Tag Archives: tort

Two Recent Negligence Settlements from Public Service Mistakes

Justice

Everyone makes mistakes, even those whose sworn mission is to protect and serve or to do no harm.  Two settlements were announced this week that demonstrate exactly that.  In Brooklyn, New York, a woman whose doctors’ negligence resulted in the amputation of her arms and legs was awarded $17.1 million.  In Tallahassee, Florida, the negligence of the police concerning a woman who was murdered during a botched drug sting operation led to a $2.4 million settlement for her family.  In both these cases, the professionals in charge, the ones whose judgement is awarded a certain amount of trust, made bad decisions that led to unfortunate consequences.  Everyone makes mistakes, but the law in general isn’t there to prevent that.  Rather, the law and the court system are intended to pursue justice among an otherwise ambivalent world.  And so, the silver lining: in Florida, a new regulation, called “Rachel’s Law” after the woman in question, was enacted to train policemen better and set up new guidelines in the use of criminal informants.

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The Latest BP Oil Spill Settlement

Oil refinery

The big news this weekend was the announcement that BP has settled the set of civil suits by residents and businesses against the company.  The settlement does not have a fixed amount, but BP claims it will likely pay around $7.8 billion.  While that may seem like a big number, this is only the most recent settlement.  In addition to this lawsuit, which covers economic and medical claims, BP has already spent about $22.1 billion on other settlements and, of course, the initial clean up of the spill.  And more is yet to come: the company still faces the US federal government and the individual states affected by the spill in court, potentially seeing criminal charges applied.  Analysts place the total amount in these cases to be anywhere between $17- and $40 billion.  BP itself has set aside $37.5 billion in anticipation of the cases.  There are a few variables in this number, which causes the range to vary so widely.  For one thing, the environmental fines depend on whether or not BP is found to have been grossly negligent, which some see as unlikely in the wake of these latest settlements.  Additionally, if the government levies criminal charges against the company, which it most likely will, the individual fines for that might be $10 billion (the highest amount of criminal fines paid by a corporation so far have only been $2 billion).  For more analysis of the numbers, check out this Wall Street Journal article that gives an excellent rundown.

The ultimate question this whole catastrophe asks is: does money really resolve the environmental problems caused by the company?  Some 5 billion barrels of oil were spilled, possibly because the company ignored safety checks in its rush to pump more oil out of the Earth.  When numbers get that high, humans have an inability to really grasp how huge they are, so use this tool to get a sense of just how much of an impact this spill had on the Gulf.  The city of Chicago and the surrounding area would be drenched in crude if the Magnificent Mile suddenly erupted.  The entirety of South Carolina would need to be cleaned if Columbia opened up and started gushing.  So does $5.4 billion, the lowest in environmental fines BP could pay, really fix anything?  I for one am looking forward to the criminal trial — let’s see if anyone will actually be held accountable for ruining a bit of the Earth.

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Blind Woman Struck by Car Receives $200,000 Settlement

Cannot see

The Star-Ledger reports today that a settlement has been reached for the blind Morristown, NJ woman who was hit by a car two years ago.  Chistina Brino was walking her seeing eye dog when she was hit by a Morris county employee driving a county-issued car.  The employee, a former assistant prosecutor, made a right hand turn outside of the county courthouse, of all places, when he struck Brino, fracturing her kneecap and dislocating her knee.  The dog was uninjured.

This news hits close to home for lawyer.com, which is located in Morris County.  The Seeing Eye, the oldest guide dog training center in the world, is headquartered in Morristown, and their dogs come primarily from a breeding center in nearby Chester.  It’s not uncommon to encounter the young dogs in training around Morristown.  Being a small city, the dogs learn all they need about crossing streets and the danger of traffic.  In fact, there’s a statue of a Seeing Eye dog and trainer in the middle of the main thoroughfare.  So, a 20-year county prosecutor must have been aware of the abundance of training dogs in the city, which makes this accident all the more unfortunate.

Teva Settles More Than $250 Million in Hepatitis Outbreak Cases

Propofol’s medicine vials were too large, leading doctors to dangerously reuse them on multiple patients.

The pharmaceutical company Teva has set aside $285 million to settle lawsuits related to their anesthetic Propofol and an outbreak of Hepatitis C in Nevada.  As reported by Bloomberg, litigants alleged that the company purposefully sold the drug in vials large enough to be reused and improperly labeled the containers, leading doctors to use drugs from the same vial on multiple patients.  This practice leaves patients vulnerable to infection and led to the spread of a deadly virus to colonoscopy patients in Nevada, the litigants claimed.  Hepatitis C is a viral liver infection and can be deadly if left untreated.  More than 80 lawsuits have been brought against Teva, which hopes to settle with the majority of them.

We are reminded that modern pharmaceutical medicine is not guaranteed to be safe.  The drugs we put in our bodies are not perfect and are, as anything, always vulnerable to human error as in this case.  An understandable lack of foresight led to the distribution of too-large vials, which led to reuse, which led to a transmittal of disease.  Though companies usually work to pull imperfect drugs from the public, as evidenced by the seemingly-frequent recall of children’s Tylenol, some things will always slip through the cracks.  The best practice when dealing with chemicals and your body is to find a trustworthy doctor, take your time, and, of course, conduct your own research.