Maryland Injury and Disability Law

Yaz Birth Control Injury Differences

Greenberg & Bederman — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 08:47:24 -0500

DC Area Yaz Birth Control Injury Law Firm Greenberg and Bederman is Currently Offering Legal Assistance

As many of you probably know, the Bayer Corporation is facing a series of lawsuits in various American states due to problems that users of their line of birth control pills are experiencing. If you don't know about yaz health problems, please read our page on yaz history.The difference between Bayer’s pills and most other oral contraceptives on the market is that Bayer’s birth control pills (which are marketed under the names Yaz, Yasmin, and a generic version called Ocella) all contain a synthetic variation of progestin called drispirenone. While the use of drispirenone has been marketed by Bayer as having some beneficial peripheral effects such as prevention of minor acne or helping to alleviate the symptoms of pre menstrual dysphoric disorder, Bayer failed to mention in either it’s marketing campaign or the warning labels used on the medication that drispirenone raises the risk of deep vein thrombosis, or blood clots in the deep arteries and veins of the legs. These blood clots can then break apart, and the pieces can travel through the bloodstream, which can cause strokes, heart attacks and pulmonary embolisms. The use of drispirenone has also lead to a higher than normal rate of gall bladder disease.

These side effects of yaz are not merely theoretical. There have been hundreds of women who have been seriously injured and hospitalized all over the country due to clot-based injuries. Otherwise perfectly healthy women have suffered from strokes, heart attacks, pulmonary embolisms and gall bladder disease, and there have even been more than fifty deaths.

As a result of these injuries and deaths, over 1100 lawsuits have been filed nationwide, with many of them falling under Multi District Litigation, which is a way to place cases with similar backgrounds against the same defendant under the same ground rules. A few class action suits (in which one group of attorneys represents multiple plaintiffs under the heading of one case) have also been filed.

Bayer has, of course, vowed to fight any and all yaz lawsuits regarding their line of birth control pills, and we certainly believe them. With profits of Yaz, Yasmin and Ocella reaching $1.7 billion dollars in 2009, Bayer can afford to wage as many court battles as they see fit. Even with all the justified bad publicity, Yaz is still Bayer’s top selling product.

The Bayer Corporation has already given some clues as to what they expect their defense to be. They recently made an attempt to allow past birth control history of the plaintiff’s to be used as evidence, which was quite rightly denied. And based on public statements by Bayer, we are expecting them to center their defenses on the warning label that is currently in place on the products themselves.

Bayer will probably wear the current label as a shield against any liability, with the premise being “Look, we have a warning label on the box, and the doctors who prescribe it have their warnings as well. If you didn’t read it, we can hardly be expected to be blamed for that.”

There are a few things wrong with that premise. In the first place, the warnings weren’t mentioned very prominently in the enormous and splashy advertising campaign that Bayer used for Yaz. The focus on these ads was all about what Yaz could do for you besides keep you from getting pregnant. In the second place, while the warning on the doctor’s labels does admit that there is a risk of hyperlykemia (elevated potassium levels,) it fails to mention that drispirenone has a higher risk of causing hyperlykemia than any other progestin based oral contraceptive on the market. Since hyperlykemia is a possibility with most other pills, this warning label basically makes it seem as if Yaz, Yasmin and Ocella are no different than any other pill on the market when it comes to risk, and this is simply not true.

An equivalent here would be if a gun manufacturer was selling a pistol that has a higher tendency to fire accidentally than any other gun on the market, but since there is a slight chance that many guns on the market will fire accidentally, their particular gun is no different than the others.

When you study the injuries associated with yaz Bayer’s warning labels should produce a list of conditions that should discourage you from taking any of their drispirenone based pills:

Yaz should not be used in women who have the following:

· Renal insufficiency

· Hepatic dysfunction

· Adrenal Insufficiency

· Thrombophlebitis or thromboembolic disorders

· A past history of deep-vein thrombophlebitis or thromboembolic disorders

· Cerebral-vascular or coronary-artery disease (current or history)

· Valvular heart disease with thrombogenic complications

· Severe hypertension

· Diabetes with vascular involvement

· Headaches with focal neurological symptoms

· Major surgery with prolonged immobilization

· Known or suspected carcinoma of the breast

· Carcinoma of the endometrium or other known or suspected estrogen-dependent neoplasia

· Undiagnosed abnormal genital bleeding

· Cholestatic jaundice of pregnancy or jaundice with prior Pill use

· Known or suspected pregnancy

· Liver tumor (benign or malignant) or active liver disease

· Heavy smoking (≥ 15 cigarettes per day) and over age 35

· Hypersensitivity to any component of this product

This is all well and good, but that doesn’t explain the hundreds of women who are suffering from none of these symptoms who are still being injured and hospitalized. And aside from that obvious red flag, these symptoms all more or less appear as disqualifications on the warnings for practically every other birth control pill out there. This again makes it appear that Bayer’s line of birth control pills are just the same as every other oral contraceptive, when they are in fact not, and that is one of the major reasons for all of these yaz lawsuits.

The “read the warning label” argument doesn’t carry any water unless that warning label clearly states that drispirenone increases your chances of hyperlykemia, which increase your chances of DVT, which increases your chances of heart attacks, strokes, pulmonary embolisms and gall bladder disease. The increased chances aren’t mentioned in a clear manner at all. Bayer did not say “Here is a birth control pill that can prevent acne and the symptoms of PMDD, but it increases the odds that you will suffer from blood clots. Take it at your own risk.” They simply said “Here is a standard, run of the mill birth control pill, except it can prevent acne and the symptoms of PMDD!”

Greenberg and Bederman is currently offering legal assistance for people in the Washington D.C. area who have been injured due to the use of Yaz, Yasmin or Ocella. Our attorneys are working diligently to help women in Virginia, Maryland and the District who have been hospitalized due to Bayer’s line of birth control pills. If you or a loved one has been injured in this manner, contact Greenberg and Bederman for a free yaz legal consultation today.

To learn more about yaz birth control, please read our yaz lawyers website page, or watch our yaz video on Youtube.

Unfair Medical malpractice Caps

Greenberg & Bederman — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 09:04:38 -0500

Mr. Fisher: I read your online comment about the "cap" in Colorado. I prefer to refer to these laws as a "limitation of liability " for the wrongdoer. Many states have held such limits on liability to be unconstitutional. I am sure that the Colorado law has been tested. As the so-called health care debate continues, people such as you need to let your story be heard so that people know how unfair and unjust these laws are. The jury verdict in the Alvarez case was essentially overridden by the Va. limitation and the family was deprived of its right to a jury trial.

I am truly sorry for your loss.

John J. Sellinger
Greenberg & Bederman
1111 Bonifant Street
Silver Spring, MD 20910
jsellinger@gblawyers.com

The state of Colorado has a $250,000.00 malpractice caps law. Unfortunately, I live in Colorado. My wife was killed by a very negligent Colorado doctor in 2003. It was a very simple 30 minute colon scopy test; and in 6 hours he killed my wife. He drilled two large holes in her colon; and all the waste material entered her chest, causing peronitis, shock, heart attack and death. There was nothing wrong with my wife; we were married for over 48 happy years and she was recklessly killed by this so called Doctor. I never even had a chance to say goodbye to my beautiful wife.

Naturally, I sued for wrongful death and settled out of court, because I might not of received any compensation, if a Jury bought the Doctors story. So, in out of court negotiations, they settled for $240,000.00. The big trouble with this is (you go 60%/40% with your attorney) my lawyer got $90,000.00 and I received only $130,000.00. This $130,000.00 is chicken feed and my wife, was worth a whole lot more than this, to me and my children and grandchildren.

It has been over 7 years, since my wife of 48 years, was killed; and I think of her every day. There is no such thing, as the so called closure; you have to tolerate it and live with it every day. It has devatated my family. My little granddaughter was only 8 years old, at the time; and she still tells me; "I miss grandma."

So, if you really want the worst Doctors in your state, the very best way to get them, is by passing the unfair $250,000.00 malpractice caps law. This really takes the doctors off the hook, protecting their negligence and increasing their profit ten fold. These greedy negligent doctors, will enter your state, like a bear to honey.

This stupid law is written for the Doctors and since they will have very low malpractice premiums (with caps) they couldn't care less, who they kill; it costs them nothing. Also, this "Doctors Law," causes the very worst Doctors, in the nation, to operate their questionable practice, in Colorado, since they can profit greatly, by much lower malpractice premiums. This negligent doctor practiced in 8 other states, before finding a home in Colorado. This horrid caps law, makes it easy for these Doctors, from other states, to be irresponsible in Colorado and in other states, that have this very unfair malpractice caps law. DON'T PASS THIS CAPS LAW!

Defective Toyota Recall

Greenberg & Bederman — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 10:54:28 -0500

Many car accidents have causes that are based on the driver’s negligence. For instance, a driver might run a red light or run a stop sign because he was sending a text message and wasn’t paying attention. Some accidents have causes that are environmental, like when someone is driving responsibly but the car hits a patch of black ice. Other accidents involve purely random occurrences, like when a driver swerves to avoid a pedestrian or animal that has darted out onto the road.

But lately there have been a slew of accidents in this country, with some of them being fatal, and the cause has nothing to do with the driver, or the environment, or carelessness on the part of pedestrians or animals. These car accidents are taking place because of the systemic malfunction of a large number of Toyota makes and models.

The numbers of failures in crucial systems such as brakes, acceleration and steering are unprecedented. There have certainly been automotive safety recalls, but as far as we can remember, there has never been an event where multiple models from one manufacturer have experienced multiple safety failures all at the same time. A recall normally involves one problem with a few models at most. In Toyota’s case, the problems involved practically their entire line of automobiles, from hybrids to sedans to pickup trucks to SUV’s.

So far, the models on the Toyota recall list include the following:

· 2009-2010 Rav4

· 2010 Highlander

· 2007-2010 Tundra

· 2008-2010 Sequoia

· 2009-2010 Corolla

· 2009-2010 Matrix

· 2005-2010 Avalon

· 2007-2010 Camry

· 2010 Prius

· 2010 Lexus HS250h

· 2009-2010 Pontiac Vibe

So considering that cars use one year ahead for their model years, these vehicular failures can go all the way back to 2004. That adds up to about six year’s worth of Toyotas malfunctioning on our roads in drastic and dangerous ways.

As we mentioned before, the problems aren’t cosmetic or something that can be brushed off. The first major recall involved floor mats that were jamming the accelerator pedal into the down position. Then there was a recall that involved accelerator pedals that were sticking even if there was no floor mat problem at all. Then in February there was a recall involving the braking system in the Prius model, which basically meant that there was a possibility of an accident no matter which pedal you happen to be stepping on.

These malfunctions have resulted in multiple serious injuries, and, unfortunately, more than a few traffic fatalities. The Los Angeles Times recently went through a series of accident reports and public records and found at least 54 instances of Toyota drivers who lost their lives due to vehicle malfunctions. Some of the more startling accidents include:

· An accident in Texas where a Toyota ran through a stop sign, hit a tree and landed upside down in a lake. Four people drowned in this accident, including the driver.

· A Toyota that sped across a street in Indiana, crashing into a jewelry store.

· A Toyota driven by a California restaurant owner that accelerated to speeds of 100 mph before it hit a telephone pole.

Most of these incidents were collected as complaints by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which is a Federal agency dedicated to automotive safety. But in the case of these Toyota complaints, the NHTSA did nothing to actually verify if these complaints and reports were valid. They are only just now testing the car that used to belong to Rhonda and Eddie Smith, who testified before the House Energy and Commerce Committee about their unintended acceleration incident. And since the NHTSA actually sat down with Toyota and negotiated a smaller and less effective recall even as people were already being injured by their cars, it’s hard for us to believe that the NHTSA will take a proactive role in handling this.

Much has been made of the CEO of Toyota testifying and apologizing on the Hill in February, but we sincerely doubt that the apology means that Toyota will simply concede if someone who was injured due to a vehicle malfunction files a lawsuit. We expect Toyota to put up a vigorous legal defense for any legal action that is taken against them.

If you have been injured due to a defective Toyota, it is in your best interests to seek legal assistance as soon as possible. Having an attorney who understands the difference between fair compensation for you and convenient for Toyota is very important, particularly if your injury has prevented you from returning to work.

Greenberg and Bederman is a Washington, D.C. based injury accident law firm with decades of legal experience. Our lawyers have been handling both car accident cases and product liability cases, and the Toyota recalls often fall under both categories. Our main office is located in Silver Spring, but we can offer legal assistance for injury victims all over Virginia, Maryland, and Washington, D.C.

If you or a loved one has been injured because of a defective Toyota Recall, contact Greenberg and Bederman for a free legal consultation today.

Avandia Drug and History Lesson?

Greenberg & Bederman — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 14:47:16 -0500

GlaxoSmithKline Diabetes Drug Avandia Linked to Heart Attacks

The Conservative Political Action Conference was recently held here in Washington, D.C. The Conference was a who’s who or rising stars in the Conservative movement. Only in Washington, D.C. can you find pundits, Congressmen and columnists receiving welcomes that would normally be reserved for the likes of rock musicians and Hollywood movie stars.

While the Conservative Movement itself has various subsets and fractions, the one element that unites them in word, deed and purpose is the idea of a small, non-intrusive government. For the most part, they espouse the theory that the best sort of government is a government that does not insert itself into the free market. Good government is that which is able to function and defend its interests without a burdensome level of taxation. They would argue that the United States is not a nation of regulations and statutes, but rather a nation of people hard at work.

This is a perfectly acceptable way of looking at things. There have certainly been times when we have found ourselves wishing for smaller government. Waiting in line at the DMV, for instance, or when we have filled out our tax forms only to find out that we owe more than we thought.

But Glenn Beck, the keynote speaker at CPAC, seemed to take those beliefs to some quite radical extremes. Mr. Beck seems to believe that government had no other business but to provide a police force and a military, and that government involvement in anything else, be it business, healthcare, communications, manufacturing, labor rights or the economy, was encroachment.

It is here that we differ significantly.

Believe it or not, there was a time that The United States of America was quite similar to the sort of place that Mr. Beck seems to wish for. Historians called it “The Gilded Age,” and it was basically the four decade period between the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln in 1865 and the assassination of President William McKinley in 1901. Mr. McKinley’s assassination led to Vice President Teddy Roosevelt’s appointment to the presidency.

To give you an idea as to how small and non-intrusive the government was during this era, we would ask you to name one President that served between the Lincoln and McKinley presidencies without looking it up on the internet. The odds are that you can’t, and the reason this is the case is because for about thirty five years, the President of the United States was practically a figurehead position. The real power was in the hands of men named Mellon and Rockefeller and Morgan and Hearst, who had practical or very real monopolies in banks, railroads, oil and mining.

To be sure, it was certainly a golden age if your name was Mellon, Rockefeller, Morgan or Hearst, but if you happened to be anyone else, then your lot in life was certainly less than ideal. There were no labor unions, so people often worked not for money, but rather company credit, which was spent at a company owned store. There was no corporate regulation, so if you happened to own a small bank or oil company there was nothing preventing one of the giants from forcing you out of business, sometimes with means involving actual physical violence. There were no standards for products sold on the market, so people ate rancid meat and goods packaged in lead soldered cans, and took “medicines” that were often nothing more than sugar water in fancy packaging. There were no child protection laws, so the coal mines of West Virginia were teeming with workers who should have been at an elementary school. In short, money was the only thing that mattered, and human dignity was worthless as currency.

With the simple marker of history as an example, we find it hard to fathom how on earth Mr. Beck could view this nightmarish period of existence as “the Good Old Days.” But if Glenn Beck believes that the Gilded Age was the pinnacle of the American age, then the recent behavior of pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline should fill him with all manner of patriotic pride.

Please consider the GlaxoSmithKline diabetes drug Avandia, which is meant for people with Type 2 Diabetes. Avandia works by making the cells more sensitive and responsive to insulin, which reduces the bodies need for the stringent blood sugar monitoring that diabetic patients have to do.

But just as with Vioxx, Yaz and Phen Fen before it, the trade off for the benefits of this drug appears to be an increased risk of heart attack. In a May, 2007 article published in the New England Journal of Medicine, Dr. Steven E. Nissen suggested that Avandia might increase the risk of heart attacks in its users. Dr. Nissen has impeccable credentials, does not accept fees from commercial entities, and is the least likely person in the world to throw around unfounded accusations. During Dr. Nissen’s studies, he noticed that 65% of the deaths that occurred during the clinical trials of the drug occurred due to heart disease.

It should be mentioned that Avandia has been on the market since 1999, and nets about $3 billion a year in profits for GlaxoSmithKline.

A recent report by the Senate Finance Committee (which spent four years going over documentation from the FDA and GSK) has determined the following:

That GSK attacked Dr. Nissen’s study in the press even though they themselves found it to be statistically accurate.
That GSK knew for years prior to the study that there were cardiac risks involved with Avandia.
That GSK ghostwrote papers for so-called “independent researchers.”
That GSK intimidated and attempted to professionally discredit researchers who were arriving at the same conclusion as Dr. Nissen.

If you or a loved one suffered an injury from the use of Avandia, contact Andy Bederman, from Greenberg & Bederman for a free legal consultation.

Greenberg and Bederman is a Washington, D.C. area injury law firm that is currently offering legal help to people in the District, Maryland and Virginia who have been injured and hospitalized due to the use of Avandia. We are also helping those who have lost loved ones due to heart attacks or strokes brought on by this drug.

If you or a loved one has suffered due to GlaxoSmithKline’s type 2 diabetic drug Avandia, contact Greenberg and Bederman for a free legal consultation today.

Hospital Infection Medical Malpractice or Inconvenient?

Greenberg & Bederman — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 08:38:52 -0500

Easily Preventable Hospital Infections Kill 48,000 Patients a Year.

There are many things that can go wrong in a hospital. There are the obvious hazards, like a surgical error or a wrong or missed diagnosis. But there are also problems that stem from seemingly minor causes. For instance, let’s say some paperwork gets misfiled and a patient ends up being given the wrong medicine. Or someone doesn’t send the right form to the kitchen and a patient is given food to which he or she is allergic. Believe it or not, these aren’t “pie-in-the-sky” scenarios. They have actually happened to patients before. The only good thing that you can say about instances like these is that at least they took place in a hospital.

As long as hospitals are run by human beings, mistakes will be part and parcel of medical care. Whether the mistakes are life threatening or just a minor inconvenience is entirely up to the doctors, surgeons, nurses, pharmacists and administrators. But as attorneys who represent victims of these medical malpractice mistakes, what is profoundly aggravating to us is when people get severely hurt or even worse due to something that was completely preventable.

One common problem that happens a lot more than it should is hospital infections. This is something that should be so high on the prevention priority list, yet the number of instances of hospital infection occuring is simply mind boggling. According to a report released by a think tank named Resources for the Future, infections like sepsis and hospital pneumonia took the lives of 48,000 patients in American hospitals in 2006. These infections were caused by microbes that could have been easily prevented with simple infection control methods. And in the instances where the patients survived, these infections lengthened hospital stays and cost patients an extra $8.1 billion. If you consider how badly the average healthcare consumer in America is being squeezed by insurance companies to begin with, this almost becomes too much to bear.

These infections do not just magically manifest themselves. They happen when hospital staff fails to maintain sterility of both the instruments that they use and the areas in which they do their job. A sterile environment is crucial to successful medicine. This concept isn’t new to medicine. Operations occurring in sterile fields with sterile instruments have been recognized as crucial to patient survival since the mid -1880’s. Patients who are recuperating are also at risk, if you consider their bandages, wounds, stitches and IV needles that are handled on a daily basis by hospital staff. These infections are brought in when nurses or hospital staff don’t wash their hands, or surgeons or nurses don’t observe proper sterilization protocol. Bear in mind that the human skin has a very important function. It keeps the very vulnerable internal organs and functions of the human body from infections, and these internal organs and functions are never more vulnerable than after a medical or surgical procedure.

These infections cost lives, time and money. A person who goes in to a hospital to have their appendix removed who suddenly contacts a staph infection from their trusted doctor should not bear the fiancial or human cost. And in case you haven’t had this experience yourself, hospitals very rarely say “Oh, my fault, no charge,” when they make a mistake. They continue to charge regardless. Insurance companies may refuse to pay for mistakes made by hospitals or medical professionals who continue to bill for their mistakes. So ultimately, the patient is left with thousands of dollars of extra medical bills simply because a nurse forgot to wash her hands.

The unfairness of this situation is intolerable, and what else can you call it when medical professionals fail to observe safety and procedural standards causing patients to die or be injured as a result?

Preventing these hospital infections isn’t a herculean task. These infections don’t simply materialize. And the idea that patients should be on the financial hook for easily preventable medical mistakes is unfair.

Greenberg and Bederman is a Washington, D.C. personal injury lawfirm based in Silver Spring, Maryland. A significant portion of our practice is dedicated to helping Virginia, Maryland and D.C. victims ofmedical malpractice. Our malpractice attorney is John Sellinger, who was voted into Maryland and DC Superlawers in 2008, 2009, and 2010, and is a medical malpractice injury attorney who has devoted his practice to helping those who have been injured by doctors or medical providersnegligence.

If you or a loved one in Maryland, Virginia or D.C. has been injured due to a hospital infection or other surgical or medical error, contact the medical malpractice injury firm of Greenberg and Bederman for a free legal consultation today.

Toyota Recall Negotiated with NHTSA?

Greenberg & Bederman — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 09:02:52 -0500

There have been thousands of automotive recalls over the years. As long as cars are designed, built and driven by human beings, mistakes will always be made. If you do a quick survey of your friends and neighbors, you will probably find that more than one of them has received a postcard in the mail, or received an e-mail, or gotten a phone call from an auto manufacturer requesting that they bring their car in for a free repair.

As we have mentioned before, a lot of car recalls involve problems that are merely inconvenient. There have been recalls involving radios, heaters, paint jobs and even seat warmers. But this Toyota recall is different. In the first place, there have been several recalls involving almost every Toyota model, and in the second place, none of these recalls involve “no harm, no foul” parts of the cars. They involve accelerator pedals, brakes and steering, each of which are crucial to the safe operation of these vehicles.

And these malfunctions aren’t simply theoretical. It isn’t a matter of if your accelerator pedal sticks, or your brakes fail, or your steering stops working. It’s a question of when.

Examples of this have been happening all over the country. In Nashville, Tennessee, a man named Dustin Ricardo was killed when his 2007 Toyota Camry crashed when the floor mat became wedged underneath the accelerator pedal. This caused the car to speed up, which then caused the Camry to crash into a tree.

In San Diego, an off-duty police officer and his entire family were killed when the Lexus that they were driving accelerated to a speed of over 100 mph. In a 911 call, someone from inside the car called before it crashed to say that the accelerator pedal was stuck.

These are some of the more high profile occurrences, but there have been 34 deaths that have been allegedly linked to various defects in Toyota models. There has yet to be a precise determination of the number of injuries to both drivers and passengers who were in the defective vehicles, and there has yet to be a specific determination in the number of “collateral injuries,” or people who were directly injured due to a Toyota malfunction but weren’t traveling in the car, but you have to assume that the number won’t be small.

And on February 18th, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration opened a formal hearing into steering problems on Corolla’s. So now the question isn’t so much “Which Toyota models are on the recall list” as much as it is “Which Toyota models aren’t on the recall list?” Between accelerator pedals, floor mats, brakes and steering, there don’t seem to be very many models that aren’t experiencing some seriously dangerous problems.

And now we are reading that one of the initial recalls was “negotiated” into a smaller and less effective process with the NHTSA, which strikes us as a failure on the part of the NHTSA and unbelievable callousness on the part of Toyota. The idea that one of the largest car manufacturers in the world finds it acceptable to “negotiate” over a critical matter of safety is almost as disturbing as the idea that a government agency that is responsible for car safety found the idea of “negotiating” acceptable as well. Safety shouldn’t be “negotiable.”

The Toyota Corporation is certainly making all the right signs of public remorse, but we have a feeling that their attitude will change dramatically when the injury and wrongful death lawsuits start being filed. If you have or a loved one has been injured due to a Toyota malfunction, you might believe that you can handle it yourself, or that an initial settlement that Toyota offers you would be enough. But handling a complex auto recall injury case on your own is practically a guarantee that you will not be treated fairly, and any settlement that you are offered without consulting with experienced legal counsel will be based on what Toyota thinks is financially convenient rather than what is fair to you.

The attorneys at the Washington, D.C. based law firm of Greenberg and Bederman have decades of experience at handling complex product and automotive recall injury cases, and are currently offering legal assistance to those who have been injured due to Toyota models that have malfunctioned. If you have suffered from an injury due to a defective Toyota, contact Greenberg and Bederman for a free legal consultation today. We serve injured victims in the Maryland, Washington, DC, and northern Virginia metropolitan area.

Toyota Prius Recall

Greenberg & Bederman — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 13:13:38 -0500

Toyota Prius Brake Issues

Hot on the heels of the acceleration issues that have affected so many Toyota models, it now appears that there is a new problem with its most popular model. According to the Montreal Gazette, Toyota has ordered a recall of 437,000 of their Prius models. The problem appears to involve the software that controls the braking system.

Just as the Prius has two methods of acceleration (battery power for idling or low speeds in the city, traditional internal combustion for highway driving,) it also has two methods of braking. The Prius uses what is called regenerative braking at low speeds, and switches to regular hydraulic braking once the driver switches to higher speeds. Apparently there is a lag when the two braking systems switch places. According to a Toyota representative, the lag lasts between .2 and .3 seconds, but when you consider how quickly traffic accidents can occur, the time between .2 and .3 seconds can seem like a very long time indeed.

We aren’t really sure what has happened over at Toyota these past few months. It seems that there has been one problem after another, and these problems are far from simply cosmetic. So far Toyota has issued recalls on almost every model that they have available on the market. There have been recalls for gas pedals being trapped under the floor mat, gas pedals sticking in the acceleration position, and now there are issues involving the brakes. We want to reiterate that these problems are not cosmetic. These problems involve the cars either accelerating beyond control or being unable to stop, neither of which is an acceptable option.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has issued the following advice for Toyota drivers who experience unintended acceleration:

Brake firmly and steadily – do not pump the brake pedal.
Shift the transmission into Neutral (for vehicles with automatic transmissions and the sport option, familiarize yourself with where Neutral is – the diagram may be misleading).
Steer to a safe location.
Shut the engine off (for vehicles with keyless ignition, familiarize yourself with how to turn the vehicle off when it is moving – this may be a different action than turning the vehicle off when it is stationary).
Call your dealer or repair shop to pick up the vehicle. Do not drive it.

These suggestions are all well and good, but they seem like the sort of tips that will leave your brain the instant your car speeds up when you don’t want it to, or won’t stop when you want it to stop. We can’t help but think that it would have been better if Toyota had not had such a catastrophic failure in their engineering department, and that way drivers all over America wouldn’t have to remember any “just in case” tips at all.

The Washington, D.C. area and the entire Mid-Atlantic region just went through a massive snow storm, and as a result we can expect our roads to be difficult to drive on for the foreseeable future. This is hardly the optimal time for your brakes to not work or for your car to suddenly accelerate. What we would recommend is to check the Toyota website on a regular basis to see if your car is on the recall list, and if it is, make sure that you bring it in for the necessary repairs without delay. While a knob that falls off the radio or a power window switch that doesn’t work is something that you might be able to put off, anything involving brakes or acceleration should be handled immediately.

This Toyoya recall is a dangerous situation for drivers and pedestrians all over the country, and it is also a rather unique one. This might be one of the few instances where an accident can happen between two cars or a car and a pedestrian, yet it is possible that nobody involved is actually at fault. A driver can hardly take full responsibility for an accident if his car did malfunctioned in a dangerous way. In situations involving automotive malfunctions that stem from design flaws, the only entity really at fault is the company that made the flawed system to begin with.

On the surface, these cases might appear to be cut and dried, but if the accident involves multiple cars or people, you can be sure that any litigation will be very complex. In order to secure fair compensation for your injuries and lost or damaged property, it is crucial that you obtain attorneys who have a great deal of experience in both car accident cases and product liability cases.

Greenberg and Bederman have been helping injury victims in the Washington. D.C. area since 1985, and our practice has been built on getting decent and fair compensation for our clients. We have attorneys with decades of winning experience in both product liability and car accident cases, and can certainly help you with your Toyota accident claim.

If you or a loved one has been injured due to faulty brakes or sudden rapid acceleration in a Toyota, contact Greenberg and Bederman for a free legal consultation today.

Nearly $3 Million Medical Malpractice in Fairfax, VA

Greenberg & Bederman — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 16:28:34 -0500

Congratulations to John J. Sellinger, our medical malpractice attorney, on his $2,933,500.00 verdict in a medical malpractice/wrongful death case tried in Fairfax, Virginia. On Tuesday, February 15, 2010, a jury in Fairfax County Virginia returned a verdict of $2,933,500, in a medical malpractice wrongful death case against a radiologist for failure to identify a perforated esophagus on a Chest CT scan. The patient had presented to the Emergency Department with complaints of severe chest pain after eating a piece of meat which had become stuck in his throat. A chest CT was ordered by the emergency room physician and was read as essentially normal by the radiologist. Evidence of the perforation was not identified on the scan. Because the Chest CT was misread, the perforation of the esophagus went undiagnosed and the patient received essentially no treatment of the condition for nearly 24 hours. As a result, he became extremely ill and dehydrated. After the perforation was discovered, as the patient was being prepped for surgery, he suffered an arrest which resulted in fatal anoxic brain injury. His survivors were his wife and two adult children. Deborah Alvarez vs. Association of Alexandria Radiologists, P.C., in the Circuit Court for Fairfax County, Virginia.

Yaz Lawsuits Filed in Indianapolis

Greenberg & Bederman — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 11:36:35 -0500

Women in Indianapolis Latest to File Yaz Lawsuits

According to the Star Press, over fifty women have filed lawsuits against the Bayer Corporation due to injuries that these women received due to the use of Bayer’s line of birth control pills.

According to the British Medical Journal Study of the women who take Yaz, Yasmin, or Oscella, 6% will experience dangerous adverse reactions ranging from blood clots, to DVT, to Gallbladder injury. Other birth control products have adverse reactions in about 1 % of patients who take birth control pills.

Bear in mind, we certainly don’t think that it’s “normal” for birth control pills to be dangerous to women. But considering that Bayer had no problem with producing, releasing and aggressively marketing a pill with an ingredient that they knew to be more dangerous than other forms of oral contraceptives, we have to assume that they think a five percent casualty rate for their products is “normal.”

The ingredient in question is a synthetic variation of one of the two main ingredients found in almost every birth control pill on the market. Most pills contain a combination of progesterone and estrogen, which essentially fools the female body into thinking that it is already pregnant. In order to separate themselves from the pack, Bayer decided to use a synthetically produced variation of progesterone called drospirenone. With this ingredient firmly in place, Bayer began to trumpet the additional peripheral benefits of what their line of pills could supposedly do. Aside from helping to prevent pregnancy, Bayer claimed that Yaz and Yasmin both helped to prevent serious forms of acne and Pre Menstrual Dysphoric Disorder (PMDD.) They combined these claims with an expensive and flashy advertising campaign that was aimed at younger women. After all, what young woman wouldn’t want to avoid acne? What young woman wouldn’t wantto avoid the emotional instability that often comes with menstruation?

As predicted, Yaz, Yasmin and Ocella became Bayer’s top selling products. And this is exactly why the casualty rate is so high. It turns out that drospirenone does other things besides acne and PMDD prevention. It also dramatically raises the potassium levels in the bloodstreams of the women who use it. This condition (called hyperkalimia) does not lead to positive health benefits. High potassium levels in the bloodstream can and do lead to blood clots in the arteries or veins in the legs, which is called deep vein thrombosis. These clots then break apart and the pieces start to travel through the bloodstream, where they then block the regular flow of blood. This leads to pulmonary embolisms, strokes and heart attacks. This is not to mention gall bladder disease, which has also been linked to Yaz, Yasmin and Ocella.

As of right now, Bayer’s public defense has been presented in two ways. The first is to say that since they have a warning label on the box, and since they mentioned the possible side effects on both the warning labels and the commercials, then it couldn’t possibly be their fault if nobody read it. The second public defense is to release statements that say things like, “When taken properly, Yaz or Yasmin are effective and safe birth control pills,” which implies that it is somehow the fault of the person who was taking the drug rather than the drug manufacturers themselves.

We find a great deal wrong with both of these methods of defense. In the first place, considering that the only way you can get birth control pills in this country is through a prescription from a doctor, most patients are already assuming that the pills are safe. If your doctor prescribes you a medication, wouldn’t you assume without thinking about it that it won’t be harmful to your health? With that being the case, we have to make the assumption that Bayer did not tell the medical community everything that it needed to know.

Secondly, how can you possibly blame the patient for any illnesses or adverse medical conditions that develop? Birth control pills are relatively easy to deal with. It’s one pill a day. We find it hard to believe that any of the women who have been taking these pills have somehow stumbled across a magic formula to make an otherwise benign working birth control pill deadly.

If Bayer had come right out and said “This pill contains an ingredient that increases the likelihood of deep vein thrombosis, strokes, heart attacks, pulmonary embolisms and gall bladder disease,” then it could be said that their bases were covered. But they did not. They did not say such things on the labeling, they did not say such things in their multi-million dollar advertising campaign, and they certainly aren’t admitting it now that the casualty numbers are starting to come in.

The women filing suit in Indianapolis are only a fraction of the number of women all over the world who have suffered real and provable damage from the use of these birth control pills. Women who, in good faith, took birth control pills that were dangerous to their health, and these women were hospitalized with painful or even fatal injuries.

Here in the Washington, D.C. area, Greenberg and Bederman has been leading the way in both informing women of the dangers of Bayer’s line of birth control pills and providing legal assistance for women who have been harmed by using these pills. We are currently representing several women who have been injured and hospitalized due to Yaz, Yasmin and Ocella.

If you or a loved one has been similarly injured, contact Greenberg and Bederman for a free yaz legal consultation today.

To learn more about our yaz lawyer, Andy Bederman, please read about Andy Bederman, or watch his yaz video onYoutube.

John Murtha (D-OH) Dies of Medical Malpractice

Greenberg & Bederman — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 10:19:23 -0500

Representative John Murtha (D-OH) Dies Due to Medical Malpractice

Being elected by ones constituents to serve in the United States Congress is certainly enough to deserve some recognition by the public. But John Murtha was one of the most effective, dynamic and controversial Representatives to ever serve on Capitol Hill.

Representative Murtha was Chairman of the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, which basically means that he was in charge of determining how taxpayer money was spent on defense. It’s no secret that the United States spends an enormous amount of money on weapons and logistics for our military, and Representative Murtha was one of the key figures in charge of the purse strings.

As a result of his position, this made Representative Murtha a very influential Congressman. The United States defense budget does more than protect our nation and its interests. It also provides jobs to hundreds of thousands of Americans. One congressional district might have a factory that makes one part of a jet or a tank, while another might have a company that provides defense analysis, while another might have a plant that manufactures rifle scopes. Since there is not one Congressman on Capitol Hill who wanted to say no to federal defense spending occurring in his district, and since John Murtha was one of the men in charge of where defense dollars got spent, he had a great deal of pull in Washington, D.C.

By all accounts, he took a great deal of advantage of his position. He earned a reputation as an old school “Pork Barrel” politician, making sure that his district in Pennsylvania received a great deal of federal money. He received enormous criticism for this, but the interesting thing about “pork barrel” or “earmark” spending is that it is usually defined as “federal spending that occurs in every district except your own.” The spending that occurs in your district hardly ever comes under the same criticism as the spending that occurs in other districts.

Congressman Murtha could hardly be blamed for wanting to get as much money for his district as he possibly could. In the first place, he was hardly alone in securing federal dollars. And secondly, his district in Pennsylvania was economically crushed by the decline of the steel and mining industries. If he hadn’t done everything he could have for his district, he would not have been doing his job.

It should also be mentioned that Mr. Murtha was one of the first major public officials to come out against the war in Iraq. Considering his position among the defense and military community, it took an extraordinary amount of courage for him to oppose the war then, which must be admitted even if you didn’t personally agree with his opinion.

If there is even such a thing as an “ordinary congressman,” it has to be said that there was nothing “ordinary” about John Murtha. His loss on Capitol Hill will certainly be felt. And what makes his death even more tragic is that John Murtha’s death didn’t need to happen. Mr. Murtha was undergoing laparoscopic surgery in January when his intestine was inadvertently nicked during the operation. This cut led to an infection, which led to his death.

It should be mentioned that Congressman Murtha had what could certainly be called a “Cadillac” insurance plan. Members of Congress (as well as the President of the United States) are treated at Bethesda Naval Hospital, which is essentially the very best medical facility that the United States public sector has to offer. And the sort of surgery that Mr. Murtha was undergoing was not exactly experimental or cutting edge. That procedure has been practiced for close to twenty years. What this says to us is that even in facilities where medicine is practiced at the highest levels, no patient is immune from the dangers of surgical errors or medical malpractice.

It is extremely regrettable that Pennsylvania lost such a capable representative, and it is also unfortunate that Mr. Murtha’s children lost their father. But it should be mentioned that the families of everyday people who are victims of surgical errors and delayed or wrong medical diagnoses feel their losses just as keenly. And just as Pennsylvania’s 12^th Congressional District will surely feel the financial impact of losing such an effective agent for their financial interests, regular Americans also find themselves in precarious financial situations when a husband or wife is taken from them due to the negligence or incompetence of a medical professional.

If anything positive can be taken out of this tragedy, perhaps it will be that Representative Murtha’s colleagues might realize that placing arbitrary limits on compensation for the victims of medical malpractice is an unfair thing to do. These arbitrary limits (which are placed under the heading of what is called “Tort Reform”) create an artificial and often inaccurate financial limitation on the lives of human beings. They also prevent Americans from exercising their Constitutional rights to seek fair compensation for their damages.

Tort reform is one of the sticking points in the current health care legislation, as many Representatives believe that there should be a strict limit on exactly how much a human life is worth. Those aren’t the exact words that they use, but how else can you really describe these limits? In quite a few states, the compensation limit for medical malpractice victims is $200,000, no matter if the victim is a factory worker, or a teacher, or a Nobel Prize winner, or a Congressman for that matter.

Those who favor tort reform usually advance the idea that the reason these medical malpractice caps exist is because an abundance of lawsuits cause insurance rates to go up to unsustainable levels. There is no actual evidence to support this theory. The payouts for medical malpractice verdicts in 2008 were the lowest on record, and there has been no dramatic increase in the number of medical malpractice lawsuits over the past twenty years. Tort reform does not help doctors, hospitals or patients. The only people who benefit from tort reform are insurance companies, who are in no need of any financial safeguards whatsoever.

Greenberg and Bederman is an injury law firm based in the metropolitan Washington, D.C. area. A significant portion of our practice is dedicated to helping those who have been injured due to medical malpractice, and that includes medical errors, surgical errors and wrong diagnosis cases. We have helped malpractice injury victims in D.C, Northern Virginia and Maryland. John Sellinger, our medical malpractice attorney, is a renowned litigator with a long and distinguished history of obtaining fair compensation for his clients. If you or a loved one has been injured due to a mistake by a doctor or surgeon, contact Greenberg and Bederman for a free legal consultation today.

To learn more about John Sellinger, please read about John Sellinger, or watch his video on Youtube.

About Social Security Disability Insurance

Greenberg & Bederman — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 12:40:18 -0500

Most people think of Social Security as a mandatory financial safety net for Americans that is administered by the U.S. Government. The general assumption is that Social Security is there for when you retire or get past a certain working age. And while Social Security does serve that purpose, the program has other functions as well.

Social Security also exists to offer financial help to Americans who have been injured or become disabled for medical reasons and who find themselves unable to maintain any employment. This is called Social Security Disability Insurance. And just as regular Social Security provides supplemental income to older Americans when they stop working, Social Security Disability Insurance prevents injured and disabled Americans from having no source of income because they can’t work at all. But there are some major differences between qualifying for Social Security Disability Income or Social Security Retirement Income. In order to qualify for Social Security Retirement, all you have to do is turn 65 and have paid into Social Security during your working life. Qualifying for Social Security Disability Insurance is a different matter entirely.

When a disabled American worker qualifies for Social Security Disability, it often means that this person will be receiving disability payments for the rest of their lives. It is for this reason that the Social Security Administration is very precise and very selective when it comes to determining who qualifies for disability insurance and who doesn’t. These standards prevent people with sprained ankles from claiming that they will need government assistance for the rest of their lives, which, believe it or not, happens more often than you would think.

The standards for qualifying for Social Security Disability are as follows:

· You have to be totally disabled. Partially disabled is not enough to qualify.

· “Disability” is based on an inability to do the job that you had before.

· It is also based on an inability to do any other work due to your medical condition.

· Your disability has lasted at least one year, or is expected to result in your death.

Bear in mind that these are the standards in the broadest sense. There are all sorts of other deciding factors that need to be determined. And generally speaking, what most newly seriously disabled people need when attending a Social Security Disability insurance hearing is the assistance of an experienced Social Security Disability attorney.

A very high percentage of initial applications for SSDI are denied. These are denied for any number of reasons, including incomplete forms, missed deadlines or lost paperwork, but many of them are also denied because the applicant didn’t understand the importance of the process and didn’t do a very thorough and complete job of stating his or her case.

This isn’t anything to be ashamed of. The process can be long and confusing for anyone, much less those who have been through a severe and life changing disability or injury. Having an attorney who understands the disability standards, knows the paperwork and has experience getting a claim approved at Reconsideration, or attending the disability hearings can make all the difference between being approved for Social Security Disability Benefits and getting denied your SSDI benefits leaving you without any government assistance at all.

Another reason for having an experienced Social Security lawyer is that at some point, your case will probably be heard by an administrative law judge. Just as it would be foolish to walk into a court room with no legal representation, it would be equally foolish to have no one on your side in a Social Security Disability Hearing.

Having an attorney to both organize your data and present your case at a hearing makes an enormous difference, particularly if you live in an area with an administrative Judge who is less likely to grant favorable outcomes. If you look at the data from the Social Security Administration website, you can see for yourself that some administrative Judges are not in the habit of offering fully favorable verdicts for those who apply for Social Security Disability benefits. Those who were lacking an experienced Social Security Disability Attorney almost certainly fell into the total denial category.

At Greenberg and Bederman, our Social Security Disability lawyers have specific experience in helping the disabled get their rightfully earned Social Security Disability payments. If you or a loved one in Maryland, Washington, D.C, or Virginia have had their initial SSDI application denied, contact Greenberg and Bederman for a free review of your social security disability application process today.

To learn more about social security disability benefits please read our social security disability FAQ or watch our videos on youtube.

Toyota Recall

Greenberg & Bederman — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 11:01:45 -0500

Have you been injured in Washington, D.C. because of a Toyota malfunction? Greenberg and Bederman can help.

Over the years, Toyota has developed a reputation as manufacturers of safe and dependable cars. This is why the two recalls that have occurred over the past four months have been so unusual.

In August of 2009, Toyota issued a recall of 3.8 million Toyota and Lexus models worldwide due to approximately 2000 cases of unexplained acceleration. In these instances, drivers reported their cars accelerating to speeds up to 100 mph, even while they were applying the brakes.

Toyota initially blamed the problem on improperly sized floor mats. Toyota claimed that the mats got jammed underneath the accelerator pedal and caused them to get stuck. The floor mats were replaced, but there were still incidents of acceleration problems even after the floor mats were replaced.

Toyota recently admitted that the problems went much deeper than defective floor mats, and has ordered the recall of some eight million cars worldwide. Bear in mind, car recalls happen with great frequency, and they often happen for quite mundane reasons. A faulty button on the stereo or power locks that short out on occasion are enough of a reason to bring thousands of cars back to the factory. But there is an enormous difference between a minor manufacturing error and one that causes cars to spontaneously accelerate up to 100 mph. According to the Times of London, these faulty throttles have been responsible for 19 deaths and hundreds of injuries.

Thanks to the recall, it is possible to bring your Toyota or Lexus in for repairs, but what is impossible at this point is getting a straight answer out of Toyota or anyone else for that matter. Some people are speculating that there is a problem in the electronics that are used in the acceleration process, while others are claiming that the problem is strictly mechanical. Toyota has also claimed that these problems become exacerbated in cold or wet weather.

Whatever the reasons for the malfunction, the end result is that people are being put in serious danger, regardless of whether they own a Toyota or not. Automobiles do not operate in a vacuum. They share the road with other cars, and drive through neighborhoods where pedestrians walk. With this in mind, it seems somewhat miraculous that there have only been 19 deaths so far.

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood halted the production of all models that fell under the recall, and wisely advised that owners of those models that were already on the road should be brought in for repairs immediately. The models that are affected by the recall are as follows:

Certain 2009-2010 RAV4’s
Certain 2009-2010 Corolla
2009-2010 Matrix
2005-2010 Avalon
Certain 2007-2010 Camry
Certain 2010 Highlander
2007-2010 Tundra
2008-2010 Sequoia

We want to reiterate that these are not harmless, run of the mill recalls. Toyota has placed thousands of people at risk ofinjury or worse due to faulty acceleration. It could have been a design flaw or it could have been a flaw on the assembly line, but at the end of the day thousands of people all over the world have been driving cars that spontaneously accelerate. They also crash into other cars and hit people.

The car recall attorneys at Greenberg and Bederman have been helping injury victims in the Washington, D.C. area for over 25 years. We have attorneys who have years of experience in product liability cases and negligence, and that includes automotive recalls. If you or a loved one has been injured because of a malfunction in a Toyota, contact Greenberg & Bederman for a free auto accident or recall injury legal consultation.

Alli and Xenical Diet Pills Reviewed by FDA

Greenberg & Bederman — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 16:25:57 -0500

Have you suffered from physical ailments due to the use of Xenical or Alli weight loss drugs?

If so, you aren’t alone.

In August of 2009, the Food and Drug Administration announced that it would be undertaking a safety review of Xenical and Alli due to the fact that 32 reports of serious liver injury had been reported to their Adverse Reporting System. Of these 32 instances of liver injury, 26 of these victims were hospitalized, while 6 of the victims underwent liver failure.

Xenical and Alli are the commercial names for the drug Orlistat, which is a commercially available drug that is meant to help its users lose weight. Xenical contains a heavier dose of the drug and is only available with a prescription, while Alli contains about half as much of the dose of Orlistat as Xenical, and is therefore available as an over the counter purchase.

Orlistat works by inhibiting the enzymes that absorb fat from the food that you eat. It essentially makes practically all of the food you eat low fat, regardless of whether or not it was that way when you ate it initially. The fat that is not digested is excreted through the gastro intestinal tract. With Xenical, about 30% of the dietary fat that is eaten is not digested, while with Alli that number drops to around 25%.

The more obvious (and disturbing) side effects of Orlistat involve the sort that you would expect with a drug that directly affects what you digest and what you don’t. There have been reports of incontinence, oily stools, difficulty controlling bowel movements, an increased number of bowel movements, loose stools, or gas with oily spotting. These are the basic unpleasant side effects that initially led the group Public Citizen to call for it to be taken off the shelves here. Public Citizen also released a study which shows that Orlistat significantly increases the incidence of aberrant crypt foci, which are known to be precursors to colon cancer.

Other side effects have also been shown to occur from use of Xenical or Alli. Users have been known to break out in hives and rashes, suffer from profound itching, experience continuous abdominal pain, and have irregular periods, as well as headaches and anxiety.

So far, the litany of bad side effects seems to seriously outweigh the benefits of the loss of a few pounds. And the idea that Alli can do all this to the body and doesn’t require a prescription boggles the mind. But the instances of liver failure are of great concern to us, particularly since the Food and Drug Administration has decided to continue to allow the marketing and sale of the drug while their investigation and safety review goes on.

America is a country that is obsessed with weight and body image, and we have a history of engaging in destructive behavior in order to shed a few pounds. For decades, women were taking “diet pills” that turned out to be little more than speed. Then there was Fen Phen, a diet pill combination that caused pulmonary hypertension and even death among the people who used it.

There is an enormous industry in low fat and low calorie foods in America. Diet sodas out sell regular sodas. The shelves are stocked with low fat foods, from snacks to appetizers to entrees. The end result of this mindset is that most Americans believe that any sort of fat is bad. But the problem there is that fat is actually quite important to our intake of nutrients. Vitamins A and D are both fat soluble and require fat to be absorbed into the body. Orlistat not only interferes with the intake of fat, but as a consequence it also interferes with the intake of essential nutrients.

It’s also no wonder that this drug has been shown to harm the liver, as one of the main functions of the liver is to secrete bile, which is crucial to the digestion of dietary fat. If this basic function is negated by drugs, you can hardly expect the liver to continue to function properly.

Both Xenical and Alli are causing users all over America real physical harm. If you or a loved one has been injured due to the use of these diet pills, you may be eligible for financial compensation. Over the past twenty five years, the Washington, D.C. injury law firm of Greenberg and Bederman has been leading the way in helping people who have been injured due to the use of dangerous drugs. We are currently offering legal help to victims of Xenical and Alli who live in Maryland, Virginia, and Washington, D.C.

Contact Greenberg and Bederman for a free alli diet pill injury legal consultation today.

Another Deadly DC Metro Train Accident

Greenberg & Bederman — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 09:04:53 -0500

The Washington, D.C. mass transit system is not as safe as it should be. We wish we could believe differently, but we can’t. The overall number of accidents, injuries and fatalities over the past few years is the sort of number that you would expect from a transit system in a third world country without proper safety regulations, and certainly not from the transit system of the capitol city in the United States of America.

It isn’t just the disastrous Red Line accident in July that we are referring to. The past few years the dc metro system has experienced an extensive list of injuries and deaths on both the subway and bus lines, plus several maintenance incidents which underscore how our dc metro transit system is badly in need of upgrade or repair. We have to wonder about the commitment of the people who are in charge of our dc metro transit system.

The most recent tragic event was the death of two Metro workers who were killed by a large equipment truck that was backing down the track. The two workers were not new to the job. Jeff Garrard had been working at his position for WMATA for twenty years, and Sung Duk Oh had been on the job for twelve. With that much experience on the job they had to have known what was considered safe behavior and what wasn’t. According to an article in the Washington Post, Mr. Garrard left behind a wife and daughter, both of whom have congenital heart defects, and Mr. Oh had a family as well.

What makes this metro accident even worse is that this isn’t the first time that DC metro maintenance workers have been killed on the tracks. In November of 2006, two Metro employees were killed on the Yellow Line when the driver of an empty four car train didn’t use appropriate emergency braking methods.

It isn’t just DC Metro employees whose safety is at risk. Everyday passengers are in danger as well. In January of 2007, a Green Line train jumped the tracks at the Mount Vernon Square Station. This accident fortunately only injured 18 people, but it was this metro accident that began to reveal the trend of poor maintenance standards and poor training, and not just with the rail transit. Eight days later, on February 1^st of 2007, an electrical short at the Farragut North station caused a fire on the tracks which shut down Metro traffic for an hour and a half. To underscore how badly in need of repair the DC Metro system is, this fire on February 1^st was actually the second fire in as many days.

Then there was a period of a month and a half where five people were struck by different busses, and four of them were killed. On January 16^th a woman was hit and killed by a Metrobus in Mt. Pleasant. On February 14, Martha Schoenborn and Sally Dean McGhee had the right of way on Pennsylvania Avenue NW when they were both struck and killed by a bus that made an illegal turn at a red light. Four days later, a woman was struck and killed by a bus on Congress Street by the Congress Heights Metro Station. A mere six days after that, a bus hit a three year old in a stroller in Southwest D.C. Miraculously, the child was treated at a hospital and released.

There were two separate occasions where trains collided on the tracks in 2009. The first was the absolutely horrific Red Line Crash in June, where nine people died and seventy people were injured. And there was another crash in November, where two cars collided in the West Falls Church train yard, but fortunately no passengers were aboard the train. There were some minor injuries to the cleaning staff, unfortunately.

With all these latest deaths, it is obvious that our transit system is not safe. If the Silver Spring line is extended out to Dulles Airport, we have to consider that this new project should be delayed until the major dc metro transit safety concerns that exist are sorted out. The NTSB determined that the Red Line crash was caused by a system failure. These failures need to be fixed immediately. The rash of bus fatalities in 2007 were reportedly caused by a lack of training and improper supervision. Have these issues been addressed?

Accidents like these cannot continue to be repeated. WMATA management has an obligation to make sure that the drivers are well trained and properly supervised. They also have an obligation to make sure that all of the trains and sensor equipment are working properly. But apparently they have not been doing so.

We know this not only by the NTSB report of the Red Line crash, but also from the concerns of David Garrard, one of the two workers who were killed on Tuesday:

Grace Garrard, a 49-year-old substitute teacher, said her husband was so careful when he was on the tracks that the truck that backed up and hit him "must have come out of nowhere." He had told her repeatedly in the past year that he was nervous that the aging transit system was not getting enough attention from Metro.

"We need to spend the money on upkeep, and they weren't doing that enough, and that bothered him," Grace Garrard said. "They weren't repairing the old stuff."

The offices of Greenberg and Bederman are located one half block from theSilver Spring metro station, and one mile from the Washington DC line. We are currently representing the injured in that horrific dc metro train crash that happened in June,2009.

If you or a loved one has been injured by a bus or Metro train, contact Greenberg and Bederman for a free accident injurylegal consultation today.

Personal Injury Legal Terms

Greenberg & Bederman — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 13:54:44 -0500

Personal Injury Legal Terms

Being injured due to the negligence of someone else can be (and often is) a terrible experience. You have to deal with the pain of your injuries, the possible loss of the ability to do your job properly, the possibility that you may not be able to work again, and lost income from the time that you missed from work. In all probability you are also dealing with an uncooperative and seemingly completely uncaring insurance company.

It is usually when the insurance company becomes uncooperative that many of our injury victims from the Washington DC metropolitan area call us. They come to the realization that simply accepting what has happened to them is now unacceptable, and they realize that they will need legal help in order to get justice and fair compensation for their injuries.

The prospect of meeting with a lawyer can be an intimidating prospect, although most of our clients are shocked that they actually speak to Roger Greenberg upon hire, and throughout the duration of their case have close contact with Andrew Bederman, or our other personal injury lawyers at Greenberg & Bederman. In spite of our reputation in the legal community for customer service and congeniality, most people discover the whole legal process to be confusing. The law almost seems like an entirely new language. You are suddenly called one thing while the person who was responsible for your accident is called something else.

In the interest of keeping clients and injury victims informed so they will be better prepared for any legal actions that may be initiated, we thought we would mention some key legal terms that occur often enough during legal proceedings. Knowing what these words mean can remove some of the mystery, and can help you move forward with your personal injury case with more confidence.

Plaintiff: In personal injury cases, the plaintiff is the person who believes that he or she has suffered an injury due to the actions or inactions of someone else, and as such feels that he or she deserves compensation for the injuries and any financial inconveniences (medical bills, lost wages from missed time at work, etc,) that the injury might have caused him or her. For instance, if you got injured by a car being driven by someone who was text messaging, and therefore missed the red light, you have every right to be a “Plaintiff” in a car accident case.

Defendant: The defendant is the person (or persons) who are being accused in court of doing something that directly contributed to the harm of the plaintiff. In our hypothetical case with the red light and the text messages, the defendant would be the person who was driving the car while using his phone. In some cases, the defendant’s insurance company could also qualify as co-defendants, in the event that they are being difficult or stubborn about offering a reasonable settlement for the plaintiff’s injuries and other damages.

Tort: This is what is known as a “civil crime.” (In other words, financial penalties can be levied on the “Tortfeasor,” or person who committed the tort, but he or she will not be likely to face criminal charges, unless the injury involved reckless driving or driving while intoxicated.) In most tort cases, a person’s property was damaged or a person was injured due to the actions (or inactions) of someone else. These damages weren’t necessarily done on purpose, but there are still damages to property or body for which the victim feels that compensation is deserved. Torts usually occur as the result of another quite important legal term:

Negligence: This is essentially the basis of most of the injury lawsuits that exist. It’s negligence that carries the day for the plaintiff in car accident cases, medical malpractice cases, premises liability cases, or product liability cases. Negligence is a standard that needs to be proven to either a judge or a jury, and what it means is that the defendant did not act in a way that a “reasonable person” would have. Furthermore, the defendant not acting as a “reasonable person” was what caused the accident. For instance, a “reasonable person” would not have run a red light because he would not have been texting while driving. The “reasonable person” model translates to other types of tort cases. Many malpractice cases use what is called a “standard of care” to determine whether or not the doctor or surgeon in question acted “reasonably.” Negligence often has to be proven in order for a personal injury case to be successful. What needs to be proven is that somebody did something “wrong,” and as a result someone else was injured. If that can’t be proven to a judge or jury, the case will probably not make it through to a successful verdict.

Statute of Limitations: In terms of civil cases, what this means is that if someone is in a situation where they feel that they need the aid of the law, they should act sooner rather than later. Statutes of limitations exist to limit the amount of time that victims have to file a lawsuit. There are reasons for this. A person could get hit by a car in January of 2005, but start to feel neck or back pain in May of 2008. The two things might be related, but so much time has passed that it seems unlikely that one caused the other. This is why it is important to talk to an attorney as soon as you possibly can after you have been injured due to someone else. The statutes vary from state to state, but it is better to be on the early side of a statute than a late one.

Contingency Fees: One of the major differences between you and an insurance company is that an insurer can quite easily hire an attorney that charges by the hour while you probably cannot. It is for this reason that the vast majority of personal injury attorneys operate under what is called a contingency fee. What this means is that the attorney will do the work at no hourly charge and will instead take a certain percentage of any money that is awarded in the event of a settlement or arbitration, or a judgment.

These are just a few of the legal terms that you will become familiar with as your case moves forward. To read more legal terms, please click onlegal glossary. At Greenberg and Bederman, we make it our mission to keep our clients informed about their options and the progress of their case throughout the duration of your personal injury case. It is for that reason that we maintain regular contact with our active clients, even if nothing is currently happening. We are always here to answer any question or concerns that you might have. We are not a “personal injury factory” who sign you on as a client and then forget all about you.

The law firm of Greenberg and Bederman has been successfully helping injury victims in Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C. for twenty five years. We help victims of car and truck accidents, medical malpractice, premises liability, and any form ofpersonal injury where someone was injured due to the negligence of someone else.

If you or a loved one has been injured in an accident, contact Greenberg and Bederman for a free personal injury legal consultation today.

Brain Injury

Greenberg & Bederman — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 13:23:52 -0500

It’s quite easy to define what a traumatic brain injury is. You could go to the New England Journal of Medicine or a third year medical textbook if you so desired, but a TBI is so straightforward that going to Wikipedia should suffice:

“Traumatic brain injury (TBI, also called intracranial injury) occurs when an outside force traumatically injures the brain.”

That’s simple enough. Traumatic brain injuries happen when people hit their heads very hard. Somebody falls, or gets into a car accident, or something falls and lands on them, and the brain takes some damage. And even though they sound like rare occurrences, traumatic brain injuries actually happen with astonishing frequency.

According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, 1.4 million people suffer from traumatic brain injuries every year. Of these 1.4 million, 50,000 people die, while 235,000 of them suffer injuries that are severe enough to cause them to be hospitalized for an extended period of time.

So the occurrences are often enough, and the definition is easy enough to sort out, but when it comes to how a traumatic brain injury affects the victim, there is no such thing as an easy definition. The reason for this is that the brain is an incredibly complex organ that even modern medicine is still attempting to figure out. It controls all of the functions of the body, from sight to balance to movement to breathing to speech to the ability to eat. The brain handles literally everything. So if there is damage to the brain, there is no shortage of things that can go wrong with the body.

Since the brain is such a crucial part of body function, it is difficult to classify any form of traumatic brain injury as “minor.” A victim who has had his cognitive abilities affected might not find it to be “minor” if he works as an accountant. A victim who has had a TBI that results in emotional difficulties might not find it to be “minor” if she works as a preschool teacher.

As difficult as adjusting to life after a brain injury can be, it is an unfortunate reality that receiving compensation from an insurer can be even harder. While many injury cases are straightforward and are relatively simpler to resolve, injury to the brain is simply harder to prove.

For instance, if you got into a car accident and broke your leg, it doesn’t take much to prove to an insurance company that it is broken. The damage from a broken leg is perfectly visible. Brain injuries can be another matter entirely. An injury to the brain is internal, and the effects of brain injuries often manifest themselves in ways that alter moods or behavior. In other words, insurance companies can and will make it seem like the difficulties that brain injury victims go through are either psychological in nature or made up entirely.

Despite all the advertising and marketing to the contrary, the main purpose of an insurance company is to make money. The most efficient way for them to do this is to limit their financial responsibilities to injury victims as much as they possibly can. Since the effects of a brain injury are not immediately visible or immediately obvious, insurers will often take a gamble on a court date rather than simply offer fair compensation to the injured.

This is why having an experienced attorney is crucial towards receiving fair compensation in the event of a brain injury. Not having qualified and experienced legal help could be the difference between receiving the compensation necessary to help you get your life back on track and receiving nothing at all.

Greenberg and Bederman is an injury law firm based in Washington, D.C. We have years of experience in helping victims of traumatic brain injuries, and we can help you get past the delays and denials of the insurance companies. If you or a loved one has suffered a brain injury due to no fault of your own, contact Greenberg and Bederman for a free brain injury legal consultation today. We have offices in Silver Spring and Baltimore, and can assist injury victims in Virginia, Maryland, and Washington, D.C.

Medical Malpractice Non Economic Caps

Greenberg & Bederman — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 09:03:15 -0500

Non-economic damages in a medical malpractice case are essentially a way for you to be compensated for elements of your injury that were not directly financially detrimental to you. It’s the idea that you have been forced to go through real pain and real hardship as the result of the negligence of a medical provider, and as such you should be financially compensated. For instance, if the mistake of a doctor required you to have a lengthy and painful recuperation, having the doctor pay for the cost of that recuperation would not be enough, mainly because if it hadn’t been for the initial mistake in the first place, you wouldn’t have had to go through the painful recuperation at all. Spouses of victims of medical malpractice can also be compensated for non-economic damages, particularly if the malpractice resulted in the death of the victim.

Thanks to years of false assumptions, many people actually support caps on non-economic damages. The doctors and insurance companies have done a good job convincing many in the public that non-economic damages are driving up medical malpractice premiums and lining lawyers pockets. These same theorists will continue believing in the false public persona until they themselves become injured and realize what “caps” actually mean, especially if the injury is severe and the consequences are long lasting. What medical malpractice caps do for the injury victim in some cases is cause the severely injured to not be able to receive the money that they will need for a comparatively normal life, much less a life of “luxury.”

If you get injured by a doctor in the state of Maryland, you still have the option to bring legal action against the doctor, surgeon, nurse, medical professional employee or medical facility who was responsible for your injuries. And while there are some caps on damages in Maryland, they are not nearly as draconian here as they are in California or Texas. In Maryland, the caps on non-economic medical malpractice damages are dependant of the sort of suit that is filed.

For instance, if a malpractice case occurs where the victim suffers injuries, the cap for non-economic damages is $680,000. But if a malpractice case occurs where the victim died, the cap for wrongful death medical malpractice cases rises to $850,000 in the event that there is more than one beneficiary.

We oppose the idea of caps for the same reason that we oppose mandatory minimum sentences. A legal verdict is not something that can be placed on a menu, as the circumstances for each case are different. Just as it makes no sense to automatically put a first time, low level drug offender behind bars for ten years, it also makes no sense to have an arbitrary limit on the amount of compensation that someone can receive if they become injured due to the negligence of someone else.

Believe it or not, Marylanders are somewhat fortunate in that the pain and suffering caps are higher than many states. A great number of states have an arbitrary cap with limits around $250,000. For all the discussions about how this helps doctors by keeping their insurance premiums down, it doesn’t do much to help the people who actually get injured, and there’s no real evidence that insurance premiums have declined accordingly.

We came across an article emphasizing this very premise in (of all places) Forbes Magazine. In an article by David A. Hyman, the consequences of these caps are laid bare:

The poor, the unemployed and the elderly are unable to find attorneys to help them in their cases. Since the only real compensation that these people can qualify for is non-economic damages (since they aren’t working or aren’t working in jobs that pay them a substantial salary,) most lawyers would end up losing money on taking a medical malpractice case of this sort due to the discovery process, which involves depositions and hiring expert witnesses.

We find this profoundly unfair. People who get injured due to the negligence of others are essentially being priced out of the legal system. This appears to be a system that works for some people, but not others, with the line of demarcation being the income level. This isn’t how the justice system is supposed to work. Your credit score or bank account should not be the determining factor as to whether or not you are treated fairly.

It is also a fallacy that it is medical malpractice lawsuits which are “forcing” insurance companies to raise their rates. The only thing that “forces” an insurance company to raise its rates is the insurance companies themselves. And considering that the number of malpractice lawsuits, judgments and settlements haven’t gone up significantly in decades, even when you adjust the numbers for inflation, the idea that insurance companies are losing money is a farfetched one at best.

While Maryland’s caps aren’t as draconian as those in California or Texas, it still means that people are not being properly compensated for severe or permanent injuries, to which we ask for what reason?

To learn more about medical malpractice issues, please read our medical malpractice page. To learn more about our medical malpractice lawyer, John Sellinger, please read Sellinger’s bio, or watch his video on youtube.

If you believe you are a victim of medical malpractice, please contact Greenberg & Bederman for a free medical malpractice legal consultation.

Yaz Lawsuit Tedious Obstacles Removed

Greenberg & Bederman — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 09:59:03 -0500

One of the reasons that scare people away from litigation is the amount of time that it takes for many cases to come to a conclusion. Many corporations and insurance companies make it a point to delay the litigation process as much as they can, solely in the hopes of wearing out the plaintiffs. In the midst of the judicial process, there are all sorts of opportunities for both sides to file motions about one aspect of the trial or another, and corporate defendants often take many of these opportunities. They are in a good position to do so. Most plaintiffs in injury cases are facing real financial hardship, like medical bills or an inability to go back to work due to injuries. Insurance companies or major corporations aren’t facing any such difficulties, and can more easily afford the legal costs of delaying a trial.

A product liability trial most often takes a long time; especially if there have been multiple victims from the same product. Fortunately for the victims of Bayer’s line of birth control pills, the process has been streamlined by the judicial system, so women who have suffered from strokes, heart attacks, gall bladder disease or pulmonary embolismshould not have to suffer as long from unnecessary delays.

Bayer’s birth control pills, which are marketed under the names of Yaz, Yasmin or Oscella, contain an ingredient called drospirenone, which is a synthetic variation of progestin. Bayer claims that this ingredient brings with it additional benefits, such as an easier time with premenstrual dysphoric disorder as well as a cure for acne. The trade off is that the levels of potassium in the blood go up, which can and has shown to cause blood clots. These blood clots can break apart and travel, which causes blockages in the heart (cardiac arrests,) blockages in the brain (strokes,) and blockages in the lungs (pulmonary embolisms.)

The British Medical Journal recently released a study claiming that out of all the commercially available hormonal replacement birth control pills, women that take the brands that contain drospirenone have a 6.3 % greater chance of suffering from blood clotting. Concrete evidence of this study is currently manifesting itself among women all over the country, as more and more otherwise healthy women who use Yaz, Yasmin and Oscella are being hospitalized with pulmonary embolisms, heart attacks and strokes.

Since so many women are filing suit under similar circumstances, the U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation ruled that suits involving Yaz, Yasmin and Oscella should be consolidated for pretrial discovery. What this means is that rather than have each individual victim of these birth control pills file an individual law suit, which would require them to provide what is essentially the same sort of evidence over and over again, and call the same witnesses over and over again, our court system has decided to determine what will be considered standard evidence so this won’t have to be determined again and again.

So far, the multi-district litigation has progressed somewhat smoothly, and Bayer has provided a million pages of documents as part of the discovery process. There has also been some give and take regarding how confidential information will be handled during the trial. This actually should work in both the favor of Bayer and the plaintiffs. Bayer does not want any trade secret information to be made available, and the plaintiffs don’t want any private information regarding sexual history or birth control history to be part of the evidence. It appears that both sides should be satisfied in that regard.

What is important about this consolidation of cases is that a great deal of time and necessity has been removed from the trial process. With so much of the evidence and testimony already established, women will be able to present their cases that much faster. In fact, there is already discussion between Bayer and some defendant’s attorneys about what are called “bellwether trials,” in which some cases will be selected early in order to determine how these trials can be expected to proceed with the established evidence.

We would hope that this state of affairs would remove some of the barriers that prevent otherwise victimized women from stepping forward and pursuing a case. There have been a few occasions where otherwise healthy women who have been injured and hospitalized due to the use of Yaz, Yasmin or Oscella have gotten in touch with us, but then they talked themselves out of taking any action whatsoever. They were afraid that the whole process would take too long, or they somehow convinced themselves that the blame fell squarely on them, or they were convinced that a trial would bring out embarrassing personal information.

This is precisely the wrong attitude to take. Bayer has released a birth control pill that is not only more harmful to women than any other similar product, but they also overstated the peripheral benefits of the pill, which persuaded more and more women to buy it, without being fully aware of the increased risks from the drospirenone in the birth control pill .

We can’t expect that going through the judicial process will be easy, because it almost never is. But we can tell you that, thanks to this multi-district litigation consolidation, quite a few of the more tedious obstacles have been removed.

Greenberg and Bederman is a personal injury law firm that offers legal assistance for injury victims in the Washington, D.C. area. We have helped thousands of Washingtonians receive fair compensation for car accidents, medical malpractice and Social Security disability. If you or a loved one has been injured due to the use of Yaz, Yasmin or Oscella, contact our yaz lawyer, Andrew Bederman, from Greenberg & Bederman for a free yaz legal consultation, or watch his yaz lawyer video on youtube.

Do Medical Malpractice Lawsuits Get Fair Press?

Greenberg & Bederman — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 10:03:16 -0500

Being an injury law firm based in Washington, D.C, we’ve never litigated any medical malpractice case in Tennessee. But upon reading a piece in the Memphis Daily News, we couldn’t help but notice some consistencies in the way that medical malpractice cases are both considered by the general public and reported by the media in general.

The article in question was written by a man named Scott Sheppard, who did an admirable job on presenting a balanced and fair piece. Regardless, the piece still gave the reader the sense that despite everything about the legal system being in the favor of doctors, medical malpractice insurance companies and the attorneys who represent them, somehow medical malpractice cases are still unfair.

Within the text of the article the reader learns how the majority of medical malpractice cases end:

Physicians and their insurance companies traditionally close up to 85 percent of malpractice cases without paying a penny to plaintiffs.

It is also stated in this article that one of the “problems” is the costs of defending these cases, mainly because the tactic of most medical malpractice defense attorneys is to completely outspend the plaintiff’s attorneys:

“Defendants have superior resources, usually hiring two or three times as many experts on each issue than the patient can afford; this impacts results,” said John A. Day, a personal injury and malpractice attorney at the Nashville firm of Day & Blair. “You can see defense costs are increasing – defendants and their lawyers are fighting harder.”

We also learned that Tennessee is actually one of “safest” states in the Union for doctors when it comes to medical malpractice:

Tennessee is among the lowest-risk states for doctors, in part, Day said, because of a very old legal principle still in use in Tennessee, known as the “local standard of care.”Most states have adopted statewide standards to assess care, but Tennessee cases can still be argued county by county.

“This particularly harms patients in rural areas because the defense claims that only rural doctors know how medicine is practiced in rural areas,” Day said.

Ironically, we also discovered how effective the press has been towards disclosing some facts on public perception about medical malpractice cases :

Twenty years of bad press about the effect of malpractice suits on health care costs also predisposes jurors against plaintiffs, Day said.

We also can feel empathy toward the doctors who want to practice medicine safely and effectively and how the numbers reveal just how seldom medical malpractice cases actually occur :

At the end of the year, [medical malpractice cases are] barely a quarter of 1 percent of all cases, but those cases are on the minds of every doctor, every time they step into an exam room.

We read how these medical malpractice cases affect doctors all over Tennessee, and presumably all over the country:

“The financial and emotional costs of professional liability litigation are tremendous; trying to avoid lawsuits involves every day of my life, every judgment that I make, and every order that I write,” Francis said. “Is that not sad?”

Honestly, this was such a well written article that for a moment, yes, we actually did feel sad. But then we remembered what it was that we just read: If an injury victim files a medical malpractice lawsuit, he or she only has a fifteen percent chance of success, and that’s only if the plaintiff’s attorney takes the case. The odds of success for the plaintiffs are presumably lower in Tennessee, where the “standards of care” vary from county to county and where the juries are going to be more inclined to support the doctors. We also remember that medical malpractice cases only occur in one-quarter of one percent of all the court cases, and that one main reason medical malpractice lawsuits are so expensive is not due to the victim who filed the lawsuit, or even the facts of the case, but because the main tactic of many of the defense attorneys is to outspend the plaintiff by hiring more expert witnesses than the plaintiff’s attorney can afford.

So in a state where the deck is completely stacked against people who file medical malpractice lawsuits and the bulk of the costs increasing from the defense attorneys, we are supposed to believe that the real problem is the injury victims who file medical malpractice suits and their attorneys, who take no money up front, don’t charge by the hour, and pay for the services of any expert witnesses out of their own pockets.

The solution to all of this, by the way, is an even bigger reduction of the miniscule amounts of lawsuits that are being filed:

“Obviously, too many medical malpractice suits are being filed,” said general and vascular surgeon Hugh Francis III, a partner at Memphis Surgery Associates.

We would like to propose another idea that would presumably cut costs. Since there are already “caps” on damages that already exist in so many states, why not also put a “cap” on the amount of money that attorneys on either side can spend on “expert witnesses?” Surely this would help cut the costs for both the defendants and the plaintiffs’ attorneys, and would surely then cut the costs of the insurance premiums, which insurance companies just won’t do. Why would insurance companies reduce a profit center on doctors who believe that their malpractice premium costs keep spiraling due to malpractice lawsuits, when in fact the numbers reveal the opposite is true? Why then do the insurance companies keep raising the malpractice rates on doctors? Could it be that the insurance company investments have declined due to the market and they need to make up their portfolio balance somewhere?

Greenberg and Bederman is an injury law firm based in metropolitan Washington, D.C. A significant portion of our practice is dedicated to helping people who have been injured due to medical malpractice. That includes medical negligence, surgical errors, or misdiagnosis, all of which is a violation of the standard of care. If you or a loved one in the metropolitan D.C. area or Baltimore has been injured by a doctor, surgeon, or medical professional, contact Greenberg and Bederman for a free medical malpractice legal consultation today.

To learn more about medical malpractice, please read our medical malpractice FAQ. To learn more about our medical malpractice attorney, John Sellinger, please read John's Bio, or watch his video on youtube.

Bayer is Not The Victim of Yaz Lawsuits

Greenberg & Bederman — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 09:54:24 -0500

Whenever there is a high profile legal action against a manufacturer or corporation, there is almost always an outcry from some in the public who think that the biggest victim is the manufacturer or corporation.

Even if the legal action in question involves a major consumer catastrophe where hundreds of people get injured or worse, die, some people manage to portray the perpetrators as the victims. They moan about the “expense of the legal procedures,” or they complain that the courts are being clogged up with “unnecessary” or “frivolous” cases. They may also claim that lawsuits “force” businesses to raise their prices, which will impact all the consumers, and not just the ones who were injured.

We have a particularly hard time buying these arguments, especially when they come from multibillion dollar earning pharmaceutical companies. In the first place, the only thing that can “force” a pharmaceutical company to do anything is either the pharmaceutical company itself or the law. Nothing “forces” a pharmaceutical company to charge fifteen dollars for a pill that costs eight cents to manufacture. Nothing “forces” a pharmaceutical company to put out products that are dangerous to the public. Nobody “forces” pharmaceutical companies to “grind out” any and all legal proceedings when a simple admission of wrongdoing and a reasonable offer of compensation to the victims would be more than sufficient.

But the narrative is quite often sympathetic to the poor, beleaguered pharmaceutical companies who are being attacked by opportunistic and ungrateful patients and lawyers, demanding unreasonable rewards for medical problems that were “dubious” at best.

Before you start feeling sorry for the pharmaceutical companies, consider the case of Susan Galinas. Mrs. Galinas is a mother of two who lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. She had been experiencing severe menstrual pain, and under her doctor’s advice, she started taking a birth control pill called Yaz.

Yaz is one of the Bayer Corporation’s line of birth control pills. Along with Yasmin and its generic version Ocella, Yaz contains a variation of progestin called drospirenone. These three birth control pills are the only ones on the market that contain this ingredient.

Exactly one month and one day after Mrs. Galinas started taking Yaz, she was rushed to the hospital due to a severe stroke. The stroke was so severe that surgeons had to remove part of her skull. Mrs. Galinas suffered severe brain damage, so much so that she has no short term memory capabilities, and her IQ is now just barely above the level of a person who is mentally disabled.

Mrs. Galinas’ stroke and her use of Yaz are not necessarily mutually exclusive events. They are most likely directly related. While most of the birth control pills on the market carry some element of risk, the use of drospirenone elevates these risks to a remarkable degree. The use of drospirenone elevates the chances of deep vein thrombosis more than any other birth control pill available. DVT causes clots in the bloodstream, which can break up and travel. These pieces of clot can cause blockages in the veins, which can cause heart attacks and, in the case of Mrs. Galinas, a stroke.

The Food and Drug Administration has unfortunately been very slow about taking any action regarding Yaz and Yasmin. The only positive steps the FDA has taken involved forcing Bayer to change an advertising campaign, and while that might have opened a few eyes about the dangers of these products, these pills are still readily available. And women who are prescribed these pills are still being hospitalized with pulmonary embolisms, strokes, heart attacks or gall bladder disease.

As you can tell from the footage, Mrs. Galinas’ life was changed for the worse. She was disfigured, she suffered brain damage, and she will have to spend the rest of her life as a shadow of herself. She will be unable to be the mother to her children that she once was, she will be unable to drive, and she will be unable to return to any meaningful employment. Besides her medical issues, her financial outlook is bleak, to say the least.

Bayer, on the other hand, is doing great financially. In the third quarter of 2008, Bayer made $445 million. (A financial quarter, by the way, is three months.) In the third quarter of 2009, Bayer made $462 million. In the first nine months of 2008, Bayer made $1.3 billion. In the first nine months of 2009, Bayer made $1.4 billion. And Yasmin is their top selling product.

This is hardly a beleaguered company being taken advantage of by greedy lawyers. Bayer is an enormous pharmaceutical giant earning billions. It is difficult for us to understand why Bayer is failing to admit any culpability here, or at least failing to come clean and offer decent settlements to the victims of Yaz, Yasmin, and Oscella users who have experienced real medical problems from these dangerous birth control pills.

Greenberg and Bederman is a Washington, D.C. injury law firm that has been in practice since 1985. It is our job to help those who have been seriously injured due to no fault of their own, and that includes women who have taken dangerous drugs. Yaz, Yasmin and Ocella certainly fall under that category. If you or a loved one has been hospitalized or injured due to the use of Yaz, Yasmin or Ocella, contact Greenberg & Bederman and ask to speak to our yaz lawyer, Andy Bederman, for a free yaz legal consultation. To watch our yaz video on youtube please click on yaz lawyer video.