, setting a precedent for the release of more detailed data.

"We're very excited that the court has ruled in this direction," said Helen Darling, president of the National Business Group on Health, which represents big companies. "Large employers have been trying to make information available on performance to consumers and to those who make purchasing decisions on which providers might be in a preferred network."

The Department of Health and Human Services has not decided whether to appeal the ruling. "We're in the process of reviewing the court's decision and evaluating our response," spokeswoman Christina Pearson said.

An appeal could be politically embarrassing for the administration, because President Bush and Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt have both campaigned for greater openness and consumer empowerment in healthcare.

"Not supporting this ruling would certainly be inconsistent with administration initiatives that favor price and quality transparency in healthcare," said Paul Ginsburg, president of the Center for Studying Health System Change, a research group. "This represents transparency on the quality side."

Moreover, support for opening up the Medicare database is building in Congress. Two unlikely allies, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.), a conservative budget hawk, introduced legislation in June to make the data available to research organizations around the country. Under current policies, researchers who use Medicare information cannot identify individual doctors.

In the past, the American Medical Assn. has voiced strong reservations about releasing the Medicare files. Spokeswoman Katherine Hatwell said the organization was closely reviewing the ruling and its implications.

Doctors are worried that Medicare files do not account for the severity of the cases that individual physicians may handle. Medicare files might show a higher-than-average number of patient deaths for a particular doctor's office. But that could be because the physician takes on the sickest patients.

As for the issue of how frequently doctors perform a given medical procedure, they point out there's a first time for every physician.

"Physicians are concerned that they will look bad, not because of their own shortcomings, but because their patients are difficult," Ginsburg said. "There are issues about using this type of information responsibly, and not using it unless you can do some significant adjustment for the difference in patients."

Krughoff acknowledges that such issues will have to be resolved as the use of the Medicare data becomes more sophisticated.

In the lawsuit, Consumers' Checkbook sought access to data on procedures performed by doctors in Washington, D.C., Illinois, Maryland, Virginia and Washington state. But Krughoff said the group has filed a Freedom of Information Act request for the same information from the remaining states.

"I think there's no question but that the judge's decision settles the matter," he said. "They'll have to give us all 50 states."

He estimated it would take a month or two after receiving the information to post it online.

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