Personal Injury Law

Tennessee Nursing Home Punished by State

Posted on April 09, 2008
This week the Tennessee nursing home industry pushed legislation to give them limited liability for the neglect of residents. It is amazing that the industry has the guts to ask for a special law created just to limit their liability when there has been record fines and citations of inadequate care this year...

Tennessee Age Discrimination cases rising

Posted on April 01, 2008
After the past few years the state of Tennessee and my office has seen more age discrimination cases. There is some debate as to why. The most commonly given reason I hear for the rise in job related age discrimination is that the work force is simply getting older...

Right to re-open a Tennessee workers compensation case

Posted on March 25, 2008
There are many considerations in determining the value of a workman's compensation claim. One of the most crucial factors is whether the "cap" applies. The is a limit in Tennessee on an award if the employer goes back to work for the same employer. Basically, if an employee returns to work for the same employer, making the same or greater hourly wage as before the injury, then their permanent disability is limited to no more than 1...

School assaults

Posted on March 04, 2008
This week I was interviewed by a local news station, Fox 17, to discuss the sexual assaults which recently occurred on school buses. Unfortunately, my office has handled several inadequate security cases and school liability cases. These cases never come to my office until the damage has been done...

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Baxter Heparin Recall - Update

Posted on March 04, 2008
Baxter International Inc. has announced the recall of all remaining, potential lethal doses of its heparin products including its possibly defective: Sodium injection multi-dose Single-dose vials HEP-LOCK heparin flush This completes the series of heparin recallsTennessee Law Blog has been covering...

Two Big Qui Tam Cases Settle This Week, Reveal Nature of False Claims Lawsuits

Posted on February 23, 2008
Amendments to The False Claims Act in 1986 as well as Tennessee?s own Tennessee Medicaid False Claims Act (TMFCA) allow qualified whistleblowers to earn a portion of the government?s recoveries (called ?qui tam provisions?) when whistleblowers, known as ?relators,? appropriately report their company?s defrauding the government...

Tennessee Legislature Considering Nursing Home Immunity Bill

Posted on February 23, 2008
The Tennessee Legislature is considering a bill that would cap any nursing home neglect or abuse jury award to $300,000.00. Apparently, the legislature does not believe that we as citizens are smart enough to sit on a jury and award a sum that is in proportion to any neglect suffered by a nursing home resident...

FDA Recalls Dangerous Heparin Made in China

Posted on February 15, 2008
FDA recall of Baxter International?s drug heparin made the front page of yesterday?s Wall Street journal after FDA officials confirmed four deaths from the blood-thinner. The culprit appears to be a Chinese plant producing the active ingredient in heparin...

FDA Recalls Medtronic Infusion Pump (SynchoMed EL Implantable) ? Dangerous Device Causes Injury or Death

Posted on February 08, 2008
Medtronic, a medical device manufacturer who has formerly warranted a dangerous device warning in the pages of this Tennessee Law Blog, has been issued a FDA Class I Recall for a series of its defective infusion pumps. (For explanation of why defective infusion pumps are dangerous, check out Tennessee Law Blog?s defective device article on the dangerous Alaris Pump modules...

Tennessee Politicians' Price Tag on Nursing Home Abuse

Posted on February 01, 2008
As I write, your Tennessee representatives in Nashville are hearing arguments for putting limits to the amount of monetary awards clients can receive in Tennessee nursing home abuse lawsuits. Proponents are using the same rhetoric as they use elsewhere, ignoring nursing home deaths, neglect, and physical abuse in Tennessee nursing homes, that makes the abuser (the negligent nursing home) the victim...

Ortho Evra Injuries ? Dangerous Drug Warning

Posted on January 25, 2008
Ortho Evra contraceptive patch users should be aware of injuries caused by the transdermal (skin) birth control patch. FDA investigations have revealed Ortha Evra contraceptive users have a significantly higher risk of developing serious blood clots (aka ?venous thromboembolism? or VTE) than women taking oral contraceptives...

FDA Publicizes OTC Drug Dangers to Children

Posted on January 18, 2008
Children?s OTC cold medication was the subject of the FDA?s public warning issued yesterday, a subject that has been awaiting strong censure for many years. The FDA report states ?Over-the-counter (OTC) cough and cold products should not be used to treat infants and children less than 2 years of age because serious and potentially life-threatening side effects can occur from such use...

Benzene Attorneys Protect Against Dangerous Carcinogens

Posted on January 14, 2008
Benzene lawsuits have been big news lately in Texas, Tennessee, and Florida--some good news and some bad news. Good news is these benzene lawsuits are having their day in court; bad news is these benzene lawsuits are occurring because government oversight of its citizens? safety is lax--forcing personal injury lawyers to step in and clean up the carcinogens through lawsuits after the cancer has been caused, soil contaminated, damage done...

Wackenhut accused of billing government for services not provided

Posted on January 08, 2008
News 4 in Nashville ran a story that Wackenhut has billed the government for security services that were not provided. If this is true they have billed us as tax payers for nothing. I think we would all agree that billing someone for work you do not perform is nothing more than stealing...

FDA Issues Safety Warning for Duragesic Pain Patch

Posted on January 06, 2008
The Duragesic pain patch and other, generic pain patches similar to Duragesic have received a second safety warning from FDA regulators. FDA officials have issued this second warning to doctors and patients using the Duragesic pain patch due to many injuries and deaths reportedly caused by the drug fentanyl...

FDA Product Recall Resource

Posted on January 02, 2008
A few weeks ago I reported on a dangerous medical device FDA recall involving infusion pumps. In that Tennessee Law Blog, I wanted to include more information on FDA recalls but didn?t have the luxury of space or time. As a Nashville plaintiff?s attorney, I feel it is my place to make the public aware of FDA recalls and other dangerous products so that I might offer my services to the injured, just as I do whenever a Tennessee client suffers physical damage from a workplace injury or defective products or financially from workplace discrimination or denied social security...

Nursing Home Complains about oversight

Posted on December 31, 2007
I recently read an article on our local paper, The Tennessean. The article was from a lawyer who represents nursing homes. He was complaining as to how costly litigation is for the nursing home and that he believes the government is being to picky on their inspection of the homes...

Dangerous Medical Device - Infusion Pump Recall

Posted on December 26, 2007
Cardinal Health, an $87 billion global manufacturer of medical equipment, announced today the voluntary recall of all Alaris Pump modules shipped prior to September 27th. These Alaris Pump modules (also known as the Medley Pump module) have dangerously defective spring mechanisms which can make these defective medical devices dangerous and deadly...

Tennessee Workplace and Indirect Discrimination

Posted on December 19, 2007
There?s a certain conception of workplace discrimination that I?d like to correct in this week?s Tennessee Law Blog. Too often Tennessee workers whom HHP partner Attorney Rick Piliponis and I have met with do not realized that they were being discriminated against, though they were passed over for promotions or denied benefits, because no one was mean to them or made inappropriate comments...

Tennessee Man Charged in Nursing Home Rape

Posted on December 09, 2007
There appears no getting away from nursing home abuse this month as nearly 300 Nashville nursing home residents look for new homes and facilitated care after Medicare and Medicaid was cut this week form McKendree Village for nursing home violations. Meanwhile, state representatives heard from Tennessee nursing home care advocates this week on the need to put more emphasis on home and community-based care, as I discussed in this previous nursing home abuse blog...

Another Tennessee Nursing Home Blog (McKendree Village)

Posted on December 03, 2007
For this week?s Tennessee Law blog entry, I?d hoped to define workplace discrimination under Tennessee employment law and discuss how many recent class action discrimination cases are not the result of meanness or maliciousness on the part of an employer...

Correcting Tennessee Nursing Home Abuse & Neglect

Posted on November 26, 2007
Nursing home abuse--like most widespread, longstanding problems--unfortunately doesn?t make the news very often. It?s usually only publicized when some new Tennessee nursing home is closed because of care violations, staff abuse, or general neglect. That?s why I found it refreshing when NewsChannel 5 (Nashville) reported Friday on the general issue of Tennessee?s negligent nursing home care and not just on a single nursing home's violations...

Legal Help for Aviation Accident Injury Victims

Posted on November 21, 2007
The day before Thanksgiving, and many of us are rushing to write our blogs and last minute correspondences before we board a commercial airline and trust our lives to those tin birds whose wings don?t flap. But I feel safe flying. As Superman says in the movies, ?Statistically speaking, it's still the safest way to travel...

Veterans Home Cited for Neglect

Posted on November 12, 2007
The recent citations Tennessee Veterans? Home in Murfreesboro has received for nursing home neglect have been receiving some news coverage of their own today, perhaps because it is Veterans Day, perhaps because of the two women greeting the patriotic parades today in downtown Nashville with pictures of two veterans who had fallen not during combat but, according to their survivors, from neglect in the Murfreesboro veterans? home...

False Claims Act Recovers $2 Billion in 2007 Fiscal Year

Posted on November 07, 2007
This last fiscal year (10/01/06 ? 09/30/07), federal False Claims lawsuits (which I?ve previously written about here, here, and elsewhere) recovered over $2 billion in taxes through settlements and judgments, according to figures released last week by the U...

Tennessee Arbitration Agreements

Posted on November 06, 2007
Next month I will be flying to New York with my client and two witnesses to arbitrate a case that occurred in Tennessee. We have to argue this case out of state and pay thousands of dollars to a private arbitrator chosen by the company that injured my client...

Tennessee Mornings Follow-Up: TN Non-Compete Contracts

Posted on October 31, 2007
Leaving the Tennessee Mornings studio earlier today, I realized there were still a few points that I wasn?t able to cover on-air concerning Tennessee non-compete contracts. Unfortunately, I still don?t have the time right now to go into most of them...

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