Connecticut Injury Attorney Blog

Accidents involving Buses have repeatedly made headlines in our State. Most recently, a school bus driven by an operator with a poor driving history was involved in a tragic bus crash which led to the death of a Rocky Hill High School student and injured scores of others. In this particular event, it appears that the lack of mandatory seat belts for Connecticut school bus riders shares blame with the bus operator's error and that of his employer for hiring this individual in the first place without conducting a thorough driving history background check. This occurence is now reverberating through Connecticut's legislature and perhaps will finally enable the necessary political will to adopt laws protecting the vulnerable passengers of such motor carriers. The sheer weight and mass of the bus when combined with highway speeds or rollovers at even city street speeds produces sheer and crush injuries to the muscular skeletal frame of many riders.

Mandatory seat belt requirments would come at a price which most would support and yet another example of how industry will fail to adopt proven and available technology where neither the government nor the civil courts have held them accountable for not providing it as a standard safety feature. It shocks the conscience to imagine that cost benefit studies have been undertaken and held up in private collaborative settings as justification for holding back upon the implementation of this widely accepted technology in passenger car settings. It remains a blemish upon a progressive State such as ours that such legislation has repeatedly been held hostage to political jockeying and never yet made it our of Comittee and onto the floor for a successful vote. Perhaps things would have turned out differently for the Greater Hartford Academy students and this young talented High Schooler who accompanied them on this bus ride.

Given an appropriate case to force the issue, I remain convinced that a single verdict against even one bus manufacturer which has failed to install this readily available equipment and the vendor which distribute these machines may have a resounding impact on the accepted standards of conduct.

Construction site injuries occur with regularity and predictable levels of morbidity. Both the federal government via the Department of Labor's Occupational Safety and Health Agency and the State of Connecticut( Conn-Osha) track and release the grim statistics. In fact compilations are periodically released detailing how many construction workers die,suffer amputation, major back and extremity injuries etc. Beyond that the manner in which these unfortunate workers become injured are detailed in statistical format. It is striking that from year to year one can see the patterns repeat themselves. For example, X number of workers will fall from roofs, scaffolds and ladders and X numbers will sustain machine related injuries or have objects fall upon them. In Connecticut, as in many other jurisdictions,both workers compensation claims and general contractor negligence claims may be appropriate and necessary to initiate in order to enable an adequate financial recovery. The individual's employer is generally immune from tort liability absent extenuating circumstances but those entities in Control of the worksite or whom have a right to control the methods or manner of work may be held directly responsible to the injured worker.

The determination of which contractors might be liable and whether the circumstances of the worker's injury suggest negligence on their part requires a thorough and sometimes complicated factual investigation and analysis. My Firm regularly evaluates such matters and has successfuly litigated these cases in Connecticut Courts obtaining a significant financial recoveries in varied circumstances. Recent Appellate law has created additional challenges in the determination of whether the prime or general contractor may be held legally liable. From a public policy standpoint holding those entities which gain the benefit of the sub contracted labor makes a lot of sense since the direct employers of the individuals harmed may not have sufficient financial incentive to take the necessary steps to protect their own workers given the immunity which they are shielded with and the financial pressures of their industry.

Surgery in Connecticut as elsewhere involves certain inherent risks that are attendant to the nature of any operation. Sometimes delayed healing, infections and adverse reactions to anesthesia occur and are not the result of medical neglect on the part of the Surgeon or Hospital staff. There are, however, many types of occurrences which are considered more than the natural complications of surgery and often indicate the presence of a deviation from the Standard of Care for practicing surgeons and Hospitals performing surgery. A few that come to mind are cutting important nerves and tendons which are nearby and not intended to be injured as part of the surgery being performed. As an example, my office sued a Connecticut Orthopedic surgeon who while performing a carpal tunnel surgery, inadvertently cut the ulnar nerve resulting in severe restricted use of my client's hand and chronic pain. At his deposition, the Surgeon admitted that he had used the backside of his surgical blade to retract some tissue rather than a special blunt tool to do so and that is how it happened. A very substantial recovery was obtained but only after considerable litigation. Other situations involve performing the wrong type of surgery or performing it in a manner which unnecessarily injures healthy organs and bodily functions. A few years ago, my office had sued a Connecticut Colorectal surgeon who performed a low anterior colon resection which resulted in the loss of some significant bowel control and sexual impotence for my client who was in his forties. Aside from the issue of whether this surgery was even properly indicated, the low anterior approach versus a high anterior approach was problematic as it was usually reserved for Cancer patients due to the types of outcome which were known to occur. For a cancer patient where survival is at issue, taking the more invasive approach even at the risk of bowel and sexual function being impacted is generally felt by most patients and their surgeons as a necessary risk. The problem was that my client did not have cancer and the surgery could have and should have been performed utilizing an approach that was unlikely to injure him in these important areas. We have also seen retained sponges and foreign objects left in a patient inadvertently necessitating re-operation,severe infections and the like. Similarly, we sued and recovered a substantial settlement for a client that was told he had cancer and needed surgery when if fact the Hospital's pathology department switched his slides with that of another patient. The error was not discovered until after his surgery when the tissue removed during surgery came back with a cancer free report from the same pathology department. We can only hope that the hospital had the courage and good sense to immediately notify the other patient who no doubt was previously given the "good news" that they were cancer free!

September 19, 2009
Posted In: Recent News , Nursing Home Abuse And Neglect , Fractures , Brain Injury , Wrongful Death

By Paul Levin on September 19, 2009 12:18 PM | Permalink
The consequences of Nursing Home abuse and neglect to Connecticut's elderly and most vulnerable residents does not often make headlines in Connecticut's newspapers and television broadcasts. Perhaps some of the reason for this is that when an elderly resident of a Nursing Home or rehabilitation facility falls and fractures their hip or sustains a serious head injury the intial reaction is too often a misplaced sense that "these things happen when one gets old." The same reaction might occur when an elderly person chokes on their food which may actually stem from a diet not sufficiently monitored for reduced mastication function or develops painful bed sores and skin ulcers as a result of an insufficient physcial activity plan and/or inadequate interventions related to periodic position changes while resting in bed. The problem is that these sorts of events while commonplace occurences are not supposed to happen while in the protective custody of a qualified Nursing Home or Rehab facility.

In Connecticut, there are overlapping federal and State regualtions and well accepted standards of care in terms of resident and patient management which require a throrough evaluation and action plan for each resident which addresses all critical functions of daily living. These include regimented fall protection prgrams and prescribed interventions, nutrition and physcial activity management. Medicare regulations require the facilities to adopt and demonstrate compliance with a physical activivty action and rehabilitation plan designed to improve the condition of the elderly residents rather than allow them to warehoused until the point of requiring acute hospitalization or death. I have a particular disdain for facilities which allow their dependent residents to suffer the sometimes terrible consequences of avoidable incidnets. My firm pursues such matters with purpose and vigor and has developed excellent expert resources to bring to bear in the analysis of
whether Nursing Home negligence is a subsantial factor in the serious injury,abuse or event the death of an affected family member.

Presently, my firm is in the final stages of preparation for a wrongful death suit soon to be brought against a local Nursing Home named Marlborough Manner. This case will shortly be filed on behalf of the Estate of George Cooley who suffered a pelvic fracture from a fall which should not have happened last December. George died as a result of complications he suffered following the necessary surgery to stabilize his fracture so that he would be able to walk again once he left the facility which he was temporarily in for rehabilitation purposes. Well, George never left and his family has not forgotten him nor the violation of trust which brought this awful result about. Due to medication management issues affecting his gait and stability, George was temporarily in need of two staff members to assist him with ambulation to assure that he would not fall per the written action plan in effect . In fact, The physical therapy department even suggested a gait belt to be tied to him as a further measure of security. George fell when one indadequately trained nurse's aide attempted to assist him to the toilet by herself! All manner of serious injury and worse may occur in the presence of negligence and it sometimes takes a thorough understanding and review of the medical records to ascertain the truth about what occured to Grandma or Grandpa. My law firm invite all such inquiries.

Categories:
•Recent News,
•Nursing Home Abuse And Neglect,
•Fractures,
•Brain Injury,
•Wrongful Death
Posted by Paul Levin | Permalink | Email This Post

Posted In: Recent News , Nursing Home Abuse And Neglect , Fractures , Brain Injury , Wrongful Death

In Connecticut, sexual abuse continues to manifest itself in many and varied contexts producing grief and significant personal injury to the vicitms. The impact on those affected is well recognized in the medical literature to leave behind life long emotional and psychological scarring, significantly increasing the risk of depression and even suicide. Just last year my office resolved one such case involving a Connecticut licensed psychologist who was actually treating a married female patient for depression when he engaged in sexual relations with her. Due to the well known psychological dependency which necesssarily occurs in the course of mental health theraputic counceling the patient is rendered particularly vulnerable to their therapist and is perhaps the primary reason that a doctor/patient sexual or even social relationship is considered a breach of the physician's fiduciary duty to his or her patient. In this particular case, the patient wound up with a destroyed marriage, a weakened relationship with her children and ultimately tried to commit suicide twice before reaching a point of relative stability and acceptance. The result of the litigation and complaint brought against the health care provider in question is that he lost his license to practice in the State( and now sells insurance). Of course, there was a substantial settlement paid with part of the money coming from the doctor''s liability insurance company and part of it coming from his personal assets.

In the last few years, a number of high profile sexual abuse cases have made the news and gained public awareness of the problem. Members of the Clergy have been made to pay substantial settlements for their past and often remote behavior. Connecticut provides for a very generous statute of limitaions when allegations of sexual abuse are Deinvolved. Sometimes the abuse is perpetrated by family members or those that are in a position of authority and control over others,particularly children. Last year, my office resolved a case brought against the State of Connecticut's Department of Children and Family Services Several children had been placed in Foster care by this State agency and this resulted in a wide variety of abuse and neglect over an extended period of time. While initially denying that this was occuring and refusing to take remedial action such as promptly removing the children involved, the State ultimately did so and proceeded to defend the case brought on behalf of the children with vigor. Prior councel who had brought the case suffered a dismissal at the administrative level. My office corrected that and obtained permission to sue the State which we did. In fostering the substantial settlement obtained on behalf of the children, we were able to establish that connecticut case law would hold the State liable for the errors and neglect of their foster care parents chosen by them on the theory that the foster care parents were mere agents of the State who continued to have custody and control of the minor children placed in their care. That the State was merely delegating its non-delegable duty to care and protect these children . Particularly disturbing was the realization that there was a track record of significant deficiencies that were systemic and subject to a federal consent order which the State had not fully implemented. Therefore, it is important for private litigants to continue to come forward so both the embarassment and financial cost of tolerating this conduct promotes a higher level of care and oversight by those in the best position to bring this about.

A commerical dough mixer was determined to be a defective product by a hartford Connecticut Jury in April 2008. The Connecticut Jury also found that the manufacturer's failure to have placed on the machine in question a bowl guard which was only available as an optional piece of equipment warranted the assessing of punitive damages. A Punitive damages award is uncommon in the setting of a products liability lawsuit and is generally based upon the determination that the manufacturer or distributor's actions were taken with extreme indifference to the rights and safety of the products intended or forseeable users. In this case the manufacturer, Varimixer, had maintained a practice of selling large and powerful commercial dough mixers without having an interlocking bowl guard as a standard piece of safety equipment. It appeared to councel based upon information developed through discovery that the decision to only offer this safety device as a non standard piece of equipment available for an extra charge was commercially motivated and failed to take into account the potential for harm to the user should the mixer be used without the bowl guard. Based upon user experience throughout the industry, it was known that there would be a certain injury incident rate that would occur in the absence of the bowl guard's presence. The defendant's expert argued at trial that the injury incidence rate was small enough that making the bowl guard standard was not necessary in order for the product to be considered safe enough to use in accordance with the ordinary consumer's expectations of safety for the product. The Hartford Connecticut jury in this defective products personal injury case rejected that argument and found the manufacturer liable for both compensatory and punitive damages. The Compensatory damages award exceeded 1.3 million dollars. The case was settled for a confidential amount following the jury award last year.

Our firm is interested in making sure that Varimixer as well as other commercial dough mixer companies such as Hobart for example have now begun a campaign to retrofit all dough mixers sold without the safety cage being included. While we were unable to require the retrofitting campaign to occur given the express finding of this jury it would be unreasonable for this company and the industry not to similarly conclude that adding on safety cages to these machines presents and unfair and avoidable risk of harm to those that use these machines in the workplace which covers tens of thousands of commercial kitchen workers nationwide. We are interested in following up on this issue and if necessary filing additional lawsuits on behalf of those injured by the commercial dough mixers through inadvertent contact with their hands due to the absence of the bowl cage guards.