Personal Injury

November 13, 2011

Dollars for Doctors

It is not a secret that pharmaceutical companies use doctors and other medical professionals to promote certain drugs. The idea of a doctor receiving dollars from a drug company for prescribing its pills raises a lot of ethical questions, and one wonders whether in prescribing a certain pill, the doctor has the patient’s best interest in mind. The drug companies have long been rewarding doctors with fees for speaking engagements (promoting the drug), consulting fee, or research grants. However, until recently, what goods and dollars were exchanged was not public information.

According to ProPublica reporters Dan Nguyen, Charles Ornstein, and Tracy Weber, some of the drug companies have begun publicizing the details of payments they make to physicians, hospitals, in other health professionals for promoting their drugs. The payments are usually in the form of consulting fee, speaking engagement fees, or research fees. Most of the money goes to physicians, however, nurses and pharmacists also work with pharmaceutical companies. ProPublica has pulled the disclosures made by the pharmaceutical companies into a searchable database. Check if your doctor has received benefits from the drug companies.

Many patients suffer personal injuries from defective drugs. The list of recalled drugs by the FDA is rather long. A lot of the drugs on this list were recalled after many patients have suffered personal injuries.

October 4, 2011

Dangerous conditions in child and adolescent psychiatric hospital

by Zneimer & Zneimer, P.C.

Chicago Tribune Deborah L. Shelton reported that experts from the University of Illinois at Chicago issued a scathing report about the dangerous conditions of pediatric and adolescent psychiatric hospital Hargrove. This report is eerily similar to the one released on March 30, 2009, slamming the conditions at Riveredge Hospital and other psychiatric facilities owned or run by Psychiatric Solutions, and to another report released in May 2011 documenting inadequate care in Lakeshore Hospital. Back in 2009 as well as in the current reports, the UIC experts reveal that the most vulnerable patient population, pediatric and adolescent psychiatric patient are subjected to sexual assaults, physical attacks, threats, and unacceptable conditions.

According to the current report between December 2010 and mid-June 2011, there were over 100 cases of children and adolescent psychiatric patients subjected to physical attacks, threatening behavior, and sexual assaults at Hartgrove. The report on psychiatric care in 2009 on Riveredge and Psychiatric Solutions identified a similar longstanding pattern of egregious quality failures, failure to protect patients from sexual abuse, failure to provide patient care in a safe environment, failure to ensure patients are adequately monitored, failure to ensure adequate staffing for patient care, failure to adequately train and supervise staff. The current report on Hartgrove paints a similarly unacceptable picture of vulnerable population placed at unacceptable risk. The reports also reveal that the hospitals are understaffed or are staffed with unqualified personnel. Most of the children in these facilities are there because they are danger to self or others and need specialized care. When the hospitals hire personnel with lack of qualifications the hospitals put the children and staff at risk. Our law firm represents victims of psychiatric and hospital negligence in cases involving sexual assaults or inadequate supervision in psychiatric facilities. Sexual assaults are usually a result of inadequate staffing, improper supervision, or failure to follow physician-ordered precautions and observation levels. Personal injuries that result from inadequate staffing are easily preventable. Keeping psychiatric patients safe should be a priority to any mental health hospital. Patient safety is a prerequisite of any therapeutic environment for a psychiatric patient. Failure to prevent assault and abuse of psychiatric patients represents gross negligence and should not be tolerated.

October 2, 2011

Elderly Pedestrians More At Risk

by Zneimer & Zneimer, P.C.

A study conducted by Transportation of America based in Washington D.C. from 2000 to 2009 found that although people 65 and older represent 13% of the population, they represented 22% of the pedestrian deaths. Cities like New York and Chicago are taking aim to make cities safer for elderly pedestrians to reduced pedestrian injuries and deaths. The Chicago personal injury attorneys of Zneimer and Zneimer note a high percentage of pedestrian injury clients are elderly and almost all of the crashes that caused the pedestrian injuries occurred in a cross walk.

As a response to studies showing that elderly pedestrians are at risk, cities like Chicago and New York are making changes. These changes include “countdown” signals at intersections, speed bumps, extended curbs and medians in the middle of wide intersections. One of the biggest changes advocated by Transportation for America are for walk signals to be made longer to allow enough time the elderly to cross. The assumption is that a pedestrian can cover 3.5 to 4 feet per second but the elderly typically can cover only 2.5 feet per second.

January 15, 2011

Appellate Court Holds that Lawsuit of Defrauded Immigrants Can Proceed

by Zneimer & Zneimer, P.C.

In 2006 Jose Alvarado promised Cesar Gamboa, Ruben Nava, and Mauro Lopez, who were unlawfully in this country, that for $15,000 apiece, he could get them United States citizenship papers. Alvarado promised that he could deliver “authentic citizenship documents” for them through a contact at the US Consulate office in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. He told them that he had contacts that could influence the immigration authorities to expedite the application process but would need to pay employees in the different departments to obtain the necessary releases. Alvarado stated that he and his brother were obtaining their citizenship documents through the contact and invited Gamboa, Nava, and Lopez to join the group. The latter agreed and began paying in installments to Alvarado. Alvarado issued them receipts for the payments through his business, Marco’s Digital Video and Photography, Inc., to prove that the payments were legitimate. They say that Alvarado used “high-pressure tactics” to get the payments, calling them weekly until they had paid in full.

Once he received the money, however, Alvarado became less communicative. He did not deliver the promised “authentic citizenship documents” but delivered various excuses. In March 2009, he told the group that they were all swindled by the Mexican contact. Alvarado asked the group to contribute additional $200 each to hire a Mexican lawyer to pursue restitution from the swindler in Mexico. These additional payments did not fare any better than the first payments. Soon Alvarado informed the group that the legal challenge was not an option but proposed a new strategy. The new plan was to hire thugs in Mexico to kidnap the swindler and to get their money back. If the swindler would not return the money, the thugs would kill him. However, in October 2009, Alvarado told the group that the kidnapping plan was also on hold.

The thug-and-kidnapping plan having failed, Gamboa, Nava, and Lopez decided to try their luck with the Circuit Court of Cook County. They filed a lawsuit against Alvarado and his business for fraud, unjust enrichment, civil conspiracy, intentional infliction of emotional distress and violation Illinois Consumer Fraud and Deceptive Business Practices Act. The trial court dismissed the complaint, finding that the contract between the plaintiffs and the defendants were illegal and could not be enforced by the court. The plaintiffs appealed. The appellate court reversed.