Dallas Fort Worth Injury Lawyer Blog

The Vatican is launching a legal defense that it hopes will shield the pope from a lawsuit in Kentucky seeking to have him answer attorneys' questions under oath.

Court documents obtained by The Associated Press show that Vatican lawyers plan to argue that the pope has immunity as head of state, that American bishops who oversaw abusive priests weren't employees of the Vatican, and that a 1962 document is not the ''smoking gun'' that provides proof of a cover-up.

Read the full New York Times story here.

Continue reading " Vatican Fights Kentucky Sex Abuse Case. " »

Debbie Stockton didn't know her obstetrician was a drug addict when her son William was born in 1989 with extensive nerve damage to his left arm.

But when the boy grew into a teenager and his atrophied arm didn't improve, Stockton sought legal advice and learned that Dr. Howard Offenbach had checked himself into a drug treatment center within a week of William's birth to kick a years-long Valium and hydrocodone habit.

So in 2007, Stockton sued, claiming that Offenbach caused William's injury by failing to order emergency surgery when the boy's shoulder became pinned beneath his mother's pubic bone during a difficult delivery.

Read the full story here.

Continue reading " Texas Supreme Court to Hear Malpractice Suit Against Missing Doctor " »

The American Journal of Gastroenterology, in a study published on March 30, 2010 stated that the use of isotretinoin, Accutane, was linked to the development of ulcerative colitis.

The study included 8,189 patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and 21,832 controls. Of the patients with IBD, which includes Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis, 3,664 had Crohn's disease, 4,428 had ulcerative colitis and 97 had an unspecified IBD condition. Sixty study participants were exposed to isotretinoin.

Read the article here at the American Journal Of Gastroenterology.

Continue reading " New Study Finds That Isotretinoin, Accutane Use Linked To Ulcerative Colitis " »

A Suffolk County jury found a Randolph doctor was negligent in the death of a college basketball player and awarded more than $2 million to the parents of Antwoine Key, who died in 2005 during a game in Worcester.

Dr. Dorina R. Abdulah had examined Key, a 22 year-old student in 2001 in order to decide whether he was medically eligible to play college sports.

After his death, an autopsy found Key had died of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, a heart condition that often affects athletes.

Read full story here.

Continue reading " Jury Finds Doctor Negligent in Death of Basketball Player " »

The scandal involving the Catholic Church and sex abuse by priests has been going on for years and years. But the saga ramped up decidedly in the past week, when the New York Times reported on a trove of documents supplied by Jeff Anderson, a St. Paul, Minn., lawyer who’s filed thousands of suits against the church in recent years.

Read full story here.

Continue reading " The Minnesota Attorney Taking on the Vatican " »

A panel of federal judges in San Diego, California is expected to rule on whether to consolidate a large number of lawsuits filed nationwide against Toyota.

Toyota has been inundated with lawsuits due to safety concerns that have led to the recall of more than eight-and-a-half million vehicles worldwide. Federal judges in California will hear arguments on whether to consolidate more than one hundred lawsuits claiming Toyota is responsible for economic losses suffered by Toyota owners.

A panel of seven judges will deliver a ruling on the proposed consolidation in April.

Continue reading " Massive Legal Battle Shaping Up Against Toyota " »

More than 100 deaths have now been blamed on sudden acceleration of Toyota Motor Corp. vehicles, nearly twice the number that had been reported two months ago, according to a Times review of public records.

With a recent surge of complaints to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration factored in, sudden acceleration has been raised as a possible cause of crashes involving Toyota vehicles that led to 102 deaths, according to NHTSA records, lawsuits and police reports.

Read the full story here at the Los Angeles Times

Continue reading " Toyota Blamed For More Wrongful Deaths And Car Crashes " »

Bayer AG, Germany’s largest drugmaker, was accused in a lawsuit of ignoring health risks of the contraceptive Yaz and advertising the drug as safe to boost sales.

The Yasmin family of birth-control pills, known as Yaz and Yasmin, carries a four times increased risk of deep vein thrombosis and pulmonary embolism compared with other contraceptives, according to the suit, filed in St. Catharines, Ontario, by two women. They seek class-action, or group, status to represent all women who used the drugs.

Read the full Bloomberg story here.

Continue reading " Bayer Accused in Canadian Lawsuit of Hiding Yaz Risks " »

FORT WORTH - Tarrant County and the County Hospital District has settled a lawsuit with the mother of a man who died while in the county jail for $30,000, according to county officials.

Tarrant County Commissioners voted 4-0 to pay $15,000 to Brenda Smith, the mother of Santana Smith, a 34-year-old Fort Worth construction worker who died on October 26, 2007 while an inmate in the Tarrant County Jail.

The hospital district, also known as JPS Health Network, also agreed to pay $15,000 to settle the case.

Read the full story here at the Fort Worth Star Telegram

Continue reading " Tarrant County Settles Lawsuit Over Inmate's Wrongful Death " »

Another lawsuit has been filed against Bayer by a California woman who suffered gallbladder disease after using Yasmin, alleging that the drug maker knew the birth control pill carried unacceptable health risk but released it any way.

The Yasmin gallbladder lawsuit was filed in San Mateo County Superior Court by Louise Thanos.

The case is one of about 1,100 Yaz and Yasmin lawsuits filed on behalf of individual women who allege that they suffered injuries as a side effect of the birth control pills. In addition to lawsuits for gallbladder problems, cases have been filed by women who allege the pills caused them to suffer blood-clot related injuries, such as a stroke, heart attack, pulmonary embolism or deep vein thrombosis.

Continue reading " Yasmin Gallbladder Disease Lawsuit Filed Against Bayer " »

A dentist has been ordered by a jury to pay a woman $1.5 million for giving her a sexually transmitted disease (STD).

According to the complaint, Alan Evans, an Iowa dentist, did not tell the plaintiff, Karly Rossiter to take precautions so that he did not infect her with the human papillomavirus, or HPV.

The court documents indicated that Evans told Rossiter that he did not have any STD’s, The two engaged in sexual activity and one year later Rossiter had an abnormal pap smear.

Continue reading " Iowa Dentist Ordered to Pay $1.5 M for Transmitting STD " »

Since the start of the recession, a growing number of sexual harassment complaints have come from men. Some 16.4% of all sexual harassment claims—or 2,094 claims—were filed by men in fiscal 2009, up from 15.4%, or 1,869 claims, in fiscal 2006, according to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

While male victims sometimes experience behavior like groping and unwanted sexual advances, employment lawyers say increasingly "locker room" type behavior like vulgar talk and horseplay with sexual connotations have been the subject of claims.

Read full story here at the Wall Street Journal

Continue reading " More Men Make Sexual Harassment Claims " »

A former Arena Football League player filed a lawsuit alleging that a team doctor mistreated his concussions two years ago, resulting in permanent injury.

The lawsuit, filed in state court in Denver, is perhaps the first in which a professional football player has claimed malpractice with regard to concussion care since football head injuries gained national prominence three years ago.

Read full story here at the New York Times.

Continue reading " Medical Malpractice Lawsuit Filed in Mishandling of Football Concussions " »

AstraZeneca Plc officials properly warned a patient’s doctors about the diabetes risk posed by its Seroquel antipsychotic drug, a jury ruled in the first case over the medicine to go to trial.

The state court panel in New Brunswick, New Jersey, deliberated before finding the company’s warnings to Ted Baker’s doctors absolved AstraZeneca of responsibility for his injuries. Baker, 61, took Seroquel for lingering effects of post-traumatic stress syndrome caused by his military service in Vietnam. His was the first of about 26,000 claims over the drug to be considered by jurors.

Read the full story here at Bloomberg News

Continue reading " AstraZeneca Wins Trial on Seroquel Diabetes Claim " »

Federal regulators in 2007 asked Toyota Motor Corp. to consider installing software to prevent sudden acceleration in its vehicles after receiving complaints that vehicles could race out of control, company documents show.

Yet the automaker began installing the safety feature, known as brake override, only this January after a widely publicized accident involving a runaway Lexus ES that killed four people near San Diego.

Read the full story here.

Continue reading " Toyota was asked in 2007 to consider installing software to prevent sudden acceleration " »

A Seattle couple have sued Toyota in federal court, demanding that the company either take back the vehicle they just bought or reimburse them for its loss in value since the automaker's sudden-acceleration troubles became news.

The lawsuit alleges that the issues plaguing Toyota violate the state's Consumer Protection Act and amount to a breach of contract. The lawsuit is a proposed class action and, if certified by a federal judge, could apply to other Toyota owners in Washington with similar issues.

It claims more than 100 class members exist in Washington and that the damages in question will exceed $5 million.

Read full story here.

Continue reading " Seattle Couple Sue Toyota Over Vehicle's Lost Value " »

The Texas Supreme Court threw out a $15.8 million verdict, ruling unanimously that lawyers improperly introduced evidence that a gravel truck driver involved in a 2002 accident that killed four members of a Wise County family was an illegal immigrant.

By repeatedly mentioning the truck driver's immigration status, lawyers for the Hughes family clearly sought to inflame jurors' passions against the driver and his employer, TXI Transportation Co., the court ruled.

Read full story here.

Continue reading " Texas Supreme Court Tosses $15.8 M Verdict in Case Involving Illegal Immigrant " »

The Texas Supreme Court said that a San Antonio woman could not sue her doctor over a surgical sponge left inside her body because she waited too long to file suit even though she could not have discovered the problem any sooner.

The court ruled 9-0 that the patient, Emmalene Rankin, ran afoul of the statute of repose, a tort reform law enacted in 2003 that strictly bans any medical malpractice lawsuit filed more than 10 years after surgery.

Read full story here.

Continue reading " Court says different deadlines apply to surgical sponge lawsuits " »

In a further blow to the antivaccine movement, three judges ruled Friday in three separate cases that thimerosal, a preservative containing mercury, does not cause autism.

The three rulings are the second step in the Omnibus Autism Proceeding begun in 2002 in the United States Court of Federal Claims. The proceeding combines the cases of 5,000 families with autistic children seeking compensation from the federal vaccine injury fund, which comes from a 75-cent tax on every dose of vaccine.

Read the full story here at the NY Times

Continue reading " 3 Rulings Find No Link to Vaccines and Autism " »

Tatum and Charlene Hernandez built their dream house in Mandeville in 2006, but their home has been their nightmare ever since they realized last year that it's filled with problem drywall from China.

The air-conditioning and other appliances keep failing. Charlene Hernandez, a labor and delivery nurse at Oschner, gets bad headaches she never used to have. Their children, Grant, 4, and Amelia, 2, seem prone to respiratory issues.

Read the full story here.

Continue reading " Chinese Drywall Case Gets Under Way in New Orleans " »

Toyota owners claiming that massive safety recalls are causing the value of their vehicles to plummet have filed at least 89 class-action lawsuits that could cost the Japanese auto giant $3 billion or more, according to an Associated Press review of cases, legal precedent and interviews with experts.

Those estimates do not include potential payouts for wrongful death and injury lawsuits, which could reach in the tens of millions each. Still, the sheer volume of cases involving U.S. Toyota owners claiming lost value -- 6 million or more -- could prove far more costly, adding up to losses in the billions for the automaker.

Read the full New York story here.

Continue reading " Class-Action Lawsuits Could Cost Toyota $3B-Plus " »

An Oregon girl whose truck-driver father accidentally ran her over with his big rig has won $24.3 million in damages from the Portland company that a Sacramento judge found legally responsible for her injuries.

In a court-trial decision returned Dec. 14, Judge David W. Abbott said the firm that hired Simon Loza Mejia, Freeway Transport Inc., was liable for the girl's injuries.

"Defendant was listed on the shipper's bill of lading as the carrier," Abbott wrote. "Defendant insured the load. Defendant guaranteed delivery of the load."

Read full story here at the Sacramento Bee.

Continue reading " Sacramento Jury Awards Over $24 M to Girl Run Over by Truck " »

The city of Los Angeles paid $7 million to settle a lawsuit brought by a volunteer for the Los Angeles Triathlon, who was left a paraplegic by an accident during the event in 2007, according to his attorney.

Steve Albala, who was 60 at the time of the accident, was on his motorcycle helping to officiate the bicycle portion of the triathlon. A traffic officer motioned for a vehicle to enter an intersection into the volunteer's path, causing the accident, Albala's attorney contended in the lawsuit.

Read the full story here at the LA Times.

Continue reading " L.A. Settles Accident Lawsuit for $7 M " »

The family of a bicyclist killed last year in a collision with a truck in Baltimore has filed a $5 million wrongful-death lawsuit against the driver and his employer.

On Aug. 4, John R. "Jack" Yates, 67, was riding his bike behind a truck when he became caught in the vehicle's rear wheels and was run over as it turned right, police said at the time. Yates died at the scene.

The civil suit, filed in Baltimore Circuit Court on behalf of Yates' wife, son and daughter, alleges negligence by driver Michael Dale Chandler of Severn and his employer, Potts & Callahan Inc., a demolition, excavation and equipment rental company, and seeks compensatory damages.

Read full story here at the Baltimore Sun.

Continue reading " Family of Cyclist Killed in Accident Files $5 M Lawsuit " »

Some of the nation’s leading orthopedic surgeons have reduced or stopped use of a popular category of artificial hips amid concerns that the devices are causing severe tissue and bone damage in some patients, often requiring replacement surgery within a year or two.

In recent years, such devices, known as “metal on metal” implants, have been used in about one-third of the approximately 250,000 hip replacements performed annually in this country. They are used in conventional hip replacements and in a popular alternative procedure known as resurfacing.

The devices, whose ball-and-socket joints are made from metals like cobalt and chromium, became widely used in the belief that they would be more durable than previous types of implants.

Read full story here at the New York Times

Continue reading " Concerns Voiced Over ‘Metal on Metal’ Hip Implants " »

On October 7, 2006, Steven Butler, by his own admission, was drunk and disorderly. He refused an order from a police officer in his hometown to get off a city bus. The officer used his Taser ECD (officially, an "Electronic Control Device") three times.

According to doctors, Butler suffered immediate cardiac arrest. He was revived by emergency medical technicians who happened to be close by, but his attorneys say his brain was deprived of oxygen for as long as 18 minutes. He is now permanently disabled.

Read the full CNN story here.

Continue reading " Tasers Under Investigation After Claims of Death and Injury " »

Since its November 5-6 meeting, the Texas Medical Board has taken disciplinary action against 70 licensed physicians.

The actions included one temporary suspension; 21 violations based on quality of care; five actions based on unprofessional conduct; four nontherapeutic prescribing violations; 17 actions based on inadequate medical records violations; one action based on failure to properly supervise or delegate; two actions based on violation of probation or prior order; two revocations and one action for impairment due to alcohol or drugs; one order modifying a prior order; four actions based on actions by another state or entity; seven voluntary surrenders; one action for failure to provide medical records; and three automatic suspension or revocation orders. In addition, the Medical Board issued one cease and desist order and took action against one surgical assistant.

Read the full report here at the Texas Medical Board.http://www.shezadmalik.com/lawyer-attorney-1374121.html

Continue reading " Texas Medical Board Disciplines 70 Doctors " »

The family of the man whose Aug. 28 death spurred the first recall of Toyota vehicles for unintended acceleration has filed a products liability and negligence lawsuit against the Japanese automaker.

Mark Saylor, 45, a California Highway Patrol Officer, was killed along with his family after the 2009 Lexus he was driving suddenly accelerated out of control while on Interstate 125 near San Diego.

Read full story here at Law.com

Continue reading " Law Suit Filed in Crash That Prompted First Toyota Recall " »

Family members of a Fort Worth woman killed in a December wreck involving an allegedly intoxicated off-duty Fort Worth police officer filed suit today against the Fort Worth bar at which the officer had been drinking.

At a news conference in Dallas today, the family's attorney said the family of Sonia Baker decided to sue The Pour House not as a quest for money, but to hold such establishments accountable for over-serving patrons and “placing profits ahead of safety.”

The lawsuit is filed under the state’s Dram Shop Act, which allows those who sell alcohol to an obviously intoxicated person to be held liable for resulting damages.

Read the full story here at the Fort Worth Star Telegram.

Continue reading " Family of Fort Worth Woman Killed in Crash Sues Bar That Served Officer " »

In an annual 2009 report released by Bayer, the number of contraceptive lawsuits over Yaz, Yasmin and Ocella has risen to about 1,100 filed cases, and that number will continue to increase as thousands of women are considering claims for serious injuries that have been caused by side effects of the birth control pills.

Included among the claims are five Yasmin and Yaz class action lawsuits; three filed in the United States and two filed in Canada, according to Bayer’s 2009 annual report released late last month.

Read the full Bayer 2009 Report here

Continue reading " Yaz, Yasmin and Ocella 1,100 Birth Control Lawsuits Filed " »

A Chicago man injured on a mini-trampoline when he was an eighth-grade student at a South Side elementary school 18 years ago has settled a lawsuit with the Chicago Board of Education and a private youth center for almost $14.7 million, his attorneys said Thursday.

Ryan Murray, who was 13 at the time, was injured in a tumbling class on Dec. 14, 1992, at what was then Bryn Mawr Elementary School, the attorneys said. Murray, now 30, became a quadriplegic after he hit his head as he did a flip off a mini-trampoline onto a mat in the school's gymnasium, the attorneys said.

Read full story here at the Chicago Tribune

Continue reading " $14.7 M Settlement in Trampoline Lawsuit Against Chicago Board of Education " »

A Fairfax County jury has awarded nearly $3 million to the family of a man who died after his esophagus tore while he was swallowing a piece of steak, finding an Alexandria radiologist liable for misdiagnosing the man's condition as a hiatal hernia.

Large civil jury verdicts are rare in Fairfax, and Virginia's cap on medical malpractice judgments required the jury's award of $2,933,500 to be cut by more than half, to about $1.25 million.

Read full story at the Washington Post.

Continue reading " Fairfax VA Medical Malpractice Wrongful Death Case, Family Awarded $1.25 M " »

A Philadelphia jury yesterday ordered Pfizer Inc.'s Wyeth unit to pay $9.45 million to an Alabama woman who claimed that the company's hormone-replacement drug caused her breast cancer.

The Common Pleas Court jury awarded $3.25 million in compensatory damages and $6 million in punitive damages to Audrey Singleton, a retired school-bus driver from Chatom, Ala. The verdict also included $200,000 to Singleton's husband for loss of consortium.

Read full story here.

Continue reading " Ala. Woman Awarded $9.45 M in Wyeth-Hormone Lawsuit " »