Pomerantz Perlberger & Lewis LLP

A New York jury awarded a mother and her child $19.6 million for a birth injury that happened in 1998. The mother, who had been looking forward to her first child after eight years of trying to have a baby, but found the birth at St. Vincent's Medical Center in Manhattan to be a nightmare. The baby was high in the birth canal, and the mother's lawyer said that the doctors should have realized the only option was an emergency c-section.

Instead, the hospital resident tugged on the baby with forceps for 23 minutes before finally getting him through the birth canal. The baby was born lifeless and oxygen-deprived and had to have emergency resuscitation, but the anesthesiologist inserted a breathing tube into the boy's stomach. The mother suffered a tear in her vaginal area that reached her rectum, but one of the doctors attempting to repair the damage left the room, and the remaining doctor badly botched the repair, leaving the mother with an injury that continues to be painful.

The jury returned the medical malpractice verdict after only one day's deliberation at the end of a three-week trial.

The birth of a child should be a joyous occasion, but a doctor's error can turn it into a tragedy. If your bundle of joy has been hurt by a doctor's malpractice, contact the experienced medical malpractice attorneys at Pomerantz, Perlberger, and Lewis, LLP today for a free initial consultation and case evaluation.

Wal-Mart has been trying to shake off its reputation as a heartless corporation guilty of numerous counts of employment discrimination and trying to squeeze as much profit as possible by not letting its employees rise above the poverty line. This action should help.

Major corporations Wal-Mart and Tyson Food have joined a lawsuit that attempts to keep a Pine Bluff, Arkansas police officer from getting workers' compensation after he was shot in the ankle and knocked unconscious after patting down a suspect.

On March 1, 2003, the officer was patting down a suspect, who then stuck a gun in his stomach. The officer struggled for the gun, but received a gunshot wound to his left ankle, then was knocked unconscious with a blow to the head. He has claimed that he suffered neurological damage from the blow and that he walks with a limp as a result of the gunshot wound. These statements form the basis of his claim to receive workers' compensation for his injuries.

However, his claim was denied by the Workers' Compensation Commission, saying that there was no objective evidence showing that he sustained permanent physical impairment. Doctors selected by the police department and the Workers' Compensation Commission say there is no impairment, but another doctor says there is. The appeals court has twice overturned the Commission's findings, saying that the presence of bullet fragments constituted objective evidence.

The large corporations are involved because they want to weigh in on the issue. They fear that if the officer's case is found in his favor, they may have to respect the opinions of doctors other than the few carefully chosen shills that can be reliably counted on to ignore evidence and deny the claims of anyone, even a former chief of police shot in the line of duty.

It is surprising that Wal-Mart would make such a public move against workers' rights following the recent row over their attempt to take the last penny of a brain-damaged employee earlier this year.

If you have suffered a work-related injury, contact the experienced workers' compensation lawyers at Pomerantz, Perlberger, and Lewis, LLP today for a free initial consultation and case evaluation.

Dr. Jayant Patel is a case in point that relatively few doctors are responsible for many of the serious errors leading to patient injuries. Dr. Patel received his early training overseas, but did intern work in New York before being granted a license to practice in the United States. He began to practice in New York, but was cited for "his moral unfitness to practice medicine," evidenced by his tendency to operate on patients without examining them. He then moved to Portland, where he was hired partly on the basis of recommendations from supervisors who knew him as an intern. While in Portland, his practice was increasingly restricted as a result of complaints and medical malpractice lawsuits. He was cited for "gross or repeated acts of negligence." At least three patients are reported to have died as a result of his gross negligence, but his license was not revoked, only restricted.

Patel then moved back to New York, and, with favorable letters of recommendation from doctors in Oregon, he secured employment at another hospital until 2001, when his license was revoked.

Then in 2003 he was hired by an Australian hospital on the basis of this curriculum vitae. Apparently, they did not check his service record, but instead promoted him to head of surgery. While in Australia, over 20 formal complaints were made against the doctor, and he is suspected of being responsible for as many as 87 patient deaths at the hospital. But instead of turning him over to the authorities, the hospital that employed him bought him a ticket back to the United States, again with a letter of endorsement. Finally, in the United States, he was arrested on 16 charges, including three counts of manslaughter.

You can read elsewhere about the botched surgeries he performed, but what I am interested in is how Dr. Patel was coddled from hospital to hospital with endorsements from his fellow doctors. It is a failure to supervise of the worst possible kind that doctors not only allowed him to continue practicing, but fostered his incompetence, leading to the suffering of thousands more individuals. If the medical profession will not police itself, someone else must step in.

You can be part of that policing mechanism. Medical malpractice lawsuits can lead to doctors' licenses being revoked or restricted. If you have suffered as a result of a doctor's negligence or gross incompetence, contact the experienced medical malpractice lawyers at Pomerantz, Perlberger, and Lewis, LLP, today for a free initial case evaluation.

As the summer wears on, most people are getting into the routine of mowing the lawn every week or two. Unfortunately, over 100,000 people were injured by lawn mowers in 2006, and though statistics from 2007 are not available, the number of accidents has been growing every year since 1997. These injuries can range from minor burns to serious injuries like lost hands, feet, fingers, or toes to death.

Do your part to avoid being injured as a result of summer's most unloved chore:

• · Wear protective clothing, including:
• Long pants
• Safety glasses
• Good shoes that protect feet and prevent slip and fall accidents
• · Do not modify the lawnmower by removing safety devices, or altering engine performance
• · Turn off the lawn mower before attempting to service it
• · Keep hands and feet away from the lawnmower blade, even if the lawnmower is turned off
• · Keep children indoors while mowing

However, some lawn mowers are defective products, and their defects can contribute to your injury. This includes:

• · Poorly designed ejection system for cut grass/objects
• · Blade design that is susceptible to blockage
• · Engines that can catch fire or have unexpected hot spots
• · Defective safety equipment
• · Unstable design for riding lawnmowers

Note that not only user-operated lawnmowers are susceptible to dangerous defects. The robotic LawnBott LB3200 Evolution was recently cited by Consumer Reports because its blades continued spinning when the lawnmower is lifted.

If you or a loved one have suffered a serious injury or wrongful death as a result of a defective lawnmower, contact the experienced product liability lawyers at Pomerantz, Perlberger, and Lewis,LLP today for a free initial consultation.

Monday was a hard day for Geisinger South Wilkes-Barre in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, which settled two cases of wrongful death as a result of medical malpractice on the same day for a total payout of $5 million.

In the first case, a woman broke her ankle and went to the hospital on April 25, 2007. The doctors knew that she suffered from several respiratory conditions, including obstructive sleep apnea and asthma, and that she had several allergies to medicines. When she was taken into surgery to set her ankle, she was given Dilaudid, a medication to which she was allergic. After the operation, she was given more Dilaudid by a nurse, even though the doctor had not ordered it. In the early-morning hours of the 26th, she was discovered to have no heartbeat and an extremely low blood-oxygen level. CPR was performed and she was placed on life support, but life support was terminated the next day.

The hospital agreed to a settlement of $1.8 million in the case.

In the second case, a woman woke up on September 6, 2007 with severe pain in her abdomen. When she consulted with her primary care physician, an ambulance was called to take her to Geisinger South Wilkes-Barre. The pain got worse, and she received many tests, but was discharged the next morning with some of the tests unreviewed. Doctors believed she suffered from a urinary tract infection. The pain continued to grow worse, and the next day, the 8th, she collapsed and was unresponsive. She passed away that night.

Her family filed a suit claiming her death was preventable if she had been appropriately diagnosed and treated. Geisinger South Wilkes-Barre settled the case for $3.2 million.

It may not be coincidental that Geisinger has also decided to lay off 400 people at the South Wilkes-Barre medical campus, arguments about the relationship between doctor shortages and medical-malpractice cases notwithstanding.

However, the layoffs seen in the light of these settlements point to the presence of serious quality-of-care issues at the facility. If this is the type of medicine that would be practiced here, perhaps people are better off with traveling to places where better care is practiced.

The layoffs are also symptomatic of the new corporate philosophy of medicine. Geisinger purchased Mercy Hospital in 2005, after determining that it could make the economically-troubled hospital profitable. The downsizing of the staff, and the consequent shifting of serious care to other facilities, namely its Plains Township medical center, were probably part of the plan.

If you have lost a loved one as a result of clear medical negligence, contact the experienced medical malpractice lawyers at Pomerantz, Perlbger, and Lewis, LLP today for a free initial consultation.

Anesthesia awareness is when a patient comes to awareness during his or her surgery. These patients experience a horrific tragedy: they can see, hear, and even feel everything that happens during their operation, but they cannot move. Patients who awaken during surgery often suffer terrible, enduring pain. They may be awake for minutes or even hours during a long surgery, and during this time they feel every tug, every stitch, every cut and probe of the surgery. They also feel a terrible powerlessness as a result of their paralysis that makes the experience deeply traumatic. A number of sufferers of anesthesia awareness have post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) that endures decades after the event.

Anesthesia awareness is often the result of medical negligence, including:

· A medication not being given

· Too little medication being given

· Wrong medication being given

Modern anesthesia is not normally a single compound, but is usually a cocktail of different medications. In the case of anesthesia awareness, the drug that paralyzes a patient is effective, but other medications are ineffective or not given. Sometimes, however, the cause of anesthesia awareness is unknown, similar to waking paralysis, whose mechanism is explained but its cause unknown.

In some cases, brain wave monitors can detect anesthesia awareness, but in other cases, they are ineffective. The best prevention for anesthesia awareness is thoroughness and good procedure on the part of the surgeon and anesthesiologist.

If you have suffered anesthesia awareness as a result of the negligence of your anesthesiologist and/or surgeon, contact the experienced medical malpractice lawyers at Pomerantz, Perlberger, and Lewis, LLP today for a free initial consultation.

With the temperature soaring and the kids out from school, summer is in full swing, and that means summer recreation, including days at the pool trying to beat the heat. Unfortunately, this also means that kids, especially teens, are at an elevated risk for a tragic spinal injury.

According to studies, diving accidents may account for as much as 14 % of all spinal injuries. The majority of sufferers are young males. Because the accidents typically occur high in the spine, they are often associated with quadriplegia, loss of control of all limbs and the torso. Brain injuries are also not uncommon. These injuries are due partly to the natural exuberance of youth, but they are also due to lack of education and insufficient supervision of pools.

If your children frequent a pool, either a public facility or at a friend's house, make sure they know about the dangers of diving. Unfortunately, children are children and cannot be counted on to exercise appropriate caution, so make sure there is adequate supervision in the form of a lifeguard on duty at a public pool, or that the owners of a private pool are aware of the dangers of diving and supervise activity at the pool.

If one of your children has suffered a completely preventable spinal injury as a result of inadequate supervision, you are looking at a lifetime of very expensive care and it is only fair that those responsible for supervising the pool should pay a share. If you are in this unfortunate circumstance, please contact the experienced serious injury lawyers at Pomerantz, Perlberger, and Lewis, LLP today to learn how you can make sure your children are cared for.