Eliza Jennings resided at The Terrace Nursing & Rehabilitation Center in Berea, KY from 2004 until her death in 2009, and during that time she endured unimaginable living conditions and neglect by the facility’s staff.
New York victims of medical negligence suffered a catastrophic blow this past Thursday, as state legislators refused to pass a “Date of Discovery” bill that has already been approved by 44 other states. “Lavern’s Law,” named after one particularly tragic medical negligence victim, would have corrected an oversight in the law as it applies to victims of medical negligence and misdiagnosis treated at New York hospitals.
We see it every time we’re on the road: drivers talking on the phone, texting, or multitasking with various mobile apps. A recent survey confirmed that distracted driving is on the rise in the US, and it has now spread to include apps like Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat.
According to the survey, conducted by Braun research and published last month, 61% of drivers between the ages of 16 and 65 report that they text while driving. 27% use Facebook, and 17% take selfies.
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.
Tracy Morgan made his first television appearance Monday, just a few days after reaching a settlement with Walmart over the horrific auto collision last June that put him within an inch of his life. It’s been nearly a year since a Walmart tractor-trailer rear-ended Morgan’s vehicle on the New Jersey Turnpike, but the actor and comedian still has a long way to go to full recovery.
Morgan’s vehicle was flipped on its head during the crash, causing serious injuries to two other passengers and killing Morgan’s good friend, comedy writer James McNair. According to the National Transportation Safety Board, the Walmart truck was traveling at 20 miles per hour over the speed limit, and the driver had not slept in over 24 hours at the time of the collision.
We wrote about the Joan Rivers tragedy shortly after the 81-year-old comedienne’s death during an endoscopy in September of last year. The Manhattan clinic that treated comedian Joan Rivers before her death allegedly made a number of serious mistakes, including failing to identify deteriorating vital signs, and providing timely intervention, according to a report released Monday.
The report, which was published by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), included a list of major error committed by the clinic:
— Failing to identify deteriorating vital signs and provide timely intervention;
— Failing to record Rivers’ weight, prior to the administration of medication for sedation;
Pi Delta Psi, one of the country’s most popular Asian American fraternities, was formed nearly two decades ago around the ideals of the organization’s four pillars of character: academic achievement, cultural awareness, righteousness, and friendship/loyalty. None of those traits seemed to be on display earlier in December when the fraternity’s Baruch College chapter allegedly engaged 19-year-old freshman Chun Hsien Deng in a dangerous initiation “game” that rendered him unconscious, and then failed to bring him to the nearest hospital before an hour had passed, and Deng had lost all hope of survival.The game, called “Glass Ceiling,” involved having pledges like Deng carry backpacks filled with sand across a snowy yard, blindfolded, while fraternity brothers repeatedly tackled them. It is contended Deng was knocked unconscious by one of these impacts, and he remained unresponsive until he was declared dead at following day.The most disappointing fact about this story is how the fraternity brothers failed to seek medical attention for Deng immediately after his loss of consciousness. Instead they brought Deng inside, changed his clothes and ran Google searches for his symptoms. Even after decided that Deng needed more significant medical help than they could offer, the boys never called an ambulance for him. Rather they drove him toGeisinger Wyoming Valley Medical Center in a car, depriving him of yet more time in the care of trained professionals. When first confronted with the police, the brothers who accompanied Deng lied about his injuries, claiming that he had hit his head in a wrestling match.The only reasonable explanation for why these brothers would waste precious time seeking medical attention for a boy clearly suffering from major brain trauma is that they feared if the truth of their game was found out, they would be held liable for hazing.Hazing is an insidious crime particularly because it so often finds victims among impressionable freshman in college social groups such as fraternities. The law takes into account the peer pressure Deng must have felt when he agreed to partake in a game as dangerous as Glass Ceiling, by holding that the victim’s “consent to engage in a hazing activity is not a defense” against hazing.Fraternities and similar social organizations can be a greatly beneficial component of a college life. But they are still organizations run by students, and when they operate without constraint, and their own guidelines are forgotten, these groups can easily run amok. The tragedy of Chun Hsien Deng’s death is twofold: first, that before Deng’s head injury not one of the Pi Delta Psi brothers that were present stepped forward to put an end to this clearly dangerous game, and second, that after Deng was knocked unconscious, none of them feared for Deng’s survival more than they feared the consequences of being found responsible.
As the NTSB continues to explore possible causes of the tragic Asiana Boeing 777 crash on July 6th, much of the news coverage until now has speculated about equipment malfunction and pilot error, or else recounted the injuries and the inconceivable horrors endured onboard the ill-fated aircraft. However the incident has also been a source of countless brave and selfless acts by the heroic passengers and crew.Cabin manager Lee Yoon-hye spoke of how her instinct to protect her passengers took over in the moments after impact. “I was only thinking about rescuing the next passenger,” she explained in a news conference on Sunday. “I didn’t have a moment to feel that this fire was going to hurt me.”She also told the story of how, when a young passenger became too frightened to evacuate the plane via one of the emergency slides, one of Ms. Yoon-hye’s colleagues carried him down to safety on her back.Fei Xiong helped her 8-year-old son leap from the plane directly onto the tarmac when she became concerned that the aircraft would become engulfed in flames before help arrived. Wen Zhang carried her 4-year-old son to safety through a small hole torn open in the wreck.Boeing 777s are designed to accommodate a complete evacuation within 90 seconds even if half the aircraft’s doors are inoperable. This capacity was put to the test on Saturday as much of the aircraft was damaged or in flames. Video footage of the impact and its aftermath shows that despite many injuries and two tragic losses of life, the evacuation of the plane was on the whole safe and efficient. This has a lot to do with crewmember training and passengers’ familiarity with safe evacuation procedures.Let’s have the Asiana Airlines tragedy serve as a reminder to all aircraft passengers of the importance of wearing a seatbelt, identifying all possible emergency exits, and familiarizing oneself with emergency protocol. Accidents like this will continue to occur, but we can ensure the best possible safety for ourselves and our loved ones by remaining aware of possible dangers and how to act in the event of an emergency.Sources: USA Today, “Asiana Survivors Recall Last Moments Before Crash” July 8 2013.CNN, “Why Asiana Airlines Flight 214 Crash was Survivable” July 7 2013.
The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board is looking for answers in the aftermath of the Asiana Airlines Boeing 777 crash on July 6th, which killed Ye Mengyuan and Wang Linjia, two 16-year-old Chinese students and gravely injured many more. The aircraft was carrying 291 passengers and 16 crewmembers from Seoul to San Francisco when its tail crashed into a seawall positioned just before the runway in the San Francisco Bay.This incident marks the first Boeing 777 crash in the aircraft’s history, dating back to 1995. Though Asiana Airlines has released a statement that they do not believe the accident to be a result of any mechanical failure with the plane, the NTSB is holding off from pointing fingers until a full investigation has been conducted. In the hours since the crash there have been speculation as to whether the pilot error or runway construction might be at fault.What is presently known is that the aircraft was traveling at “significantly” slower than target speed while approaching the runway, according to a NTSB report, and that there was a stall warning 4 seconds before the aircraft’s impact. 1.5 seconds before the impact the crew attempted to pull away from the runway, lifting the nose of the aircraft right before its tail crashed into the seawall.Autopsies are underway to determine the cause of Ms. Ye and Ms. Wang’s deaths. One of the girls is believed to have been ejected from the aircraft upon impact, and there is some evidence that she was then run over by an emergency vehicle rushing to the scene of the crash.Other passengers suffered head trauma and spinal fractures in addition to other injuries. It is estimated that over 180 passengers have sustained injuries from the crash.Our deepest sympathy goes out to these passengers and their families. We will continue to cover this story as more information is released, and we hope the NTSB conducts a thorough investigation that may yield information about the reasons for the crash and how tragedies like these can be avoided in the future.Source: Chicago Tribune, “Pilot of Crashed Asiana Plane was ‘In Training’ to Fly Boeing 777,” July 7, 2013.
The limits of New York Court of Claims Judge Renee Forgensi Minarik’s authority were called into question last month in the hospital negligence lawsuit Thurston v. State. Minarik was forced to make a decision against her conscience but in accordance with an ancient law, the 1846 wrongful death statute that ignores the grief of loved ones in determining the damages in a wrongful death case. Justifying her decision, Minarik explained, “bad laws make hard cases.”Thurston v. State pitted the family of Cheryl Thurston, a physical and mentally handicapped woman who drowned in a bathtub at the state-run Office for People with Development Disabilities Pittsford facility as a result of her caretaker’s negligence, against the State of New York.Cheryl had a condition that caused her to suffer from frequent seizures, and as a result she required constant supervision from the facility’s staff. On August 30th, 2008, Cheryl was left alone in her bathtub, where she experienced a seizure and then drowned before she was able to regain consciousness.The way that the present wrongful death statue is worded, because Cheryl was not earning income at the time of her death and because she was not conscious of her suffering, her case is not worth any pecuniary damages. Judge Minarik was forced by the law to dismiss Cheryl Thurston’s case, in the face of everything she knew to be just.”It is repugnant to the Court to have to enforce this law which places no intrinsic value on human life,” she wrote in her decision.Minarik’s authority would not allow her to award damages to the Thurston family or to punish the negligent facility for their flagrant error, but in her decision she acknowledged the need for significant legislative reform.Minarik’s sentiment is one that the New York State Trial Lawyers Association is in agreement with. Earlier this year they proposed an update to the 1846 wrongful death statue, which, they point out, predates the American Civil War and the abolition of slavery. Their proposal, dubbed Zachary’s Law after a two-year-old boy who was killed by the negligence of a hospital that was ultimately not held financially responsible, is an attempt to realign the law with modern ideas about the value of human life.Grief is real, and like physical pain and suffering it should have value in court. The negligent hospital that treated Zachary Storms understood the significance of grief. That’s why they paid for grief counseling for each of the hospital staff that was present for Zachary’s death. His parents, however, who stood by him and even held him down as instructed while doctors poured an exorbitant amount of activated charcoal solution down his throat, filling his stomach and lungs and eventually killing him, were not qualified to receive compensation for the grief they suffered and are still suffering.Because the present wrongful death statute awards damages based primarily on expected future income, it is highly biased towards high-income earners. The families of wealthy men and women are compensated more fully than middle and working class families. The lives of children and the elderly on the other hand, are nearly worthless in the eyes of the court because they are not earning income.This is a law that needs to be reformed, for Cheryl Thurston, For Zachary Storms, and for all the future victims of negligent institutions with little to no income.Sources: New York Law Journal, “Judge Forced to Make ‘Repugnant’ Decision,” June 4, 2013.New York State Trial Lawyer’s Association, “Shouldn’t New York’s grieving families be compesnsated for their profound loss?” 2013.
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