Philadelphia Injury Lawyer Blog

Expect to hear more about MRSA ever since the government’s first assessment of the potentially deadly staphylococcus infection finds its growth is out of control. No one knows why it is mutating into strains with unique properties that make it a more virulent form of infection.

Many people would rather not worry. MRSA has been identified in hospital settings for the past two decades. What has changed is that the drug-resistant bacteria is increasingly found outside of hospital settings and affecting more than the weak and vulnerable.

In the latest reports - four siblings attending public school in Far Rockaway, New York have been diagnosed with the bacterial infection. The school is being cleaned.
The mother of a boy who died from the so-called “superbug” is filing a $25 million lawsuit against New York City alleging negligence in the death of 12-year-old Omar, her only child.

Aileen Rivera says Kings County Hospital showed recklessness and carelessness when an emergency room attending physician failed to diagnose Omar with MRSA. Instead, they prescribed an antihistamine and sent him home. Omar died two days later.

If you or a loved one has suffered or died due to a medical issue, please contact the experienced medical malpractice attorneys at Pomerantz, Perlberger & Lewis today.

The Mississippi Supreme Court recently upheld a $4 million award to the family of a woman who was misdiagnosed with cancer and then given a dose of painkillers that killed her. Reith Sanders, the daughter of the victim, Ersel Allen sued Hospice Ministries and Dr. William Causey; the hospice settled mid-trial for $1 million. Ms. Sanders claims that a simple lab test could have prevented this tragedy.

In 2001, the 66-year-old woman was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer at the University of Mississippi and was sent to Hospice Ministries in June. She died a month later. She had been receiving massive doses of painkillers though she never even had cancer. Dr. William Causey was the medical director of the hospice at the time. He is currently serving a 25-year prison sentence for sexually assaulting a young boy in 2002.

If you or a loved one has suffered or died due to medical malpractice in Philadelphia or anywhere in Pennsylvania, please contact the experienced medical malpractice attorneys at Pomerantz, Perlberger & Lewis, LLP today.

PharmaFab, a distributor of more than 100 different drug products, has entered a legal agreement with the FDA under which they will stop the illegal manufacture and distribution of prescription and over-the-counter drugs. In the past, PharmaFab has sold items not made according to the current good manufacturing practice (CGMP), and many of its products did not have the required FDA approval.

PharmaFab has also been ordered to destroy all their illegal drugs and is barred from distributing all drug products until it fully complies with CGMP and gets the required FDA approval.

Just a few of the drugs distributed by PharmaFab include:

Rhinacon A Tablets
Sudal 12 Chewable Tablets
Atuss HX CIII
Histex PD 12 Suspension
De-Congestine Sustained Release Capsules

If you or a loved one has suffered adverse side effects from a drug or medical device in the Philadelphia area, please call the experienced legal team of Pomerantz, Perlberger & Lewis, specializing in Personal Injury, Medical Malpractice and Vehicle Accidents, to schedule your initial consultation.

A woman claiming her breast implants were damaged in an on-the-job car accident is only getting compensation enough to replace one of the two implants, according to a state appellate judge’s ruling recently.

The North Carolina Court of Appeals issued the decision in a workers’ compensation claim filed by Penny Rumple Richardson who claims the 2001 accident caused rippling and a decrease in the size of her breast implants. Not surprisingly, this case was the first of its kind heard by the judges.

Greensboro plastic surgeon Dr. David Bowers testified that the woman’s right implant had ruptured and the left implant showed signs of rippling, so he replaced both of her implants. But he later testified that the left implant most likely had rippling because it was under-filled.

Judges ruled that Richardson would be compensated for the one ruptured implant and that it be covered under workers' compensation because they are a "prosthetic device that functions as part of the body."

If you have been injured on the job and feel you may be entitled to Workers' Compensation benefits, please contact the experienced Workers’ Compensation lawyers at Pomerantz Perlberger & Lewis in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania today to schedule your initial consultation.

A company called Delta Enterprises is voluntarily recalling almost 2 million cribs after two infants died from suffocation. The company states that almost a million drop-side cribs manufactured between 1995-2005 need safety pegs that consumers may have lost during reassembly. Additionally, another 600,000 cribs have spring legs that can become worn out after several uses.

In one of the infant’s death circumstances, there was no safety peg and when the crib’s side detached, a gap was left and the infant got stuck in the gap. In the second death, the infant died by suffocation when a spring peg failed to lock and the side detached.

If you or a loved one has been injured or killed by a defective product in Philadelphia, please contact the experienced attorneys at Pomerantz Perlberger & Lewis, LLP today.

An ATM that was not properly secured fell on a customer's foot in a CVS store recently. The suit claims the ATM became unsecured and came to rest on the customer's foot and that CVS failed to properly operate, manage and control the machine. Allegedly, screws were missing from the ATM. The plaintiff in this case is seeking over $50,000 in damages for the injuries he sustained.

In a separate premises liability suit also filed in the circuit court, a woman alleges that a Wal-Mart store negligently placed a cart near a plant display, leading to her fall. The woman is suing Wal-Mart for damages totaling more than $30,000. The suit specifically alleges that Wal-Mart failed to keep its aisles clear of anything that could cause a fall. The plaintiff claims the cart was in an unsafe area near a table of plants.

Premises Liability Law deals with the body of law that makes the person in possession of land responsible for injuries suffered by persons present on the premises. These cases are sometimes referred to as "slip and fall" cases and often require the advice of a lawyer.

If you or a loved one has suffered an injury due to a slip and fall or some other accident on someone else's property in Philadelphia or anywhere in Pennsylvania, please visit the website of Pomerantz Perlberger & Lewis today for your initial consultation.

According to Florida law, adult children over 25 years of age cannot file lawsuits for the wrongful death of their parent caused by medical malpractice. Only spouses and adult children under 25 can seek damages caused by medical malpractice. Even Florida trial attorneys are outraged by this law and have sought to fight it for years but to no avail.

In 2000, the Florida Supreme Court upheld the lower court’s decision; however, Justice Barbara Pariente claimed that the age restriction was unjustified and likened the decision to limiting the rights of survivors with blue eyes over brown. Pariente asked the legislature to reconsider the decision, but her request was ignored.

Trial attorneys have found one possible way to get around the law, but it’s not easy. In order to pursue a medical malpractice claim on behalf of adult children older than 25, the attorneys must first prove the conduct of the healthcare professional was so outrageous that "it goes beyond all bounds of decency." There is only one case on record where the outrageous conduct argument was used successfully. That case involved siblings suing after their mother died during routine eye surgery and was eventually settled out of court.

How can the value of someone’s life be measured by the age of her children? How can a court tell a 26-year-old man that his father’s death due to medical malpractice is not legally worth fighting for?

If you or a loved one has suffered or died due to medical malpractice in Pennsylvania, please contact a Philadelphia medical malpractice attorney at Pomerantz Perlberger & Lewis today to schedule your initial consultation.

The family of a five-year-old Chicago boy was awarded $14 million after he suffered a severe brain injury during birth that resulted in him having cerebral palsy. Staff members at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago allegedly mixed up the boy's heart rate with his mother's pulse rate.

The baby boy was not breathing when he was born, and the staff was not prepared to resuscitate him because of the monitoring error. The obstetrician and the nurse both misinterpreted the boy's heart rate before delivery and did not even realize the baby was in fetal distress.

The boy went without oxygen for seven minutes which, in turn, caused him to have cerebral palsy with total paralysis of his arms and legs. A neonatal resuscitation team was not called until the baby was delivered, and as soon as a breathing tube was placed in his airway, his heart rate increased. But it was too late; the damage to the brain had already been done, and the boy will never walk or talk.

If you or a loved one has suffered or died due to medical malpractice in Pennsylvania, please contact a Philadelphia medical malpractice attorney at Pomerantz, Perlberger & Lewis today to schedule your initial consultation.

In Fayette County, Kentucky, a woman was awarded just under $10 million after routine heart surgery left her paraplegic. Thirty-one percent of the fault was assigned to the surgeon. Verdicts against the other defendants (two facilities) were moot because they were already settled before trial. This could be the largest medical malpractice award in Fayette County’s history.

The plaintiff in the case, Latricia Satterwhite, had surgery on her mitral valve in April of 2006; the surgery was successful. But according to medical experts, the surgeon misplaced the cannula (long thin tubing) for a machine that pumps blood during the surgery. Misplacement of the cannula caused too much blood and oxygen to be pumped to her right hand and too little to her brain and spinal cord. Ms. Sattterwhite can no longer walk. She also suffered brain damage.

If you or a loved one has been harmed during surgery or some other medical procedure, please contact the experienced medical malpractice attorneys at Pomerantz, Perlberger & Lewis, LLP today.

A woman in Sweden went in to the hospital to have her appendix removed, and instead, she had an ovary and a Fallopian tube removed. This egregious example of medical malpractice took place last year but the story has just now hit Swedish newspapers. A Council that managers the hospital named in the suit says the surgery’s complex nature may have contributed to the mistake. The incident is still being investigated.

If you or a loved one has suffered or died due to medical malpractice, please contact Pomerantz, Perlberger & Lewis, LLP to schedule a confidential consultation.

A Delaware woman went to a hospital due to a severe case of indigestion; an hour later, she was pronounced dead by hospital staff. But when someone noticed that her dead body was still breathing. She was not dead after all, and she and her family are suing the hospital and staff for compensatory and punitive damages.

Judith Johnson is now brain injured but she can walk and talk, according to her attorney. The 61-year-old was actually having a heart attack when she arrived at the Delaware hospital in May 2007 and went into cardiac arrest 45 minutes after her arrival. She was treated in the ER but records reveal she "never regained a pulse." She was pronounced dead at 8:34 p.m.

The woman now suffers from memory loss, speech problems, liver damage, seizures, personality changes, and permanent neurological injury as a result of the care she received in the hospital, according to her attorney.

If you or a loved one has suffered or died due to medical malpractice in Philadelphia or anywhere in Pennsylvania, please contact the attorneys at Pomerantz Perlberger & Lewis, LLP today to schedule a confidential consultation.