A new lawsuit could set a sweeping legal precedent about how prepared hospitals have to be before a natural disaster strikes, and how effectively they must respond both during and after a catastrophe.

The civil trial began in the wrongful death lawsuit of Althea LaCoste against the Pendleton Memorial Methodist Hospital in New Orleans.

Several differing perspectives were offered on what led to the 73-year-old woman’s death while at the hospital when flood waters led to a power outage at then hospital after Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans in late August 2005.

Depending on the outcome of this suit, hospitals could potentially be liable for maintaining high levels of operation during a wide range of emergencies, including viral pandemics, natural disasters and terrorist attacks.

Attorney Lawrence Best, who is representing LaCoste’s family members, said during opening arguments that he will focus on the hospital’s alleged failure to supply power to the hospital with an emergency backup that could stand up to a powerful storm. Best claimed during the Jan. 12 start date that the neglect of such a system is what caused her death, according to the Times Picayune.

David Bowling, serving as attorney for both Methodist and its parent owner Universal Health Services of Pennsylvania, asserted that hospital staff did everything that could be expected to save lives before and after floodwaters filled the city. Bowling added that ruling in favor of LaCoste’s relatives would set a standard too high for hospitals to actually meet, the Times Picayune reported.

LaCoste was taken to Methodist for congestive heart failure one day before the storm caused an immense amount of damage both in the New Orleans area and along the Gulf Coast. She was put on a mechanical respirator which went out when the hospital lost power after a fuel pump was flooded.

Nurses kept her alive throughout the 18 hour power outage with manual breathing assistance using hand pumps, but she passed away some time after power came back on.

“Some of them knew this (fuel pump) was on ground level,” Best said. “Some of them should have known. And all of them should have done something about it.”

While Bowling did not argue how detrimental the fuel pump’s low placement was on the hospital, he pointed out that LaCoste’s physical condition played a role in her passing. Bowling said LaCoste also suffered from persistent infections and diabetes along with heart failure, according to the Times Picayune.

The trial has continued with testimonies from former Methodist staff and administrators, as well as LaCoste’s family members. In 2002, former Methodist vice president Cameron Barr wrote that the hospital did not have a backup generator system that could withstand 15 feet of flood waters.

At the Jan. 15 court date for the trial, former Methodist CEO Larry Graham said he was not aware of Barr’s report.

The Food & Drug Administration has a spotty record from a personal injury standpoint–numerous approved drugs and medical devices have later been recalled or have given rise to mass tort litigation.  Worse, with last year’s U.S. Supreme Court decision in Riegel v. Medtronic, state courts were pre-empted from granting relief to consumers injured by faulty medical devices if those devices had received pre-market approval from the FDA.

In the food arena, however, the outcomes are sometimes even more bizarre.  Food inspection duties are split between the FDA and the Department of Agriculture, and those divisions occur along very ragged lines.  Because food issues often get short shrift from the FDA, where limited resources are heavily weighted toward drug and medical device issues, it has long been argued that a unified agency was required.  In fact, in 1999 the Government Accountability Office issued a report calling for just such action.

Now, the New York Times is reporting that a different solution appears to be in the works, with a movement to split the FDA.   Connecticut Representative Rose DeLauro is proposing a Food Safety Administration and a Federal Drug and Device Administration.

Harrowing stories of neglect are becoming commonplace–last year, a 7-year-old Ohio girl was repeatedly raped on her special needs bus, and the news has recently been full of stories about the criminal charges associated with the death of Danieal Kelly, a 14-year-old girl with cerebral palsy whose  mother left her to starve and dehydrate to death in her bed.  But even with stories like these popping up in the news on a regular basis, it’s almost impossible to believe the story of Ed Rivera and Linda Hockaday.

Rivera is a 22-year-old mentally and physically disabled man who attends a special  needs program in New York City.  Hockaday is the 51-year-old matron charged with transporting Rivera and others like him.

While most of us were celebrating the new year on Wednesday night and early Thursday morning, Rivera–who has cerebral palsy–was sitting strapped into a seat in a locked bus.  Rivera sat in that seat for 19 hours in bitter cold.

Lest you think that perhaps Hockaday simply made a terrible mistake, think again:  Rivera is 6′2″ tall and was strapped into the seat directly behind the driver’s seat.  And, Hockaday has reportedly admitted that she knew Rivera was there.  Her explanation, according to CBS news, was that she didn’t want to be late for church.

Hockaday is now facing criminal charges and Rivera is in the hospital.  It appears that Hockaday isn’t alone in her responsibility for this near-tragic event, either.  News reports suggest that when police first went to the Outstanding Transport facility to search for Rivera, employees there didn’t bother to tell officers that there was a second bus lot.  It was in that second lot that Rivera was finally located, when police returned to the facility hours later with Rivera’s entire family to continue the search.

A case before the Texas Supreme Court will determine whether or not a family injured by a fleeing felon can recover from that driver’s automobile insurance company. On the surface, the case looks like a personal one, and it’s attracted enough attention simply for the impact on the victims:  a man fleeing from police at speeds of up to 100 mph and disregarding traffic signs leaves a 7-year-old boy in a coma for a week, and his insurance company refuses to pay for the child’s medical expenses.

Obviously, the driver was at fault.  But, Nationwide Insurance says, that’s not enough.  Their policy, like most automobile insurance policies, excludes “intentional acts”.   But what, exactly, constitutes an “intentional act” in the insurance world?

That may vary from state to state, but a lower Texas court has already determined that the driver’s actions were intentional, because driving at such high rates of speed and disregarding traffic signals made an accident “inevitable”.  The company, and the court, hang this interpretation on three little words in the insurance policy, originally purchased in Ohio:  “ought to know”.  The driver, they argued, should have known he’d cause an accident, and thus his actions were “intentional” under their definition.

Clearly, there’s more at stake than this one case:  if the court rules that simple knowledge that driving at high speeds and/or running stop signs is enough to constitute an “intentional” act for insurance purposes, the likely extension of that ruling is a move toward denying payment in any reckless driving scenario.  In fact, an attorney for Nationwide admitted when questioned by the court that he did not believe there would be coverage if an insured intentionally ran a red light.

If that interpretation prevails, liability insurance as we know it could be significantly limited.  While it makes sense from a contractual perspective that companies wouldn’t compensate their insureds for intentional acts, everyone involved would do well to remember that mandatory car insurance exists specifically to protect victims..and those victims are no less at risk and no less injured when a driver “intentionally” runs a red light than when he reaches to change the radio station and doesn’t see it.

But wait.  Changing the radio station is an “intentional” act, isn’t it…?

Yesterday, disbarred Florida lawyer Graham Kligerman was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison for his role in a fake mortgage foreclosure rescue scheme.

The 34-year-old lawyer is accused of being the closing agent on 57 fraudulent real estate transactions. Banks were deceived into making millions in loans. Worse, homeowners facing foreclosure, who turned to Kligerman to save their homes, actually lost their homes.

Kligerman, who pleaded guilty to wire fraud and conspiracy to commit bank, wire and mail fraud, was also ordered to pay $6.5 million in restitution payments to all the loan processors, homeowners, banks and homebuyers who were cheated by his con.

His defense lawyers argued that his deceptive behavior stemmed from mental illness and the desperation of a failing law practice—not greed. The said that Kligerman only kept $150,000 of the diverted equity and gave the rest to his law clients.

“This court is seeing too many of these types of cases,” the presiding judge said. “There are victims out here who have lost their homes. You should be down on your knees begging for these people to forgive you and do something tangible to make up for what has happened to them. They’re hurting and you’re living comfortably—What’s wrong with that picture?”

Kligerman was disbarred in 2005 after he fabricated court documents, faked a judge’s signature and diverted money to a client from one of his personal trust accounts while pretending it was a payment from defendants.

“I live with regret every day,” Kligerman told a reporter. “To anybody who was hurt, and I know there were many of them, I apologize.”

Mortgage foreclosures are at an all-time high. If you are nearing or facing mortgage foreclosure, be careful who you turn to for help. Like Kligerman, there are many predatory people out there looking to cheat homeowners who are desperate to save their homes.

Consider talking with a bankruptcy lawyer. A Chapter 13 bankruptcy repayment plan has helped thousands of Americans save their homes from foreclosure and get set up on a realistic repayment plan to better manage their debt.

With the economy in such turmoil, times are tough for everybody—even lawyers. Layoffs at law offices are rare but becoming somewhat of a trend as income dwindles.

A Chicago law firm laid off 24 defense lawyers out of its 680 staff and another firm let go of 21 defense attorneys out of their stock of 650, according to a Chicago Tribune story.

But don’t worry—if you’re looking for a lawyer, we have an extensive network and nobody’s going anywhere!

Total Lawyers can help you if you’re looking for a:

• Bankruptcy Lawyer
• Criminal Defense Lawyer
• Personal Injury Lawyer
• DUI Lawyer
• Divorce Lawyer
• Family Law Lawyer
• Estate Layer
• Lemon Law Lawyer

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) just busted a world-wide spam network responsible for burdening mailboxes with billions of illegal messages encouraging people to purchase unsafe male-enhancement and weight-loss pills.

The FTC froze the assets of two men, one from New Zealand and the other from Texas. Those assets may may go back to consumers who were sold the bogus weight-loss and male-enhancement drugs. [OK, time to insert bad, obvious joke: “I guess everything isn’t always bigger in Texas.”]

The FTC said it received more than 3 million complaints about the related spam. Preliminary estimates are that the spammers made millions of dollars off the bunk drugs.

The spam network used servers in China to host its Web sites and also used a “botnet” (a network of computers that are hijacked to send spam). In addition, it worked in Cyprus and Georgia to process the credit card information. Through this global system, more than 10 billion spam messages were sent each day.

The FTC is working with the FBI on possible criminal charges against the men.

Check out the related Total Lawyer’s article, Virginia Supreme Court Votes in Favor of Spam.

A divided Washington State Supreme Court ruled that victims of domestic violence will have certain job protections if they’re forced to take time off work to look after themselves or their families.

The case at hand involved a federal lawsuit filed by a woman against her employer. She alleged that in 2003, her company demoted her after she returned from taking two weeks off to deal with issues relating to domestic violence.

She said she was forced to take the time off because her then-husband beat her and her child so badly that the child had to be hospitalized and she had to attend court proceedings and move her family into a protective shelter.

Her personal injury lawyer said she was later fired because she protested her demotion. The company said they fired her for falsifying her timecard.

The Supreme Court justices ruled that “the legislative, judicial and executive branches of government have repeatedly declared that it is the public policy of this state to prevent domestic violence by encouraging … victims to escape violent situations, protect children from abuse, report domestic violence to law enforcement, and assist efforts to hold their abusers accountable.”

Last year when the case was pending, the state passed a law that provides “reasonable leave” for domestic violence victims (and victims of sexual assault and stalking) so they can seek medical treatment, social services, shelter and help from the police.

Everyone’s dealt with lost or misplaced luggage on an airplane before.  But few have had the lost luggage experience of Miguel Olaya, a 60-year-old Brooklynite.

Olaya was transporting a coffin with the body of his deceased wife Teresa via an American Airlines flight to Guayaquil, in their native country of Ecuador. However, when he arrived, her body didn’t.  Oyala had to wait four days until American delivered the body, which by then was in such a state of decomposition that his family could no longer hold an open-casket funeral.  American had evidently not properly refrigerated the body as guaranteed by their stated policy on transportation of bodies.

Oyala and his 16-year-old daughter have now filed a lawsuit against American Airlines, seeking an undisclosed sum that reportedly reaches into the millions.  

For more on recent litigation around the U.S., view Total Lawyers articles page.

Former CU Head Football Coach Gary Barnett Still Clueless

The University of Colorado recently settled a historic Title IX lawsuit in which two women had claimed that they had been raped at a party for football recruits and that the school had previously ignored a similar claim with the school’s football recruiting program.

In addition to these disturbing claims, the lawsuit spurred many other scandalous headlines, such as:

• CU football recruits being enticed with strippers, drugs and sex;

• evidence backing the woman’s claims that CU encouraged the policy of showing recruits a “good time”; and

• then-CU Head Football Coach Gary Barnett having very little sensitivity or tact on the matter.

Review the Colorado football recruiting scandal and read more about the 2.85 million settlement in the following article:

University of Colorado Reaches Settlement on Historic Title IX Lawsuit.