Texas updates in category: Wrongful Death

According to the Associated Press, a jury has found a former McMinnville, Tenn. day care owner guilty of first-degree murder in the death of a 6-year-old and the abuse of her two older brothers. On Tuesday, March 4, the jury recommended a life sentence for 41-year-old Sherri Mathis, with sentencing scheduled for April 23.The jury found guilty verdicts on nine criminal counts, including two...

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A California nursing home received its second state citation in two years following the death of a 94-year-old woman who wandered away from the nursing home last November.The California Department of Public Health fined the Palomar Heights Care Center $100,000 in January for not providing adequate supervision.A nurse told police that the elderly woman was checked and found sleeping 12 minutes...

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"Don't swallow magnets," is the advice that four year-old Braden Eberle is giving to other children. Braden recently spent six days in the hospital recovering from surgery to remove magnets from his intestines. Last April Braden swallowed a piece from a Magnetix toy set. Braden somehow had gotten one of the magnets loose from one of the rods and swallowed it. His mother, Jill, was not that...

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When a prescription is needed, there are several places the patient can end up with the wrong medication. The doctor could prescribe the wrong medication in the first place. When you give the prescription to the pharmacy, the person taking the prescription could misread the medication's name or dosage or mistype the information in the computer. The pharmacist could misread the information or...

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This week Boston plays host to the ICD Lead Performance Conference. This conference is dedicated to the wires that connect implantable cardioverter defibrillators (ICD) to the heart. These little wires were tossed into the public eye back in October when medical device giant, Medtronic, recalled one of its most popular leads due to an elevated risk of breakage. Reports of the defective wires...

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Loyola University Medical Center made the announcement this week that the hospital will begin evaluating all new patients for staph infections. Methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus infections (MRSAs) are the type of bacterial infections that do not respond to treatment with antibiotics. The new policy comes in the wake of a $25 million dollar wrongful death suit filed this week by the...

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A wrongful death case has been filed against drug store giant Walgreen Co. after an allegedly incorrect prescription caused a woman to have a miscarriage. The incident occurred outside St. Louis where Chanda Givens tried to fill a prescription for Materna, a prenatal vitamin, and was allegedly given Matulane, a strong chemotherapy drug, instead. The lawsuit claims that Givens became ill soon...

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A widow has filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Chrysler Corporation claiming the company failed to provide adequate protection, ultimately leading to her husband's death.Robert Leaks was driving his Dodge pickup truck when he lost control and slammed into a tree, killing him. The family claims the dangerous 2006 Dodge Laramie pickup "was not reasonably fit for unintended, but clearly...

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The family of Miguel Angel Ramirez has filed a wrongful death case against Nueces County Sheriff's Department and the deputy that shot and killed Ramirez. Ramirez, 32, was shot 10 times by Deputy Burl Smith on June 7th of this year. Ramirez was along the side of Interstate 37 with an 18-inch machete. The sheriffs department says that Ramirez would not heed the warnings of the officers and...

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We earlier posted about a personal injury lawyer that filed a motion to recuse four of our Texas Supreme Court Justices from hearing a wrongful death case. The motion, which alleged that the justices were biased in favor of defendants, was based in large part on a law review article by a UT professor that found the Court ruled in favor of defendants in 2004 and 2005 over 80% of the time. Not...

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Yesterday a jury handed down a $1.5 million verdict to the family of Aurilano Salas for a wrongful death lawsuit that was filed after his 2001 death. The verdict was only 15 percent of the $10 million that the plantiffs attorney suggested as "reasonable compensation." Salas was had no spleen and suffered from many life threatening conditions. He became ill at work and was transported to Christus...

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The plaintiffs in a wrongful death suit have sought the recusal of Texas Supreme Court justices Dale Wainwright, Scott Brister, Wallace Jefferson, and Nathan Hecht. A Motion to Recuse is a motion asking that a judge not hear a case, usually because the judge has some involvement or bias. This lawyer's motion is based in large part on a study performed by University of Texas Law Professor David...

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A southeast Texas woman has filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the manufacturers of the floor buffer that she claims killed her husband. She believes that the buffer was unreasonably dangerous and these defects lead directly to the death of her husband. Anne Harper filed the suit against OPC/Floor Blazer and American Honda Motor Co. last Thursday alleging that the propane motor on the buffer...

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Purdue University and the parents of a 19-year-old freshman have agreed to a settlement in the fatal accident that occurred last January. The student wandered into an unlocked utility room where he was electrocuted on January 13th. The boys body was not discovered until two months later. The family of the victim was paid a lump sum settlement of $500,000, the maximum amount that can be claimed...

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I read an interesting story in the Houston Chronicle last week about a doctor being charged in the death of his child patient. A five year-old autistic boy died at after being administered a chemical treatment by a Pittsburgh doctor. The treatment the doctor, called chelation therapy, is an FDA approved; however, it is not designed to treat autism, but acute heavy metal poisoning. Some people...

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