Sandra Bland was pulled over by a Texas state trooper on July 10th for failing to signal a lane change. She was arrested, charged with assaulting an officer, and on July 13th she was found hanged to death in her jail cell.
“I think he’s guilty of the most cruel thing that a human being can do to another human being.”
That’s what Dr. Soe Maunglay has to say about his boss, Michigan oncologist Farid Fata, M.D., who on July 10th was sentenced to serve 45 years in prison and forfeit $17.6 million.
Only a dozen lawsuits have been filed against Amtrak in the weeks since the deadly train crash on May 12th, but there are more to come, and there is a good chance many of the victims will end up without fair compensation for the injuries they suffered.
8 people were killed and over 200 injured when an Amtrak train derailed while rounding a curve in North Philadelphia. The train’s black box data has shown that it was traveling at a speed of 106 miles per hour in a 50 mile per hour zone.
Class action lawsuits can be some of the most challenging cases for an attorney to take on. When a large number of plaintiffs suffer damages at the hands of a single party, it is often more efficient for them to bring a class action suit, in which one or several plaintiffs sue the defendant on behalf of all the plaintiffs, and then divide up the compensation between them. While these cases are typically more expedient and cost effective than launching many individual lawsuits, they do create the added complication of how to fairly divide the settlement.
One high profile case that has proved particularly difficult for both its victims and attorneys is the lawsuit against Johns Hopkins Health System for the unauthorized photographing of thousands of patients’ genitalia by gynecologist Dr. Nikita Levy. Dr. Levy was caught using a pen camera to photograph his patients early last year, and soon afterwards police found thousands of videos and over a hundred still photographs of his patients on the doctor’s home computer and hard drives.
With the recent $40 million settlement of the Central Park Five case, I am reminded of one of the unfortunate truths of personal injury law: no matter the figure, a financial award is never a true substitute for the physical, emotional or psychological damages inflicted on the victim.
In April, 1989, five black and Hispanic teenagers aged 14 to 16 were accused of beating and sexually assaulting a white woman on her run through Central Park. The boys’ case played into the racial tensions of the time as well as the widespread fear that the city was being overrun by gangs and hooligans. The boys were given nicknames like “the wolf pack” and “animals” in the papers, and “wilding” became a new verb describing these fearsome actions.
Personal injury cases are often brought to help remedy injuries caused by motor vehicle accidents, construction accidents, and medical malpractice. But, as I have written of previously, personal injury lawsuits can, in certain cases, arrive at a resolution where no other legal remedy is available. With the rise of child pornography on the Internet in the last two decades, personal injury law is proving a new and novel tool both for deterring the future exchange of illegal pornographic materials and for helping its child victims recover.One of the most widely viewed victims of Internet child pornography was sexually abused by her uncle between the ages of 4 and 9. Amy, as she is known to the media, has had her pictures and videos factored into around 3,200 criminal cases in the last fifteen years. The news of her images’ popularity online was a shock to Amy, occurring years after her uncle’s abuse ended. The trauma of knowing that, in Amy’s words, “at any moment, anywhere, someone is looking at pictures of me as a little girl being abused by my uncle,” has been a significant impediment in her road to recovery.After evaluating Amy, forensic psychologist Joyanna Silberg expects that she will need to continue therapy throughout the rest of her life, and that she is likely to suffer periodic setbacks that will disrupt her career prospects. Amy’s attorney James Marsh has estimated the cost of Amy’s lifetime treatment at just under $3.4 million.While her uncle has been punished with a prison sentence for his crimes, this still does not cover Amy’s damages. Amy’s atttorney James Marsh solution so far has been to file a new lawsuit against each defendant found in possession of pornographic pictures of Amy. The reasoning behind this is that with each distribution and viewing of these images, Amy’s privacy is violated by yet another individual. There have been 180 cases to date, and from these Amy has recovered over 40% of her damages. Next month, the US Supreme Court will decide if the burden of tracking down each of these offenders should rest with Amy and Marsh, or with the men already charged with viewing the images.While I hope for Amy’s sake that this case works out in her favor, either way it demonstrates how effective personal injury law can be in cases where no other remedy is available. James Marsh has made significant headway in covering Amy’s treatment costs by digging into the pockets of the men who have benefitted from her continued trauma.Sources: New York Times, “How Much Can Restitution Help Victims of Child Pornography,” January 24, 2013.New York Times, “Allocating Liability for Child Pornography, in Full or Fractional Shares,” December 2, 2013.
New York Injury Attorneys Blog