This Makes Me Sick

Derma-Goon, Doc Turned Lawyer, and $217 Million Verdict

Dr. Skin Cancer's Demise
Patients say doc's cancer ops left them disfigured. Turns out he was drunk on ripping off Medicare for million$ and the geezers were his pawns. Now he's in the joint. BRAVO! Read [Herald Tribune]

Gold Diggin' Law Firm?
Deposition: West Va. Doc Rick Houdersheldt said he was approached by three or four patients in 2004 who complained they had been solicited by the Charleston law firm of Curry and Tolliver to file suits against King and Putnam General Hospital. One of the patients allegedly told Houdersheldt that he had been offered $10,000 to become a plaintiff against King and Putnam General. Classy. 

Turns out the aforementioned Tolliver is a former emergency medicine doc who is now a lawyer doing med mal suits. Interesting. We'll try to get a post from him. Read [The Record]

Tampa Man Gets $217  million Med Mal Verdict
Laywers for the patient—who was left brain-damaged and disabled after hospital emergency room doctors misdiagnosed stroke symptoms—says they tried to settle with the doctors' insurance company, but were rejected. Nice chess move! Read [Houston Chronicle]

Where do we begin on this one?

Wistful Doc, Nurse Rescue Team, and Anchorman's Blues

Old Doc Codger retires, says some doctors need to be sued, but “somebody shouldn’t win a $2 or $3 million settlement for what was an honest mistake or honest misjudgment." Then he handed out penny whistles and moon pies.  Read [Tyron Daily Bulletin]

Nurses Union Launches National Disaster-Response Network, Again Assumes Liability in Post-Storm Chaos Read [Oakland Tribune]

'Paralyzed' Anchorman's Med-Mal Suit Gets Wet: Date of Speedo-Sportin' Photos Questioned Read [The Olympian]

Lawsuits and Rx Drugs: Living in Perfect Harmony

Drug makers faced the most lawsuits of any industry last year. We're not pointing fingers, but the numbers are just nuts.

"Since 2000, more than 65,000 product liability lawsuits have been filed against prescription drugmakers" The big four targeted in the last few years: hormone-replacement drug Prempro, birth-control patch Ortho Evra, anti-psychotic Seroquel and anti-seizure drug Neurontin.

Plaintiffs claim drugmakers failed to disclose the drugs' risks and/or failed to properly test them.

A law professor offered his two-cents on the situation: "The lawyers have created almost an assembly-line approach to use ... against an industry that's in tobacco-land in terms of how much people hate it." Ouch. Read [USA Today]

WV senator tackles 'fraudulent' and 'tacky' lawyer ads

West Virginia Senate Majority Leader Truman Chafin has seen enough. "The legal profession's public image, once perceived as honorable and noble, has eroded into a carnival-like thing, akin to a blue-light special, touted on a used car lot," reads a recent resolution by State Sen. Chafin. He wants to create an independant committe to review ads and new advertising rules like they've got in Kentucky. Oh, yeah, forgot to tell you that Chafin is also a "wealthy trial attorney." And he's a democrat, too. Would any of our fiery readers like to respond to that? Read [Lexington Herald-Leader]

Keys to hiring a personal injury lawyer

We came across Expertlaw.com, which prides itself on “bringing experts and attorneys together.” Seems like a smart space for medical malpractice cases. Digging into the website, we found Michigan attorney Aaron Larson's “keys to hiring a personal injury lawyer.” We’ll let him do the calling out of his brethren.

Should I hire the personal injury law firm with the 1-800 number and all of the ads on TV?

Generally speaking, television and radio advertisements are a bad way to find an attorney. Many advertisements are paid for by referral agencies, which collect large numbers of calls and then divide them up between member attorneys. Even when the advertisements are paid for by a law firm, often many of the cases are referred out to other firms who share the enormous cost of advertising. Most of the time, the attorney with the big advertising campaign will not have an office near you. Unless your case is worth a lot of money, you may well find that you are quickly referred to a different firm or that you can't get much attention for your case.

Please note that, when it comes to hiring a personal injury lawyer, many of the best personal injury attorneys do little or no advertising. They get their cases through "referrals" from other attorneys, due to their reputations for doing good work and getting good results.

Seen any good commercials lately?

Subway legal business

Vandals were kind enough to not completely obscure this ad found in a New York City subway station. The info about the firm's "Top Medical Malpractice Award in the U.S.A." still reads clearly. But as enticing as the "Boxin' Irishman" logo is, we're not choosing our legal representation while waiting for the F train.

Step right up

For our latest installment of Legal Lotto, we highlight the monthly “Injury Alert” newsletter from New York-based Parker & Waichman. It’s billed as “your source for top-notch, valuable and current information about issues related to personal injury law. It also includes a list of current product recalls.” Recent topics include: over-medicating children and risks associated with the unapproved (“off-label”) use of atypical anti-psychotic drugs in elderly patients. While consumers should be informed about product and drug recalls and malpractice issues, something just doesn’t sit right about an “Injury Alert.” Maybe we’re wrong, but stoking the lawsuit monster makes us sick.  And who signs up for this? Are people just sitting around looking for a way to cash in?  Post your thoughts.

Show me the lawsuit

Attorneys flocked to St. Louis at the end of August, as they filed 1,300 lawsuits just before a new Missouri state law limiting lawsuit awards went into effect. "We had lawyers flying in from Kansas City and driving up from Arkansas," Circuit Clerk Mariano Favazza said. "Lawyers were standing in line 100 deep!" Read [The Springfield News-Leader]