First Vioxx Ruling
August 30, 2005
Merck & Co., founded in 1891, has a slogan -- what it calls its "guiding philosophy." That philosophy is, "patients first." In the first of many Vioxx trials expected to be litigated in state and federal courts across the country, the jury wasn't buying it. On Aug. 19, after a month-long trial, ten out of 12 jurors -- the number needed to return a verdict of guilty -- found Merck liable to the plaintiffs, survivors of a man who took Vioxx for pain relief. The damages award was staggering: $24.5 million in economic losses and compensation for mental anguish and $229 million in punitive damages.
Wrongful Death Suit Allowed over Embryo
August 30, 2005
Earlier this year, a Chicago judge ruled that a husband and wife will be allowed to proceed with a wrongful death suit against a fertility clinic that allegedly inadvertently discarded their fertilized egg. Lawyers say courts have previously considered cases involving embryos to be property rights or negligence claims, but a wrongful death action presents a new issue that could affect abortion law, stem cell research, genetic testing and a wide range of other issues. "Calling this a wrongful death is a new frontier for the judiciary," said Andrew Worek, a medical malpractice defense lawyer with Philadelphia's Weber Gallagher Simpson Stapleton Fires & Newby. Worek has written about the legal issues surrounding pre-embryonic human cells. "In the past, they have been handled as property or negligence cases."
Physician and Medical Device Defendants
August 30, 2005
Politics make strange bedfellows," is an election-year maxim. Sometimes, bitter rivals in primaries become allies after a convention, or forge alliances to get favored bills and "pet" proposals approved. But while politics may make strange bedfellows, it has nothing on personal injury litigation. Perhaps nowhere is this more true than in the realm of medical liability lawsuits involving doctors and medical device companies as co-defendants. The intersection of medical malpractice and product liability litigation often pulls together two distinct but interrelated entities, which can both end up as defendants in complaints incorporating allegations of medical malpractice and product defect.
Brain-Dead Woman 'Gives Birth'
August 30, 2005
A few weeks ago, the media was all over a touching story: A 26-year-old pregnant woman, suffering from a fast-moving malignant melanoma, tragically died when the tumor attacked her brain. Unlike the Terri Schiavo case, the woman's grieving husband and family all accepted that she was dead. But, believing that she would have wanted them to save her baby against all odds, they arranged for her to stay on life-support until the fetus was viable enough to be taken from its brain-dead mother.
The Double Blind Placebo Controlled Trial
August 30, 2005
The blind allegiance to what I call the "fool's gold standard" lives on. Anyone with even a passing interest in bioethics knows it is unethical to conduct a double blind placebo controlled trial where standard therapy exists, except under limited circumstances. The exceptions are where: 1) there is no risk of harm if the patient forgoes treatment during the placebo phase such as in a trial for a drug that seeks to cure hair loss or impotence; 2) the standard therapy carries such severe side effects that patients might choose to avoid it; or 3) the standard therapy is otherwise of questionable efficacy.
Twenty Questions
August 30, 2005
Is the trial design the best possible design from an ethical perspective? If the trial design involves dose escalation or randomization, are these elements…
Using Daubert to Defeat Causation in the Delayed Diagnosis Claim
August 30, 2005
The old maxim, "the earlier the treatment, the better the outcome" has been a longtime staple in plaintiffs' collection of so-called "expert medical opinions." Let's face it -- the notion that earlier treatment is preferable, while imprecise, seems like a logical conclusion for most of us. However, the Eleventh Circuit's recent decision in <i>McDowell v. Brown</i>, 392 F.3d 1283 (11th Cir. 2004), establishes that such general medical principles, which are typically based on no more than the expert physician's common-sense and anecdotal experience, are far too speculative to overcome an evidentiary challenge pursuant to <i>Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmeceuticals, Inc.</i>, 509 U.S. 579 (1993) and therefore fail to establish causation in a medical negligence case. Part One of a Two-Part Article.
Software Review: Needles Case Management Software
August 30, 2005
Javerbaum Wurgaft Hicks & Zarin is a tort litigation firm based in Springfield, NJ. The firm consists of six partners, associate attorneys, and support staff. We have used the Needles Case Management Software System since 1991 (at that time, it was called PINS, which was the DOS-based version of the program). The firm, at the time, was looking for a program that would organize the office and streamline casework. We were swamped with paper files and though we had a case flow, it was disorganized. Today, with 20 people in the office using the Needles program to manage cases, our firm is more organized than ever before.
VoIP: Insource Or Outsource?
August 30, 2005
Often, the most effective way to tackle the challenge of improving responsiveness as clients demand more immediate access to attorneys and legal advice, is by fortifying our communications systems in order to foster quicker and more efficient collaboration between attorneys, counselees, subject matter experts, and other legal professionals. As a multi-office legal organization, we achieved this by switching to a Voice over IP (VoIP) phone system that provides redundancy and reliability, streamlines the management of call flow, protects internal resources, and provides measurable cost-savings. In our experience, VoIP is a valuable technology for any productive legal organization.
Information Integrity Balancing Availability And Security
August 30, 2005
What happens when information is available but not trusted because it is not secure? What happens when end users have unfettered access to information ' but the information they're sharing is suspect? Or, what happens when quick business decisions are made based on data that is readily available but possibly compromised? The bottom line: Information is useless unless it is both secure and available.
