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.
Rule Changes Adopted
The board adopted the following rule changes that were published in the Texas Register:
Chapter 163, Licensure, amendments to §163.5, Licensure Documentation.
Chapter 165, Medical Records, amendments to §165.1, Medical Records; §165.5, Transfer and Disposal of Medical Records.
Chapter 166, Physician Registration, amendments to§166.2, Continuing Medical Education; and §166.6, Exemption from Registration Fee for Retired Physician Providing Voluntary Charity Care.
Since its last board meeting, the Texas Medical Board took disciplinary action against 59 licensed physicians. The actions included 13 violations based on quality of care; two actions based on unprofessional conduct; three actions based on violations of probation or prior orders; three actions based on other states’ actions; six actions based on inadequate medical records; four actions based on impairment due to alcohol or drugs or mental/physical condition; two actions based on nontherapeutic prescribing; two actions based on failure to properly supervise or delegate; one action based on a criminal conviction; three voluntary surrenders; two violations of failure to obtain required continuing medical education; two administrative agreed orders; and 12 licensees agreed to enter into administrative orders with the board for minimal statutory violations.
TEXAS-Johnson County officials are concerned about “mud” spills, the mess that some companies leave behind when waste is hauled away from drilling sites.
When trucks loaded with the mud used in the gas drilling process travel too fast along county roads, some of it spills out, and county officials are sometimes left to clean up the mess.
The Johnson County’s emergency management coordinator, said cleanup costs are mounting, and the problem is also plaguing other counties in the Barnett Shale.
The mud contains lubricants and toxic chemicals used to make the drill bit turn more easily. When mud spills onto roadways, it is like ice, sometimes leading to serious accidents.
DALLAS — Four people, including a 14-month-old toddler, died in accidents on icy roadways as a wintry storm moved through Texas over the past week.
Authorities blamed icy roads for all four traffic fatalities. In three of the four deadly accidents, Monday night and early Tuesday, the drivers of the vehicles were speeding on slick roads, officials said.
Driver fatigue is responsible for up to 40% of all accidents caused by semi-truck drivers. Data from the Deptartment of Transportation show that driver fatigue causes as many as 750 deaths and nearly 200,000 injuries on an annual basis.
Under the current rules, a driver must be allowed 10 hours off duty is he has been driving for more than 11 hours and/or has been “on duty” for up to 14 hours. In addition to this daily rule is a weekly rule that requires drivers to stop operating their truck if they have been “on-duty” for either 60 hours in a 7 day period or 70 hours in an 8 day period.
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration has fought unsuccesfuly to tighten these rules and avoid the driver fatigue that has caused so many accidents and injured so many people.
The family of a man who died at a San Francisco jail has filed a $10 million federal civil rights lawsuit against the city, saying sheriff’s officials ignored prisoners’ pleas that he needed medical help in the hours before he died.
The 48 year old man, died in his cell, a day after he was booked on suspicion of possession of drugs for sale following his arrest.
Five inmates have alleged that jail staffers did not respond to prisoners’ pleas for the man to be treated by a doctor after he complained of feeling ill.
The man’s death was listed as accidental, the result of a heart attack caused by acute drug intoxication, the medical examiner’s office said.
The wrongful-death suit filed on behalf of man’s family Friday in U.S. District Court in San Francisco claims that jail staffers failed to recognize that the man was undergoing opiate withdrawal. He told staffers and other inmates that he “felt like he was dying,” the suit said.
A $10 million settlement has been reached involving personal injury claims filed over a Jan. 2 charter bus crash that killed one person and injured dozens more near Victoria, Texas.
The settlement which included the family of the man who died and 44 passengers was reached with the driver, owners and managers of the bus company.
A 55-year-old Houston man, died when the bus traveling from Monterrey, Mexico, to Houston veered off U.S. 59 near Victoria and flipped on its side. Dozens were injured. Forty-four of the passengers filed personal injury claims.
The family of a child who died in a Winnie the Pooh bassinet has sued the Walt Disney Co., alleging the company allowed sales of the bassinets despite a flawed design that had been linked to another baby’s death.
The bassinet had a drop-down side for easy access, but the design created a gap where babies could slide through and hang to death. The child was 6 months old when she was strangled.
Shortly after the child’s death, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission directed retailers to stop selling the bassinets, which were manufactured by Simplicity Inc. Disney’s consumer products division licensed its Winnie the Pooh name and image to Simplicity.
The suit, filed in California state court in Los Angeles, raises questions about a common practice in the nursery products industry: Are companies that license their names and characters to other manufacturers responsible when those products turn out to be deadly?
An appeal by Hanford contractors, has been rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court clearing the way for a settlement with almost 2,000 people exposed to radiation during the Manhattan Project and the early years of the Cold War.
The contractors – E.I. Du Pont De Nemours & Co., General Electric Co. and UNC Nuclear Industries Inc. – were challenging a ruling by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last spring that sided largely with the plaintiffs.
The people exposed to radiation lived in eastern Washington, eastern Oregon and Idaho, down wind of the Hanford nuclear reservation, as the U.S. government was developing the first atomic bombs in the 1940s. They have spent nearly two decades trying to win compensation for thyroid cancer and other conditions that they say were caused by the exposure.
Merck is considering an appeal after a Texas state appeals court reversed its own prior dismissal of a $7.75 M judgment in a Vioxx personal injury lawsuit against the drugmaker.
A three-judge panel of the Texas 4th Court of Appeals ruled there should be a new trial in the case. The plaintiff, a longtime smoker with a history of heart disease, died of a heart attack in 2001 after taking Vioxx briefly.
The three judges sent the case back to the original trial court, where a jury in 2006 had awarded $32 million to the man’s widow. That amount was cut to about $7.75 million under a Texas law limiting damages.
Dallas Fort Worth Injury Lawyer Blog