Dr Shezad Malik Law Firm has offices based in Fort Worth and Dallas and represents people who have suffered catastrophic and serious personal injuries including wrongful death, caused by the negligence or recklessness of others. We specialize in Personal Injury trial litigation and focus our energy and efforts on those we represent.

Articles Posted in Nursing Home Abuse

As a Texas medical doctor and Medical Malpractice attorney, I am providing this case law update and commentary.

fort_worth_medical_malpractice_attorney.jpg

As part of Texas’s tort reform laws, enacted by the Texas legislature in 2003, one of the requirements in order to file a medical malpractice claim, was the furnishing of a medical expert’s report within 120 days of filing the lawsuit.The 5th District Court of Appeals says that the legislation serves the state’s interest in preventing frivolous medical liability lawsuits and related health care system costs. This medical expert report requirement is also known as the Texas’ certificate-of-merit law, and is similar to many other states’ medical malpractice reform.

Recently Texas’ certificate-of-merit law passed another constitutional challenge after the 5th District Court of Appeals validated the requirement for plaintiffs to file an expert report demonstrating the merits of a medical liability case.

The personal injury sage continues. As a Fort Worth Personal Injury attorney I am writing this blog to hopefully provide insight to my readers, about the law works with its byzantine rules and regulations.

The Law and its practical applications are murky at best and we as lawyers have developed our own rituals and our own special language. Because if we spoke in plain English, then it would not be special anymore.

In my last missive I detailed the week before an actual trial that we were getting ready to do on our slip and fall case. The case got continued. Now we are using this opportunity to continue in our siege of the defendants castle. We continue to press our charge and are unrelenting in our skirmishes.

“Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war.”

And so it begins, twenty four hours from now, with a drop of the hammer and a cry of “Order, Court now in session,” the battle banners would have unfurled with the sounds of trumpets.

As a Fort Worth Personal Injury Attorney, I would like to offer the following insights. As I mentioned in my last posting from the battlefront, we were due in court tomorrow to argue our slip and fall case which just got canceled and set for a new date.

The foul air would have been filled with the clanging of steel, the clashing of shields, the stench of panic and fear permeating the air to be supplemented with whiffs of gunpowder. My friends, this was no ordinary skirmish, but the accumulation of 3 years hard labor. But it was not to be…

My friends that is what a court room feels and sounds like, all shrouded in the fog of war and at the end of the day, one victor and the vanquished. Carnage and havoc for both.

Trials are no easy things and the plaintiffs all want their day in court. It is hard to then explain to them when you get a worse deal at trial that in settlement talks a year earlier.

In this particular battle, the decision to go to war was easy, we had no offers to settle or offers through mediation. Here, if we had failed to press our charge and we lost, what did we lose? We came with nothing and left with nothing. Then the next time the defense would know we spared no quarter, we yielded no ground, and we fought to the last man. Each man died a hero, with sword in hand, a bloody battle indeed.

In this battle dear readers, there are no prisoners.

Continue reading

A federal investigation has found that Texas is failing to protect disabled residents who are living in large state facilities, from possible lapses in health care.

The U.S. Justice Department said in a report that deficiencies in staffing put residents in 13 facilities at risk of abuse and neglect .

The probe concluded that serious problems and deficiencies in care currently exist throughout the facilities where nearly 5,000 vulnerable Texans live.

“We have concluded that numerous conditions and practices at the facilities violate the constitutional and federal statutory rights of their residents,” said an assistant attorney general in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division.

Continue reading

A congressional report out Monday September 15, 2008 says 1,600 U.S. nursing homes — nearly one-third — have been cited for abuse.

Some 5,283 nursing homes were cited for abuse violations, according to a review of state inspection records requested by Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif. These homes were cited for nearly 9,000 abuse violations from January 1999 to January 2001.

Continue reading

Contact Information