Chicago Injury Law Blog

"The top U.S. public health agency spent millions of dollars on a Hollywood consultant, a lavish visitors center, and a 70-foot-by-25 foot ``wall of plasma televisions,'' a senator's report said.

Using some money intended to fight bioterrorism, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention paid out more than $1.7 million since 2001 to get producers to include public health messages in television shows and movies, according to the report, issued today by Tom Coburn, an Oklahoma Republican. One consultant is a former CDC employee, the report said.

The Atlanta-based agency last week asked for more money and an airplane to help with the fight against tuberculosis after the travels of an infected man called attention to gaps in controlling the disease. Coburn, a doctor who sits on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, said the CDC has mismanaged the $9.2 billion budget it already has, while infections such as with the AIDS virus keep growing."

Read the full article at Bloomberg.com.

"New York City’s chief medical examiner, Dr. Charles S. Hirsch, has for the first time directly linked a death to exposure to dust from the destruction of the World Trade Center.

In a letter made public yesterday, Dr. Hirsch said that he was certain “beyond a reasonable doubt” that dust from the twin towers contributed to the death of Felicia Dunn-Jones, 42, a civil rights lawyer who was engulfed on Sept. 11 as she ran from her office a block away from the trade center.

She later developed a serious cough and had trouble breathing, and she died five months after the terrorist attack.

Dr. Hirsch said he had decided to amend Mrs. Dunn-Jones’s death certificate to indicate that exposure to trade center dust “was contributory to her death.” The manner of death will be changed from natural causes to homicide."

"Tyco International, whose two top executives were imprisoned for fraud, has agreed to pay almost $3 billion to settle class-action lawsuits brought by investors, the company announced yesterday.

The settlement, described as the largest payment ever by a company in such litigation, seeks to help put to rest one of the nation’s most notorious cases of fraud. Tyco investors may be in a position to recover even more money because they would also share in any proceeds from litigation still outstanding against L. Dennis Kozlowski, the former Tyco chief executive, and two other former executives, and against the company’s former auditor, PricewaterhouseCoopers."

Read the full article in the NY Times.

"The Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association and more than 30 Blue Cross health plans across the country agreed yesterday to pay $128 million to settle lawsuits brought by doctors who said that they had been underpaid on insurance claims.

The settlement, which resolves class-action claims filed by more than 900,000 doctors, requires Blue Cross plans to revise claims-payment procedures and set up independent review boards to decide billing disputes, according to court documents.

Archie Lamb, a lawyer in Birmingham, Ala., who represented doctors, said in a statement that the accord would “leave doctors with more time for patient care instead of dealing with what was a complex, cumbersome system.”

Read the full article in the NY Times.

"The widow of a Waxahachie man killed in an explosion at a Texas Industries Inc. plant in Midlothian was awarded $18.9 million by a Dallas jury Friday.

The verdict was the culmination of a monthlong trial in which the Dallas-based company was accused of negligence and recklessness in the death of 34-year-old Gordon Rutherford, who was working for Circle 4M Welding, a TXI contractor.

Mr. Rutherford was killed in January 2003, when a fire broke out involving a pollution-control device called a scrubber that contained "extremely hazardous and flammable materials," according to the wrongful-death lawsuit filed by Mr. Rutherford's widow, Amy."

"Seven upset gamblers sued the Ameristar Casino of St. Charles today, saying the casino cheated them out of money, food and points they could have earned in the casino’s rewards program.

St. Louis attorney Arthur G. Muegler Jr. filed the lawsuit in St. Charles County Circuit Court. The suit also names Ameristar’s Las Vegas parent company.

If it is certified as a class action lawsuit as Muegler hopes, it could affect as many as 100,000 to 300,000 casino customers, he said. They are seeking $150 million in actual and punitive damages."

Today, the United States Supreme Court overturned the Oregon Supreme Court's determination that a $79.2 million dollar punitive award was appropriate. The facts and procedural wranglings in the case can be read in the Wall Street Journal, but I thought the opinion deserved some comment.  The Court reasoned that the award essentially penalized the cigarette maker for harms to those other than the plaintiff, and was not directed at the "reprehensibility" of Philip Morris' conduct. 
Let's forget for a moment that a $79.2 million penalty to a company like Altria (formally Philip Morris) is the equivalent of a parking ticket.  In a case like this, how do you not consider the harms to a society when determining the penalty to the wrongdoer?  As Justice Stevens writes in his dissent, "A murderer who kills his victim by throwing a bomb that injures dozens of bystanders would be punished more severely than one who harms no one other than his intended victim." 

"Two nonprofit groups that gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to a Southern Illinois appellate judge this past fall appear to have violated the state's election laws.

Together, the American Tort Reform Association and the American Justice Partnership, both business-friendly groups that have supported calls for tort reform, pumped $785,000 into Illinois politics this year.

That includes $425,000 given to Belleville attorney Steve McGlynn, the Republican who ran for but lost the Southern Illinois appellate seat to which he had been appointed.

By donating directly to McGlynn, both groups triggered campaign finance reporting requirements under Illinois' election law, the State Board of Elections confirmed to the Post-Dispatch on Thursday. But as the deadline passed Wednesday, the groups, based in Washington, had neither registered as nonprofits with the board nor filed disclosure reports detailing where they got their funding."

Read the full article at the St. Louis Dispatch.

What is the saying? Cut off your nose to spite your face?
A recent article in Business Week exhorts "Business Trounces Trial Lawyers".  The article focuses on the state level tort reform efforts by business and insurance companies. No question that these efforts have been very successful in curtailing, if not altogether eliminating, the rights of those injured. However, two unintended effects are the proliferation of 'business versus business' litigation, and the fact that health insurance companies will never see the money spent on an injured's treatment. When someone is injured, payments are often made by health insurance companies for the treatment.  When an attorney is able to make a recovery for the injured against the negligent party, the health insurance company is reimbursed for those payments. When there is no recovery, there is no repayment.

Read the article from Business Week here.

"Efforts to hold corporate America accountable for slavery got an unexpected boost last week, when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit revived a massive class action litigation that had been
dismissed by a federal district court in Chicago.   As I will explain, the decision, which was authored by Judge Richard Posner, is a bit of a paradox: It offers the standard conservative analysis of the slavery claims, while also introducing an extremely liberal interpretation of state consumer fraud laws. "

Read more at Findlaw.com.

I found this to be an excellent, simple break down of the position taken by Republicans and others who support tort deform:

"Let's look at how a tort trial typically works. The injured party has a lawyer (you know, the "bad guy"). The doctor/corporation/defendant has a lawyer (or lawyers). There is a judge. And then there are twelve (sometimes six) ordinary citizens. - the jury.

The injured party's lawyer has a chance to tell his client's story. The lawyer(s) for the doctor/corporation/defendant has a chance to tell his(their) client's side of the story.

The judge tells the jury what the rules they have to apply to the case are.

Then the jury makes a decision.

It is this last group of people the Republicans are really complaining about. They are the ones deciding whether to award money to the person who claims s/he was injured.

"Lee, an employee at the Hapeville Ford Motor Co. plant, stopped by the Riverdale Wal-Mart after work at 1:30 a.m. on March 8, 2001, to pick up party supplies. Her 9-year-old son was asleep inside her Ford Explorer, which she parked under a light pole close to the front entrance.

When she left the store, Riggins demanded her keys. Lee dropped the keys and ran, but Riggins shot her in the back with a .380-caliber handgun.

Lee was able to get her son out of the SUV before Riggins drove away.

He was caught within minutes.

In her suit, Lee complained about a lack of security at the shopping center and was able to provide a list of 398 visits by police to that store for various crimes in the 20 months leading up to her shooting.

"That should have been sufficient to put Wal-Mart on notice that crimes were being committed there," said Lance Cooper, Lee's lawyer. "Also Wal-Mart had a policy to have security patrols but chose to not put them into place at that store."

Cooper said Wal-Mart officials also destroyed a surveillance videotape of the attack after Riggins was convicted."

Read the full article in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Family members of a woman killed with her 1-year-old son reached a settlement with one of the contractors for the Chicago Housing Authority. The deaths occurred during a fire that broke out at the Harold Ickes Homes on the South Side.  The fire was caused by children playing with matches, however the deaths were a result of the contractors failure to install and maintain smoke detectors on the floor where the fire started. 
During the discovery stage of the litigation, plaintinff's attorneys uncovered the fact that a CHA contractor actually falsified a report indicating that smoke detectors existed before the fire. The family settled for $5.75 million.

"While many people perceive the U.S. Chamber of Commerce as an apolitical and innocuous
business support organization, it is anything but. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, often through
its Institute for Legal Reform (ILR), is engaged in a largely covert effort to elect public officials
and judges who reflect a strong political agenda of protecting corporations from liability and
weakening the civil justice system.

It is generally hard to track in which races the U.S. Chamber/ILR gets involved, how much they
spend, and what the outcomes are. Secrecy is a hallmark of the U.S. Chamber/ILR’s strategy
when getting involved in electoral races. It sometimes goes to great lengths to keep its
involvement and funding a secret, hiding behind local front groups.

However, depositions and discovery documents obtained in a pending lawsuit surrounding the
2004 defeat of a pro-consumer candidate for Washington State Attorney General, Deborah Senn,
illustrate just how organized, systematic, and aggressive the U.S. Chamber/ILR’s operation is."

Read the full report from the Center for Justice and Democracy here.

"Anne Burke was installed Thursday as the newest member of the Illinois Supreme Court in a courtroom packed with the state's political notables.

Among the speakers at the ceremony were former Govs. Jim Thompson and Jim Edgar, Senate President Emil Jones, House Speaker Michael Madigan and his daughter, Attorney General Lisa Madigan. Veteran broadcaster Bill Kurtis served as master of ceremonies.

Burke, 62, who is married to the powerful Democratic Chicago Alderman Edward Burke, previously served on the Illinois Appellate Court."

Read the full article in the Lincoln Courier here.

The residents of the Mid-Ohio Valley in West Virginia were poinsoned by Teflon maker DuPont for years without knowing it. Known to be poisonous since the early 1960's perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), or "C8", the chemical is used to make Teflon. A spike in cancer rates and birth defects in the effected region caused the residents to raise questions and ultimately file a lawsuit against DuPont.
The company settled the case our of court, including the creation of the largest public health study ever including over 80,000 people along the Ohio River. The settlement included the installation of several water treatment plants to immediately reduce the amount of C8 in the water.
The private lawsuit also churned the EPA into action, who is mandating the all C8 be removed from consumer products by 2010.

Read more about the C8 lawsuit here.

Lawsuits have recently been filed agaisnt H&R Block alleging that the tax preparer's "Express" IRA's costs more in fees that they generate in interest.
The suit further alleged that about 500,000 people purchased the IRA, seeking damages in upwards of $250 million in penalties and compensation.

Read more here.

Republican lawmakers, joined by the Illinois Chamber of Commerce, argued that Illinois' legal system makes the state inhospitable for businesses that may choose to locate in bordering states.

"Our state has over many years established the reputation that we believe in shakedown justice and that businesses are not likely to get a fair hearing or fair trial in our state," said Doug Whitley, the state Chamber president. "Our reputation is directly tied to job creation and economic growth. This state needs job creation and economic growth."

The Illinois AFL-CIO argued that the justice system is not to blame for the state's job losses.

"The large corporate interests pushing this legislation are the same companies that are outsourcing jobs, cutting pension plans and laying off workers," said Michael T. Carrigan, the union's secretary-treasurer in a prepared statement.

Read the full article found in the Pantagraph here.

The Bush Administration's recent Medicare "improvement" legislation proved to be a complete fiasco. Elderly in need of life saving drugs where not covered by the program, and a reported increase of $800 billion to the cost of prescription drugs to the government and its beneficiaries over the next decade.
According to the Center for Economic and Policy Research, the provisions entered at the request of pharmaceutical companies into the Medicare drug program will cost taxpayers and seniors more than $80 billion a year.
Keep in mind that Big Pharma contributed a total of $96 million in campaign contribution funds from 2000 to 2004. Consider the new Medicare provisions to be the payoff. Industry profits will swell an estimated 500 to 600 percent as the new legislation goes into effect.

Read more here.

"Don't believe for one minute that the Cook County Circuit Court is a
"judicial hellhole." That's what the American Tort Reform Assn. (ATRA)
branded our courts recently. The judiciary, bar and public all deserve an apology from ATRA for its caustic and misguided vilification."

Read the full article in Crain's Chicago Business here.

"Hundreds of very live Americans are walking around with pieces of the wrong dead people inside of them. A macabre scandal has spread from a body-harvesting lab in New Jersey to hospitals as far away as Florida, Nebraska and Texas as hundreds of people discover that they have received tissue and bone carved from looted corpses, not least the cadaver of Alistair Cooke, the late and erudite host of PBS's 'Masterpiece Theatre.' The Brooklyn district attorney and federal Food and Drug Administration inspectors are investigating dozens of funeral homes in New York City and Biomedical Tissue Services Ltd. of Fort Lee, N.J., which is run by a former dentist who, his lawyer acknowledges, abused intravenous pain medications while with patients. The former dentist came to funeral homes, investigators say, and extracted bone, tendons and skin from corpses without the consent of relatives. Later, Biomedical Tissue Services shipped coolers full of tissue to hospitals for surgeries. A dead body can be worth tens of thousands of dollars when it is dissected for parts."

Read the full Washington Post article here.

In response to a Chicago Tribune editorial regarding Cook County being a judicial hellhole, Judge William D. Maddux, Presiding Judge, Law Division, Circuit Court of Cook County, sent the following letter (below and attached) to the Tribune. The Tribune NEVER PRINTED the letter.

RESPONSE TO CHICAGO TRIBUNE EDITORIAL
DECEMBER 15, 2005

Responsive to your editorial of December 13, 2005, wherein the American Tort Reform Association (ATRA) criticized Cook County, Illinois, calling it a "judicial hellhole" for its "growing reputation as a plaintiff-friendly venue and a known hostility toward corporate defendants," we offer to you facts and statistics germane to those allegations. The ATRA attempts to support its charges by citing to fewer than a handful of cases where the courts denied the transfer of cases out of Cook County, Illinois based on the doctrine of forum non conveniens. This phrase means inconvenient forum. The statistics from the Clerk of the Circuit Court of Cook County show these
claims are false and baseless, but before we get to them, certain aspects of the report need to be addressed.

Everyone from William G. Pintas & Associates wishes all our visitors a very Happy Holidays and a safe and joyous New Year.

"An economic consultant yesterday said a Senate proposal for a $140 billion trust fund to compensate asbestos victims is inadequate. The fund might need $300 billion to $695 billion over 50 years to cover the claims of workers suffering lung cancer or other illnesses caused by asbestos, according to a private study done by Bates White LLC, an economic consulting group. 'I did not expect to find this result when I started this,' Charles E. Bates, the consulting group's president, told the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday. His firm was hired by a nonprofit public-policy group."

Read the full article here.

On Friday, Wisconsin governor Jim Doyle vetoed the state legislature's attempt to cap non-economic damages in medical malpractice actions. The bill is very similar to the one passed in Illinois only months ago.
Earlier this year the Wisconsin Supreme Court overturned the state’s medical malpractice bill enacted in 1995. The court found that the law created two classes of victims: people with less severe injuries who cold get full compensation, and people hurt more severely who could not. The unconstitutional bill capped non-economic damages at $350,000, which was adjusted annually for inflation.
Governor Doyle stated, "approving a law that would quickly be overturned doesn't do anyone any good."
The fact that the law would do little to curb skyrocketing malpractice insurance premiums supports Governor Doyle’s decision also.

Read the full story here.

There are many groups whose sole purpose is to end the alleged proliferation of lawsuits and lawsuit abuse in this country. The groups have catchy names like "Sick of Lawsuits" (SOL) or "Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse" (CALA). The groups are supposedly made up of individual citizens who support tort reform. However, a recent article indicates that many, if not all, of these groups are hardly made up of individuals. They consist and are solely funded by national, sometimes even multinational, corporations.

The following is an excerpt from an article written in the Quad-City Times.

The shouting about runaway jury verdicts generated headlines during state legislative sessions earlier this year. It got loud enough in Illinois that lawmakers passed and the governor approved a cap on on pain and suffering damages just for physicians and hospitals. That, the Illinois State Medical Society insisted, should stem the flood of lawsuits that keep driving up malpractice insurance costs.

A new Department of Justice study can't find the flood.

In examining 18 years of federal court cases, the Justice Department
found fewer lawsuits, fewer trials, fewer settlements and awards that
average far below the caps some physicians groups insist are needed.

Lawsuits over motor vehicle cases - not malpractice - show up more
frequently on federal courtroom tort dockets.

In just over half the trials, plaintiffs lost. And it was judges, not
juries, that ruled for plaintiffs most frequently.

In short, the Justice Department study debunked just about every premise presented to Congress for tort reform.

When are the facts going to rise above the well-funded hype? Republican and Democrat alike need to be aware of the constant attack on the civil justice system by anti-consumer interests.

The Justice Department filed a lawsuit last summer against Second Chance Body Armor for selling defective bulletproof vests for President Bush and federal agents. The suit alleges fraud, citing the use and eventual cover up of material in the vest that degraded in the presence of heat, light and moisture.
There is little doubt that the manufacturer is at fault, and other lawsuits will follow. But what is President Bush doing contributing to the self-proclaimed lawsuit crisis in America? Apparently there is no crisis when he is the one who potentially could be harmed. A police officer in California was not as lucky in avoiding the effects of the defective body armor.
Unfortunately, President Bush will continue to push for legal "reform" that attacks victims and protects corporations from liability. Consider the statement from Laurie Beacham of the Center for Justice & Democracy:
“As the President must now know, defective products will inevitably make their way to marketplace, and the irresponsible companies that produce them must be held accountable in court. In fact, sometimes, lawsuits are the only way to force a defective product off the market. We hope this President now ends his reprehensible campaign against injured consumers who go to court to obtain justice. No one likes a hypocrite."

A "qui tam" or whistleblower action is generally a claim brought under the Federal False Claims Act (FCA) which protects those who report companies that are committing fraud on the United States Government. Abraham Lincoln championed the law during the civil war to protect the Union Army from companies selling them shoddy equipment. Today the law protects those who call out fraud, and entitle them to a portion of whatever the governement recovers in the action.
However the Bush administration seeks to weaken the FCA, and take away the protections the Act offers to whistleblowers. Consider the story of Ms. Bunnitine Greenhouse, an employee with the U.S. Army Core of Engineers. During her day to day duties, she discovered that Halliburton, Vice President Dick Cheney's former company, received billions of dollars in no-bid contracts for work in Iraq. She asked why one company received over half of the business in Iraq without competition or competitive bids.
For this, she received "poor performance" ratings and was demoted from an executive position to middle management.

Read more here.

Big business and insurance companies are on a constant quest to discredit personal injury lawsuits and our 7th Amendment right to a trial by jury. The main tools for this task are exaggeration and fabrication. A well known example of exaggeration is the McDonalds hot coffee case. The plaitiff, Stella Liebeck, suffered third degree burns on her inner thighs and groin from coffee that was kept at dangerously high temperatures. The coffee is kept at such a high temperature to mask the poor quality of the coffee. McDonalds had record of 700 similar cases before Ms. Liebeck's case. McDonalds refused to pay her medical bills (approx. $20,000), and for that reason she sued. The $2.7 million punitive jury verdict (the equivalent of two days worth of coffee sales for McDonalds) was reduced to $480,000 after the verdict, and the case settled shortly thereafter for an undisclosed amount.

$4.9 billion dollar verdict against General Motors. $144.8 billion against the tobacco industry in a Florida class action. $253 million to the widow of a man killed by Vioxx. The media loves to jump on these figuers, resulting in plaintiff's verdicts being considerably overrepresented. Consider the following cases:

**Every major newspapaper in the country placed the 1999 $4.9 billion dollar compensatory and punitive damage award against GM on behalf of six people burned when the gas tank of their Chevy Malibu exploded after a rear end collision.

Only two of those papers ran a front page story on the judge's reduction of the award to $1.2 billion.

Four of those papers briefly mentioned that the case settled for an undisclosed sum in 2003 while the case was on appeal.

**All media jumped on a jury's $144.8 billion punitive damage award agianst big tobacco in Florida. The countries major newspapars made it a headline story.

When the appeals court overturned the award, only two of those newspapers printed front page reports.

**A Texas jury awards $253 million to the widow of a man killed by Vioxx, including a $229 million dollar punitive award. All major news media cover the story in great detail.

The majority of accounts of the trial failed to include the fact that Texas law would reduce the punitive verdict to about $1.6 million.

Wasting little time, President Bush nominated John Roberts to replace Justice Rehnquist as the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Bush nominated John G. Roberts to the Court of Appeals for the District of Colombia in 2003, a court long known as a grooming area for future Supreme Court nominations.
Bush initially nominated Roberts to fill the void left by Justice O'Conner's resignation. However Roberts seems to be a natural choice to the Chief's chair, as Roberts served as Rehnquist's law clerk from 1979 to 1980, and as has remained elusive to those trying to pin down his level of conservatism.

A copy of Roberts' Senate questionnaire may by found here.

Chief Justice Rehnquist died on Saturday evening, succumbing to a long fight with thyroid cancer. Regardless of your views of some of his decisions, Justice Rehnquist was an oak on the court. In his 19 years as Chief Justice, he lead the court with efficiency and even-handedness, guiding the court through decisions like Bush v. Gore and leaving a legacy of leading a Court that may be the biggest proponent of states' rights in the history of this country. For this the man was both loved and hated, but so far as his role as Chief Justice the liberal stalwart Justice Stevens sums it up noting Rehnquist's "efficiency, good humor and absolute impartiality that [he has] consistently displayed when presiding at our [judicial] Conferences."

The Senate passed a bill that would effectively protect gun manufuacturers from lawsuits currently being pursued by many cities and municipalities across the country. The bill also makes lawsuits brought by individuals whose family members were killed or injured by guns very difficult to pursue. Proponents of gun control and industry regulation went ignored, as proposed amendments to outlaw hollow tip "cop killer" bullets and a provision mandating backgound checks at gun shows failed.
Regardless of your feelings on gun control, the civil justice system works as a balance on unregulated industries to protect the consumer. Taking away that balance by denying citizens access to the courts only promotes unaccountability in industry.
If the Second Amendment's right to bear arms is to be protected, then so must the Seventh Amendment's right to a civil jury trial. By eroding the rights guaranteed in one Constitutional Amendment, you effectively weaken all of them.

Read full article here.

The FDA began the initial approval process for a return of silicone breast implants to the market. The FDA told Mentor Corporation last week that its implants meet the intial criteria for approval. Several steps remain before final approval, but final approval is likely.
Silicone breast implants have been banned since 1992 because of serious health problems linked with ruptures and leakage. Lawsuits arising out of these injuries linger to this day.

Read the full article here.

Republicans and Democrats alike are currently pushing a medical malpractice reform bill through the Illinois General Assembly. This bill severly limits a victim's access to the courts by capping their ability to recover for losses caused by a negligent doctor. This bill is riding a wave generated by the battle cry of "doctors fleeing the state" and "who is going to deliver your baby?". This cry, propagated in no small part by insurance companies, tugs at the heartstrings--but is completly false and inaccurate...