With the elderly population of the United States living longer, the rate of dementia in nursing homes and other eldercare facilities is also steadily rising. Dementia, a gradual deterioration of cognitive skills, is not a mental illness. But understaffed facilities and undereducated workforces can often confuse it as mental illness in patients. Moreover, these facilities [...]
On December 4th, 2005, Janet Henebema was driving home from work as a dealer in an Atlantic City casino. Suddenly, her car was struck by another car—one that had skidded out of control on some black ice. Ms. Henebema got out of her car and walked over to the shoulder of the road, only to [...]
In January of 2008, James Hitesman—a nurse who working for Bridgeway Senior Healthcare, a nursing home in Bridgewater, N.J.—sent an email to fellow Bridgeway employees. He reported that he was noticing a high rate of infection among the facility’s patients. Bridgeway’s medical director disagreed, replying as such in a return email. But Hitesman was not [...]
In what is proving itself to be a cautionary tale for dentists and patients across the country, federal authorities with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) are stepping in to help investigate a dental office that is gaining notoriety in the national press. While the exterior of the Tulsa, Oklahoma dental office appeared [...]
In a startling report released this week, almost 200 Jersey City schools’ water fountains were found to contain lead contamination above federal standards. One of the fountains, said the report, contained contamination at more than 800 times the Environmental Protection Agency’s standard. Thirty-seven had levels of more than 100 times the standard. Lead poisoning is [...]
“It’s a very individual thing,” said Dr. Peter Carmel. Dr. Carmel, 76, is a pediatric neurosurgeon at University Hospital, immediate past president of the American Medical Association (AMA), and a professor at UMDNJ-New Jersey Medical School. Dr. Carmel made this statement to the Star Ledger, in reference to the nation’s aging physician population. “We have [...]
According to Timothy McInnis, one of the plaintiffs’ lawyers, Par Pharmaceutical “risked the lives of senior citizens across the U.S., by illegally off-label marketing [the drug, Megace ES] to the elderly.” Today, Par pleaded guilty in federal court in Newark to “misbranding” criminal charges. A federal magistrate judge sentenced the company to pay an $18 [...]
Last year, the town of Fort Lee, N.J. began issuing tickets to jaywalking pedestrians caught “texting while walking.” And now, that approach to preventing resulting injuries is being looked at across the country, including in Nevada, where one assemblyman has proposed a law that would ban texting and walking on every Nevada state road and [...]
A high profile personal injury case in Pennsylvania, New Jersey’s next-door-neighbor, is on its way to being put to rest. A few years ago, Carrie Goretzka stepped outside to call the power company and report an outage and downed line on her property, 30 miles east of Pittsburgh. No one knows exactly what happened that [...]
In 2004, Mississippi passed a piece of legislation that was the “centerpiece” of its tort reform. The law created a $1 million cap on non-economic damages awarded to plaintiffs in civil litigation, including in personal injury cases ($500,000 for medical malpractice actions). The cap was put in place, supposedly, for two general reasons. First, it [...]
