Maryland Injury and Disability Law

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 Yasmin Lawsuits 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.

New Years Accidents

Greenberg & Bederman — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 11:32:44 -0500

A lot of people seem to have somewhat of a blind spot when it comes to personal behavior. You would be surprised at the number of folks who will read about a drunk driving accident, mutter “these people ought to know better” under their breath, and then go out and drive after having a few drinks.

There is a real sense of “it won’t happen to me” among people who drive after they drink. It’s a sense of invincibility that they keep right up until the point where they get arrested, or worse. We know this because we often find ourselves representing the victims of drunk drivers, who always seem to have thought that only other people are dangerous when they get behind the wheel.

A lot of this might have to do with the fact that alcohol lowers inhibitions, which makes those who drink a lot more confident in their abilities than they normally would be. Or it might have something to do with the myths that surround alcohol use. There are still people who believe that there is a way to instantly make a person “not drunk,” or that one form of alcohol is somehow less potent than another.

You have three choices on New Year’s Eve: Don’t drink at all, take a cab, or ride with someone who doesn’t drink. Getting behind the wheel after taking even one drink can lower your reflexes and dull your reaction time. In fact, impairment begins after just one serving of alcohol. According to the Department of Health and Human Services:

“At low doses the effects of alcohol may include alterations in mood, cognition, anxiety level, and motor performance. It may also impair performance several hours after the blood alcohol level has gone down. Even slightly elevated levels result in more fatal accidents, and the majority of individuals who experience a problem related to alcohol use are light and moderate drinkers.”

This means that “only having a couple” or “just having one” is enough to adversely affect your ability to drive. And there is no magical way to make you sober, despite what some of the old wives tales might say:

“If I drink a few cups of coffee, I should be fine to drive.”

Caffeine has no dampening effect on how your brain and body reacts towards alcohol. The coffee might make you jittery and wide awake, but it won’t make you less drunk.

“I’ve just been drinking beer. What’s the big deal?”

The alcohol in beer doesn’t have any less of a punch than the alcohol in whiskey. In fact, one beer (12 oz) contains the same amount of alcohol in one shot (1.5 oz) of vodka, gin, whiskey, scotch or bourbon. And one serving of beer or liquor contains the same amount of alcohol as a glass of wine (5 oz.) When it comes to drinking, there isn’t any type that affects you less than the others.

“I actually drive better when I’ve had a few drinks.”

No you don’t. The alcohol is just making you think that you can. One of the first things that happen to people who drink is their inhibitions drop and their confidence goes up. It’s the reason you see people who can’t sing rushing to the karaoke microphone. Any feelings of extreme confidence are alcohol fueled, and should not be considered an asset when you get behind the wheel.

We’re bringing this up because tonight is New Years Eve, which is the exact night that a great deal of the population goes out and drinks a great deal of alcohol. Consequently, it’s also the night where a great many people are arrested for alcohol related offenses, and unfortunately it’s also the night where a lot of people get behind the wheel of their cars after they have been drinking.

It’s part and parcel of the holiday season, unfortunately. The number of alcohol related traffic fatalities spikes every year between December 15^th and January 1^st, and no doubt many of these people thought “I’m fine,” or “nothing will happen to me” before they got behind the wheel.

It would be tragic enough if all of these drunken driving accidents just involved those who chose to drink and drive, but the sad reality is that they often involve other people who, quite often, were obeying both the law and common sense and chose not to drink and drive.

Drinking and driving is not just a crime. It is also unbelievably negligent behavior, in which you can and should be held both criminally and financially responsible for any accidents or injuries that you cause. You have every right to go out and celebrate as you see fit, but you don’t have the right to endanger others when you do so. If you decide to have one drink, or a few, or a whole lot, don’t get behind the wheel of a car.

Greenberg and Bederman is an injury law firm that helps victims of car accidents in the Washington, D.C. area, and that includes people who have been injured due to the actions of drunk drivers. We believe that people who have been injured because of someone else’s negligence should be fully compensated for their medical bills, loss of income, pain and suffering and emotional hardship, and we further believe that drinking and driving is one of the purest forms of negligence that exists. If you or a loved one has been injured in a car accident or injured due to the actions of someone who was drinking and driving, Greenberg & Bederman for afree accident legal consultation.

Yaz Alternatives

Greenberg & Bederman — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 15:29:12 -0500

As we have been reporting extensively over the past few months, Bayer’s line of birth control pills has been a source of major controversy over the past year or so. The pills (which are marketed under the names Yaz, Yasmin and Ocella) first came to the attention of the general public when the Food and Drug Administration ordered Bayer to remake an advertising campaign in October of 2008. The FDA’s problem with the campaign was that it overstated the supposed side benefits of Yaz (treatment for acne and depression,) while understating the increased dangers that the special ingredient posed towards the women who used the pill.

While the FDA was having problems with the advertising, the women who were actually using the products themselves were having serious problems of their own. The new ingredient that Bayer decided to use for these birth control pills is called drospirenone, which is a synthetic variation of progestin. Along with the supposed benefits of decreased acne and an easier time with premenstrual dysphoric disorder, this ingredient has also been shown to increase the odds of deep vein thrombosis (blood clots in the legs.) These blood clots have a tendency to break apart, and the pieces of the clots have a tendency to travel through the bloodstream. This can cause pulmonary embolisms, strokes and heart attacks among women who are otherwise healthy.

To be fair, there is a risk of deep vein thrombosis associated with most forms of oral contraceptives, but the problem with Bayer’s line of pills is that the drospirenone increases those odds pretty substantially. According to the British Medical Journal, there is a 6.3 fold increase of deep vein thrombosis among women who use birth control pills containing drospirenone. Bayer’s birth control pills are the only brands available that use drospirenone, so the BMJ’s study might as well just say “Yaz, Yasmin and Ocella.”

From here, it’s just a matter of arithmetic. A 6.3 fold increase might not seem like much, but if you consider the full on advertising blitz that Bayer put on in order to sell this drug, then it stands to reason that the number of women who take this drug without knowing about the additional risks will increase, which therefore increases the number of women who are suffering from adverse effects. And that’s been an obvious problem. Thousands of otherwise women all over the country are finding themselves hospitalized with strokes, heart attacks or pulmonary embolisms, and the only consistent factor among these women is that they have been taking Yaz, Yasmin or Ocella.

Considering the increased risk of health problems that drospirenone can bring with it, we would urge any woman considering taking an oral contraceptive to avoid Bayer’s line of birth control pills and to consider some of the many alternatives that are available on the market. While there is still a risk of blood clotting with most birth control pills that are based on hormone replacement, the risks are significantly lower with pills other than Yaz. In fact, some of the safest pills on the market are the so-called second generation pills that contain low doses of estrogen and variations on progesterone that are much safer than drospirenone.

Lybrel: This is a pill that contains a hormone called levonorgestrel, which has been shown in most studies to have the lowest risk of deep vein thrombosis (clots.)

Nordette: This is another low dose estrogen/levonorgestrel combination pill, and Nordette is in fact just one of the many brands that use this combination. And again, levonorgestrel has the lowest incident rate of deep vein thrombosis.

Seasonique: Another levonorgestrel pill, which comes with additional benefits in terms of regulation of menstruation.

The injury law firm of Greenberg and Bederman has taken an active role in the Washington, D.C. area in both warning women of the potential hazards of Bayer’s line of birth control pills and offering legal help for women who have already been injured because of them. We are currently representing women who have been hospitalized with pulmonary embolisms, strokes or heart attacks after using Yaz, Yasmin or Ocella. Thanks to recent actions by the federal courts, the process of getting your case through the legal system has been streamlined, which is making it that much easier for your case to be heard relatively quickly. Rulings have also been made that will safeguard your privacy throughout the process.

If you or a loved one in Baltimore, Maryland, Virginia or Washington, DC has been injured due to Yaz, Yasmin or Ocella, contact our yaz lawyer, Andy Bederman, for a free yaz legal consultation.

Yaz Class Action Lawsuit

Greenberg & Bederman — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 13:41:41 -0500

One of the reasons that scare people away from litigation is the amount of time that it takes for 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 them. 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 usually afford the legal costs of delaying a trial.

A product liability trial can often take a long time; especially if there have been multiple victims from the same product. Fortunately for 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 embolism should not have to suffer from long and 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. While that might or might not be correct, the trade off is that the levels of potassium in the blood go up, which can and does cause blood clotting. These clots can break apart and travel, which can cause 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 clots. 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 such 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 pills file an individual 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.

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. Perhaps 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 product that is not only more harmful to women than any other similar birth control product, but they also overstated the peripheral benefits of the pill, which encouraged more and more women to buy it. Most women probably considered less acne and less mental trauma as a selling point when they started taking the pill, and were completely unaware of the increased dangers of drospirenone.

We can’t claim 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 & Bederman is a personal injury law firm that offers legal assistance for injury victims in the Washington, D.C. area. We serve Silver Spring, Maryland, DC, VA, and Baltimore. 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, Andy Bederman, for a free Yaz legal consultation, or read more about yaz on our yaz lawyer website.

Roger Greenberg 2010 Superlawyer

Greenberg & Bederman — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 15:03:23 -0500

Roger Greenberg was voted into 2010 Maryland and DC Superlawyers Magazine.

Super Lawyers, an independent magazine adhering to a selection process that is objective and independent of any advertising or payments to nominate its candidate, has named Roger E. Greenberg a Super Lawyer in its Maryland and Washington DC 2010 editions. Lawyers were asked to nominate the best lawyers they've personally observed, were not allowed to nominate an internal lawyer without nominating an external lawyer, and lawyers were not allowed to vote for themselves. This evaluation led to a final selection of our personal injury lawyer , Roger Greenberg. Congratulations on a job well done!

Roger Greenberg is a partner of Greenberg & Bederman, a personal injury lawfirm located in downtown Silver Spring, MD, one half block from the Silver Spring Metro station, one mile from the Washington, DC line. Greenberg & Bederman handles auto accidents, medical malpractice, social security disability denials, and yaz injury law.

To learn more about Greenberg & Bederman, please visit the Greenberg & Bederman website. To learn more about Roger Greenberg, please read Roger Greenberg's bio, or watch Roger Greenberg's video on Youtube.

To Avoid Injury Owners Must Shovel Snow

Greenberg & Bederman — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 09:32:59 -0500

There is a foot and a half of snow on the ground here in D.C. After the initial appreciation of how the snow looks begins to wear off, you start to realize that the winter wonderland is actually a foot and a half of inconvenience. Even the most simple of acts takes intensive preparation. Going out to get the newspaper involves putting on multiple layers of clothing. Driving anywhere involves digging a trench through the snow that is big enough for your car, and that’s only if the roads have been properly plowed and are safe enough to drive on.

When there is a foot and a half of snow on the ground, it is very tempting to simply stay inside. Most people hunker down and wait until things get down to manageable levels before they go anywhere. And while that is understandable, homeowners in Maryland, Virginia and D.C. do have some responsibilities regarding the sidewalks in front of their houses. As dull and labor intensive as shoveling snow can be, clearing a safe path in front of your house when it snows is not just courteous. It’s also the law.

Benny Kass wrote a great article in the Washington Post which details the laws regarding icy sidewalk liability in Maryland, Virginia and D.C, and we think everyone should take a look. Slipping and falling might seem to be YouTube worthy slapstick fodder to many of us, but in reality slipping and falling is one of the leading causes of deaths and injuries among older adults.

According to the Center for Disease Control, more than one third of adults age sixty five or older fall down every year. Twenty to thirty percent of those who fall suffer from injuries. Some of them are moderate injuries like bruises, but many of these falls involve injuries that are more severe, such as fractures or head trauma. Head trauma injuries are particularly dangerous. In fact, traumatic brain injuries accounted for 46% of fatal falls among older adults.

Snow and icy conditions increases the likelihood of slipping and falling for everyone, older adults included. In order to help avoid either falling or being the cause of someone falling, we would urge you to make sure that the walk in front of your home is properly shoveled and cleared of ice. You should also use either salt or sand to help prevent ice patches from forming overnight or to clear ice that is already there.

Another obvious hazard with snow and ice on the ground is driving. This particular bout of snow left much of the D.C. regions roads impassable, and even after days of plowing there are still many roads that are not safe to drive on. It might seem like stating the very obvious, but driving during a snowstorm or in the aftermath of a snowstorm is not a safe thing to do.

In the first place, driving while it is snowing limits your visibility a great deal, even during the daytime. It not only obscures your vision, but the snow itself can also dust over and cover patches of ice, potholes or curbs. After the snow stops, the roads can still be very slick and difficult to drive on. And the snow that is left after plowing has a tendency to melt during the day and freeze at night, leaving the roads in an almost constant icy state. There is also the matter of road salt, which inevitably ends up on your windshield and smears very easily.

There are also other drivers to contend with, all of whom are probably dealing with the same road conditions, ice, limited visibility and rock salt in one of two ways. They are either driving in a very timid fashion, or they are driving entirely too aggressively. The timid driver can cause backups and fender benders, while the overconfident driver is convinced of his or her invincibility due to four wheel drive, or the fact that they are driving an SUV. Cars with four wheel drive are just as susceptible to crashing as any other car, but many of the drivers don’t seem to believe such a thing is possible.

In a perfect world, everyone could simply stay home until the roads were clear, but considering that we live in the Washington, D.C. area, this will never happen. Everybody has to be at work. So the only advice that we can offer is for you to use common sense, try to stick to roads that have been thoroughly plowed and salted, make sure that you have plenty of windshield wiper fluid to help with the salt, and drive as carefully as you possibly can.

Traffic accidents can and will happen at any time of the year, but snow and ice make the prospects even more likely. With traffic as heavy as it is in Virginia, Maryland and D.C, crowded roads and poor weather can make a dangerous combination. Greenberg and Bederman is currently offering legal assistance to people in the D.C. area who have been injured due to no fault of their own. We have decades of experience in helping victims of falls, car and truck accidents, and medical malpractice. If you or a loved one has been seriously hurt, contact Greenberg and Bederman for a free legal consultation today.

Bayer's Lawyers Ask Yaz Victims for Personal Information

Greenberg & Bederman — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 08:44:57 -0500

Have you ever been questioned on the witness stand or in a deposition? It isn’t fun.

The main job of the opposing counsel is to make the jury doubt the validity of your testimony. This means they will do everything short of calling you a liar. They will pick apart your story, obsess over irrelevant details of your testimony and call your motives into question.

If that doesn’t work, the opposing counsel often has no problems with getting personal. They will often ask you questions about your life that has absolutely nothing to do with the case at hand. The reason they do this is because they want to make you appear untrustworthy to the judge or jury.

Fortunately, for thousands of women across the country, the judge presiding over the Yaz birth control pill case will be placing limits on these sorts of questions.

For those of you who don’t know, there have been hundreds of lawsuits filed against Bayer over their line of birth control pills. These pills, which are marketed under the names of Yaz, Yasmin and Oscella, contain drospirenone, which is a synthetic variation of the hormone progestin. This variation has been shown to increase the level of potassium in the bloodstream of the women who use these birth control pills. This can cause deep vein thrombosis, which is the formation of blood clots in the veins and arteries of the legs. Quite often, theses clots break apart, and the remnants travel through the bloodstream, causing blockages in the lungs, heart or brain.

Due to the large number of lawsuits that were all filed under similar circumstances (users of these pills being hospitalized due to pulmonary embolisms, strokes or heart attacks,) the suits were consolidated into multi-district litigation. This means that the general ground rules of the cases will be the same, and that certain pieces of evidence will be considered as a given rather than having to be presented over and over again.

On Friday the eleventh, a hearing was held in the Philadelphia Common Pleas Court to determine these general ground rules for a yaz lawsuit. Bayer’s lawyers were seeking permission to force the plaintiffs in these Yaz, Yasmin and Oscella cases to fill out a questionnaire that would make them detail any methods of birth control that they have used besides hormonal birth control.

From here it is a very slippery slope to asking plaintiffs about how many sexual partners they have had, or how long they have been using birth control, or any manner of sleazy questions that would serve to do nothing but make the plaintiffs in this case appear to have somehow deserved what happened to them. This is the same sort of deflective questioning that many defense lawyers still use when questioning rape victims.

Judge Sandra Mazer Moss viewed the idea of the questionnaire as both inappropriate and a potential invasion of privacy:

During the hearing, Judge Sandra Mazer Moss, coordinating judge of Philadelphia's mass torts program, said she was surprised the defendants weren't asking how many partners the female plaintiffs had.

"Then we could put out a brochure and everyone will know," Moss said.

Judge Moss did mention that she might allow the defendants to obtain some information about prior contraceptive use among the plaintiffs, but she made it clear that she would not allow the proceedings to degenerate into an interrogation about the sex lives of the victims.

We also are having a hard time discerning what the motives would be for asking about past birth control use in forms that don’t involve hormonal replacement. The question at hand is whether the hormone in Yaz, Yasmin and Oscella has been causing blood clots. Condoms, IUD’s and cervical caps involve no hormones whatsoever. We can only intimate that the reason to bring this up is to publically embarrass the plaintiffs. This tactic is actually more than just being spiteful. If a woman finds out that she will have to disclose information that is very personal, it might be enough to get her to drop the case. If that seems like a cold hearted tactic, do bear in mind that there is quite a lot at stake with these cases. This isn’t just one woman who had a bad experience with these pills. This involves hundreds of women all over the country who have experienced severe medical problems, and sadly, there have even been deaths. Bayer will be sure to do anything within their power to whittle down the number of lawsuits that they will be facing, and that includes intimidation through public humiliation. With that in mind, we are pleased that Judge Moss did not allow this irrelevant and insulting questionnaire to be pursued.

Greenberg and Bederman is currently accepting cases involving women in Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C. who have been injured or hospitalized due to the use of these birth control pills. If you or a loved one has suffered from a stroke, heart attack, pulmonary embolism or gallbladder disease due to the use of Yaz, Yasmin or Oscella, do not hesitate to contact our yaz lawyer, Andy Bederman, for a free yaz legal consultation.

To watch our yaz video on you tube, please click yaz lawyer video.

Insurance and Federal Antitrust Exemption

Greenberg & Bederman — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 13:45:24 -0500

Are you tired of the runarounds, denials, and rate hikes of health insurance carriers such as Cigna, Aetna, Blue Cross/Blue Shield and United Health Group? Have you tried to take your business somewhere else? Have you ever tried to find a small, mom and pop style health insurance company in Maryland, D.C. or Virginia?

Good luck with that. There aren’t any.

Every health insurance option that you have in the D.C. metropolitan area is either a direct subsidiary of an enormous health insurance conglomerate or is an enormous health insurance conglomerate. “Taking your business elsewhere” simply means going to another company that will charge you exorbitant amounts of money for the same shabby treatment.

The reason this is the case is because there is nothing keeping health care giants from buying out or muscling out any other health insurance company that tries to set up shop. Ordinarily, this would be called a “monopoly,” which is supposed to be against the law. It’s the reason that there is a Ben and Jerry’s and Baskin Robbins. It’s the reason that there is Coke and Pepsi, as well as RC or the generic version that you can buy at any supermarket. It is illegal for any one entity to corner the market of any product or service. The only two entities that are exempt from setting up monopolies are Major League Baseball and health insurance.

Health insurance companies were granted this exemption thanks to the McCarran Ferguson Act of 1945, which leaves the regulation of insurance entirely up to the states in which they do business. This means that even if Blue Cross, Humana or any of the health care giants are engaging in ridiculously blatant anti-trust activity, the federal government has no means to stop them.

Currently, insurance companies in charge of your health already have multiple advantages over their policy holders. They can and will drop coverage over the flimsiest of pretenses; they can and will refuse to pay for valid claims; they can and will raise rates to unaffordable levels all while making billions in profits; and they can and will interfere in medical treatment of patients strictly for their own financial benefit. And they are able to do this regardless of whether or not there are antitrust laws in place.

With an antitrust exemption, health insurance companies are able to do the following things:

Price Fixing: Insurance companies often go by what is called a “usual and customary” rate when they pay for services. But these rates aren’t determined by the standard movements of the market. They are often determined by the insurance companies themselves. Just this year in New York, four health insurance companies were investigated in New York for using software that not only set prices, but also skewed them in a way that favored the insurance companies. New York is an anomaly in that the state actually decided to investigate and press charges. Most state governments do not bother. And since the federal government has no power to investigate insurance companies due to their antitrust exemption, many insurers in many states are free to operate as they see fit.

Market Allocation: In case you haven’t noticed, there isn’t exactly a huge variety of health insurance companies to choose from. According to the Government Accounting Office, the largest health insurer in the average state held 43% of the policies for small group coverage. “Small group coverage” usually means the coverage that you get from work, which is where the vast majority of us get our coverage in the first place. With so few choices for consumers, there is no incentive for any of the insurance companies to lower their prices. And since the status quo is so profitable, there is no need for any insurance company to engage in anything but advertising in order to attract customers. Low premiums and fair treatment of policyholders aren’t necessary. Since there is no antitrust exemption, there is also nothing keeping health insurance companies from simply divvying up entire states through prior arrangements. Two insurers could take the majority of one county, three insurers could handle all of the small businesses, four or five could handle all the big employers. These aren’t “markets” as much as they are “fiefdoms.”

Bear in mind that this has been going on since 1945. Health insurance companies have become enormously wealthy and enormously influential on Capitol Hill. The current brawl over meaningful healthcare reform in the House and Senate as well as all the loud and angry protests over the summer can be cited as evidence as to how hard the insurance companies will fight to keep things the way they are.

Back in September, Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) introduced legislation into the Senate that would finally remove the federal antitrust exemption that insurance companies currently enjoy. The insurance companies are, of course, against the removal of the exemption:

America's Health Insurance Plans, an industry trade group, also opposes a repeal of the antitrust exemption and has cited the cost that additional litigation would impose on the health-care system.

AHIP spokesman Robert Zirkelbach in a statement Tuesday argued that the current exemption is "extremely limited in scope and has nothing to do with health plan competition."

We would beg to differ. There is nothing “limited” about an exemption to a law that is crucial to preventing an entire segment of the economy from being controlled by a handful of companies. And “the cost of additional litigation” seems like a flimsy excuse for keeping this exemption. Do they mean that going to court to defend themselves against charges of price fixing and market allocation would cost too much money? Do they mean that they would probably face lawsuits from states, businesses and private citizens, and that would be too expensive for them?

There is not one person, group, or association in America who can make the argument that they don’t want to have to show up to court because it would cost too much. But thanks to the antitrust exemption, insurance companies have no qualms about using that excuse.

This simply serves to illustrate the uphill battle that most people have to fight when they are dealing with insurance companies. There is no financial incentive for insurance companies to treat policyholders fairly, and there is practically no enforcement to keep them from keeping their prices high and their services poor. This means health insurance, or auto insurance, or even malpractice insurance carriers can delay, deny, or devalue your case, in hopes that you will give up the fight. This is why obtaining experienced legal counsel when you get injured is incredibly important. Insurance companies have the resources, money and time to get you to settle for an amount that is significantly less than you will need for medical bills and lost income. Having an experienced personal injury lawyer on your side can help you cut through the red tape, and ensure that your legal rights are protected.

Greenberg and Bederman has been helping injury victims in the Washington, D.C. area for a quarter of a century by representing victims and fighting the insurance companies. We help people who have been injured due to car accidents, medical malpractice, injuries from falls and injuries due to dangerous medications. We serve the metropolitan DC area including DC, Maryland,and northern Virginia. If you or a loved one has been injured due to no fault of your own, contact Greenberg & Bederman for a free legal consultation.

To learn more about Greenberg & Bederman, please visit our personal injury page. To learn more about our personal injury lawyers, Roger Greenberg, or Andrew Bederman, please click on Roger Greenberg, or Andrew Bederman. To learn more about our car accident lawyer, Jason Fernandez, please click on accident lawyer. To learn more about our medical malpractice lawyer, John Sellinger, please click on medical malpractice lawyer. To learn more about our Social Security lawyer, Suja Vargherse, please click on social security lawyer. To watch our client video testimonials, please click our videos tab on our website.

Pedestrian Accident

Greenberg & Bederman — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 08:41:34 -0500

Pedestrian accidents are something to take very seriously. The average weight of a passenger car is 3239 pounds, and even a car traveling just ten miles an hour can do severe damage to an unprotected human being. D.C. is no stranger to pedestrians getting hit by cars. Just two years ago we broke a ten year record for fatal pedestrian accidents in the District, with 27 people struck and killed by automobiles.

At around that same time, The Washington Post put out a list of the most dangerous intersections for pedestrians in Washington, DC. Considering how many of us actually walk in this city, and considering the D.C. area’s reputation for traffic, we view this as practical information. You should also consider that with cell phones, text messaging, iPods and even television sets in automobiles, more and more drivers are spending less time with their eyes on the roads.

We found some particularly bits of information in this article that were surprising, and some that were not. For instance, it isn’t much of a surprise that over half of these dangerous intersections were in Northwest D.C. This is where the White House, Smithsonian, Capital Building and most of the major monuments are, which means that this is where most of the tourists congregate. Adams Morgan and U Street are also in Northwest, and if you are a D.C. native you probably already know how crowded with pedestrians these neighborhoods get on weekend nights.

Washington, D.C. and all the surrounding areas are more car friendly than pedestrian friendly. You would be hard pressed to find someone in D.C. or the Maryland and Virginia suburbs that doesn’t own a car, and that mindset seems to permeate the entire population. You would be surprised as to the number of people that get hit by cars due to no fault of their own who still seem to think that they were to blame.

Believe it or not, the folks who created the laws were mindful of the fact that cars can do a great deal of damage to people, and accordingly pedestrians and bicyclists often have the right of way in many traffic situations. Here are few of the more obvious ones:

Crosswalks: There doesn’t need to necessarily be a light at a crosswalk. Pedestrians have the right of way when they are walking on a clearly established crosswalk. This means that motorists are required to stop and let pedestrians cross safely. Blasting through a cross walk with your car is not only rude, but is also against the law.

Stop Signs: This might seem as obvious as the nose on your face, but one of the more common causes of pedestrian accidents are when the driver of a car doesn’t come to a complete stop at a stop sign. The slang term for this is a “Texas Stop,” which is where you don’t stop as much as you just slow down. It is important to remember that even a car going at the slowest of speeds can still do real damage to a human body. So if a driver just fails to come to a complete stop, he or she is still carrying the forward momentum of a vehicle that weighs over a ton.

Right Turns: This is simply an extension of failing to stop at a stop sign or intersection, but the potential danger to pedestrians is even greater. A driver who fails to come to a complete stop before turning right is both accelerating into a turn and turning without getting a full view of what will be ahead of him.

Ignoring or Crowding Bicyclists: If your initial reaction is just to blaze past a bicyclist as fast as you can, you are absolutely breaking the law. Bicyclists have just as much right to be on the roads as you do, and due to the fact that they have practically no protection whatsoever, they have to be treated with caution and respect. Not giving them enough room on the right or driving past them at an accelerated rate of speed could lead to an accident, and if that occurs, the odds are that you will be at fault.

Ignoring the Speed Limit: Ignoring the posted speed limit is dangerous behavior anywhere, but if you do so in a residential area, you are definitely putting the lives of others at risk. On any given suburban street, children or pets think nothing of darting out into the middle of the street. Neither do adults for that matter. If a pedestrian is hit in a residential area and the driver in question was speeding, it’s hard to imagine a judge treating this person with restraint.

The injuries that pedestrians and cyclists suffer after they have been hit by a car can be long lasting or even permanent. If a pedestrian gets hit by an automobile, it isn’t a question of if he or she will be injured. It will be a question of how badly he or she will be injured.

At Greenberg and Bederman, we take into account every aspect of what aninjury victim has lost when we formulate our legal strategy. It isn’t enough to just consider the medical bills. We also consider time lost from work, emotional trauma and pain and suffering. It is our position that the great majority of accidents don’t just happen as much as they are caused, and we use that as a guiding principle when we represent the needs of our clients.

Greenberg and Bederman has been serving the injured of Washington, Virginia and Maryland for twenty five years, and we have earned a reputation as advocates for those who have been hurt due to the negligence of others. If you or a loved one has been injured in a car accident or injured as apedestrian, contact our injury lawyer, Jason Fernandez, Andrew Bederman, or Roger Greenberg for a free accident injury legal consultation.

Does FDA Ensure Safety of Yaz or Yasmin?

Greenberg & Bederman — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 09:27:06 -0500

The Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA)primary responsibility is to see that any food products and pharmaceuticals are safe for consumption or use, or at the very least they make sure that the benefits outweigh the risks. For instance, if you were to come up with an effective pain reliever using ingredients in your kitchen, you couldn’t mass produce and sell it as a pain reliever unless you had your product go through the FDA approval process.

This process actually takes years. After initial testing, the pharmaceutical companies have to send their testing results to the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation Research (CDER.) These results are then reviewed extensively by a team of doctors, statisticians, pharmacologists and other scientists. Aside from going over the testing results, they also see if the labeling proposed by the pharmaceutical company is accurate. In other words, if the CDER perceives a risk in the drug that isn’t mentioned in the labeling, or feels that the supposed benefits of a drug are overstated, it is their duty to inform the pharmaceutical company of their findings.

It is important to mention that the CDER doesn’t actually test the drugs themselves. They only go over the data provided to them by the pharmaceutical companies. That’s not to say that they do a poor job in analyzing the data, but what is to prevent the pharmaceutical companies from turning in half truths or incomplete information? What if the pharmaceutical companies fail to mention a possible side-effect because they view it to be “statistically unlikely?”

Another aspect of the CDER’s testing and safety process is that the same scientists, statisticians, doctors and pharmacologists who approve a drug as safe for consumption are the same ones who are in charge of handling safety concerns after the drug has been on the market. This has led to real problems in the past.

In 1999, the FDA approved a drug called Vioxx, which was developed and initially tested by Merck. Vioxx was marketed as a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID,) which was meant to provide non-narcotic pain relief for sufferers of arthritis. This pill was basically known as a “super-aspirin,” mainly because Merck claimed it was able to not only provide better pain relief than traditional over the counter analgesics, but was able to do so without causing upset stomachs, which is a common side effect of aspirin and acetaminophen.

The drug was a huge success, with an estimated 80 million people taking the drug worldwide. But almost immediately, there began to be some real problems. Within months, there were reports of people suffering severe heart attacks. However, the very nature of Vioxx actually provided Merck with some protection from FDA fallout. After all, Vioxx was a drug for the treatment of arthritis, and arthritis sufferers are generally elderly. The elderly are statistically more likely to have heart attacks than any other demographic. The fact that Vioxx was a common link with these victims was discounted by the FDA:

“There were 14 cardiovascular deaths, (nine and five in rofecoxib and naproxen groups,

respectively). Most of the cardiovascular deaths were in patients with known

cardiovascular risks.”

Obviously, Merck was not going to admit that there was anything wrong, considering that they had spent millions on both developing and marketing the drug, and they were making money hand over fist. And the problems and delays with the FDA were due to the fact that the people in charge of reviewing Vioxx complaints were the same people who approved the drug in the first place.

There were two things very wrong with this scenario. In the first place, if the same FDA workers who approved Vioxx came out publically and said that they were wrong to do so, that would essentially be admitting that they didn’t do their jobs properly. Secondly, aside from regular FDA workers reviewing the drug, it was also reviewed by what was called an “independent advisory board,” which wasn’t really “independent” at all.

In 2005, when it became clear that there was a severe problem with Vioxx that could no longer be ignored by the FDA, the advisory board met to discuss not only Vioxx, but also the similar NSAID drugs that were either on the market or were close to being put into production by all the other pharmaceutical companies. The advisory board voted to keep these drugs on the market, despite the estimated 27,000 deaths that had occurred since their introduction. A group called the Center for Science in the Public Interest looked into who was serving on this board, and found that of the 32 experts serving on the panel, 23 of them were either receiving consulting fees from the drug companies themselves or owned a considerable amount of stock in drug companies that were either marketing NSAID’s or were about to introduce one of their own.

So between rank and file FDA members who were hesitant to publically correct their own mistakes and outside advisory boards that were staffed with people who were practically pharmaceutical company employees, the environment for fast action on a dangerous drug did not exist.

To its credit, the FDA did in fact alter the rules of its advisory panels, so that in order to serve on one you couldn’t have a financial stake higher than $50,000. But the rules regarding in-house review of dangers at the FDA have not changed:

Agency officials have made some changes to drug oversight, according to a Government Accountability Office report, but the FDA continues to give the bulk of its decision-making power to scientists who approve new drugs, rather than those who monitor the side effects of drugs on the market.

This was one of the two major factors in Vioxx being allowed to stay on the market for so long, and this worries us because right now a popular drug is posing a serious danger to the health of women who have been using it.

Bayer’s line of birth control pills, which are marketed under the names Yaz, Yasmin and Oscella, have been linked to thousands of hospitalizations all over the world, and more than a few deaths. The active ingredient in these pills is a synthetic variation of progestin called Drispirenone, which has been shown to raise the potassium levels of women who use it. Elevated potassium levels can raise the risk of deep vein thrombosis, which is the formation of blood clots in the legs. These clots can break apart and travel, which can and does cause strokes, heart attacks, and pulmonary embolisms.

Bayer has been arguing that these dangerous side effects are not out of the statistical norm, and that the victims are mostly women who smoke or were over the age of thirty. But we and other attorneys like us have read about enough cases of perfectly healthy women ending up hospitalized after taking these pills disagree with Bayer.

With FDA culture being what it is, it isn’t very surprising that the only real problems they have had with Bayer so far is over their advertising. The rest of it, the strokes, the heart attacks, the elevated levels of potassium, well…that’s still under review. Perhaps by the exact same people who approved this drug in the first place?

Greenberg and Bederman is a Washington, D.C. area law firm that is currently offering legal help for women who have been injured due to the use of Yaz, Yasmin or Oscella. If you or a loved one has been injured or hospitalized due to the use of these birth control pills, contact our yaz stroke lawyer, Andy Bederman, for a free yaz legal consultation.

Drunk Driving Accidents in December

Greenberg & Bederman — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 08:39:30 -0500

The holiday season is upon us, which means that we can expect all of the traditional trappings that go with it, both positive and negative. We can expect moments spent with friends and family; we can expect cold weather, and we can expect homes decked with bright lights and festive decorations. We can also expect crowded shopping malls, heavier than normal traffic and the majority of our population rushing around even more so than usual.

We can also attend the traditional round of holiday parties. Office parties, celebrations with friends and relatives, and parties at churches, social groups and charities are all a big part of the holiday season. The general sense of holiday festivities can encourage those who generally abstain from drinking alcohol to have a drink or two. And for those who make a habit out of drinking, the holiday season gives them every excuse to cut loose and drink even more.

This would simply be a matter of personal preference if it weren’t for the fact that we all have to share the roads with other drivers. And those of us who exercise personal responsibility and obey the law when we don’t drink and drive are not immune to the actions of those who don’t. This premise is true for all twelve months of the year, but it takes on a certain urgency during December. It is for this reason that the Center for Disease Control and Prevention has declared December National Drunk and Drugged Driving Prevention Month. According to the CDC, over 1.4 million drivers were arrested over a period of one year for driving while under the influence of drugs or alcohol, and these were only the people who were caught. The CDC further claims that in that same year there were 159 million self reported instances of drunk driving, so the arrests only count for around 1% of the actual number of people who recklessly take to the roads after drinking and driving.

The numbers get particularly frightening in December, especially among the demographic of drivers between the ages of 21 to 24. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the numbers of fatal accidents between December 15^th and January 1^st involving alcohol impaired kids in their early twenties is staggering:

2003: 34% of fatal alcohol related traffic accidents

2004: 37% of fatal alcohol related traffic accidents

2005: 36% of fatal alcohol related traffic accidents

2006: 38% of fatal alcohol related traffic accidents

2007: 35% of fatal alcohol related traffic accidents

In other words, if between the week before Christmas and New Years Eve there is a fatal traffic accident involving a drunk driver, there is a better than average chance that the driver will be between the ages of 21 to 24.

In our immediate vicinity, the numbers bear that out. In Washington, D.C. in 2007, the one driver in that age bracket who died in a traffic fatality had a blood alcohol content of .08 or higher, which is above the legal limit.

In Maryland, there were 108 traffic fatalities in that age bracket, and 50 of the drivers were at .08 or higher. That’s 46% of the fatalities.

And in Virginia, out of the 187 traffic fatalities involving drivers who were age 21-24, 70 of them (38%) were legally intoxicated.

If there is anything to be learned from all of this, it is that the standard feeling of invincibility that happens with the young is utterly misapplied when it comes to drinking and driving. And it can also be said that all of the advertisements and public service announcements warning against drunk driving apply to everyone, not just those who are in their thirties or above.

Drinking and driving is not only a crime. It is also complete and utter negligent behavior. It is not just an action where you put yourself at risk. Drunk drivers endanger the lives of everyone around them, be they drivers or motorcyclists or bicyclists or pedestrians. There is no plausible excuse for getting behind the wheel of a car after you have been drinking a substance that lowers your inhibitions and kills your reflexes.

At Greenberg and Bederman, we offer legal assistance for people in the Washington, D.C. area who have been injured in all sorts of traffic accidents, and that includes drunk driving. In our twenty five years of serving the injured of D.C. as a law firm, we have helped victims of car accidents and negligence receive the compensation that they deserved. If you or a loved one has been injured in Maryland, Virginia or Washington D.C, contact Greenberg and Bederman for a free drunk driving accident legal consultation.

Medical Malpractice Caps Difficulties

Greenberg & Bederman — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 15:10:36 -0500

Recently in New York, a group of five veteran medical malpractice defense attorneys joined a Manhattan law firm. In the press release celebrating this acquisition of talent, we read the following:

"The rising cost of damage awards and settlements in medical malpractice cases continues to take a heavy toll… With these additions to our medical malpractice defense team, LeClairRyan is now in an even stronger position to help New York-area healthcare providers fight back."

They also mentioned a report from the Physicians Insurance Association of America, in which they claim that the amount of money given by jury awards is skyrocketing. All of this is new to us. Far be it from us to go against the numbers that the malpractice insurers themselves put together, but when we checked with the Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics, we found that most medical malpractice cases are closed without any payout to the plaintiffs at all. And those jury awards that are supposed to be so high were only awarded in cases where there was a serious medical injury or a near death experience of the patient. It’s hard to imagine how compensation could be “excessive” when a patient almost dies or will be spending the rest of his or her life with an injury or serious medical condition.

Whenever politicians or business advocacy groups discuss tort defense and tort reform, we always seem to hear a lot about “excessive jury awards.” They always trot out the McDonald’s case, or bring up some cases that slipped through the cracks of common sense as if they were everyday occurrences rather than the legal oddities that they are.

It is very easy for these groups to portray themselves as victims. The vast majority of people in America have had no reason to set foot in a courtroom in their lives, and have had no practical experience of how the legal system actually works. We live in a society where people have the right to seek recompense for their damages in court, but the burden of proving these damages lies solely on the plaintiff. This can be a very difficult thing to do, especially considering that defendants in civil cases already have so many built in advantages. We don’t have a system where anybody can walk in off the street and instantly win a million dollar verdict for nothing.

In the first place, thirty states have caps in place for non-economic damages. This means that you can only be compensated for your suffering up to a certain point. In Maryland, for instance, the cap for non-economicdamages in a medical malpractice case is $650,000. This means that aside from any compensation for lost wages or wages that you might have made had you been able to continue to work, the most that you can get for your pain and suffering is $650,000. In Virginia the medical malpractice cap is just a little under $2 million, but it’s a “hard cap.” This means that the most you can be compensated in any medical malpractice case is $2 million, which includes both economic and non-economic damages. But it should be mentioned that cases where victims actually reach that level of compensation are the exception and not the rule.

Another thing to consider is that medical malpractice cases themselves are rare. In a six month period in Washington, D.C, from January 1^st to June 30, 2009, only six malpractice cases reached verdicts. One of these cases was actually filed in 2001, so that gives you an idea as to the delaying that the malpractice insurance company lawyers as a matter of routine. Out of these six cases, three of them went in favor of the plaintiffs, but it should be mentioned that the judgment for two of these cases were well below what the plaintiffs thought they deserved. One judgment was for $125,000 where the plaintiff was asking for $300,000, and the other was for $110,000 where the plaintiff was asking for $600,000.

This brings us to another set of advantages that defendants in injury cases have. In many cases, what the plaintiff thinks is reasonable and what the jury thinks is reasonable are two very different things. Even if the verdict goes in favor of the injury victim, there is no guarantee that the jury will award what was asked for. Plus there is the practice of remittitur, in which a judge can lower the amount of a judgment if he or she thinks the amount is “excessive.”

So, between the actual low amount of success, the tendency for awards to be low, the artificial caps that are placed on the amount of money that victims can receive, the tendencies of juries to make low judgments and the ability of judges to slash their verdicts in the event that they don’t, we have a very hard time understanding what else could possibly be done in order to make things “easier” for medical malpractice insurers and their clients. Perhaps making filing for damages against doctors illegal? How about penalizing those who bring suit against a doctor if they aren’t successful? Or how about making the restrictions on what victims of medical malpractice can receive even more strenuous? Maybe a flat rate of a few thousand dollars for any injury, no matter how severe?

These examples of how the deck has become more and more stacked over the years against victims of medical malpractice or medical negligence serve to remind you how important it is to have experienced legal counsel to represent you in your case. John Sellinger, Greenberg and Bederman’s premier medical malpractice attorney, has received the highest possible rating by Martindale Hubble for competence and ethics. He was voted by his peers into 2008, 2009, and 2010 Maryland and DC Superlawyers Magazine.

John Sellinger has successfully managed hundreds of medical malpractice cases in the Washington, D.C. area. A medical malpractice case could not be in better hands, whether it is a surgical error, wrong diagnosis or birth trauma case including cerebral palsy, or erb’s plasy. If you or a loved one has been injured due to medical malpractice in Maryland, Virginia or Washington, D.C, contact Greenberg & Bederman for a free medical malpractice legal consultation.

Yaz in Washington Times- Andy Bederman Quoted

Greenberg & Bederman — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 15:55:50 -0500

There are many frustrating things about the work that we are doing with women who have been injured by Bayer’s line of birth control. The idea that these women came to us after being hospitalized for taking what was supposed to be a safe drug is bad enough. But what makes it even worse is that Bayer is continuing to deny that Yaz, Yasmin and Oscella are dangerous despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. We also find it aggravating that while the Food and Drug Administration has been taking some positive steps towards bringing Bayer’s rampant and irresponsible marketing under control, they are still moving unacceptably slowly when it comes to having the drug removed from the shelves. They are currently running “more studies,” but they don’t expect to have that done within a year.

There is also an element of frustration in the deafness of the media. Greenberg and Bederman and other law firms like us have practically been crying from the rooftops about the dangers of Yaz, Yasmin and Oscella. We have been running radio and TV ads, we have been all over YouTube, and we have been running this blog, and up until today, the dangers of these birth control pills have received barely any coverage in either local or national media.

Finally, the Washington Times has taken notice that there is something very wrong with these pills, and that there has been something wrong with them from the very beginning.

For those of you who do not know about these dangers (which isn’t surprising, considering how little coverage this has received,) all three of the pills in Bayer’s line of birth control pills contain a synthetic variation of progestin called drispirenone. Bayer came to the conclusion that this variation could not only prevent pregnancy, but could also help clear up moderate forms of acne and help prevent some of the heavier symptoms of premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD.) Drispirenone might very well do all three of those things, but what it also does is dramatically raise the potassium levels in the bloodstreams of the women who take them. These risks exist in practically all forms of oral contraceptives, but the inclusion of drispirenone amplifies them to a remarkable degree. It raises the chances of blood clots forming to exponential levels. These blood clots can then break apart and travel through the blood stream, where they can then cause strokes, heart attacks, and pulmonary embolisms. As well as increasing potassium levels in the blood, drispirenone has been shown to increase the cholesterol levels in the bile ducts of the gallbladder. This increases the risk of gall bladder disease, which may not be as dangerous as strokes, heart attacks or embolisms, but is still an extraordinary painful thing to go through.

This isn’t speculation on our part. Hundreds of otherwise healthy women all over the country have been hospitalized due to strokes, heart attacks and pulmonary embolisms, and more than a few have died. Many have also been forced to undergo gallbladder removal surgery, or have suffered excruciating pain due to the formation of gallstones.

One of the victims of Yaz in particular is named Lottie Green, who is mentioned in the piece in the Washington Times:

“In her left lung, the pulmonologist told her, was the largest blood clot they had ever seen and there were others in her right lung as well, she said.”

Ms. Green came to us for legal help, and we are moving forward with the case. We would very much like it if she were the last woman who was forced into the hospital due to the use of Yaz or Yasmin birth control pills, but considering both Bayer’s denials and the FDA’s foot-dragging on the issue, but we are afraid that she wont be.

We have to question the priorities of the media these days. Considering that so many cable news outlets are forced to fill up twenty four hours, you would assume that they would be able to find a readily available pill that is potentially deadly to women at least somewhat newsworthy. But instead we are given hours of talking head analysis over the significance of President Obama bowing to the Emperor of Japan, or whether or not Celebrity A and Celebrity B are going to get a divorce. If it were bubble gum or baby food or deodorant that were making a high percentage of its users suffer strokes, heart attacks, pulmonary embolisms or gallbladder disease, then surely there would be news every hour on the hour, with exposes on 60 Minutes to go with it. But for some reason, the very real dangers of Yaz, Yasmin and Oscella are being ignored. Kudos to the Washington Times for informing the public in the Washington, D.C. area.

Greenberg and Bederman is a D.C. area injury law firm that is currently helping women who have been injured due to the use of Yaz, Yasmin or Oscella, contact Greenberg and Bederman in Maryland, D.C, Virginia or Baltimore for a free yaz lawyer legal consultation today.

To learn more about yaz side effects, please read our yaz page. To learn more abour our yaz lawyer, Andy Bederman, please read yaz bio or watch his yaz lawyer video.